Some women aspire to wearing their mother’s shoes. As children, we might have dressed up in them. Later in life, we may follow in our mother’s footsteps intentionally, or because of how we’ve been moulded. Performer and writer Karola Gajda’s mum was sent by Stalin from her homeland Poland to a Siberian gulag at the age of three in 1940. The Red Cross reunited Karola’s mum with father, who had been sent to a different gulag, in the UK, seventeen years later. It was meant to be a happy time, but she then fell ill with a mystery illness. Fighting for her life on a UK ward without a scrap of English, she was saved just in time because of the persistence of a young doctor who spotted she needed the new wonder drug of the day, cortisone. Had Karola’s mum been in Poland she would have died, as it was only available in the UK and America. She got the drug, but it was too late, and the consequences were major. In her usual blend of tragedy and comedy, Karola Gajda looks at one of the most influential relationships of her life asks, can she - or does she - walk in her mother’s shoes? A new and beautiful show that walks the tightrope of painful and funny. 'Life is complicated. So is love'.