The Loss That Defined the Transition
December 9, 2024. Three days after my birthday. The same day I was born—Monday, my mother left this world. A full circle, yet one I never anticipated. Her passing didn’t just mark the end of her journey but also the closing of a chapter in mine. Now, I sit in the silence of grief, processing, reflecting, and trying to understand how to move forward.
I turned 48, and with that, I faced a truth I had been circling for years: my life with my mother was turbulent, but filled with deep love for each other—perhaps too much for her, as she poured all of her love into me. I was born into her trauma—into a life of loss, displacement, and longing. She carried wounds from a revolution that sent her family into the diaspora, from a marriage that failed, one she never got over, to another that lasted three decades but hurt her deeply as he never left his wife, and from friendships that faded, as one by one, her Persian friends in the UK drifted away, leaving her feeling more and more alone in a place that never truly felt like home, surrounded by memories of what was lost.
She was a mother raising a child alone, without family, navigating a country that never truly felt like home, among people and customs that remained unfamiliar. among people who never fully understood her. The longing for a different life always lingered in the background—regret mixed with survival. She fought for me, for our life, but in doing so, she never had the chance to enjoy it. She was not equipped to make her life better—her inner turmoil, the drugs doctors gave her that numbed her pain, offered false calmness but kept her trapped. Circumstances, financial limitations, and the need to stay on benefits to survive and raise her child kept her bound..
Layers of Identity and Struggle
Being her son meant inheriting more than just her love; it meant inheriting her pain. And yet, I had my own struggles—struggles that only compounded the weight of our shared history.
Coming out to my mother was one of the hardest journeys of my life. When I tried at 20, it was met with threats of suicide and I was too young to deal with those kinds of threats, the late 90s and early 2000s were different times. So, for five years, I lived a lie, pretending, fabricating relationships to make my life more palatable to her. When I was 25, just before turning 26, I decided I couldn’t lie anymore.
Again, I was met with pain, threats, and years of turmoil before we reached a place of understanding. My teenage years were consumed by the guilt of being different. My 20s were spent coming out. And when I finally met someone, believing I could be open, that too ended because he wanted to hide from the world. This is important to say—I could not live in secrecy. After years of hiding from my mum, of finally finding my voice, I knew I had to live openly.
My 30s were a desperate attempt to build my career, to make something of myself. Every spare moment was spent drawing, painting—on top of working full-time.—I didn’t socialise as much as I could have because I was working and drawing. My focus was on creating rather than seeking out experiences others my age might have embraced.But by my late 30s, my body began to fail me. The years of storing emotions instead of expressing them took their toll.
When I was 8 or 10 years old, I promised myself I would never cry again. And I kept that promise until I was 18—when I tried to quit smoking, and even then, the tears were out of frustration. This emotional suppression became an unhealthy pattern, a weight on my body that I am only now beginning to understand. My emotions have always found their way onto the canvas. Art has been my release and tears. I am very good at talking, but crying has never come easily to me. Instead, my body carries my emotions—manifesting in anxiety, tension, and eventually, claustrophobia and pain.
The World and My Place in It
Chapter 1 was the process of confronting l.....my past—the guilt, the pain, the struggles of growing up without a father, of being raised in a world where money was always a battle, of constantly reinventing myself to survive. It was also about falling in love, experiencing heartbreak, and the fear of falling in love again—scared because of the pain I had seen my mother endure.
Chapter 2 was about facing my mother’s decline—her mental health deteriorating as dementia took hold, reshaping our relationship in ways I never expected. Versions of Robert. The many iterations of me she saw, created, and forgot.
Now, I stand at the threshold of Chapter 3. But I haven’t started painting it yet.
Because I am still here, in the void. Processing. Observing.
And the world around me is in turmoil.
I have always wrestled with my identities—Persian, English, Jewish, Christian. As a child, I was called 'Paki' or 'halfie' when I played outside with other kids on my council estate, that name calling as a child built an insecurity that has stayed with me all my life. I was sent to a Catholic primary school with one nun, Sister Suzanne, who was one of my favourite teachers. She was kind, patient, and one of the few people who made me feel truly seen during those early years. I spent my summers at my uncle’s vicarage until I was 13 and I lived in a home where Iran was ever-present in language, culture, and memory, even as the outside world was distinctly English.
But the world has changed. The rise of social media brought me closer to family in Iran and the U.S., bridging the gaps of diaspora. And yet, October 7, 2023, changed everything again. The war between Israel and Palestine shattered something in me. I have spent months observing, reading, and reflecting rather than speaking. There is so much division in the world, so many voices clashing, while the innocent suffer.
I know the pain of displacement through my mother’s experience. I understand the devastation of losing one’s homeland. I have heard the stories of Iranians forced to flee, killed, and tortured for wanting to be free, just as I have witnessed the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians. And now, I sit in a space where I don’t want to contribute to division—I want my art to bring people together. But I also feel deeply triggered by the antisemitism I see, the erasure of history for both people , and the weaponisation of suffering. And so, I wait. I seek counsel with my therapist and have conversations with friends who are both Jews and Muslims.
I will not create from reaction. I will create from understanding.
A New Chapter Waiting to Unfold
I built my website. I separated my art and Colour Consultancy. I am working out how to bring it to the world. But I know this: I do not want to work on illustrations for my next chapter. My soul is telling me this through my resistance to creating them.
All I dream about is painting on canvases—large canvases, a room filled floor to ceiling with my art. I dream of a locked cube room, even though I am claustrophobic, every wall covered in my work, a physical manifestation of everything inside me. But I don’t have the means yet.
So I wait.
I am waiting to start Chapter 3. I am uncovering and revealing Chapters 1 and 2. I am dealing with loss, with identity, with reflection. I am navigating the complexities of my past, my mother’s struggles, my own transformation.
But above all, I am waiting for the moment when it all bursts onto the canvas. When the emotions I have stored find their way into colour, into texture, into form. When Chapter 3 is no longer just a thought but a creation.
And when that moment comes, it will be a deeply honest expression—one that reflects everything I have lived, processed, and carried within me.
For now, I sit in the silence. Waiting. Processing. Brewing.
By Robert Paul