Cath Brew:

This podcast contains conversations about trauma and other challenging subjects and may be sensitive for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

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You are listening to Drawn to a Deeper Story. I'm Cath Brew from drawn to a story.com. I'm an artist who illustrates and educates about marginalized experiences for positive change with a particular interest in identity and belonging. This podcast is about the lives that challenges and the difficult conversations around them, and it's a place to listen openly and to absorb people's truths, to learn how to show up differently for the benefit of everyone.

And today I'm joined by Antonia Rolls. Thank you for joining me today, Antonia.

Antonia Rolls:

Hi Cath. It's lovely to be with you again.

Cath Brew: I

t's fantastic to hear your voice. It's just lovely. So thank you so much.

Antonia Rolls: It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.

Cath Brew:

Right, and for the listeners, You might be thinking, haven't I heard this woman before?

Antonia Rolls:

Yes. Well, who I am is, as you say, Antonia Rolls. I am an artist and I have three things which I think define me.

First of all, I'm creative. Second of all, I don't conform, and third of all, I need a platform. And I think that that covers everything. So my life has taken turns that I didn't expect. Mm-hmm. I deal with difficult subjects, which is death, end of life, and dying, and also addiction. And when we first spoke on this podcast, we talked about how I was the mother of an addict.

Mm-hmm. And how dealing with an addicted son is, is. Very challenging and traumatic, but rewarding and eye-opening in so many ways. And I created the exhibition addicts and those who love them. And behind every addict is someone traumatized by loving them because I am that person traumatized by loving them well.

Um, on the 24th of February, I found my son dead in his flat of an overdose, and that has. As you can imagine has changed so many things. Mm. And the exhibitions have come together. Now, the who. Come full circle to the graceful death exhibition. Mm-hmm.

Cath Brew: It's quite profound really.

Antonia Rolls:

That isn't it, that circle. It is very, it is, I'm gonna use the word spooky because it has come full circle and, and I also, what has come full circle is that I gave birth to, and I was the one that he wanted to find him dead.

So I saw him first when he was alive, and I saw him first when he was dead. And that is somehow a bit of a comfort.

Cath Brew:

I was just gonna ask, is that a comfort? But I could feel myself slightly resisting cuz it didn't, it didn't quite feel like a fair question in some ways.

Antonia Rolls:

Well, here, here is something which I, I'm learning and which I believe everybody's grief is different, everybody's journey is different, and I'm thinking that we are allowed joy and laughter in our grieving, it is possible. Mm-hmm. When we are tipped into grief, obviously everything crumbles around us. And this is my sixth personal loss. This is. You know, I just keep having them, you know, if I was thinking of a, a divine plan for life, I'm thinking, well, here is what I need to learn.

I need to learn about dying. I need to learn about end of life. I need to learn about addiction, and I'm being given it in bucket loads. But joy. Is possible in grief. It may be as simple as just having a cup of tea and the pleasure that gives you, it's possible. So comfort is also possible in grief if we allow it, but I do understand that.

When we are in the depth of grief and we are traumatized and we are in a kind of shock, joy, and comfort, and on those words mean nothing and they don't come through. I think they have a place and, and I think that it's not doing a disservice to our loved lost one by experiencing joy.

Cath Brew:

I've watched you grieve in ways like I've never seen anyone else grieve with such grace, but also really living your grief and, and I mean that by embracing it. So it's actually, I don't wanna say a positive thing, but you're embracing it in a way that means that you are not actually letting it consume you to that point of being completely rendered useless by it.

Is that a fair statement? There's something about what you are doing that I haven't. Seen people do before and I'd be interested in what, what your thoughts are on that.

Antonia Rolls:

Thank you for that, Cath. Ok. So there is an answer to this and it's. Unconventional. This is my sixth personal loss. Mm-hmm. The first loss I had cracked me open like a knot.

