Today we’d like to introduce you to Sky Khan. She and her team shared their story with us below:
Sky Khan is a multidisciplinary artist + storyteller of Pakistani-Scots-American heritage. My guiding principles have formed from time spent sitting with the dying in hospice, my work with incarcerated mothers, parenting a cancer survivor, surviving cancer, and my experience raising four humans in Texas Hill Country and New York City with my best friend, Ben. Over the past decade, I went on a journey to work in one new profession per year. I worked as a death doula, interior designer, university professor, digital marketer, meditation teacher, birth worker, consultant, entrepreneur, teen counselor, parenting coach, and toy brand creator. Through these experiences, I observed, documented, and painted intensely intimate moments from 21st-century life. Some of my recent work can be seen at skykhan.com.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Every morning, I wake up with the perspective that this new day is a chance to restart life. I could save $1/day for each of my children for the remaining 10,000 days I have left here. In addition to a financial legacy, I’ve decided to write down one new idea or thought every day. I plan to leave our children with a script for living a meaningful life when I’m no longer here. My family of six has faced two separate battles with cancer over the past decade. It is a different experience to face cancer as an adult patient versus as a caregiver of a child. We’ve lived as near to the edge as we could go. At the edge of life, the only way you can live is in the present moment. There is no time or bandwidth to live any other way.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve held hands with people at both the beginning and end of life as a death doula and as a birth worker. Through my work with GALS (https://www.givingaustinlaborsupport.org), I help to improve birth outcomes and strengthen vulnerable populations such as incarcerated teen mothers. Witnessing the full cycle of life has informed my work as an artist. In between the bookends of birth and death, we tend to race through life, never pausing. We race right past acceptable, always searching for more. My new artwork incorporates the experience of modern mothers. I was mothering the unwell, mothering when unwell.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share?
I realized how important it is to raise involved young activists who care and invest time in our community. I want our children to appreciate how much their lives matter. This is why we worked with our four children to develop a family passion statement (attached). Our oldest son is on the Teen Advisory Board of Generation Serve (https://www.generationserve.org) and the Teen Leadership Council at Wonders and Worries (https://wondersandworries.org). All of our children are involved in Camp Kesem (https://www.kesem.org), which supports children impacted by a parent’s cancer. Find causes that matter to you and get involved.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.skykhan.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ilikeu
