We were lucky to catch up with John & Michelle Miller recently and have shared our conversation below.
John & Michelle, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
Our purpose was found through working on our self-discipline and increasing our resilience due to our mental health issues and childhood struggles.
We both grew up very isolated from our peers, quite aware how different we were from those around us. We both have autism and ADHD as well as struggling with trauma and PTSD from our childhood and abusive relationships we went through in early adulthood.
After years of observation, we’ve found that we both have a very unique and complex story due to our upbringing and mental health struggles. We utilized our past history separately as well as our history together to create our own unique story.
We’ve forced ourselves to keep pushing forward while accepting our past, learning from our struggles and issues, turning them from road bumps into stepping stones.
We’re quite resilient as a result of our pasts, by embracing the struggles and pushing forward despite any obstacles, we have created a life we love living.
Even though we still struggle with our health and finances daily, we are thriving and enjoying life again!
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
We love creating and embracing creativity. Art has been our primary form of communication, connection, and a way to process both the outer and inner worlds. Being autistic has uniquely shaped our perspectives and actions. With our complex minds, we have an abundance of ideas, complete with plans and designs to bring them to life. However, we often think of more than we can practically accomplish or even write down.
Therefore, we aim to build a business that sells our artwork as stickers, with the possibility of offering the originals for sale. As our skills grow, so will our business. Mental health and art therapy are integral to our lives and motivate everything we do. You will see a strong theme of how our inner minds work through our photography, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and much more.
John hopes to build a solid graphic design career. With experience already in creating logos, interactive sticker charts, timeline charts, sticker designs, and more, he is open to commissions for almost any graphic design project. He loves being able to help provide the exact asset to fit the need and is up for any exciting challenge you may have. He also enjoys drawing, painting, ceramics, woodworking, creating files for his laser cutter, and more. He has extensive technical, chemical, and general material knowledge for various projects.
Michelle aims to develop Artist Trading Card (ATC) Interactive Art Trade Displays. ATCs are 2.5″ x 3.5″ art cards that artists decorate and then save, gift, or trade. This art form began in 1997 in Sweden by M. Vanci Stirnemann as an exhibition for people to create and trade face-to-face. Due to current circumstances, many people cannot meet to trade cards but still want to participate. To address this, Michelle plans to set up Trade Displays around Colorado Springs in various businesses to facilitate the exchange of local artwork. You can pick up free art kits with upcycled/recycled art materials generously donated to help you get started creating a card. Then you can bring back your card (or any other cards you make) and stop by the different trade boards for someone else’s artwork! You’ll be able to trade at any display whenever the business hosting it is open.
We also host a monthly craft and trade event in Colorado Springs at the end of every month, allowing people to create and trade cards for free!
Our long-term goal is to establish a proper mental health hospital, using our experiences, knowledge, expertise, research, creativity, and insight to address the lack of adequate care. Much of our business is geared toward fueling this ultimate project, which means so much to us.
In the meantime, we both hope to run an art business selling our handmade art, including both originals and sticker designs, and hosting arts and crafts classes. To see what we are up to, support us, or help influence which artistic direction we go: follow us on www.Ko-Fi.com/onourtrail
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1) Childhood Struggles // Mental Health
Both of us experienced very difficult childhoods—similar in some ways yet completely different in others. Being autistic made the world a very confusing place for us. What worked for others often didn’t work for us. As we grew up facing numerous debilitating situations, we eventually found each other and realized how our processing and internalizing of experiences differed from our peers. We perceive the world very intensely and had to completely readjust our lifestyles to adapt. By going against many social norms to address our specific struggles, we have significantly improved our health and avoided frequent ER and physician visits.
Highly motivated to learn about and understand psychology and mental health, we strive to balance our struggles with autism, ADHD, cPTSD, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. To navigate life, it’s essential to know who you are, how you are built, how you respond, and to discipline yourself to act in ways that are best for you both directly and indirectly. This may mean imposing consistent and sometimes boring rules or guidelines to keep yourself safe and healthy. Even the smallest steps, when taken with intention and consistency over time, build the best version of you. Listening to a podcast for 15 minutes a day might seem insignificant, but it accumulates over your lifetime. Everything you hear, see, smell, taste, and feel is recorded and compacted to build your future self. So carefully choose what you give your attention to—your time, your mental capacity, and your money—as each is an investment towards bettering yourself or tearing yourself down. With this mindset, we have built ourselves into a surprisingly strong place today.
Daily discussions and studies on all aspects of how the world works keep us thoroughly engaged, and we enjoy exploring its complexity and fascination. There are so many different content creators with various depths of knowledge from whom we hope to learn. No one can know everything about anything, so each person must dedicate themselves to what attracts and matches them: their likes, dislikes, sensory inputs, perceptions, knowledge, skills, abilities, etc., even if it’s a small part of the world that is a deep well of information. These differences are what made us realize: we need a community. With so many different people suited for different roles, it would be impossible for one or even two people to handle everything on their own. They would have to rely on others to help cover their weaknesses and, in return, be the strength for someone else’s weakness. For those struggling with mental health issues, this is glaringly obvious.
