In Purgatory to Paradise, award-winning designer Mahwish Syed celebrates beauty as a vehicle for healing. When Mahwish was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, she faced a crossroads. She could run from the fear, the distress, and the ominous history the word "cancer" holds in our imagination. Or she could walk proudly into illness to find her way through to wellness, remerging from her personal underworld empowered and burnished like many of mythology’s greatest heroines.

Weaving mythology, design, her passion for art history, and her dedication to whole-body health into a tapestry of rebirth, Mahwish frames her own cancer journey as one of renewal and redemption. She is not alone in this journey: releasing oneself from purgatory to claim your paradise is every person’s birthright. Whether you are decorating your home or renovating your body from the inside out to recover from illness, you will be inspired by this audiobook to design an authentic life that’s unique to you.

About the Author: Mahwish Syed is a fashion and interior designer, a storyteller, and proud mother. She has dressed bodies and houses for more than two decades and continually circles back to her passion for mythology and symbolism, exploring in her work and writing the crossroads where textiles, fashion, decorative arts, and myth intersect. An award-winning designer, she has been celebrated for her anthropological approach, where she listens and observes her clients to fashion an environment that is both unique and magical. Her interdisciplinary talents have won her the regard of clients, architects, and top brands, and galleries across the world. Her designs have been featured in the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, Women’s Wear Daily, and Time Out NY.