A fresh start for Asher Nelson makeup artist has battled some mean demons to get where she is today, including desperate grief from the loss of her mother, and obesity brought on by a string of life events. She talked to Tracy Neal about life, weight loss and recovery.
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he professional makeup artist, who loved woodwork above all else at school, didn’t know then that her flair for sculpting would one day shape her life. Asher is the energy and drive behind Nelson’s mobile makeup business, Asher Artistry, which works with commercial and private clients, from fashion shoots to weddings and makeup education clinics. There are so many moving parts to Asher’s story, it’s hard to know where to begin. So, we’ll start in the kitchen of her beloved mother, Lorraine. The memory is where Asher goes for comfort from the yearning, and to piece together how her problems began.
The gradual decline from active teen, who enjoyed sport and was a star discus thrower, to what in clinical terms was morbidly obese, ran parallel to life crises which reached a peak upon the death of her mother from cancer in early 2020. “Mum survived stage four breast cancer when I was 14. She had an enormous battle and survived that, and then she was diagnosed with lung cancer in November 2019. She was gone three months later.” Asher says it was at the point, after years of battling to control her weight, that she gave up. It was not until she made the link between her mental and physical condition that she resorted to surgery.
CLAIRE DEWSON
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