Flourish, non-toxic festival Mind, Body and Spirit | Bitch can Stitch x Hello Love x Fake Tit Fund

Hello Love (taken from their website)

It was a rainy day and I was walking up and down Old street trying to find a cosy, nice spot to sit down and enjoy my coffee break. Suddenly I came across this funky, colourful shop named "Hello Love". I walked in without paying too much attention to my surroundings and went straight to the coffee stand.

After a few sips and a few minutes of looking around,  my curiosity had overcome my weather grumpiness  and I came to the realisation that I was in a multi-purpose event space. 

The space was supporting people with cancer diagnosis, in recovery or/and in remission.

I, myself, have a complicated relationship with cancer, sickness and death. My dear grandpa passed away when I was 7 years old from lung cancer and I can still feel the gap and nostalgia that his memory elicits.

A few years ago, one of my best friends, confined in me that she was diagnosed a year before, went through chemotherapy and was in remission at the time

I was shocked, but my friend voiced that it was something locked in the past and put in a small box in a small corner of her mind not be opened until felt ready. 

I respected her decision of silence.

Another very traumatic and difficult encounter I had with cancer was when my friend lost her mother after a continuous battle for recovery. Having lived with that friend in the past I was certain that she would be severely affected by this loss and alienate herself. One day, she reached out in her own subtle way but I was entirely triggered. I offered minimal, typical verbal support and caused her great disappointment. I am now aware I was lacking the engagement and attention needed due to my immobilising fear of death and grief.) 

At that point, I felt inadequate and powerless; that feeling contradicted with my future aspirations to provide people with tools to persevere any challenging experiences/situations.

 In my professional life, patients have brought up the themes of loss and dying in their artworks during our sessions and I was able to contain their feelings and the energy in the room allowing them to process their current situation.

Reflecting on all my previous experiences I had decided that educating myself on cancer would be my first step forward. This day had come, I got an invite on their “Flourish, non-toxic festival Mind, Body and Spirit" hosted by the charity who owns the multipurpose event space. I checked the itinerary and I knew this would be a way of getting one step further in learning how to support and understand what my friends had experienced in a personal level.

From the beginning that talks I went through an emotional rollercoaster. We were asked how many of us have been diagnosed at some point with cancer; many women raised their hands.

I immediately felt a plethora of emotions but mainly admiration. 

So many empowering women in a space!

First part, four unforgettable speeches from four amazing women. They shared with us how they had overcome cancer, their journey to recovery and how they managed to use their experience for their own growth and inspiration. Started from organising festivals, to becoming authors, to facilitating their own counselling sessions and finally to setting up their charity foundations and projects.

Each and every one of the presentations was touching and empowering.

Talks about holistic approaches were discussed, the ineffective implementation of the NHS processes and weak communication skills from doctors who have caused deeper trauma to patients. 

On a training I had attended via the NHS about learning how to interact unbiased with people with personality disorders, we did a role play exercise. One person was the doctor, one the patient and one the observer. The ‘doctor’ had to inform the patient of their diagnosis and vice versa.

It was a terrifying experience but very eye opening in both cases. Being the person to pass on this delicate, frightening information sensibly and being the recipient of such news without reacting with intense confrontational responses were like looking at the same picture from a different angle; same picture, different interpretation. 

Sitting there with my NHS badge from work made me feel ashamed about the way those women experienced being diagnosed and the inefficient hospital care. It made me develop even more strong feelings of my aim in this profession. However, their experiences gave me a new aim goal for my profession; to change the way patients are handled by incorporating empathy, professionalism and kindness.

One of the speakers have set up the Fake Tit Fund. It is a foundation where, a database of information will be provided to the women having breast cancer. It will be a way of learning about all the possible options, seeing photos and stories of other women and being able to have access to a more complete perspective and be able to make a more refined selection about your breasts and whether you will do restorative surgery or not.

After these powerful presentations and discussions there was an embroidery patch workshop.

The ‘Bitch Can Stitch’ in collaboration with the ‘Fake Tit Fund’ organisation had organised a 2hr embroidery workshop teaching all the participants how to sew their own boob patch. They handed an embroidery kit to each of us and various nipple designs and skin colours to choose. 

I picked up the stitching method slowly but got there - stitching ain’t no joke! After repeatedly failing to understand how the stitches work I handled it like I handle all the materials I cannot figure out their technique… I improvised! Despite the messy stitches and poor quality of threading at the back, by the end of that session I had a boob.

This embroidery workshop was almost like a comic relief after these emotionally charged talks.

Perfect ending to a powerful day.

After that day, I feel much more connected to my friends) and I was holding them in mind throughout the whole event. I feel liberated by my guilt in a way and it makes me happy that from all the places I could have had my coffee I chose to enter that aesthetically pleasing and fun coffee shop which led me to this remarkable festival.

There is a rule of attraction in everything we do. I seem to be attracted to holistic, artistic places with alternative therapies and perspectives and I am all up for it! 

Let’s see what the future holds, the only thing for sure is that I will keep up with each and every one of the people who I met today and follow their work and projects!

If interested please do too!