About me

Hi, I’m Andrea.

I’m an illustrator and writer, and the person behind Illustrating Hope and Illustrated Musings.

I use art and words to explore life, particularly the messy bits. Much of what I create has grown out of my own experience of life not turning out quite as expected, and of discovering that hope can coexist with some very difficult things.

For me, creativity has become less about producing something beautiful and more about paying attention, making sense of things and sometimes finding words, or pictures, for experiences that are difficult to express.

Where Illustrating Hope began

Illustrating Hope grew out of one of the hardest periods of my life.

During my recovery from PTSD, particularly when things were at their worst, I found myself drawing. Often a simple illustration could express something I couldn’t yet put into words.

Over time, I created hundreds of these small drawings and watercolours. Some are funny, some hopeful, some painful, and some very personal indeed.

Many of the illustrations closest to my heart have never been shared publicly.

For a long time, they needed to remain private.

Increasingly, I think I may be reaching the point where I am ready to share more of them.

One of my hopes for the future is to bring that collection together in a book, telling something of the story of recovery through the illustrations I made along the way.

Art, words and real life

Recovery hasn’t given me a neat ending.

Life has continued to include caregiving, relationships, loss, faith, questions, change and all the ordinary complications of being human.

But it has also become much bigger again.

I’ve learnt a great deal through therapy, reading, study and lived experience. I’ve become increasingly interested in what helps us heal, what helps us connect, and what allows us not simply to recover from difficult experiences, but to live well afterwards.

That’s some of what I explore in Illustrated Musings.

I write personally, but I don’t write because I think my experience provides a blueprint for anybody else’s. I write because I’ve discovered there can be something powerful in one person saying, “This is what I’m noticing. This is what I’m learning. I wonder if any of it speaks to you too?”

And lately, adventure

One of my more unexpected discoveries has been the importance of adventure.

After years in which so much of life was necessarily about coping, caring and getting through, I began deliberately making room for things that made me feel alive again.

Sometimes that has meant something remarkably small: taking my little camper away for a night, going somewhere on my own, visiting somewhere new, walking, noticing, learning, or simply doing something because I wanted to.

I’ve come to realise that healing isn’t only about tending to what has been hurt.

Sometimes it’s also about making room for life again.

That is becoming part of Illustrating Hope too.

What matters to me

A while ago, I did some work around my values and eventually settled on four:

Honesty. Courage. Kindness. Adventure.

They’ve become something of a compass for me.

Honesty means being willing to tell the truth, including when it is uncomfortable.

Courage helps me live that honesty rather than retreating into what feels safe.

Kindness reminds me that truth doesn’t have to be harsh, towards other people or towards myself.

And adventure reminds me that life isn’t only something to recover from or manage. It is also something to participate in.

Those values increasingly shape both how I live and what I create.

Where I am now

I’m still creating. Still writing. Still learning.

Illustrated Musings has become a place where I can bring together many of the things that interest me: art, psychology, relationships, faith, creativity, wellbeing and the strange business of being human.

And Illustrating Hope is growing with me.

I don’t know exactly what it will become, and actually, I’m increasingly comfortable with that.

For now, I’m making art and writing about real life, making space for honesty, hope and all that comes in between.

And I’m glad you’ve found your way here.