Bidding You Well

I am fun(d)-raising to support my healing from Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. I believe in healing as a creative, collaborative, community process - so I am looking out for how to make this so. This auction is one way - please join me!

You can read more about my 'Fun-Raiser' here:
https://www.justgiving.com/page/matilda-leyser-1

Hi,

I’m Matilda. I’m a writer, aerialist, one of the Artistic Directors of Improbable, and a mother to two extraordinary neurodivergent children, aged 10 and 14, who learn from home. You could say I am still learning from home too, and in the last three years my learning curve has been terrifyingly steep. 

At the end of April 2024, the day after I turned fifty, I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.

People sometimes talk about turning fifty as entering the second half of life, even though most of us won’t reach a hundred. I assumed I still had decades left. Instead, immediately after my birthday, I was confronted with the possibility that I might not.

Until then, I had never spent a single night away from my children, but that year I spent weeks in hospital undergoing intensive chemotherapy. By the end of '24, the treatment had worked. I was clear.

But by the end of the next year, I was not. 

In Nov 2025, tests showed the leukaemia was back, at a smaller-than-microscopic level. Because of the nature of my disease, the doctors expect it to become a full relapse unless treated. My best chance, I am told, is a stem cell transplant.

That means more intensive chemo, more weeks in hospital, and someone else’s cells put into my blood.

I am frightened. It is a risky treatment. I am also deeply grateful that this possibility exists. 

But I also want to be proactive in my healing - to seek support from a range of alternative practitioners with experience in oncology to help me survive and even thrive, before, through and after any transplant. 

I’m a writer - I believe that anything can hold meaning, and that inside trouble there is always a glint of gold - an invitation, a possibility. You can follow my quest for this in my Substack: ‘Adventures in Wellness’ and through the poems on a pole I am making every month. However, I don’t have much actual gold to fund the support I seek. There is a gift in this too because it means I have to be brave and reach out, invite others onto this treasure hunt with me. 

You can join me in a few different ways. You could:

1) Make a donation through my Just Giving Page - any sum would be tremendous: https://www.justgiving.com/page/matilda-leyser-1

2) Sign up to my Substack, as a paid or free subscriber.  https://substack.com/@matildaleyser

3) Help me fun(d)raise by joining in this online creative auction: do something you have always wanted to do -  take up pole dancing like me, make lemon meringue pie, write a story, sing a song - whatever brings you most alive, and invite others to value your contribution- put it up for bidding. 

Thank you for whatever part you wish to play.

And I promise, if and when - and let’s say when - I am out the other side of this, I will pass on whatever gifts I receive now. Because the treasure isn’t mine - it’s to be shared, and that is what makes it so precious.