Jean Marshall The Artful Woman

  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 ...

   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...

  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 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...