They overwhelmed him and in the end, they. Couldn't let him go and they, they just closed over his head so there was no light left. And with his death, I think those demons have no place in his life. They can't harm him anymore. There is nothing they can do, but what they can do, what that darkness can do is come for me and I can sink into the darkness of despair and bleakness.

And retrospect and guilt and shame because of his terrible, terrible life as an addict. And I made a decision that the darkness was, had no place in my life. Yeah, my grieving or anyone else's grieving, and therefore I'm going to look for the light. And looking for the light has meant that I. I don't allow myself in that.

I stop myself when I'm in it. Indulging and I use the word indulging for myself. I don't suggest other people do in guilt. Going back and getting absolutely stuck in situations where I could have done something different, cost you could have done. And that getting stuck, rearranging the past puts you on a hiding to nowhere.

Yeah. Cause when you finish rearranging it, nothing happens. It's still the same. Yeah. Yeah. So, In this grieving, I am looking for the light, and I don't know why I'm making it public, but I'm making it public and it's surprised me that I've done that and it's surprised me that somehow other people are responding to it well in that when people are responding, they're not responding about me, they're responding about themselves because.

So many people are in grief and so many people have lost a loved one to addiction and the shame that's attached to addiction and to an overdose death, which I still awaiting his inquest. He's had, um, a post, but it was, in my mind it was an overdose cause of so many reasons. I found that, that the syringe and things, um, just next to him, um, There's so much shame around this, and I'm thinking, you know, my whole thing is about addicts and those who love them, and the operative word in that exhibition being love, which is not a sentimental thing.

It's a big powerful. That's powerful. Yeah. And it cracks around you and it shatters and up again and keep at it. So that's a long answer to a short question.

Cath Brew:

It's a wonderful answer. And there's several things in that that I, I want to pick out. And one of them is what you were saying about making a conscious choice about not letting it take you down as well, because hindsight can be a wonderful thing, but it's also incredibly damaging because we judge ourselves on decisions that were made without the knowledge that we have now. I think that we're especially hard on ourselves. So I, I'm particularly interested in how you manage the reflections on your thoughts of what might have been or not been, and, and you answered that beautifully.

I think there's great power in realizing. Where you could go with this, but you, you choose not to. And I think that's incredibly emotionally intelligent, actually.

Antonia Rolls:

Well, thank you Cath. And, and I also think that I owe it, you know, the darkness that engulfed him cannot be my darkness. It cannot be anybody's darkness.

We can't have that. And by choosing the light in this bereavement doesn't mean I don't cry and I don't miss him. Yeah. I wake up, you know, in the morning with this little, and I call it like a little existential scream in my head because. He's not here and there's nothing I can do about it. But then I have to make a choice.

Well, what am I gonna do? What am I going to do with my life? I have more life behind me head than the head of me. Yeah. Am I going get lost now as I have been in the past with other bereavements, or am I going to rise up with this one, taking with me the tears, the sadness? The missing him and all the regrets because we can't stop the regrets.

And am I just going to, uh, do this looking for the light? Whatever that means. And what the other thing is that nothing can harm, cost you anymore. Yeah. He cannot be hurt. He can't be hurt, he can't be touched by anything but love now. And I think I'm gonna have a bit of that. Yeah. You know, he's my boy and he's touched by love and.

We loved each other, even though he didn't often show it. I'm just a mother's prerogative to say he loved me. He loved me, but I loved him and I know he loved me, but I'm going to join him in my own version of this light. Yeah. And do my crying and my missing and my being kind to myself. Mm-hmm.

Cath Brew:

Yeah, and, and I think that's the power of you doing it publicly as well, because as you say, The, the responses you're getting and giving, it's giving people permission to blast that shame away with some light and actually that the love and actually talk about it in a different terms rather than, than shame and all the difficult stuff.

I think there's a wonderfulness of, of giving, of you showing your vulnerability and giving people permission to be. To be vulnerable themselves, but, but real vulnerability, not clouded in all this extra stuff that actually they don't need to own.

