Jean Marshall | Author, Coach, Speaker

  One of the hardest parts of sharing my recovery online isn't the physical therapy, the setbacks, or even learning to walk again. It's the people who think they know my story after watching three seconds of a video. I recently shared my 10-month recovery update as a new below-knee amputee. The video wasn't asking for gait critiques, medical advice, or strangers to analyze my every step. It was documenting where I am in my journey and celebrating a milestone that took months of pain, determination, surgeries, setbacks, and rehabilitation to reach. I was sharing progress. I was sharing hope. I was sharing what it looks like to start rebuilding a life after a catastrophic accident. But instead of people simply celebrating that milestone, some immediately jumped into telling me what I should be doing differently. "Ditch the crutches." "Take gait lessons." "You're going to fall." Here's the problem. They didn't know my story. They didn...

  The Hardest Part of Recovery Had Nothing to Do With Learning to Walk Again When people think about recovery after a catastrophic accident, they picture the obvious things: surgeries, physical therapy, doctor's appointments, learning how to use a prosthetic, and rebuilding physical strength. Those things are hard. But one of the hardest lessons I learned had nothing to do with my injuries. It was learning to see people differently. Before my accident, I had always been someone who knew where I stood. If someone crossed a line or a relationship became one-sided, I had no problem recognizing it and walking away. What's different now isn't me. It's my circumstances. After my accident, I suddenly found myself needing help with things I had always done independently. I couldn't just jump in my car and run errands. Now a simple trip to the store requires planning, arranging transportation, and relying on someone else. That change taught me something I never expected: Nee...

  The Invisible Weight of Recovery People see me walking with a prosthetic and assume I’m getting better. What they don’t see is everything that is still happening behind the scenes. Recovery isn’t just physical. It’s emotional. It’s mental. It’s financial. And sometimes, the people who are supposed to help you end up making your recovery even harder. I’ve learned that the hard way. After surviving a near-fatal accident, spending four months in the hospital, losing my right leg below the knee, breaking my pelvis, ribs, wrist, vertebrae, and crushing my left leg, I thought the hardest part would be learning to walk again. I was wrong. The hardest part has been carrying everyone else’s mistakes, choices, and stress while trying to heal my own body. I’ve had caregivers who couldn’t follow simple instructions, showed up late for months, argued instead of taking responsibility, and somehow made everything my fault. I found myself repeating the same directions over and over again. “Get t...

I felt the need to write this because I've realized that a lot of people have good intentions. They're trying to relate. They're trying to connect. They're trying to help. But sometimes the things they say leave me hurt, angry, sad, or just completely dumbfounded. People need to understand that you can't just say the first thing that pops into your head. When you're talking to someone who's been through catastrophic trauma, your words matter. Think before you speak. Don't just word vomit all over someone because you're uncomfortable or trying to relate. Some of the things people have said to me over the past eleven months have been incredibly hurtful. They didn't make me feel seen. They made me feel dismissed. And in some cases, they did more harm than good. I'm writing this because I hope it makes people stop and think before they say the same things to someone else. It's only been eleven months since my accident. My trauma is still fre...

Don't Let Someone Else's Limited Thinking Become Your Limitations The reason I wrote this piece is not to rant. I recently lost my photography career after a tragic, catastrophic accident where I lost my leg. Now, once again, I'm being forced to reinvent myself. And that's kind of been the theme of my whole life: reinvention and resilience. I mentioned to some of the people closest to me what I wanted to do next, and boy, did they have opinions of their own. Not only am I still healing ten months after my accident, and my body is still going through trauma, but my brain is also forced to figure out what's next. When I told a couple of people what I wanted to do, they shut me down almost instantly. But then I had to think about their lives. All they've ever done was exchange their time for money. They don't understand me. I'm a creative person. I don't punch in and punch out for a J-O-B. So, I'm guarding my plans closely and only sharing them with...

  The Setbacks Nobody Warns You About There are moments in recovery when you think you've finally turned a corner. A few weeks ago, I left my surgeon's office feeling hopeful. After months of surgeries, healing, and uncertainty, he told me he didn't need to see me anymore for my left leg. It felt like I had finally crossed something off my list. But what I quickly realized was that being discharged didn't mean I was healed. It didn't mean my ankle would stop swelling. It didn't mean the pain would disappear. It didn't mean I would suddenly regain my mobility or no longer need physical therapy. And it certainly didn't mean my journey with my prosthetic leg would become easy. Just when I thought I was making real progress, I developed large blood blisters along my amputation incisions after physical therapy. When I removed my prosthesis, the liner was saturated with blood. I was devastated. Not because of the blisters alone, but because they represented ye...

 It's hard to believe it's been 10 months since my accident. It's been quite a journey. I went from the trauma unit to an acute care hospital, connected to more life support machines than I could count. One by one, I was able to come off each machine until I was finally discharged at the end of December. When I got home, I spent about a month in bed. I couldn't do much for myself and had to slowly rebuild my strength. I started going to the gym once a week, and after a couple of months I was finally able to get a caretaker who could take me two or three times a week. That's when I really started making progress. But recovery hasn't been a straight line. My amputated leg had complication after complication, and the wounds wouldn't heal for months. Even though I received my prosthetic leg on February 10, I couldn't safely wear it until the very end of April because the wounds wouldn't close. Just when I started walking with my prosthetic at the gym, I ...

   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Surviving Ortega Highway: Why Road Safety Can't Wait Lake Elsinore, California – July 2, 2026 — Nearly ten months after surviving a catastrophic head-on collision on Ortega Highway, Jean Marshall is speaking publicly about the crash that forever changed her life. By sharing her experience, she hopes to raise awareness about the devastating consequences of reckless driving and the lifelong challenges many survivors face long after the headlines disappear. On September 6, 2025, Marshall was driving home on Ortega Highway when another vehicle crossed into her lane, causing a violent head-on collision. The crash left her with life-threatening injuries, including the loss of her right leg, multiple fractures throughout her body, broken ribs, spinal injuries, a shattered left leg, and internal injuries that resulted in heart and kidney failure. She spent four months in the hospital undergoing multiple surgeries before beginning the long process of rehabilit...