Working under the broader theme of women’s empowerment and her mental, emotional, and physical well-being, Kidner Gallery presents fine art photographer Michelle Gibson’s series “She Was Not Okay”. Her arresting images featuring the personal stories of women who have faced heartbreak, trauma, medical challenges and emotional and physical obstacles tell the story of unseen wounds, deliberately hidden from the world under the mask of beauty and perfection. Gibson creatively juxtaposes the idea of women’s surface perfection with the internal pain, trauma, loss, and grief that is deliberately hidden from the outside world as women dress for parties and joyful occasions in delicate flowing gowns. Gibson invites us to see behind the façade of perfection to normalize the reality of women’s experiences and invite a deeper dialogue and conversation with each other. It is through our vulnerability and truthful connection that we foster empathy and compassion, and empower ourselves as women, both individually and as a collective, to begin to heal. Gibson invites the viewer behind the curtain and asks that we stay curious, engage, and ask meaningful questions, so that we can better understand and support each other’s healing. We heal best when grief is collective.

Kidner Gallery and Michelle Gibson Photography

Opening Reception: Thursday May 14, 6-8 pm

Location: Wright Sisters Group, 2234 Queen St. East.

Exhibition Dates: Thursday May 14 – Sunday May 17, 2026
Exhibition Hours: 10 am – 6 pm Friday and Saturday; 12pm – 4 pm Sunday.

Space on Queen Street East generously hosted by

Motherhood is an unexpected direction that my life took, changing everything from my sense of time, my sense of self, and my priorities in life. Caring for an autistic child who also has significant medical complexity – including a rare kind of brain tumour – has been at times overwhelming. Struggling with the stress of his medical uncertainty, his future, as well as the behavioural and social challenges that can come with autism, on top of normal parenting responsibilities, has been a lot for me. I don’t think most people who know me see the mental and emotional load that I carry around with me all the time, and how that affects who I am – who I have become.

I lie on the couch in a beautiful silk red dress. My hair falls across my face, obscuring my features entirely. I become anonymous, a figure rather than a person, unknown perhaps even to myself. The concussion has erased more than my memory; it has temporarily dissolved the boundaries of my identity.
After the injury, time no longer moved in a straight line. Thoughts arrived half-formed, then slipped away before they could be grasped, like trying to hold water in open palms. The couch became an island, the only stable place in a room that occasionally tilted without warning.
The red dress tells its own story. It was chosen for another version of this day, for a body that could move freely through the world. Instead, I find myself here, lying still, defeated. The body needs rest. Light hurts the eyes. Sounds feel too loud. The world moves too fast for a brain that’s trying to heal.
Here is the paradox of an invisible injury. Outwardly, I appear whole, even beautiful in repose. But internally, I navigate a changed landscape where light feels too bright, where concentration requires immense effort, where the familiar has become strange. The veil of hair becomes a metaphor for the experience itself, hidden from view, known only to the person living through it.

For many years I was unable to fully express my emotions in situations that were challenging. Starting with my parent’s destructive marriage and difficult divorce, the dissolution of my own first marriage, the medical trauma of an invisible neurological disease, the potential breast cancer diagnosis and surgery. While many people would cry in such situations, I typically found myself feeling neutral or numb and would continue my days without fully processing or releasing the tension. Because of this, my emotions were stored as memories and held stress in my body. I now realize that crying is a normal regulator that can help to shift one’s being from a fight or flight stress response to allowing the self to return to a more neutral state of calm. In this image, I am wearing a blue crinoline skirt that represents my tears wanting to be shed and the bathtub, a strong structure where they can gather and be held. I remain hopeful to be able to continue to release and shed tears when necessary to always help my body return to a state of calmness and serenity.

In 2022, I was diagnosed with a debilitating neurological disorder, Chiari Brain Malformation, an overly intense filum ligament at the base of the spinal cord that pulls on the brainstem. My prognosis was not good – being confined to a wheelchair, and a lifetime of pain and suffering, including disorientation, nausea, insomnia, and sensitivity to light to name just a few. Abandoned by North American doctors who were largely ignorant of the disease and its proper treatment, I found the Institute of Chiari in Barcelona and decided to take a chance on their surgical procedure. After four years, the road back to regaining my brain functionality has not been easy. But after many hours of post-surgical therapies, my neurological functionalities have been restored, and I have my life back. This image illustrates the most difficult days of my health journey when I was unseen and unheard by the medical system, and is the inspiration for “She Was Not Okay”.

