Jean Marshall The Artful Woman

Posts

What Does It Really Mean to Be Strong?

People love to tell me how strong I am. They see what I've survived—trauma, loss, surgeries, fear, recovery, financial stress, heartbreak, and the countless times I've had to rebuild my life—and they call me strong. I never asked to be strong. I didn't wake up and choose a life where I would have to keep rebuilding myself over and over again. I didn't choose to be the one who has to rely on independence through survival. I didn't choose to be the one who keeps getting back up when there's no guarantee of support waiting on the other side. A lot of the time, I didn't want to do it on my own. But I didn't get a choice in that part. Not because I set out to be strong. But because I kept going anyway. I kept going anyway, and I stayed kind and loving through it. Real strength isn't about being hard, unshakable, or emotionally shut down. Real strength is staying kind without becoming weak. And honestly? That's harder than people think. When people tel...

I Wanted to Be in the Best Shape of My Life at 60. Then I Lost My Leg.

Before my accident, I kept saying the same thing to myself: I want to be in the best shape of my life when I turn 60. I meant it. I was hiking, walking, going to the gym. I was building strength in my body and imagining a future where I kept getting stronger, not weaker. Then the accident happened. I was still 59. I turned 60 in a hospital bed. I lost a leg. I fractured my other leg in multiple places. I broke ribs. I had vertebrae injuries. My body went into heart and kidney failure. Pain became constant, not occasional. Everything I thought I was building… was suddenly gone. And for a long time, I couldn’t understand something: If I was focusing on health, strength, and vitality… how did I end up here? I used to think maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I thought wrong. Maybe I “manifested” the wrong thing. But I’m starting to see something different now. Life isn’t a formula where good thoughts guarantee safe outcomes. Bodies exist in a world where accidents happen, s...

Faith Trauma And The God I Choose To Believe In

The God I Choose to Believe In I’ve been struggling with something lately, and honestly, I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t affect me. It started after a conversation with a friend I’ve known for years — someone I used to have a very normal, human friendship with. We used to hike together, grab beers, sit on the beach, talk about life, grief, stress, relationships, and everything in between. He was just a regular flawed human being like the rest of us. Then life changed. He retired, got remarried, dove deeply into organized religion, and somewhere along the way, it started feeling like every conversation became a sermon. Not inspiration. Not connection. Preaching. Constant scripture. Constant verses. Constant moral conclusions about everyone else’s life. And honestly, what bothered me most wasn’t even the Bible verses. It was the judgment. The holier-than-thou energy. The way he spoke about people — even his own family — like love suddenly had conditions attached to it. And then ...

Survivor of Ortega Highway Head-On Collision Speaks Out on Life-Altering Injuries, Recovery, and Road Safety Awareness

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Survivor of Ortega Highway Head-On Collision Speaks Out on Life-Altering Injuries, Recovery, and Road Safety Awareness Lake Elsinore, California — 6-17-2026 — A California woman is speaking publicly about the life-changing impact of a head-on collision on the Ortega Highway , calling for greater awareness around reckless driving, road safety, and the long-term human cost of split-second decisions behind the wheel. On September 6th, while driving carefully and allowing extra time on a route she had always approached with caution, she was struck head-on by a driver who crossed into her lane. Her vehicle was sent flying before crashing into a tree, which ultimately stopped her car from going further and likely saved her life. She sustained catastrophic, life-altering injuries, including the loss of one leg, severe damage to the remaining leg requiring extensive metal hardware, multiple spinal injuries, rib fractures, a shat...

When did I cut myself off from love?

Releasing the hidden blocks to love, trust, and abundance that I didn't realize I was carrying. I realized something today during a tapping session called I Am Love . The question came up: When did I cut myself off from love? The first answer that surfaced was after my dad died. The grief was so overwhelming that I turned inward. I withdrew from the world, stopped doing the things that once brought me joy, and quietly disappeared into myself. It felt safer to protect my heart than to risk feeling that kind of pain again. But when I looked deeper, I realized it started even earlier. When the mortgage industry crashed in 2007 and 2008, I lost my job and lived in constant fear of losing everything. I had built a successful life that required a substantial income to maintain, and suddenly I was forced to let go of memberships, activities, and the lifestyle I had known. One of the hardest losses was my social circle. Every weekend, my house was full of friends. I cooked, entertained, ...

Rebuilding Meaning From Wreckage

Rebuilding Meaning From Wreckage There comes a moment in some people’s lives when they stop negotiating with terror. Not because life suddenly becomes safe. Not because the pain disappears. Not because the future finally comes with guarantees. But because they finally realize they have already survived the thing they thought would destroy them. That’s where I am. For a long time, I lived in survival mode. After my stroke years ago, I learned what it meant to rebuild a life from the ground up. I fought my way back physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I learned how to think again, trust my body again, and believe there could still be a future for me. And then life shattered me again. Another catastrophic event. More uncertainty. More pain. More fear. More loss. More moments of lying awake wondering how much one human being is supposed to endure. Lately, one fear has been louder than all the others: The fear of losing everything. The fear of losing housing. The fear of instabil...

Walking Through Fear While My Life Is Still Unstable

Walking Through Fear Anyway: When Survival Becomes a Daily Choice I’m at risk of losing my housing right now. That sentence alone feels surreal to write, but it’s my reality. I’ve already survived things most people only ever read about. A catastrophic accident. A medically induced coma. An amputation. Metal now holding parts of my body together—including my vertebrae, and my left leg from my knee to my ankle. I’m still learning what all of this means in real time, because even now, no one has fully explained every part of what happened to me. I also don’t remember the accident itself. Not because I’m avoiding it—but because my mind shut it out. The trauma was so severe, and my body was so critically compromised, that everything went into survival shutdown. I had kidney failure and heart failure. My body was shutting down, and my brain shut down with it. What I do remember is the day. I remember my thought process clearly in the beginning. I remember thinking I wasn’t in a...

Jesus Was Never a Christian: Untangling Faith, Fear, and Direct Connection to God

“Jesus Was Never a Christian: Untangling Faith, Fear, and Direct Connection to God” There comes a point in many spiritual journeys where the questions stop being theoretical and start becoming deeply personal. I found myself there recently — asking questions I once avoided. If Jesus wasn’t a Christian, then what exactly is Christianity? And if God isn’t inside a religion, then what am I actually relating to? The truth is simple, but not always easy to sit with: Jesus Christ was not a Christian. He was a Jewish teacher living within his own time, culture, and spiritual tradition. Christianity formed after his life, when his followers began trying to make sense of his teachings, his death, and what they believed was his resurrection. Over time, those early communities evolved into structured systems — what eventually became the Church. Through councils, leadership structures, and political influence from figures like Constantine the Great , Christianity became an organized...

My Body Is Not a Machine: Learning to Rebuild After Trauma Without Losing Myself

A raw reflection on rebuilding life after stroke, amputation, and chronic pain, exploring the balance between movement, rest, and nervous system healing without losing identity or strength. There’s a strange thing that happens after major trauma. People expect you to slow down. To be fragile. To disappear into recovery. But that’s not what happens inside me. Inside me, there’s still a drive. A fire. A pull toward movement, toward strength, toward doing something—anything—that makes me feel like I’m still here. Because I’ve survived things most people don’t see up close: a stroke, major fractures, organ failure, amputation, and a body that has had to rebuild itself from the inside out. So when I say I want to move again, I mean it in every part of me. But I’ve also learned something important: My body is not a machine. It’s not bionic. It’s not something I can push endlessly without consequence. It is living tissue that remembers everything it has survived. And somet...