A little bit broken (yet still a beautiful thing)

Posted on 10 April 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

  This was inspired by a photograph of a butterfly someone else had taken when it landed next to her, and her observation of how it was broken but still beautiful, like her. It really spoke to me. For my painting, I switched over the broken wing to the left side, to represent my cancer
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Love Tree

Posted on 10 April 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

My Gift To You A poem about carers and the (often unrecognised) importance of their role in cancer survivorship. The poem is called My Gift to You– because friends who care and carers are apart of the gift we have been given the greatest gift of all life.   This timeless peaceful place Washed over me My
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Lotus

Posted on 10 April 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

  ‘To me, the cancer journey felt like being in the eye of a storm. Having very little control over what was happening, learning how to hold on, withstand, and trust, until eventually the storm is over, and we are left to pick up the pieces that remain and figure out how to put them
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Acorn cups

Posted on 4 April 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

    The acorn cups resonate with me, from the outside they are hard and ugly but those golden cups are the very heart of the tree  – they hold the seeds of her life together, until they fall and start again as we all do.   Mal, prostate cancer survivor
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Raven

Posted on 28 March 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

    Before my diagnosis and treatment I spent a lot of time with Ravens on the mountain ridges of Snowdonia. I would soar high above the crags, catching the wind as it was lifted up the dark cliffs, diving, flipping, feeling the wind with every outstretched feather. After my treatment I was grounded and
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MRI scan

Posted on 22 March 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

  This painting inspired by my MRI scans, that my urologist provided. So I thought that’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to try and paint and then this came along and it really inspired me to carry on painting. The scan is my internal landscape. It’s important to me to know what’s going on in my
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Cancer Diagnosis, Healing and Feeling Timeline

Posted on 22 March 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

Denial I was in denial the moment I felt the pea sized lump. I was too stressed at work to deal with it and it came and went with my cycle so it was only once I had quit my job a few months later that I found the time to make a doctors appointment.
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Dreams

Posted on 22 March 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

                                                                                                                                                                                                              Mal, prostate cancer survivor        
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My Journey

Posted on 22 March 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

MY JOURNEY I sat in the consulting room With my red socks as company “It’s almost certain you have CANCER” Is what the doctor said to me. There are tigers; there are pussycats Mine is the aggressive kind On hearing this, my world collapsed I momentarily lost my mind I’d been SUPERMAN, personified Invincible –
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Snakes and ladders

Posted on 20 March 2018 by Sofia Vougioukalou

                                  Looking back 8 years on April 29th 2009 my life had a blowout. I was diagnosed with oesophagus cancer. Life is like the board game snakes and ladders. Life began again for me at square 1 on the 29th
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