Transforming our childhood struggles into skills and tools, we aim to benefit ourselves and others today. Our goal with our business is to help guide others in tangible ways to improve their lives by deeply analyzing our own lives.
2) Perseverance // Consistency
To us, these are overlapping but provide a more rounded view of what we mean. We kept pushing through, taking those small steps every day for days, weeks, and months, to now years, which has brought us to where we are today. We can look back and be proud of our dedication and investment in ourselves by maintaining those small steps, whether we saw immediate results or not. The results do come, and if it takes a while, then it will be amazing!
There were many times we almost completely gave up on life. But we kept going, knowing that we were created for something—anything more than what was being told to us. Sometimes, our purpose in life is to become the people we needed as children. Our lives were a test of trials and errors to determine what helps and what doesn’t, so we can better guide others in understanding themselves. After all, who would want to learn from someone who hasn’t done it themselves? Our goal is to turn our findings into useful information for others to better their own lives. We benefit only if others benefit, and we would love to share knowledge gained from our sufferings.
3) Creativity // Uniqueness
Our world was very bleak growing up, so to entertain ourselves, we created a vibrant inner world. We were afraid to stand out and be ourselves, only recently stepping out and becoming more public about who we are.
The world around us is full of beautiful and intricate designs, with well-thought-out processes and systems coexisting with us. The wonder of what is around us keeps us alive and inspires us to create. When we come across ideas, we frequently develop plans or concepts, eager to see them become reality. Even though many are well beyond our capacity or more likely, our time, how can we not want to play with the various concepts in this world?
Recently, we had the opportunity to attempt making our own paints. For years, we read up on the idea of creating our own pigments and dyes from natural materials around us, such as rocks, moss, bug hives, and more. At some point, we finally decided to make it a reality by asking, “Why not today?” Everything seemed perfectly aligned: great weather, we had time, slept well, it was our day off, no expectations, and we felt fresh excitement for the project. So we did! John created a series of various pigments and turned them into watercolors. We hope to host classes covering this process so you can create your own local colors to paint with!
Both of us have many overlapping crafts and activities we enjoy doing together, while we each have specific crafts we particularly like. For example, we both enjoy drawing, painting, sculpting, building, Artist Trading Cards (ATCs), game-building, and more. John focuses more on graphic design, video editing, building SVG files, AI design, paper cutting, cooking/baking, and chemistry. Michelle enjoys organizing materials, creating crafts and classes, curating kits, building junk journals, recycling paper into new handmade paper, and scrapbooking.
Though it may seem like many of these interests do not connect, the art of the subject and the craft of understanding and playing with its pieces are exciting and fun! Keep learning by watching and listening to information repetitively, then play with what you’ve learned. Keep trying until you understand what was told to you, then rinse and repeat! The world is such a vast and wild place, with more surprises than we could ever know. You just have to be active in unlocking those surprises.
Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?
While many people played crucial roles in steering us toward a better life, it was a struggle to narrow it down to just a few individuals.
First and foremost, we have to mention each other. Both of us were going through extremely difficult and challenging times long before we met. It turns out we are the perfect halves of each other’s brains and managed to work together to pull ourselves out of suicidal thoughts, severe depression, toxic environments, and domestic violence. During our lowest times, we found that no one was there for us. Those who promised support often disappeared. But when we met in person, we clicked immediately. You really just need one person in your life to truly support you, stand by your side, and be as committed to you as you are to them. We are incredibly lucky to be best friends before anything else, building our marriage on that foundation. On top of that, we have amazing teamwork from 7 years of consistency!
The second is Beverly Gardner, who was Michelle’s therapist for many years. Beverly was initially unsure how to help and even expressed her concerns to Michelle’s parents. But she still stuck with it. During Michelle’s darkest point, only Beverly was there and kept her going for two straight years. No one else seemed to care, but Bev did. Her consistency, patience, understanding, and guidance helped Michelle stay alive long enough to meet John. If it wasn’t for her, Michelle would have had nothing to look forward to in life. We want to thank her so much for listening patiently, even when it was difficult (which was pretty often). She is one of the best blessings in our lives, and we are eternally grateful.
Lastly, Jen and Rick Manabat have done so much to support us. They were the first adults to genuinely be interested and invested in our lives. Their support was real and tangible. We had trouble believing in ourselves, but they believed in us and put their hearts into helping us. Jen was our occupational therapist for almost a year and encouraged us to take steps to regain control of our lives. When she left the practice, she stayed in contact as our friend. She is probably the first person in our lives we greatly respect simply for who she is: loving, nurturing, creative, supportive, patient, and understanding. We would still be on a slipping and failing path if it weren’t for them, and for that, we are so grateful to both of them. They are an upstanding couple we would love to learn more from!
Each of these individuals is extremely significant because they helped us stay alive, not just live better but to be alive and exist. We went through some dark times and had these wonderful people step alongside us. Sometimes you don’t need people who know everything; you just need people to stick with you and genuinely care consistently.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Www.Onourtrail.com
- Instagram: Onourtrail
- Other: https://www.Ko-fi.com/onourtrail.com
Image Credits
Michelle H Miller (self for all)
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
