Episode Eight with Dr Lorna Collins, from aspiring jockey, and university lecturer, to artist, film maker and writer

By the age of 15, Lorna already had an exciting equestrian career in front of her and represented Great Britain several times successfully in junior eventing. Passionate about speed and with a Dad who was a champion jockey, at 16 she set herself another goal – to become the first woman to win the Grand National. She was also on track to become a student at Cambridge University. Out on the gallops one day, disaster struck, and she had an accident that almost killed her.
Her catastrophic brain injury led to her developing a number of psychiatric illnesses including an eating disorder as a coping mechanism, resulting in frequent hospitalisation over the course of the next twenty years.

Despite this, as a highly functioning and very bright polymath, Lorna still managed to study, eventually gaining her Ph.D. from Cambridge. More study later led to Lorna securing her dream job as a creative health lecturer at University College London.

In this inspirational story of survival and growth, hear how Lorna’s art and natural creativity became her medicine helping her to find her voice and recover, how she uses a growth mindset and persistence to overcome challenges and create opportunities, and what led to her deciding to leave academia to follow her passion and become a writer and artist as she turned 40.

Her first children’s novel, “Squawk – a book of bird adventures” has recently been published by Vanguard Press.
Lorna can be contacted via:
Website: https://lornacollins.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sensinglorna
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sensinglorna/

SHOW REFERENCES:

Squawk – a book of bird adventures – Lorna’s first children’s book, published in February 2023.

How Creativity Revived Me– Lorna’s TEDx talk in which she discusses how we can all be creative and initiate our own everyday revivals.

Imposter Syndrome–a sense of feeling like a fraud, even when the evidence indicates otherwise.

Flow– the psychology of optimum experience written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the pioneers of the scientific study of happiness.

Mind- the mental health charity where Lorna volunteered.

Gilles Deleuze – philosopher and metaphysician, author of “Francis Bacon, the Logic of Sensation”.

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