Why hello there! My name is Jessica Taylor-Bearman and I am an author who originates from good ole Kent, but now resides in Essex. I suffer with multiple chronic illnesses, which make everyday living rather challenging! I live with my husband Samuel and my little daughter Felicity, who is one!
I have always wanted to be an author and used to write stories from as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager my life was busy and I absolutely loved it. I was always very active and loved spending time with both my family and friends. I suppose I was just an average teen to be honest, swimming through life as if I were invincible…
But in 2006 everything changed…
I got a regular flu virus that everyone in my class went down with too…the only difference was I never recovered…
I was diagnosed with a chronic illness called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and by the time I was admitted into hospital I had lost all function; I couldn’t speak, move or eat for myself.
To cut a long story short, I spent a long *loonngg* time in hospital receiving various treatments which were both good and bad (when I mean bad…they were really bad). But my suffering inspired me to do more; I began keeping diary entries so that one day I could write a book and I thought of other ways to express myself.
In the years of not being able to move I discovered that when somebody made me laugh, my body would start to uncontrollably shake. It gave me a crazy idea that if someone could make me laugh when I had a paintbrush in my hand then maybe I would be able to actually do a painting that recorded my laughter…a Laugh-O-Gram was born…and the rest was history! In 2009 I created The Laugh-O-Gram Collection and they were exhibited in the Canterbury Art Festival.
Over time my technique improved and I started a new collection called Freedom of Laughter, which was based on travel. Due to my severe chronic illness, I couldn’t physically travel, so I went to places in my mind and created a host of different landscape paintings based on different countries….but STILL using laughter lines. My African painting ‘A New Horizon’ actually lives in Ethiopia!
In 2010 I started my charity Share a Star to help seriously unwell young people like myself, and their families too. My idea was to create special holding stars for the children who were facing hospital or were suffering from debilitating chronic illnesses, because my experience had made me really understand how hard it was to be ill. Share a Star is still going strong today!
In 2012 I documented my hidden life with very severe M.E. through making videos to raise awareness of the condition. My first YouTube video was called The World of One Room. It was viewed by thousands of people across the world and still feels pretty mind blowing. I also did a separate one called Seven Years in the Making, which followed my journey to sitting in a chair for the first time since becoming ill.
In 2017 I featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Unrest, which I was the only representative of the UK. Yeah I know, still feels unbelievable. A few months later I got married to the love of my life, and then a year later my first book ‘A Girl Behind Dark Glasses’ was published by Hashtag Press.
One of my proudest achievements is being able to say that I am a published author. To then be able say that I am a bestselling author too, felt out of this world. It got even more surreal in 2020, as A Girl Behind Dark Glasses won The People’s Book Prize award for Best Non-Fiction for that year… *cue hysterical sobbing*… the incredible support I have received from my family, friends and the whole chronic illness community made that one happen.
I have always been an activist when it comes to disability rights and my aim has always been to give a voice to the voiceless. Now that I am a chronically ill mum, I feel this is even more important because there is just not enough positive representation of disabled mums!
So you will generally find me blogging my life on this website, my Facebook page The World of One Room and on Instagram waffling on about how my daughter manages to be both a cutie AND a monster, whilst trying to explain the reality of being a chronically ill mum.
My second book ‘A Girl in One Room’ is being published on the 25th February 2021 and I am both nervous but extremely excited to share it with you! It follows my journey from returning home from my four-year hospital stay and what happened next. I am thinking of the next one too and let’s just say I’ve started the planning already!
Thank you for visiting my website and I look forward to hearing more from you all.