I've always drawn.

As a child, I copied things exactly — quite literally. I loved the detail, the precision and the challenge of getting things just right.

I'm a scientist by training, so perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise!

I chose to leave my career to be there for my son, who is wonderfully neurodiverse and has multiple additional needs. It wasn't a decision I regretted. It was simply the path our family needed.

In 2022, I could still create those detailed drawings. My biggest enemy was time.

Then life changed.

My brother passed away from cancer. Twenty days later, my father followed him after complications from an infection he'd picked up while visiting my brother. My father had lived with us, and I was his carer.

But by then, the "us" was no more.

We were divorcing after 21 years of marriage and nearly 29 years together.

At the same time, I was being investigated for cancer, had lost three stone in weight, and my kidneys had decided they didn't particularly fancy working properly either. My Minimal Change Disease had relapsed.

Through all of this, my son — amazing and beautiful — was my light. He also brought some rather unexpected and very different challenges.

Together, we found our place, our community and, eventually, after quite a struggle, a home.

And that home brought us something we both desperately needed:

peace, and a new path.

I started photographing those moments too — little pieces of our new home and our new life that felt worth stopping for.

Chosen images that captured the beauty around us and reminded me that, even amongst everything that had happened, there were still moments of peace.

Then came another year of being misdiagnosed while my arthritis progressed rapidly.

My son never got to attend school in our new home. After 18 months of homeschooling, it took legalities, persistence and a lot of money to secure Education Other Than At School — EOTAS — for him.

He is now moving on to Education Other Than In College — EOTIC — and we're waiting for GCSE results day before we find out what that will look like for him next year.

When his package finally gave me three days a week, with three hours where I could do things for myself, I thought I might finally have some time to create again.

Except I couldn't.

The arthritis had disabled me, physically and mentally.

I could no longer hold a pencil and draw detailed, accurate pictures in the way I once could.

A year ago, I started my own mental health journey. I realised I couldn't unpick everything by myself.

I'd spent much of my life taking antidepressants that never really worked for me. When my son was born, I stopped taking them because I never wanted to feel disconnected from my feelings again.

Then, at a certain age, perimenopause arrived with its own complications.

I was carrying unprocessed grief, and I'd spent so long in survival mode that I didn't really know how to stop.

And then the penny dropped.

I was diagnosed as neurodivergent too.

That became the beginning of a very different journey — one of learning, understanding and acceptance.

And somewhere along that journey, I started creating again.

Not as I used to.

I found another way.

I started letting colour flow.

As the colours flowed, I found moments of calm. Moments where words weren't enough. Moments of peace within the pain and life's adversities.

Those paintings have now become something new.

Some will remain paintings.

Others are being transformed into jewellery and cards, with carefully chosen fragments of the original artwork becoming little pieces of something that can be held, worn or given to someone else.

And the photographs are there to share the beauty of our new home — the place that became a source of peace, inspiration and hope.

And so DyLou Studio was born.

Created, chosen and crafted by Mandy.