‘If I can inspire hope in one person, then Breathe has done its job’
Why Breathe?
When I was diagnosed with mesothelioma in October 2006, I was 38 years old, married, and the mother of two very young children. We were told there was no known cure, and that we were looking at months rather than years.
In those early days of illness, my emotional life was almost impossible to navigate. Everything was intense but it shifted with mercurial speed. I was like a pot of boiling water on the stove. Crying or shouting might take the lid off for a moment, but what I needed was for the gas to be turned down.
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.
Only with hindsight do I realise that I used music, and specifically opera, to turn the gas down. Opera met my intensity: the arias gave my feelings a 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. Opera didn’t calm the storm; it allowed me to step inside it safely, long enough for the heat to diminish.
Nearly twenty years later, I am still here. For reasons no one can fully explain, I have had a reprieve.
It’s taken eighteen years for me to write Breathe — a combination of survivor's guilt and just getting on with life. 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.
Breathe grew out of that realisation. It’s 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.
This show is my attempt to give some of it back.