Hello all!! Good morning, afternoon, and goodnight for all reading this blog, wherever you’re reading it. This year will conclude the fourth year this company has been in existence. It has been a long and exciting journey, but it is still only just gearing up to get far bigger.
Our CEO created ImagineWe as a way to get proactive with her student loans. The rising cost of education has gone up more than 50% and in some places more than 60% according to the College Board of the National Center on Education (2018). It is a huge undertaking to expand your concept of life around disabilities. When a person wakes up, they never anticipate that their whole life will change in an instant when one person doesn’t hit their brake. Jessica woke up normal, and she went to bed permanently disabled with a degenerative disc disease that would slowly move down her spine and steal her ability to write without pain. This left her suffering from chronic pain and is a metaphor, many will understand, it also took a lot of her “spoons” and left them in the street that.
Have you heard of Spoon Theory? It is not so much an actual scientific “theory” as much as a visual metaphor to explain chronic conditions, daily activities, mental health, and all of these things connected with energy level or units of available energy in a day. I can explain it like this: say a “normal” person (a person with no diagnosis of disability, disease, or condition with an ample amount of energy each day) has twelve spoons. Every time they perform a regular day-to-day task, a spoon is removed. Throughout the day spoons are continued to be removed until the end of the day, when they run out as normal, or even might have one or two left. This is the normal unit of energy exhausted by someone who does not suffer from anything.
On the contrary, a person who suffers from any range of mental or physical health problems begins their day with fewer spoons available than the person above did. In many cases, they only have half of the number of spoons. So, yes, this would mean they have 50% of the energy level of a typical person. We read about this concept a few months ago, and this metaphor is so on point to explain this visually as a concept that so many people both suffer from and understand.
The reason we explained it in this blog was that Jessica was now turned into this person that it now applies to in 2011 when she was rear-ended on her way home from work, and it was so much worse because she was bracing for impact having been watching the truck behind her 4 cylinder car drive upon her as if everyone wasn’t stopped at a stop-light. That moment changed everything.
To make matters worse, Jessica was also living with an abusive boyfriend. When asked why she stayed she said this:
“Domestic Violence is such an intricate mental health struggle of the stolen and released power and control in a relationship. Sometimes it’s just easier to have someone tell you what to do every day, and how to feel. Sometimes I answer this question with the fact that by the end oft= the relationship, I was studying my experience to learn why I was there in the first place. I wanted to understand why I was accepting too little of a life for myself, and why I didn’t care or love myself enough to want more from this world, and from my partner. I wanted to know why it appeared that I actually hated myself, and why I believed deep down that I was capable of “deserving” to be treated in such a terrible way. In the media, you see how terrible prisons can treat the inmates like on Orange Is the New Black. This is in some cases just like this type of relationship, except a prison is governed by a person, or group of people, and an abuser is governed by no one except for their own deranged, and oftentimes psych/sociopathic selves.
In terms of the Spoon Theory, as an added explanation that I only just learned about in the last few months, after my car accident, the actin and of itself to even THINK about packing up and leaving would immediately wipe out every spoon I had… After my car accident, everything was different. I was now trapped in a lesser body than I had days before, and so seriously didn’t appreciate it. After my son was born, things started growing into consuming days of spoons all at once, and at this point, it would take fewer spoons to leave than it would to stay, so I did what I had to, and we left to a safe house.”
Jessica speaks out about Domestic Violence and even now studies the effects of Domestic Violence on Survivors in an attempt to be able to expedite the process a survivor can take to find success, and live the unique life that they have dreamed about. Today’s blog showcases Jessica’s car accident, Spoon Theory, and Domestic Violence for a very important reason.
Four years ago when Jessica was reaching her five-year mark as a survivor of Domestic Violence (Watch Jessica’s Five-Year Survivor Celebration on Channel 4 News Feature (WIVB)), her mom gave her a puppy. This puppy is a husky, and her son (who was currently obsessed with Dr. Who – the 11th doctor to be specific) named him Dr. Geronimo. Dr. Geronimo was registered as an Emotional Support Animal, and slowly Jessica’s PTSD triggers and anxiety started to lift.
Her ESA doggy is a huge reason she has been able to gain the necessary energy to create and take this company to a whole new level. We even have Dr. Geronimo showing up in a series that Jessica wrote called Eloina Spelloina in her book that pays tribute to her father who passed away in 2014. We’ll talk about him and this book Eloina Spelloina & Papa’s Angel Stone at a later date.
Happy Birthday to Dr. Geronimo who turns four years old today!
The dog who made life possible again after abuse, depression, and chronic pain threatened the CEO’s livelihood. All this to explain the huge improvement that created this entire company from the love of one woman and her dog, Dr. Geronimo, illustrated into books, giving her smiles, pushing her when she needs it, and lifting her off the floor when she is consumed in grief or overwhelmed with life.
Happy Birthday to Dr. Geronimo!!!!! Best dog ever! There is nothing quite like an animal’s love! Below, in the comments, tell us where do you get your emotional support from. Do you have an emotional support animal? Tell us about it!
