In those early days, my emotional life was almost impossible to navigate. Everything was intense, but it shifted with mercurial speed, so I rarely had time to properly feel anything before the next wave arrived. A counsellor at the Royal Marsden described it as being like a pot of boiling water on the stove. Crying or shouting might be like taking the lid off for a moment, but what really needed to happen was for the gas to be turned down.

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The problem was that no one could do that for me. All I wanted was for someone to tell me I was going to be OK — and no one could.

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Only with hindsight do I realise that I used music, and specifically opera, to turn the gas down. The arias gave my feelings a shape and a duration. Each one created a contained space in which a single emotion could exist without being overwhelmed by the next. For a few minutes at a time, fear, grief, anger or hope had somewhere to go — and then, crucially, somewhere to end.

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I don’t even know how much I was really singing at the time. But returning to those arias gave my body a rhythm to breathe with, and a physical way to stay present. Opera didn’t calm the storm; it allowed me to step inside it safely, long enough for the heat to lessen.

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Alongside medical treatment, I felt a strong need to find my own way of engaging with illness — not to be cured by it, but to reclaim a sense of agency and dignity. I explored a range of alternative therapies, not because they promised answers, but because choosing them for myself helped restore a feeling of self-respect. We all have our own paths, and this was part of mine.

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Nearly twenty years later, I am still here. For reasons no one can fully explain, I have had a reprieve.

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At the time of my diagnosis, I could not find a single hopeful account online — only stories of pain and fear. While mesothelioma still carries a poor prognosis, extraordinary teams of doctors, nurses and scientists are working to change that narrative. I realised that perhaps I could help too, simply by being a living, breathing counter-story.

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Breathe grew out of that realisation. It is not a story about survival or illness, though both are present. It is a love story. Facing death stripped everything back and allowed me to see human nature at its most generous — in my family, my friends, in medical teams, and in strangers. To have received so much love in one lifetime is an extraordinary gift.

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This show is my attempt to give some of it back — through voice, through music, and through the courage to keep going.