Antonia Rolls:

Yeah, and the words shame and guilt and regret, those are really powerful words, and we have to be so careful of them.

They're very good servants, but not good masters. And we can get lost in them because when somebody like Costya died who was only 29 and who was. As disabled with addiction and alcoholism as a very old man with Alzheimer's, it was very sad. I could take that as my responsibility and say, if only. I had done this, that, or the other.

And if only things were different when they're not different. And I did what I could at the time and so did he. And the other thing is that the diction is such a terrible thing in our minds. We, it's so hard to say, help me. My loved one is an addict. Because people dunno what to say. No with the best one in the world.

They don't because unless you've had experience of. Addiction. You dunno what to say, it's too much. But that drives it underground and we can't talk about it.

An overdose death that an addict death that all the cause an addict dying isn't just something that happens after, uh, there are no clues. Mm-hmm. By the time an addict takes an overdose or dies, There have been possibly years of outrageous, appalling behaviour and trauma and police and ambulances and denials and all the terrible things, and violence.

You know, there is so much that's attached to addiction that when somebody dies of addiction, Most of us are already quite traumatized by the whole experience. Yeah. And we feel we, we can't possibly say that this addict has died and we are hurt to our call because it's so hard to, as you say, shed a light on it.

And what I want to do is, Just shine the light. Say the words. Say, if I was to say it's all okay, it's not okay. That's not okay. But what if the truth is that this thing is happening? It would be wonderful if we could say it.

Cath Brew:

Yeah, and just acknowledge it. Yeah. Yes. Because it's the denial of it that makes it go underground and be, and that's where the shame starts to come in. Like if we talked about it as though it was a normal everyday thing because it's part of the human condition.

Antonia Rolls:

Mm-hmm. Then I think it would change massively. It would, we would be able to support each other. I mean, a lot of the, the, um, the responses, I'm getting off from people who've lost someone to addiction, who are struggling in the darkness because, They can't speak about it or they feel that they can't speak about it. And that doesn't do anyone any good. No. The darkness that got their loved one has got them. Yeah, exactly.

Cath Brew:

And it continues. Yeah,

Antonia Rolls:

it does continue. And we don't know, you know, when we're lost in darkness, we don't know that we, we don't have to have it

Cath Brew:

No. And often you don't realize how deeply within it that you are. When you're in experiencing something that's so deep or a stressful time in your life, it's very hard to pull yourself out or to, to realize. And it's often the people that. Are observing you and that love you that can see, so it's those who love, those who love addicts. Like it's all of that, the ripple effect of everybody observing it. But you might not be able to see it yourself.

Antonia Rolls:

And that that's a very, that's very good, Cath. Yeah, because the other thing which I think is that we all need each other. Mm. We all need each other. No one. Can do this on their own. No one should be left to do this on their own. You know, and I do think, I don't have any proof for this, but I think at least one thing, bereavement, a loss or some such life event does crack us open.

I couldn't believe that this God that I thought was on my side had done this dastardly thing to remove somebody who should be here and hadn't listened to me. And. I, I was angry and I was unstable. Actually, I was absolutely unstable with this loss. So that I consider is that the loss that cracked me open and coming back from that and through that has made me realize through the next loss is right up to cost that that mustn't happen again because I'm needed here and I'm thinking that.

There are so many people for whom the loss of their addict does crack them open. It absolutely cracks them open and there is, there is no logic to it and it, there is no answer to it. You have to go through it and you have to work it out. But as you say, that's when they need friends and family. They need people who will sit with them in silence if needed.

I'll give you an example. Yeah. After Steve died and I was so unstable, my. To stay. Mm-hmm. And I remember lying on the floor in my sitting room and my three younger ch my children were in the house and I was not able to cope with them or anything. And I lay on the floor and there was a piano on in that room, and I.

Rolled under the piano and I sobbed and my cousin came in and she didn't say anything, but she got on the floor and she put her arms around me and rolled under the piano with me, and we stayed there till I was stable. Amazing. Yeah.