She moves through her days well-dressed and composed, her appearance suggesting she has everything under control. Beneath the polished surface, however, she carries a weight that rarely lifts. The world around her moves quickly, and she struggles to keep up, adjusting to constant change while holding everything together. There is no pause button—only the expectation to keep up.

At home, the responsibility feels heavier. She is the emotional center for two teenage boys, absorbing their frustrations, fears, and growing pains. One son, on the autism spectrum, requires constant advocacy, patience, and vigilance. She loves them deeply, yet she is often tired in ways she cannot easily explain. She is not always okay, even when she says she is.

As an Asian mother/ daughter, expectations press in from every direction. She has been taught to be strong, selfless, and grateful, regardless of the cost. She supports her parents financially and emotionally, carrying their worries while quietly setting her own aside. Society praises her resilience, but rarely asks what it costs.

She wears beauty like armor, responsibility like gravity—moving forward not because it is easy, but because stopping feels like failure.

To the outside world, we were the “perfect” couple. On the inside, I was suffering silently in a recurring physical, emotional, and mental abuse cycle. I felt helpless and alone.

One day, while crying on my bedroom floor, I asked God to give me the strength to leave. God heard me and gave me the courage to start over. I filled the time I used to spend worrying about his infidelity with going to the gym, doing yoga, reconnecting with friends that I had unknowingly shut out of my life, finding my love for basketball again through coaching young girls. I had found my way back to me – a lover of life, a lover of belly laughs, a lover of love.

It took years, but I even found a way to let my wall down and let true love in. I’m so grateful God loved me enough to walk me through to the light. I am never alone with Him.

Every time I ate, it only got worse. The food I kept swallowing felt like burning coals as it reached my stomach, each gulp firing a new pain. In my head, food was the enemy, not the stress I was experiencing, so I tried to fight it. Every meal became smaller and every snack slowly disappeared. My thought process was to make the enemy go away, and everything will be okay. As I stopped eating, I lost a lot more than my weight – I was losing myself. Once I had lost everything that made me who I am, I decided enough was enough. Food is not the enemy; my mindset was. I told myself that healing my relationship with food needs to come first. So, I fought and fought, bite after bite to not only get physically better but also mentally. This healthy brain became better equipped to deal with the real enemy – my anxiety. Once I learned to take control of my thoughts, the anxiety became controllable, the stressful things no longer seemed so daunting, and I had gained my life back in more ways than before.

For many years, I worked in cancer research, developing new treatments for breast cancer. So, when I heard the C-word in the context of my own life and diagnosis, it felt surreal. How did i find myself on the other side of this equation? To be receiving the exact drug i once helped develop – how can this be?
Breast cancer and treatment stripped me down to my core: my body, my belief systems, my spirit. It brought me to zero. It was humbling, scary, and deeply transformative.
With time, I began to see the experience differently. Not as the end of who I was, but as an invitation to rebuild. To consciously choose how I want to live, what I want to believe, and who I want to become.
Every day we get to live, we are given the opportunity to start again. Big life events, such as a diagnosis, breakdown of a relationship, loss of a job, challenge us to our core. Through my coaching company Wellness With Barbara, I now dedicate my purpose to helping others get unstuck by upgrading their belief systems and their confidence to realise that they too can start again. You are not alone.

When my mind becomes overwhelming, I try to return to my body.
Living with ADHD, OCD, and anxiety means moving between clarity and overwhelm. Some days I feel creative, compassionate, and focused. Other days, negative thought loops make even simple tasks feel heavy.
Music, movement, breathing, and time outside can help me in those moments, though not always. Resting in a field, comforted by the surrounding grass and breeze, can help me feel less trapped in my thoughts and more grounded in my body—able to observe my mind rather than be consumed by it.

The thought of leaving my life behind for the unknown was terrifying and felt impossible. Until the pain of staying became greater than the fear of being on my own again. Finding the courage to embark on my journey meant embracing my true power and resilience, and choosing peace, self-respect, and self-love. I can choose to love myself. I can bring myself flowers.