Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jessica (wondermundo) Salinas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jessica (wondermundo), thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I guess you could say my resilience comes from my challenging upbringing. I mean, I’m a first-generation Mexican American, and I didn’t even start speaking English until I was five. Growing up in a tiny border town, my parents had to work grueling manual labor jobs because they dropped out of school early on. We were really poor, and my dad battled alcoholism while my mom’s discipline involved spankings starting at the age of 2.
So, I basically had two choices: crumble under the weight of it all or tough it out. I went with the latter – pushing through tough times has been my secret sauce, and it’s carried me through life’s ups and downs.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My childhood was ROUGH and my 20s were a wild ride, but I’m ok now. I have a successful career, own a home, and have an amazing 10 year old whose dad is even more amazing. I do okay for myself.
I thought I had achieved my “dream,” but I still hated myself. I still suffered from what I thought was just high functioning depression and anxiety. I felt awful for feeling awful and constantly had/have to fight off thoughts that tell me I am a loser, lazy, and should just die.
In 2021, I started seeing a trauma informed therapist in early March and learned about structural disassociation. Dissociation is a spectrum that can go all the way from daydreaming to dissociative identity disorder.
I fall somewhere in between there, but I honestly didn’t believe I could have some form of structural dissociation.
I doubted the severity of what happened to me and saw myself as resilient for not letting it get me down.
But the reality is that if I actually remembered the traumatic nature of those memories fully, I wouldn’t be able to function.
The way I survived was by my brain taking those things and finding a way to tell itself that it was no big deal, because the alternative would have left me paralyzed and at risk of being hurt worse.
“Having structural dissociation means we are split into different parts, each with a different personality, feelings, and behavior. As a result, we feel completely different from moment to moment. One moment we feel strong and happy, the next moment we feel empty and numb, then we feel rage. It might all happen suddenly without an apparent trigger.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-emotional-intensity/201907/do-you-have-normal-part-and-traumatized-part
My stubborn self still couldn’t/wouldn’t believe it. I was convinced my new therapist was wrong, I wasn’t traumatized, I just had depression, and was lazy.
What happened next?
I told myself that if I really did have other parts to prove it, show itself. I told it to do something only I/we would know. None of this “move my left arm” stuff. I felt like I needed proof.
A few days later, I was coloring with my son and I turned the page over when I finished the sheet. I just started drawing lines.
Drawing lines quickly turned into me drawing a face, which suddenly led to me quickly remembering how I used to draw this face ALL THE TIME when I was a teenager.
I sat there in awe, trying to keep my composure as I was filled with tears of joy and sadness. I told it I missed it, but that wasn’t all I remembered.
It’s a weird feeling to miss yourself and to receive a flood of memories, years memories and insights.
Yes, I had turned my passion into a career, but I lost my passion somewhere in there and forgot why I created in the first place.
1️⃣ I remembered how I used to make a ton of cool analog collages.
2️⃣ I started drawing and getting better at it, quickly.
3️⃣I realized how I had grown my design skills since I first started teaching myself html and graphic design in the late ’90s. But I never applied my skills to personal work since they’d grown.
4️⃣ I decided to apply what I learned + my ❤️ of collages and digital art into making again, starting with digital collages.
5️⃣ A few people saw my art and said I should make NFTs if I wasn’t already. I asked an NFT was and found an amazing community.
6️⃣ I began to learn more about digital art outside of work through the community and got an iPad and Apple Pencil. That completely changed the way I create art and helped me get outside of Adobe, which I associated with my career.
There is still a long ways to go with my journey and not sure it will ever end, but I know that the only way through it is with mindfulness and art.
7️⃣ I started using Midjourney and it allowed parts of me that can’t draw to also express themselves. When we use AI to create art we don’t prompt with specifics on what it should look like, it’s more of the feeling it should invoke. It’s opened up a world where all parts of me are able to fully express themselves.
My focus now is glitch art, trash art and AI art. My art is less focused on coming to terms with having dissociative identity disorder and more on exploring all parts of myself, learning who they are, how to love them, and finding ways we can communicate better.
Collections like wonderscapes on foundation explore what my vast inner world is like and my dissociative glitch collection on Layer looks at the in between spaces and masks that we all wear
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Write this better but still casual. It’s going to be an answer for a magazine interview about my life.
The three most important skills were
1.) learning how to ask for feedback and take critique. This helped me learn not take it personal and truly grew my skills as a designer an artist.
2.) remain curious. Learn to learn. There is constant change and it’s important to keep up with new tools and trends. This has been my special power. It’s hard sometimes but push through or you’ll stagnate.
3.) it’s ok to fail. If you’re not failing you’re not learning. This has been the most impactful thing someone has ever told me. It’s only failure when you don’t learn. I like to call it fail forward. I totally failed at being a full time artist last year but I learned so much. I know what I’ll do differently and will be so much better prepared when I try again.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
This isn’t for everyone but the book that had the most impact for me was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It taught me not to take things personal, not to make assumptions, and always do my best. It’s easy to assume and take things personal because we’re human. It keeps me grounded and in my own lane.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wondermundo.xyz
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/aliciaenwondermundo
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wondermundo