Cath Brew:

And absolutely. Meeting you where you were at at that moment. Mm-hmm. And not sweeping it under the carpet or saying, come on, let's have a cup of tea.

You're allowing that, that horrendously of that grief to, to be there and, and what you say about the power of actually your, you expressing that and your body, you needing to go through it. Your body physically needs to actually. Process stuff like so that Yeah, that's a really wonderful Yeah. Story of, of what to do really with somebody.

Antonia Rolls:

And she didn't need to save me. No, she didn't need to make me better. She didn't need to do anything. Nothing she do, and she just needed to. Be strong with me. Yeah. And she did. Yeah.

Cath Brew:

Yeah. That's wonderful. I guess that's also something I've been thinking about more recent weeks and and months is that, as you said at the beginning, you described yourself as someone who's been traumatized by loving an addict, and the trauma of that is so incredibly painful, but also after many years, it's also very familiar to you.

It's something that's been your every day and you've, you've known for several years. How do you release that familiar to create a new. Familiar. That might be scary because although it's been difficult, it's also scary to release it because it, it was known. Is that, does that make sense?

Antonia Rolls:

Absolutely. No, really, really good point.

Yeah. Where's the chaos? Where is it? There seems to be much more time in my day. I'm not afraid of the phone ringing. Yeah. I don't wake up in the morning cuz I turned my phone off at night for 15 years because I couldn't cope the calls and I used to wake up in the morning, put the phone on the think, oh my Lord, what am I gonna find?

What's on the phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The absolute chaos that we lived in, the noise. The fear, there's so much fear that the kind of helplessness, that the powerlessness over this whole thing that's gone, and I seem to have 12 more hours in the day and there is silence. There's so much silence, and it's almost as if the riots.

Has gone home, there's no riot anymore. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. You know, I, I don't know how I'm gonna to deal with it. I'm, I'm dealing with it because I have to, because even if I wasn't dealing with it, I'd still be dealing with it. It be serious. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I'm here. I, I I'm, while I'm here and I'm breathing and I'm alive, it will be dealt with.

Cath Brew:

It's being dealt with. It's just like slowly developing a new normal, really, isn't it? Working out what that is. Yeah.

Antonia Rolls:

Working out what it is. And, and also I'm, you know, this, this loss has left me so exhausted. I'm so tired so much of the time. It's quite good to have the space to rest in. Yeah. But you know, I do.

Um, I do wish sometimes the phone would ring and I could, I, I think, well actually, I would handle that little kind of gasp of anticipation when I see Costya's name coming up on the phone. I'd love that to just happen one more time, you know? And then I think, well, okay, I would love that, but I also would not love that.

What I would love is for him to be alive and well, yeah, that wasn't him. No. And that wasn't his story or mine. And here we are. And I just, um, I'm just doing it day by day, minute by minute.

Cath Brew:

Yeah. I think there's something quite profound in that, in. The silence of giving you space to reflect on where you are and, and also to realize.

How noisy the noise was and the chaos. And going back to what we were saying before about when you're in it, you, you know it's happening, but it's often not till it's not there that you realize how large it really was. Yeah. And I love that you are feeling like you've got more space and peace in some ways in, in, in your days in that way.

And, and just cuz that's emotionally exhausting, I imagine.

Antonia Rolls:

Yeah, it's because Costya things were looking up for him, but his. It's as if you know, he didn't tell us how bad he was. It was only the last six months or so I began to see quite. How bad an alcoholic he was. Yeah. And quite how addicted and dependent his life was and how his body was falling apart.

His mind, he's so intelligent, his mind was still bright, but his perception of reality could be, could be very difficult to deal with. He had no love for himself, none at all. He couldn't accept love given to him because, Before he died, he found love. His partner Darren, came into his life and Darren is just beautiful.

