I’m Jackie Venus (she/they)—a self-taught illustrator, animator, writer, and multiply-disabled advocate navigating life in Appalachian poverty with my cat familiars.

I’m AuDHD, non-binary, and live with CPTSD, PMOS (formerly PCOS), MCAS/HIT, and other invisible disabilities—many of which I believe are the direct result of prolonged abuse my body will never fully recover from. I’ve been on SSDI since 2009 and was formally diagnosed autistic in 2019 at age 39.

Art is my love language, and creating this work lets me send that love back into the Universe. If you’re here, thank you and I hope you’ll read further to know what my art and advocacy are truly about.

In 2024, I was hired in a part-time role as a Co-Researcher through the Double Rainbow Lab at UMass, studying neurodivergent and gender affirming mental health care for Autistic adults with diverse experiences of gender. In 2025, I became the Lead Illustrator on the same project for its peer-reviewed publication. I never imagined I could combine my two biggest special interests—art and psychology—without a degree in either field.

For someone constantly told I wasn’t good enough for such spaces, I still doubt myself sometimes. I’m excited about what the future might hold for me and grateful to be even a small part of the changes our society needs.

Much of my art is about systemic abuse and the trauma others caused me. But I’m not pretending I never hurt anyone. For a while I was reliving my trauma instead of working through it, and I took that out on other people. Sometimes people who never meant me harm like others once had.

I believe some of the people I’ll talk about in my art were far worse to me than I ever was to them, but there are people I hurt who weren’t actual abusers, and I don’t get to dismiss that.

I no longer expect perfection from anyone, not even myself. There was a time I saw people in absolutes. One harmful trait, and I’d either cut them off entirely or lash out in anger and fear.

Now, what I expect is accountability: when harm is pointed out, own it and work through it. Most people aren’t willing to do that, and I’m trying hard to be the person I expect others to be toward me. Holding myself accountable isn’t a one-time thing, it’s ongoing shadow work and it doesn’t unfold in a linear way.

This goes for what I expect from others, too.

That’s why I want to share my stories publicly, even the ones where I’m not shown in a good light. Even the stories where I’m still figuring out how to name what happened to me.

My goal is to help people facing similar systemic abuses navigate them and advocate for themselves as safely as possible. I also want to invite people repeating cycles of abuse to look, not just at how others harmed them, but at how they may have harmed others as well.

I hope to learn from the people who connect with me through my art and advocacy, as well. I never want to reach a point where I believe I’ve stopped growing. I still have so much healing to do in myself, too.

In my own healing journey, here’s the hard truth I keep returning to: how can one recover from severe trauma when the systems they need to survive are still actively traumatizing them daily?

They cannot. Not fully.

I believe the more we tell our stories collectively, the more likely we can dismantle those systems and truly heal, instead of putting band-aids over wounds that need stitches. But it’s going to take a lot of hard work.

Hard work, I believe, that my highest self signed up to take on in this lifetime.

Spirituality is waking up in me now, drawing me toward the metaphysical and the intuitive—things I once laughed at others for believing in. Not every soul speaks this language, and that’s fine, but these topics will keep showing up in my work.

This isn’t a phase or understanding I came to lightly. It’s the soil I was always rooted in, unacknowledged for decades out of fear and cynicism. Now I’m embracing it with joy, with wonder, and without apology.

By my mid-forties, I finally accepted that being the outcast of the outcasts wasn’t a curse. It was a choice many aren’t willing to make. They’d rather normalize horrible things than not fit in anywhere and walk alone. I’d rather die alone with integrity than stand beside people who’ve forgotten what humanity means just to fit in somehow, and I refuse to make myself smaller to make others comfortable anymore.

These are my stories, from my perspective, to tell. Fair warning: my art and advocacy aren’t a safe space for everyone. I discuss hard topics that many prefer to ignore or that could re-traumatize some people.

If you don’t like what I have to say, find discussions of trauma too triggering, or find my content “too much,” please just move along. There’s plenty of other art out there for you.

Don’t expect me to be someone I’m not.

Kind Regards,
Jackie Venus