A pharmacist who gave up her career to support her severely autistic son before enduring a difficult divorce has said “impossible doesn’t exist” after successfully pursuing her lifelong dream to study medicine aged 35, opening a small café to make ends meet and cover her university fees, and launching her own aesthetics clinic.
Dr Ros Jabar, 51, who lives in Cardiff, worked as a pharmacist from 1997 and said she was the “breadwinner” in her semi-arranged first marriage, earning about £65,000 annually to support her family, including her son Jamil, now 22, who was nonverbal at the time due to his severe autism, and daughter Yasmin, 21. While Ros was able to provide for her family, she claims she was called “a bad woman and a bad wife” as she did not want to be the “traditional” stay-at-home mother.
Struggling in her unhappy marriage and with her son’s autism, and facing criticism for her work-life balance, she ended up quitting her job as a pharmacist and later placed Jamil in a special needs school – but she had always dreamed of becoming a doctor. In order to pay the bills, look after her children, and secure some funds to pay for university, she opened a café called Jabar’s Hut – a name inspired by Star Wars’ Jabba the Hutt and her surname – which was a “roaring success”, and she then got a place at Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, aged 35.