Darren would look after him. Lovely. Darren. Yes. And I loved cost and Dimitri here, my, his brother loved. And even his sister Alexia who didn't get on with him, she was really compassionate and and lovely about him. And to him there was a lot. There, but he couldn't allow it. He couldn't allow it. And you know, when I found him, Cath, I felt on the journey up to London, we were gonna have a day out together that Friday.

Mm. And on the up to London, I was feeling happy and I just had also this thought in my head that maybe this is the last time I'll feel happy. Interesting. Wasn't answering his phone for the last 24 hours and I thought something's wrong. And he'd left his door unlocked and I walked in and I just knew, and he was lying.

He was sitting on his sofa. He was already very white, very cold, very stiff, and he had a quarter of a bottle of vodka next to him, and his flat had been cleaned by Darren. There was one little light on, or because of the darkness that he lived in, he couldn't, funnily enough, accept daylight. He wouldn't let light in.

So the curtains were drawn, it was dark, there was a lamp, and there was his needle and some something in the needle. Mm. Uh, just next to him. And I thought, I thought, Oh, when I first found him, I thought, you're so cold. And I wanted to put a blanket on. I thought, well, that will warm him up. And then he'll come back.

And then I thought, no, you know, not at all. This, this poor ad. He's actually done it. He's, he's dead. Um, and then I thought darkness got him. I thought the darkness finally closed over his head. And that night when I went back to my bed and I thought I'd never sleep or eat again. I had this thought in the night that that darkness, it's to be despised.

It's to be kicked away. It's to be told to go. And that darkness cannot come for me. And it cannot, cannot have any part in any of our, we have to notice the darkness. We have to look for it. We have acknowledge it's there and then we have off and we have to be it. And then I thought this darkness, it got his body and it got his mind, but it didn't get his soul.

It hasn't got his soul. He is not, he cannot be affected by this darkness ever again, and my job is to make sure I'm not. And anyone that I come across, if I can, I am to shine a light on that darkness to say to people, you don't need to own this darkness. Notice it's there, and then get rid of it doesn't stop your grieving, it doesn't stop you from having the sorrow and the loss, but what it does, Is, it gives you power over your own process and it also gives you permission to live and we have to live people that are left after such loss, any loss.

We have to live. We are needed here by the fact that we're alive. Yeah. And we have to understand that we take control. And it sounds impossible if you are in that cracked open like a nut phase. What I'm saying makes no sense, but it will make sense at some point. It will. And we have work to do. People that are left here alive and these losses are not sent to destroy us.

They are. They are sent somehow. To strengthen us. What will we do with it? Yeah. What do we choose to do? Yeah.

Cath Brew:

How do you transmute it into something that's gonna be amazing? And actually, yes, you use the power of it to create something new and create. New life in a way, in the sense of the work that you do and the conversations that you are having and there's a, a bizarre vibrancy in the horror of the subject as well.

Antonia Rolls:

Like there's a Yeah, it's, it's incredibly powerful. It is powerful. And once people feel that they can talk about it and say all the words they feel they shouldn't say, then we're going somewhere. And I think that when I say, what are we going to do about it? Well, Maybe at some point in our lives in the future, somebody who is suffering so badly will come our way and we will understand and we'll be the one who will say, come here.

I hear you. I see you. You are going to be fine. And we can support them. Yeah, because we understand it. And that's powerful.

Cath Brew:

There's nothing quite like physicality on a, a deep, deep level of actually having experienced that and every level, like, mind, body, soul, knowing what that actually feels like to be able to support another person.

Antonia Rolls:

Yeah. And it might be a surprise to us. Mm. We might think that we're, you know, we're all, we're still in our own grief until somebody who's in that early stage comes along and we think, no, I understand this. I know what I wanted to hear. I'll do the, I'll do it for this person and it'll be as, as you and I talk about often, it'll be under the radar.

Yeah. Nobody will put it in a newspaper. Nobody will trumpet it from the rooftops. It'll just be a wonderful, kind, uh, compassionate act that you will do and the ripple effects go out. Yeah.

