Jean Marshall The Artful Woman

Waiting for Help That Never Comes This morning I woke up with a realization I didn't want to have. Nobody is coming to save me. Not the insurance company. Not the disability office. Not the attorneys. Not the government. Nobody. It's been almost nine months since my accident. Nine months. One day I was photographing beautiful events at luxury hotels for successful clients. I was studying to expand my skills and explore new ways of helping people. I was planning for the future. Living my life. Then everything changed. Since then, I've spent months waiting for systems that move at the speed of a glacier. Waiting for paperwork. Waiting for phone calls. Waiting for decisions. Waiting for people who don't seem to understand that while they're shuffling papers, real lives are hanging in the balance. Yesterday I called my law firm for a status update. A few weeks ago, I was told my case was finally being filed. Yesterday I learned it wasn't. Apparently there was a comm...

I recently shared a post asking for support during a very difficult time in my life, and I received some comments calling me a "beggar" or accusing me of "money begging." I want to clarify something: I am not begging. I am asking for help while I try to survive an unexpected and life-altering situation. There is no obligation for anyone to donate. People are free to scroll past, say no, or simply wish me well. But it's incredibly hurtful when people judge a situation they haven't lived. I was in a catastrophic accident that was not my fault, and it permanently changed my life. I didn't ask to lose my leg. I didn't ask to spend four months in the hospital. I didn't ask for my body to be permanently altered, my car to be totaled, or my ability to work and support myself to be taken away. This didn't happen gradually or by choice. It happened in an instant, and it has taken away my health, my independence, and my ability to support myself in the...

I Don't Know My Purpose Yet, and That's Okay For months, my only job was to survive. Survive the surgeries. Survive the pain. Survive learning how to live in a body that no longer looked or functioned the way it once did. There wasn't much room for anything else. But lately, something has changed. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm getting my mind back. I'm reading again. Taking courses. Asking questions. Thinking deeply. Exploring ideas that once seemed out of reach because all my energy was spent simply making it through another day. And one question keeps coming back to me: Given that this happened, what do I want to become because of it? I'm not looking for a perfect answer. I'm not trying to convince myself that losing my leg was somehow easy or that all suffering has a neat explanation. My body still hurts every day. I have broken bones held together with metal. My scars ache. Recovery is exhausting. But I refuse to let my mind rot or m...

   Energetic Familiarity: When Healing Speaks Before Words Do I had a conversation recently with someone who told me he was interested in sound therapy. He wasn’t coming from a clinical place or a highly structured healing plan—he was simply curious. He and his wife were going through some challenges and were looking for a more holistic way to approach what they were experiencing. What stood out to me wasn’t just what he said, but how it felt underneath the words . There was something familiar in it. Not in a surface-level way, but in a deeper, quieter way—like his system already recognized something about this path. That’s what I would call energetic familiarity . The Body Knows Before the Mind Catches Up We tend to think of healing as something we choose logically. We research, compare, decide, and then commit. But in reality, the body often responds long before the mind has formed an explanation. When someone is drawn to sound therapy, energy work, or any kind of vibrationa...

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....