About me

Typ­i­cal­ly, you‘d find a whole list of things under this head­ing con­cern­ing what the per­son does for a liv­ing, what edu­ca­tion they‘ve com­plet­ed, if they have chil­dren and/ or if they are pet owners.

Truth be told, I‘ve been at a loss for a cou­ple of years now on what to write about myself. In my expe­ri­ence engag­ing in this type of small talk and try­ing to con­vey who I am, by the above men­tioned para­me­ters only has led to a down­ward spi­ral of neg­a­tive emo­tions for both par­ties. Yet that‘s how soci­ety has taught us to intro­duce our­selves to some­one we don‘t know. This doesn’t encour­age joy; I can get past this when speak­ing to some­one, but set­ting that tone in writ­ing is dif­fer­ent. So, I’ve decid­ed not to fol­low this for­mu­la com­plete­ly but give it my own twist.

My school­ing and fur­ther edu­ca­tion were inter­rupt­ed mul­ti­ple times. With every new symp­tom, need­ed surgery and spe­cial fam­i­ly cir­cum­stance the ques­tion of who I am and what defines me had to be asked anew. The only thing that is a giv­en con­stant in my life has been that Car­ney Com­plex is a part of me, and that it is up to me what I make of it.

Life has dif­fer­ent terms for me, and the jour­ney I am on with Car­ney Com­plex has impact­ed my life and iden­ti­ty immense­ly; as soon as I felt sure of who I was, I‘ve had to reluc­tant­ly let go of this idea and rede­fine myself over and over and over — and you‘ve guessed it: I am still doing it to this day.

Hi there!
My name is Jennifer Woods.
I turned 35 in 2020, have been living on disability since 2013
and would describe myself as:
A creative, chaotically organized generalist!

1992–2008

Despite the many inter­rup­tions I might have had dur­ing my edu­ca­tion I was able to com­plete a
swiss matu­ra and two years of fur­ther gen­er­al school­ing for art at the School of Design in Basel.

2008–2013

Not being able to go onto uni­ver­si­ty or com­plete an appren­tice­ship in desk­top pub­lish­ing, I was pushed into try­ing to get a com­mer­cial edu­ca­tion before being ruled dis­abled. Being labeled with dis­abil­i­ty has not kept me from read­ing and edu­cat­ing myself by the method of learn­ing by doing.
I am grate­ful to have a net­work of skilled and knowl­edge­able friends, fam­i­ly and acquain­tances whom I can ask for help and their expert opinion.

2011-Present

I’ve con­tin­ued my vol­un­tary work and ded­i­cat­ed much of the last 9 years to cre­at­ing a sup­port group for oth­ers with Car­ney Com­plex on face­book, start­ed the first Car­ney Com­plex Aware­ness Day back on April 24th 2016 and have con­tin­u­ous­ly done so every year since. I’ve designed the logos, done some video edit­ing, writ­ten texts and have been work­ing on the Car­ney Com­plex web­site as well as this blog.

Here, too, I am very grate­ful to know I have peo­ple whom I can turn to for help, sup­port and guidance.

Interests

I can con­sid­er myself very lucky to have a lot of inter­ests. This char­ac­ter­is­tic has kept me afloat.
Much of my sense of self how­ev­er was shaped through par­tic­i­pat­ing in swiss scouts from 1997 to 2017. Through the sup­port and encour­age­ment of oth­er fel­low scout friends I received edu­ca­tion to become a scout leader and lat­er a fed­er­al youth and sports instruc­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in camp sports and trekking. This allowed me to give 7–10 day cours­es and coach oth­er scout troops.

While I‘ve not par­tic­i­pat­ed in any scout activ­i­ties since 2017 I still am a scout at heart, love nature and don‘t mind get­ting dirty.