Cath Brew:

And we often don't see those ripple effects either. No. And I think that's one of the things that's, that is powerful of.

Is doing it with an intention that is honorable means that you don't necessarily see it, but you don't need to see it because you know that it's going out there and it's doing what it needs

Antonia Rolls:

to do. Yeah. It's, we're, we're not doing it for brownie points. Mm. Yeah. We're doing it. What, what, what is it? We're, we're doing it for compassion, but also we're doing it because it's the right thing to do.

Cath Brew:

You just know intrinsically what is the right thing to do. Mm,

Antonia Rolls: absolutely. Absolutely.

Cath Brew:

So in some ways, I don't wanna say a new beginning because that, that feels more like I'm, if you're racing posture, and I don't want to do that. I, it's not the right word, but it is, there is a beginning of some sort in where you are at.

Now and the future is obviously gonna be very different for you. So where in that compassion for yourself and for cost and your family and, and the work that you're doing, where's it taking you or where are, or rather where are you taking it?

Antonia Rolls: Well, I think we're hand in hand. I'm not sure. I think at the moment my energy is going to keeping the light and being, what is it, being aware. Where is it going, the new beginnings? Well, there will be work. I will, I will write and paint about this experience, and I think I'm going to incorporate overdose deaths into both the graceful death and the addicts and those who love them. I will work on the death of someone through overdose and through suicide.

Mm-hmm. Because that's what it was. I have work to do at the moment before Costya died. I had four exhibitions back to back to put on. So I've got one starting next Tuesday, um, the, the, a Graceful Death exhibition in Brighton, in the library there as part of Dying Matters week. Mm-hmm. And then I've got addicts and those who love them, which will be shown in Brighton in June. And then Wandsworth. Festival in London in June, and then in Edinburgh for the festival in August. So that takes a lot. Yeah, it's a lot of preparation paintings for them. Exactly. A lot of preparation. So I'm going through the motions and preparing all this. I will have to be public for all of these exhibitions because that's how the exhibitions work.

Because of the subjects. Um, I'm there because people need to talk, but I'm thinking that I will do all these exhibitions and when everything's finished in the beginning of September, I may well lock myself away and. See what happens in the studio. See where, where I'm taken about writing and painting around this, this new experience.

Cath Brew:

Mm-hmm. Have you thought of, I don't know why, but just came to me as you were, as you were talking, you, you are painting all these other people and their experiences. Have you ever painted yourself and how your experience is? Mm-hmm.

Antonia Rolls:

Well, I've done one. Um, ages ago for the, a graceful death, but I made myself look so much thinner and nicer, but I really am. I'm embarrassed.

Cath Brew:

You're really a horrible person, aren't you?

Antonia Rolls: I just thought, oh gosh. You know that, that's a lot about my own vision myself. I haven't done one of myself. I have to think about that. I think, cause with all the, the work I'm doing, I'm asking questions of other people and I'm trying to, I started a graceful death trying to work out what death was after Steve died.

And then a, as you know, I lost, what did I do? I, I lost Steve and then I lost my mother and then my brother. And then my husband, cuz I'm married again. And then, and then my father and then cost this, this is the sixth one. And I was trying with a graceful to work out well where did they go? What, what, how So lot discovery there.

And then for the addicts and those who love them, I didn't know what to make of addiction and alcoholism. So I, I started asking other people who were in addiction or through addiction working with addiction. You know what, tell tell me what's, what's going on. So it's all been about asking people like the questions about themselves that I can understand a bit more.

I dunno, I, I can't see my myself being interviewed, but why not? I might interview myself and do a. Put myself and asked myself.

Cath Brew:

You, you've talked a lot about the, the catastrophic nature of the first death and the impact of you and that I just see a series of the, the evolution and, and how you've processed and what you've learned and Yeah.

