Five years ago, I had what you could call a break down. I started crying uncontrollably at work and had to go home. I got diagnosed with exhaustion syndrome with depression as one of the symptoms. Working as a nurse at a children’s hospital was fun and fulfilling but the working conditions proved too much for me. I tried several ways of getting back to work. One of which was studying in a slow pace to become a paediatric nurse and now I have a nice diploma of my master’s degree, but I still haven’t gone back to nursing. Instead my goal became just to get well again, to start feeling like a normal human being and not like an empty eggshell.

I had the fortune to be able to move back home with my mother, in her big house in the middle of the woods. I started to write again as a way of dealing with the exhaustion, the anxiety that comes with it, and the panic attacks. I took long slow walks in the forest, did yoga and very slowly I stopped sleeping 18 hours per day. I managed to get out of bed in the morning, despite still having the anxiety and excessive crying, I got better.

In my teens I read a fantasy book where one character has a miniature of his own face made in a type of wood with magic powers. After wearing it for a while the face comes to life and helps him out in unpredictable ways. When I moved home again, in my attempts at getting better, this snippet of story came back to me and I found I really wanted a small face on my wrist helping me through the worst. I had never sculpted in wood before nor did I have the right tools but whittling that small piece of wood was meditative and healing to me. When I finished I felt happy in a way I had forgotten how to, and just holding that little face made me calmer.

From that first face I started to develop my skills and ideas more and more and All of Alice is the fruition. I still live in the woods with my mum, but I’ve added a boyfriend to the household. It is a harmonious collective. I am so grateful that I am able to do things that makes me happy. Writing, wood working, gardening, these things make me well again, all in my own pace.