Around the same time, I started having terrible headaches. Sometimes it was like my brain was a bowling ball in my head. I captured that in the chatbot, too. I tried pen and paper but it just didn’t work for me.

I’d ask it to give me a summary I could take to counselling; maybe a priority to discuss. It was really helpful. A way of making sessions more productive.

And then I realised I had months and months of content contained in a big long chatbot conversation. I started having a bit of a play.

One day, I randomly asked it to create a prompt to describe how I was feeling at that moment. I took that and fed it into an AI art generator. And I sent it to my counsellor with ‘This is how I feel today.’

But I looked at that first image of a woman walking out of the water – like she was emerging into life, brand new on the planet – and I thought, that’s me. That’s how I feel.

Normally we’d start a session with my counsellor saying, ‘Hi, how are you?’ I hated that. But that day was different. It was a much more effective beginning.

We spent a long time looking at the image together. He asked me questions about the water; the trees and jagged plants; the necklace with the book pendant.

Now I look at it and I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever created. Cringey. But it got the conversation onto a really interesting footing.

“Grief has forced me to go with the flow.

But it’s also freed me up to try stuff that’s completely new – like creating these images.”

After someone dies, the person you were disappears too. Since Cameron died, I’ve had to become a new version of myself.

I guess I’m trying to show my evolution through the artwork. Lots of the images I create are female. Lots of them balance the darkness with something a bit lighter. Positive images of transformation.

The first one I created was a bit cartoonish. The second was much more gothic. I used words like ‘obsidian’ to create this granite effect. It looked more like a sculpture than a human. 

I’ll use more specific terms to bring it closer to what I’m feeling. For one image, I wanted a strong female face with big pink lips that were bleeding. That took a bit of work. I had to go back and forth: ‘the features are too masculine’; ‘I want it to have a dancer’s body.’

I spent ages on another image of a woman with a scarf around her eyes. Because she was moving in a dynamic way, I wanted the scarf to move too. I spent so long getting the exact effect I wanted.

I’m 42 and most of my friends haven’t been married, never mind married and lost someone. It’s so lonely and so hard to explain. But using these tools I can create an image and say, ‘This is how it is – look.’

I might not be creative, but I know how I feel.