Watch Shilpa's story above
“The best thing I ever did in my life was falling in love with my husband and moving to Ireland.”
Shilpa Kiran left her life and job as a graphic designer in Bangalore, India to move to Ireland with the love of her life, her Polish husband in 2012. The couple had a stressful time sorting visas but arrived in Dublin with just two suitcases and a baby on the way. “Ireland is home to me now, for some reason I feel like I have been here before. I think because I had my baby here, he was born here, we have raised him Irish, all his first moments happened here, this country is special to me.”
Following a stressful pregnancy, Shilpa gave birth to her beautiful boy, Liam ,but she developed swine flu soon after the birth, which then lead to postnatal depression.
“I didn’t know what was wrong, I was happy to see him but I wanted to cry all the time - the emotions are overwhelming at the time, you don’t know if you are doing the right thing for your child and you don’t know if you are doing right for yourself.”
Shilpa had very little support, apart from her husband, and knew she needed to sort her emotions and her mind, “this is when I started baking. The more I tried to bake, the more I feel in love with it, it made me happy, It made me relax.”
Coming from India, where she never even had an oven in the kitchen to being able to bake was a huge challenge, Shilpa admits. She watched videos, tried and failed and tried again. Shilpa knew she didn’t want to go back to a full time job as she wanted to raise her boy, so decided to share the pictures of her food online and so her blog, ‘Soulful and Healthy’ was started in 2015. “From this, I became a food photographer. So now I do food photography and food styling and I have done this for many big restaurants in Dublin which I still cannot believe.”
The mother-of-one credits food for helping her overcome those difficult days and encourages other women to just talk about it if they are feeling down. “It is a hard thing to deal with, if you have friends or someone to talk to it becomes much easier.
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While being a mum is the most important thing in her life, she also believes women can be so much more. “A lot of women don’t realise that they have it in them, they think ‘okay, I am now a mother, this is what I do’ but no, you have to be happy to keep your family happy and that is exactly what I told myself and what my husband always tells me - ‘you have to be happy with your life, in order to make us happy.’
“You could live your Best life by following your dreams and passions, don’t give up on it, it is not going to be easy, but keep doing what you love doing and work will come to you and your dream will come true. Don’t ever give up on it.”
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