A Chronically Ill Book

I painted/designed the cover for this beautiful book full of empathy, fierce women, and a touch of magic realism…

Have you ever read a fiction book with a chronically ill main character? (Probably not, right?)  Any young woman with an invisible illness/disability will see herself in this book, and anyone else will gain some much-needed insight into the lives of women who are “still sick”.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been asked that question, too- “You’re still sick?” goes hand-in-hand with “but you don’t look sick!” and “get well soon!” after you’ve just said you have a c h r o n i c illness. Yup. Thank you [sarcasm].

Find more about it on the author’s website (which I also helped design!) or purchase her book on Amazon, etc!

 

Daily IV, Daily Art.

 

 

I went many years trying to hide my illness. I didn’t  want to appear like I was complaining or exaggerating (which I think is very common particularly for young sick women who are often dismissed as “faking” symptoms), and I didn’t want it to define me. I wanted people to remember me for my work, my art, not as “the sick girl”.

 

But I did myself a disservice by doing this. Illness is a part of me. It has shifted my priorities and dictated my time. I would spend however long my body allowed me to “act normal” and then I would go home and collapse. I would have to recover from doing normal things. I had to schedule my time so wisely.

 

No one knew in my college classes that being there that day meant I would not be able to cook dinner that night. That the energy I expended on learning and working those couple of hours would mean I’d spend the next day holed up in a dark bedroom waiting for a migraine or  some other unbearable pain to lessen. I had to plan my days around tasks like showering (if I did that before class I might faint while standing waiting for the bus, so I’d try to shower the night before, etc etc etc…. endless planning of things most people don’t even think about. #spoontheory)

 

Looking back, I wish I had shared more with my friends, family,  professors, etc. Perhaps if they were open to learning about chronic illness, I could’ve helped spread some empathy. They would’ve been a little more understanding of the next person they met. Perhaps they would consider that just because someone doesn’t LOOK sick, doesn’t mean they aren’t. They would know that despite what popular movies and books portray, illness does not end in only death or miracles. Sometimes you get sick and  just stay sick and that is your new reality.

 

I no longer want to hide my illness. Years of misdiagnosis meant years of extreme suffering. But I am finally beginning to heal and want to share all parts of myself and my art, not just the pretty end products!  There is so much more to come!!

Thanks for reading,

xJenna

Orange River Constellations

“Orange River Constellations” A past work– acrylic and stitched fibers on canvas.

I really miss working with acrylic but unfortunately I only have access to watercolor and paper at the moment. I went through a traumatic time where I lost all of my belongings (ALL. Including my art supplies and my entire portfolio and any unsold works).

Thank you for understanding the days/months/years of hiatus if you follow me now or my last blog or if you knew me back from Etsy (Musical Color Studio). I’m still very much in the “chronic-illness-abyss” but always grateful whenever I feel well enough to be creating again!

xJenna

Works in Progress

Some details and before/afters of paintings I’m currently working on.

Quiet People, Loud Minds

“Quiet people have the loudest minds” – Stephen Hawking

In Spite Of

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

-Edith Wharton

 

Where I’ve Been

“If you’re any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were.”

-Romare Bearden

This quote was the last thing I posted on my previous blog  in November 2015. I hope that’s what I’ve been doing the past few years.

The only way I can wrap my head around years of illness and isolation is to somehow hope it was worth something.

Years pass in a blur. It’s one of those awful paradoxes where each minute of the day seems to last forever (in pain or a state of insomnia) but then suddenly I realize it is a new month. A new year. That time has actually flown by. But I was stuck in that chronic-illness-suspended-time-place. Stagnant.

I try to not think of this as wasted time. It’s not fair to call it “wasted” at all. It was hardly a choice. I try to be content in small moments, try to appreciate & acknowledge small achievements, but at the end of the day it is not the life I imagined or wanted for myself. It is not a life you would wish on anyone at all.

Unfortunately I have no miraculous recovery story to share. I have multiple chronic illnesses (chronic means long term, means I will likely cope with them in some way the rest of my life). I was misdiagnosed, undiagnosed and mistreated for years and my immune and nervous system spiraled out of control until I reached a point where I could barely function on a daily basis.

If you’re at all curious, I have dysautonomia, Ehlers Danlos, lyme/bartonella disease, and I was also exposed to toxic mold. At the advice of my doctor, in 2015 my mother and I left our home (the source of the toxic black mold) with only the clothes on our back. I lost all of my belongings, all of my artwork, e v e r y t h i n g.  I was essentially bedridden for 2-3 years, with extremely diminished brainpower/mental ability on top of physical symptoms. I was not myself. I could not be creative, I could not create art, I was stuck, unmoving, lifeless.

I am healing, I am not healed. I can now stand for more than a few minutes without fainting. I can smell commonly-used chemicals like perfume, detergent, or smoke and am (usually) no longer sent into anaphylactic shock like what used to happen every time I left my house. I have a chest port and have to administer hours of IV medications daily, and there are other things I need to do on a minute-to-minute basis to stay in this improved state. My mental ability has improved. I can think again.  I can read again. I can be creative again! In small moments I can feel like myself again.

So like I said before, I have no miraculous recovery story to share where I tell you I am completely healthy and returned to how I was “before”. But if you saw me a few years ago, you would still agree that this is still a major improvement. And I am still hoping to reclaim even more of my life in the years to come, slowly but surely…

I am sharing all of this as a conscious decision to be more open and candid with anyone who likes my artwork or has found my website because of it’s illness-related keywords/tags. I want to share more parts of myself with you than just the pretty finished products I create! I could only have created them by going through this journey. I have a point of view that other artists don’t, and I hope it shows.

So I suppose Romare Beardon’s quote is fitting. I have made a “miraculous” (or at least an out-of-the-ordinary) journey and I have come back to make some statements in shapes and colors of where I have been! Thank you for stumbling across this and for following along with me…

xJenna

PS- if you’re looking for more information about chronic/invisible illness I have accumulated a ton of information and useful links/websites. I’d be happy to share them with you- leave a comment below or contact me here. [I want my blog to be more focused on art and how illness has influenced it and my creative process and less about my specific symptoms, health tips or a bunch of overwhelming information that can be found elsewhere. But I’d be happy to share advice/info privately if you need it!]