Jean Marshall The Artful Woman

What I wish doctors knew about helping people manage pain is that there seems to be a lot of disconnect and lack of communication in the healthcare system. When I was in acute care, I was prescribed a number of medications that nobody really discussed with me. They just gave them to me. When I found out I was on methadone, I asked what the plan was to wean me off of it because I didn't want to be on it long-term. Nobody seemed to have an answer. When I was discharged from the hospital, they took me off methadone cold turkey and sent me home. After I got home, I received a phone call from an outpatient substance abuse treatment clinic. They told me they would be treating me for methadone dependence, but the earliest appointment they had was three weeks after I had already been discharged and taken off the medication. They actually said they were going to put me back on it so they could wean me off it. I remember thinking, if this was something that needed to be addressed, why was...

  As someone who’s lost a loved one (my father and my dog), suffered a stroke, had skin cancer, navigated a toxic relationship, faced financial uncertainty, and now lives as an amputee —all back-to-back—I found myself in a chronic state of fight-or-flight, hypervigilance, and nervous system dysregulation. This article dives a little deeper into what that actually means, and—more importantly—how healing can begin. When the body goes through sustained stress, grief, relational instability, health crises, and financial insecurity, the nervous system adapts in the only way it knows how: it stays alert. It stays on guard. It learns that safety is not guaranteed, so it remains in a constant state of monitoring the environment for what might go wrong next. Over time, this protective response can become the baseline rather than a temporary reaction. In this state, life begins to feel different. Everyday sensations can become amplified. Sounds feel sharper or more intrusive than they used...

  The Hidden Thought Patterns That Keep Us Stuck Over the past year, my life has changed in ways I never could have imagined. After surviving a devastating car accident, losing my leg, enduring multiple surgeries, and facing an entirely different future than the one I had planned, I've had to reinvent myself once again. Reinvention isn't new to me—I've done it many times throughout my life. But this time feels different. Trauma has a way of leaving behind more than physical scars. It can create thought patterns rooted in fear, survival, loss, and uncertainty. If we're not careful, those thoughts become the lens through which we see our future. As I've been working on my own healing, I've been paying close attention to the beliefs and mental habits that no longer serve me. The truth is, many of us unknowingly carry these patterns around, and they quietly keep us stuck, disconnected from possibility, and afraid to move forward. This list isn't about pretending...

  Nobody tells you that becoming an amputee basically turns your entire life into an Olympic event called: “Can I Make It To The Bathroom In Time?” Spoiler alert: Sometimes the answer is no. People see amputees out in public and think: “Wow. So inspiring. So strong.” Meanwhile at home, I’m one missed transfer away from becoming a biohazard. My life now revolves around timing. My bladder’s timing. My bowels’ timing. My cat’s timing. My dog’s timing. And unfortunately, I’m the slowest one in the house. Ironically, my cat seems to understand my disability more than my dog does. Which feels unfair considering the dog literally survived the accident with me and witnessed everything firsthand. But my cat watches me struggle like: “She is fragile. We must proceed carefully.” Meanwhile my dog is just out here operating under the belief that I still function like a normal human being. After my second surgery to remove hardware from my leg, I came home wearing a medical boot...

  You Don’t Attract From Thoughts Alone — You Attract From State I was listening to an audiobook recently about money, abundance, and manifestation, and something kept repeating over and over again: Your state matters. Not just your thoughts. Not just affirmations. Not just vision boards or pretending to “act rich.” Your state . And honestly? That hit me harder than any manifestation technique ever has. Because after trauma, survival mode, medical crises, financial stress, toxic relationships, heartbreak, fear, and years of constantly bracing for impact… your nervous system doesn’t magically respond to “just think positively.” You can consciously want abundance while your body still expects danger. That realization changed everything for me. As someone who survived a stroke, navigated years of healing, lived through emotional and financial stress, and spent far too long carrying survival energy in my body, I’ve started realizing that scarcity isn’t always just a mindset....

I’m Tired of Being Tested. I’m Ready to Feel Blessed. Lately, I’ve been diving into teachings about energy, abundance, nervous system healing, and consciousness. I started listening to books like The Body Code , revisiting some of the work from David R. Hawkins and his Map of Consciousness, and exploring ideas around changing your emotional “state” to shift your life. At first, I think I approached it from a place of frustration. Because honestly? I’m tired. Tired of surviving. Tired of fear. Tired of feeling like life is one long series of lessons, tests, trauma, recovery, rebuilding, and “overcoming.” After surviving a stroke, years of emotional healing, toxic relationships, financial fear, and then a catastrophic accident that completely changed my life — including losing part of my limb and enduring multiple surgeries, recovery, pain, trauma, and the emotional aftermath of rebuilding my life all over again — I realized something: My nervous system learned survival so deeply tha...

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...

  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...

  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 ...