From Cancer Recovery to Community Builder: Why I Opened Rise

The actual story, told straight.

People ask why I opened a Pilates studio and I usually give them the short version: I trained with APPI, I love the method, I wanted to bring it to Keyworth. All true. Also not really the answer. I want to tell you the real reason Rise exists.

Not the elevator pitch. Not the polished version. The actual story, with all the scared and exhausted and quietly hopeful parts that a business plan doesn’t have room for.

The longer version involves breast cancer, a marriage ending, living in Spain, moving back to England with two kids and no particular plan, and somehow arriving at February 2026 with a studio full of reformers and a team I’m genuinely proud of.

Here’s how it actually went.

Spain, 2019.

I was living in Spain with my then-partner and our two children, Eva and Jack. I was not, by any honest measure, in a good place physically. I was massively overweight, wildly unfit, and genuinely terrified of anything that looked like a gym - I had the kind of relationship with exercise that mostly involved avoiding it. The idea of walking into a fitness space - being the person who clearly didn’t belong, who people clocked and quietly assessed - was enough to keep me away from all of it.

I signed up for a mat Pilates class because I thought it looked easy. The listing said it was for the over-60s, and honestly? That was the appeal. I figured we’d be at a similar fitness level, and (this is the slightly embarrassing part to admit) I suspected that older women might be less likely to silently assess the body of someone who’d clearly never been near a studio before. I pretended, upon arrival, that I hadn’t noticed the age specification on the listing. I had absolutely noticed.

The class was small. The room was quiet. The women moved at their own pace, and when they noticed me they just smiled like I belonged there already. No assessment. No performance required. Come in, find a mat, move.

I was right about the judgement. Completely wrong about it being easy.

I was hooked from the first session. Not because I was good at it - I wasn’t. But because for the first time, movement felt like something I was doing for myself rather than to fix something about myself. That distinction is enormous. I knew I wanted to come back.

October 2022.

I was 32 when I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.

I’m not going to soften that sentence, because it doesn’t soften. Triple negative is an aggressive subtype. The treatment is intensive. And no amount of being a generally optimistic person fully prepares you for the particular cold clarity of a consultant telling you what is growing in your body and what they’re going to do about it.

What followed was a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. Months of my body being taken apart and put back together. Eva and Jack were the reason I got out of bed on the days when getting out of bed required a reason. I won’t pretend it was all brave. Some of it was just endurance - putting one day after the next because there was no other available choice.

It was a genuinely hard year, and the circumstances around it made it harder. My relationship was already struggling. There were arguments, long absences, a lot of time when I was managing the kids alone and feeling too weak to do much about it. My dad came out from Manchester to help when things got bad enough that I couldn’t reliably look after Eva and Jack on my own. That’s the version I don’t usually lead with, but it’s the true one.

Pilates wasn’t part of this period. My head was too full and my body was too depleted. I wasn’t doing any fitness at all. I was just getting through it.

Back in the UK

We moved back to the UK in 2023. The first few months were the chaos of resettlement - schools, routines, finding some version of normal. Then, eventually, I found my feet enough to start moving again. I got back to Pilates. It became part of the week in the quiet, reliable way that routines do when you’re ready for them.

January 2024.

My marriage ended in January 2024.

I’m not going to spend a lot of words here, because this isn’t that story. Coming out of cancer treatment and into the end of a long relationship, alone with two children, is a particular kind of ground-zero that I hadn’t anticipated and wasn’t prepared for. What I’ll say is that the Pilates routine stayed. Which, in the context of a period when quite a lot of other things didn’t, felt significant.

A few months later I found a reformer studio, and that was a different thing entirely from the mat work I’d been doing. The spring resistance, the feedback the carriage gave, the way it met my body where it actually was rather than where it was supposed to be - it was the most intelligent piece of equipment I’d encountered. I started going regularly. Then I started thinking about teaching. Which was either a sensible idea or the slightly unhinged ambition of someone who had recently had quite a lot happen to them. Probably both.

Reformer Pilates was a revelation.

I was a different physical person than I’d been before cancer. Chemotherapy changes the body in ways that take time to understand - fatigue patterns, strength deficits, a nervous system that needed gentleness before it could accept challenge.

At some point during those months, a thought began to form that I initially dismissed as too big, too impractical, too much for someone who was still, in many ways, just trying to get through the week.

What if I built the space I’d needed?

2025 to 2026

I did my APPI training in 2025. The Australian Physiotherapy and Pilates Institute - one of the most rigorous and evidence-based Pilates training organisations in the world, grounded in anatomy, physiotherapy, and a deep understanding of how bodies actually work. I wanted the kind of training that takes the method seriously as a physiological system rather than a wellness trend. I don’t teach - Rise has a team of instructors who are far better placed to be in front of a class than I am - but the training gave me something more useful for what I actually do: the knowledge to lead a team properly, spot good Pilates from bad, and understand exactly what we’re offering and why it works. Worth every penny. Which is fortunate, because that was the original justification.

I found the studio space in Keyworth, put together a team, bought the reformers, and opened in February 2026. Luke came into my life in December 2024, during the building of all this, which was either very good timing or very chaotic timing depending on how you look at it. He’d say good. I’d say both.

Building Rise was one of the hardest and most clarifying things I’ve ever done. Every decision - the space, the equipment, the team, the culture, the way we talk about what we do - came from asking the same question: would this have felt right to the person I was when I needed it most?

Seven years from that first mat class in Spain. A cancer diagnosis. A marriage ending. Two children to raise. A complete reinvention. Some journeys take exactly as long as they need to.

Why Rise Is the Way It Is

Most Pilates studios in this area look the same. White walls, neutral tones, the kind of aesthetic that says ‘wellness’ in the same way a hotel spa does - carefully inoffensive, slightly soulless. I find them a bit lifeless, honestly. Like they’ve been designed to look calm rather than to actually feel like anywhere.

Rise is colourful. It has a personality. When you walk in, something should feel different - not serene in a generic way, but genuinely alive. I wanted the space to have its own energy, because I think that matters more than most studio owners admit. You can feel when somewhere has been put together with real care versus when it’s been assembled from a mood board of what a Pilates studio is supposed to look like.

I’m Autistic, and I know what it’s like to walk into a space that doesn’t feel right - but the answer to that wasn’t to strip everything back to beige. It was to build somewhere that feels genuinely welcoming rather than just inoffensive. There’s a difference.

The class sizes are small because individuals deserve individual attention, not because it sounds nice to say. The instructors are well-trained because I’ve been in classes where they weren’t, and I know the difference it makes.

To Anyone Reading This Who Recognises Something

If you’re going through cancer treatment or coming out the other side and looking for movement that works with your body rather than ignoring what it’s been through - I see you. Movement, when it’s the right kind, is not something to wait for until you’re better. It can be part of what better looks like. Please talk to your medical team first, obviously. But we’re here, and we know what we’re doing.

If you’re in some version of a difficult year - after illness, after a relationship ending, after any kind of life that stopped looking the way you thought it would - you are welcome here exactly as you are. Not the version of you that’s recovered. Not the version that’s figured it out. The version that showed up today - that’s the whole point of the place. Come as you are. We’ll go from there.

This isn’t a sob story. It’s a comeback. And you’re welcome to be part of it.

Rise Pilates Studio is at 9 & 9a The Square, Keyworth, Nottinghamshire - with free parking on Bunny Lane. If this resonated and you’d like to come in, we’d love to meet you.

Browse our timetable and book here. Or just come and say hello. That works too.