Mighty Member since September 2016
Jo is a writer, CRPS warrior and founder of The Princess in the Tower — a chronic pain healing portal to offer comfort, strength and support to fellow pain and chronic illness warriors — but she’s also been a magazine feature writer, a trumpeter in a jazz band, a traveling vagabond, a journalist, an artist, activist, published in the broadsheets (for the right reasons), almost eaten by a crocodile (for the wrong reasons), a volunteer in India, lost in the Himalayas, found in the Mediterranean sea, a poet, purveyor of love and lover of life, and a skydiving, rock-climbing, scuba diving, mountain-biking, fitness-loving 22 year old when CRPS arrived with a jolt. After clinging to her much-loved career like a mosquito in the breeze until the painful neurological disease became systemic, she was bedridden for 8 years. In a life of such extremes and from that bed, the princess in the tower was created. She’s never stopped learning potential healing modalities, inhaling books and courses for air (with diplomas ranging from nutrition to acupressure to psychology to Traditional Chinese Medicine to chronic pain management), for the silver lining in all of this is in helping fellow pain warriors. Knowing just how hard it is to live with constant pain and complex systemic illness, she is fuelled by a deep passion to support others while managing her own condition through a fusion of practices alongside her writing, art, yoga, meditation and unquenchable thirst for books. Jo does her best to balance her projects, passion for writing and helping others with her obvious deficit of spoons, and despite being frequently floored by the capricious nature of CRPS, refuses to let it still nor stop her quest to support other kindred spirits, wayward princesses and pain warriors. She also shares offerings for creative souls at her sister site, Inspire Portal which fuses writing and creativity with ancient healing practices. She is also writing her first historical fiction novel.