Yeah. I dunno. It's just, I just have an image of my head of it. Maybe I'll do it for you. True. You get my cartoons. It's probably not gonna fit the bill.

Antonia Rolls:

Oh, I think that would be lovely. I'm thinking that if I exhibited. 15 paintings of myself and I was there. People might say, well have you a problem, don't you?

And then you'd say, yes, I have a problem. Yes, I need more paintings of me. That's what I, yeah, I mean, it does

Cath Brew:

look bit like full of yourself if you, but it just, I don't know. I just think there's something lovely about it. The idea of the ultimate, yeah. And maybe, but maybe that then also feels like a conclusion and maybe there isn't ever a conclusion to this as well.

Antonia Rolls:

I think the only way it could work in my mind is to make it. Slightly witty, so it wasn't too deep. But then what's that saying? You know? Well, yeah, it's a really

Cath Brew: difficult, difficult, yeah.

Cath Brew:

Before we go, I wanted to ask you. Two last questions.

Firstly is if you could pass any additional advice to a parent or somebody who's a sibling or a loved one, or someone who's an addict, or who's dying what, who's in your shoes, essentially, what would it be?

Antonia Rolls:

I think I would say I. Don't be frightened. Fear is an, it's a terrible energy that prevents good things from happening often.

So if somebody has somebody they love who's an addict, I would say get help for yourself. Get help. From other charities or people that support families and friends of addicts so that it's not a disaster when terrible things happen because they do all the time in addiction. So I'd say get help for yourself and love your addict, and understand boundaries for people who are dying.

If somebody you love is dying and you love them, I would say you already know them so well that you know what? To do. Mm-hmm. And I would also say, don't, don't let fear stop you from being yourself with this person who you already love and you already have that relationship with. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so I, I, I think maybe for both, the thing is to banish fear.

Mm-hmm. Talk to people, you know, look after yourself. If you have to deal with addiction, you need help. And you need support from good, like-minded, loving real people. And if you are. In the position where you are dealing with somebody's death again, find support from people who love you and understand you and will support your process.

And don't be frightened to go and see your loved one and just be you. Wow,

Cath Brew:

that's quite a conversation. Thank you. So much for your time, and you've already mentioned your exhibitions coming up with, with Brighton, two in Brighton and then uh, Wandsworth and also the Edinburgh Fringe. How can people who might want to come.

Find out more or know where you'll be, what timings all that kind of stuff. What's the best way for people to find out?

Antonia Rolls:

Okay. I'm going to update my website. Mm-hmm. And put it all on there, which is Antonia Roll co uk. Okay. And you can find me on Instagram as Antonia Rolls. Twitter as Antonia Rolls and Facebook as Antonia Rolls

Cause I have made it really easy. That's for you. Perfect. It's just easy. And I've, I'm on Twitter a lot at the moment. Mm-hmm. So you can kind of follow me and what I'm doing there. Yeah.

Cath Brew:

Okay. Wonderful. And I'll put those links in the show notes so that people can find them easily too. Thank you. No, thank you.

Uh, I, I love talking with you Antonia. It always is an incredibly profound conversation and I. I often have questions ready just in case it's, it's never gonna happen. But then there's a silence and there's nothing to say. But, but I just love being able to see where a conversation goes with you and you, you have such grace and wisdom, and there's a sense of quiet stillness and strength in you that, that I really enjoy talking with and observing and, and kind of responding to.

So thank you so much for your time and for sharing. More about your story personally, uh, and also just generally how you feel about things and what's been going on. Cause I know it's, it, it's absolutely massive. And I, I really just want you to know how much I value you sharing that with us, because as we know it, it can be incredibly difficult as well.

So thank you very much.

Antonia Rolls:

Well, thank you Cath and I love you.

Cath Brew:

I love you too. Thank you. So, I've never ended a podcast, but I love you and I think that's, That's beautiful. So yeah. Well, thank you

Antonia Rolls:

so much and I love you too. God bless you.

Cath Brew:

Yeah, you too. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.