A Daughter’s Illness Changed Everything: How Former Actress Nicola Cheung Built a New Life on Preventive Care, Collaborative Parenting, and Social Enterprise

A Collaborative Approach to Parenting

Cheung explicitly rejects a "top-down" parenting style as outdated. With her 17-year-old daughter, she talks "like an older sister or a friend" rather than repeating "'Mum says so, so do it.'" Becoming a mother, she says, was her "true turning point." "When I was a daughter, I only had to take care of myself, and now I have to look at the whole situation, the whole family," she explains. That concern for her children's safety also catalysed a major career shift: in 2010, she enrolled in a two-year environmental management master's degree at the University of Hong Kong because her daughters made her deeply aware of environmental pollution and food-safety issues affecting the next generation.

Planning for the Unexpected Without Obsessing

Cheung's third lesson is about mindset. "We can't control what happens in this world, or in our lives. But we can get ourselves prepared, so that when something does happen, we'll have more options," she says plainly. Once plans are in place—insurance, professional advice, savings—she believes "the healthiest thing to do is stop worrying," because she sees worry itself as a cause of illness. "If you worry, you get sick. If you don't, you are less likely to be," she adds.

Turning Personal Lessons into Community Impact: LoCoFarms

Cheung co-founded LoCoFarms, a social enterprise that reconnects Hong Kong consumers with local growers and food artisans. She describes it as her way of being proactive for the wider community: "doing something for our society, for the Hong Kong community." She sees LoCoFarms as "a seed for sustainable development" and measures success not by scale but by having acted on her values.

These four pillars—expert-backed prevention, collaborative parenting, calm preparation for uncertainty, and community-focused action—form the blueprint Cheung has drawn from a single crisis. "Within just 24 hours, many things can change," she reflects. "But we can get ourselves prepared."