How Creativity Helped Me Rebuild During a Difficult Chapter of My Life
- Jun 30
- 6 min read
Ifeyinwa Nwaejike is the Founder, Creator & Publisher of IFy Atelier, an independent publishing and creative studio based in Belfast. Through books, storytelling, and creative projects, she explores culture, identity, creativity, and the human experience.
There are moments in life when everything seems to be moving in the direction you expected. Then there are moments when the map disappears entirely. For years, I believed I knew exactly what my future would look like. Like many people pursuing a demanding professional career, I had a carefully planned path: study hard, pass the exams, build the career, keep moving forward. Life, however, has a habit of introducing unexpected detours.
During one of the most challenging periods of my life, I found myself facing uncertainty on multiple fronts. Plans I had spent years working towards suddenly felt far less predictable, and the future that once seemed clearly defined became much harder to see. What surprised me was where I found stability, not in certainty, not in having all the answers, but in creativity.
Returning to creativity
Long before medicine, business plans, and professional ambitions entered the picture, I was a child who loved creating things. Growing up in Nigeria, power cuts were a normal part of daily life. Entertainment was often something we invented ourselves. We created games, told stories, and found ways to turn ordinary moments into adventures. I spent countless hours writing stories, drawing, and imagining different worlds.
Like many adults, I gradually moved away from those activities as responsibilities increased. Creativity became something I would return to “when I had time.” The truth is that many of us never feel like we have enough time.
Yet, when the future began to feel far less certain, I found myself returning to the very activities I had loved as a child, not because they were profitable, not because they were strategic, but because creating something felt better than sitting still.
Building IFy Atelier
What began as a creative outlet gradually evolved into something much larger. I founded IFy Atelier, an independent publishing and creative studio based in Belfast, because I wanted to build something on my own terms. At its heart is a simple belief, creativity can be both calming and culturally meaningful. Its guiding motto, “Celebrating culture through creativity,” reflects my conviction that art should not only help us slow down, but also connect us with stories, places, and heritage.
During the summer of 2025, while navigating a season of uncertainty and working on my current novel, I found myself returning to adult colouring books and colouring apps as a way to decompress. There was something grounding about slowing down, choosing colours, and focusing on a single page. For a little while, I stopped thinking about everything that felt uncertain. My attention was entirely on the page in front of me.
As I explored more colouring books, I began to notice a gap. There were countless titles available, yet very few explored African locations in a way that felt educational, thoughtfully researched, and visually engaging. My previous experience working in elderly care had also shown me how colouring books could support relaxation for people living with dementia or cognitive impairment. Some books felt overly childish. Others were so intricate that they risked becoming frustrating rather than calming.
That observation stayed with me. I wanted to create books that encouraged curiosity rather than passive consumption. Books that celebrated culture not as a stereotype or a monolith, but through the individuality of places, histories, and lived experiences. Books that invited readers to slow down, learn something new, and reconnect with their imagination.
The result was the Iconic African Locations colouring book series. Looking back, I realise the books were never just about colouring. They became the foundation of IFy Atelier, a publishing studio built on the belief that thoughtful creativity can encourage curiosity, celebrate culture, and help us see the world with greater depth and appreciation.
Why African locations?
Africa is often discussed through headlines, statistics, and stereotypes. Far less attention is given to its beauty, complexity, and individuality.
I wanted to present Africa as I had come to know and appreciate it, full of history, wonder, creativity, resilience, and potential. Not as a single story or a monolith, but as a continent of diverse places, cultures, and lived experiences, each with its own identity.
Through the Iconic African Locations colouring book series, I wanted to create an opportunity for people to engage with those places differently. Rather than scrolling past an image online, readers spend time with a location. They notice its architecture, landscapes, and details. They become curious. They begin asking questions.
For me, that curiosity matters. I sometimes think one of the saddest realities is that many Africans grow up surrounded by extraordinary beauty, yet rarely see it celebrated or reflected back to them in the way it deserves. If these books encourage even a few people, whether in Africa or elsewhere, to look more closely, learn something new, and appreciate the richness of the continent’s cultures and heritage, then they have achieved something meaningful.
That idea resonated deeply with me because curiosity has always been at the heart of both science and creativity.
Small wins matter
One lesson I learned while building IFy Atelier is that progress rarely arrives in dramatic moments. Most of the time, it appears quietly.
Publishing the first two volumes of the Iconic African Locations colouring book series, reading positive reviews from readers on Amazon, seeing the books become available through retailers such as Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, AbeBooks, The Great British Bookshop, Amazon, and Faire, learning that Marcus Books, the legendary independent Black bookstore in the United States, had chosen to stock them, watching IFy Atelier’s online community gradually grow, one reader and one conversation at a time, building a LinkedIn network that includes publishers, literary agents, journalists, entrepreneurs, and people whose ideas continually challenge and inspire me, and being invited to become an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine, none of these moments transformed my life overnight.
Yet each one reminded me that, even when the future felt uncertain, I was still moving forward. Together, they became quiet evidence that progress was happening, even when it was difficult to see.
When people talk about success, they often focus on major milestones. In reality, many achievements are built on hundreds of small decisions made consistently over time. The challenge is learning to recognise those moments while they are happening.
Creating during uncertainty
Building IFy Atelier wasn’t simply about creating books. It meant learning an entirely new profession.
Getting the Iconic African Locations colouring books into readers’ hands turned out to be far less straightforward than creating them. There were distribution hurdles, metadata headaches, pricing quirks, and more than a few unexpected detours. I quickly discovered that publishing a book and building a publishing business are two very different things.
I also discovered that running an independent publishing studio means wearing far more hats than I ever imagined. Writer. Publisher. Production manager. ISBN manager. Metadata fixer. Pricing strategist. Rights manager. Marketer. Customer support. Founder. Each role came with its own learning curve, and many days involved moving between them before the workday was over.
Then there was AI. At one point, I found myself arguing with Google AI at three o’clock in the morning because it seemed determined to confuse IFy Atelier with every “Ify” and “Atelier” business it could find. Months later, in a completely separate incident, I publicly blamed the algorithm before discovering that part of the problem was an outdated reference I had forgotten to remove from one of my own online profiles.
It was a humbling reminder that technology isn’t always wrong. Sometimes, it simply reflects the information we give it.
Looking back, I can laugh about it now. At the time, though, it captured the reality of building something from scratch. Every day brought a new problem to solve, a new system to understand, or a new skill to learn.
Unexpectedly, that process became part of the healing. Instead of dwelling on uncertainty, I was creating, learning, adapting, and slowly building something that was entirely my own.
I thought creating the books would be the hardest part. In reality, creating them was the easy part. Building everything around them became the real challenge.
Looking ahead
Today, IFy Atelier continues to grow through publishing projects, storytelling initiatives, and creative work that celebrates culture, identity, and place. The journey is still unfolding.
Like many entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals, I do not have every step mapped out. What I do know is that creativity remains one of the most powerful tools we have for navigating uncertainty.
Sometimes, the most important thing we can do is begin, one page, one idea, one project, one small act of creation at a time.
Read more from Ifeyinwa Nwaejike
Ifeyinwa Nwaejike, Founder, Creator & Publisher
Ifeyinwa Nwaejike is the Founder, Creator & Publisher of IFy Atelier, an independent publishing and creative studio. Through books, storytelling, and creative projects, she explores culture, identity, creativity, technology, and the evolving human experience. She is the creator of the Iconic African Locations colouring book series and is currently developing future publishing and long-form storytelling projects. Combining creativity with a STEM-informed approach to problem solving, she is passionate about creating work that inspires curiosity, imagination, and meaningful conversation.
