Chattanooga’s new funny girl finds her voice through art and comedy

Jennie Joy “JJ” Barrows was 28 when a therapist requested at what level she perceived she in good shape the middle-little one syndrome.

“Perfectly now,” she realized.

Since center university, she’d struggled with insecurities and question, feeling unheard, unseen and not able to locate her individual self-well worth. She hopped from town to city and therapists and rehab as she dealt with melancholy and ingesting problems. She was pet dog-paddling by means of a choppy sea of feelings browsing for an anchor in existence.

She discovered it by way of artwork.

Mining her life encounters for materials, she wrote comedy that was not only funny but relatable. She commenced showing her abstract artwork, which had earlier been only a hobby considering that childhood. Subsequent, she released a motivational reserve that verified daily life is challenging but that there is hope and therapeutic in setbacks. Now the center youngster was witnessed and read.

Lifetime IN THE Middle

Rising up on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, Barrows was one particular of four small children — all of whom had names that begun with a B, other than hers.

Her grandfather was Cliff Barrows, the nationally acknowledged song leader who traveled the nation with the Reverend Billy Graham. It will come as no surprise, then, that her father followed him into the ministry and became a Southern Baptist pastor.

Barrows describes staying a preacher’s child as “complicated.”

“I did not like it simply because the church anticipated you to be perfect, and general public college expected you to be a rebel. I know my moms and dads seriously liked me so I are unable to blame them for my insecurities. So considerably is expected of a pastor, and my mother was raising four kids beneath 5. I sense like the pressure came from anticipations of neighborhood about what a preacher’s child should really be. I observed my moms and dads busy, and I think I just went inward. I appeared for communities where I may well in shape, and I hopped all around a great deal.”

Soon after substantial faculty, she attended the School of Charleston, then moved to Chicago to enter rehab for depression and an feeding on dysfunction.

“Considering that Chicago was where by I turned my everyday living about, I just stayed,” she claims. But following 4 several years of challenging winters, the South Carolinian necessary a climate improve and she moved to Portland, Oregon, for art college.

“Every person claimed I could not make a dwelling doing artwork, so I took a job in graphic style and design,” she states. When she dropped out of art faculty, she moved to San Diego, California, to assist a good friend doing work with superior-school youth.

Indicating she “fell in like with the West Coast and the beach,” she also fell for Josh Newton even though dwelling in Santa Barbara. Following the two married, they determined to shift because of to the “insane price of dwelling” in Santa Barbara and the frantic rate of everyday living there.

“We had frequented Chattanooga and really believed it was neat. Also, it was nearer to residence in South Carolina, but not Much too shut.”

HUMOR IN Day to day Everyday living

Barrows claims she experienced no thought what she was acquiring into when she signed up for a stand-up comedy course in San Diego.

“The first day of class the trainer had all of us get up and say why we had been there. Everyone had authentic responses — like they were being inspired by Robin Williams — but me. I said, ‘I essential treatment but couldn’t manage it.’

“Every person laughed. I recognized then I could be myself. I could be true about my lifestyle, and people today could relate to it. It was really therapeutic for me.”

The course spent the full six weeks writing material for a graduation showcase. She located it to be annoying, cathartic and “super pleasurable.” Some dropped out along the way, but not Barrows — and she seemingly aced graduation.

“There was a person there who had been on ‘Last Comedian Standing.’ He asked if I preferred to open up at The Comedy Retailer in San Diego for him. When I understood these were being strangers, and they nonetheless imagined I was amusing, I knew I was onto one thing. But I nevertheless imagined of it as a interest, not a career.”

Her life activities from getting a preacher’s child to her admiration for her 98-calendar year-old aunt who lives in a memory-treatment facility but is still sharp as a tack (“That is Jedi,” she quips) presented a ton of prosperity of substance from which to draw.

She began scheduling displays, having the prospect to do showcases. About two a long time into it “I realized I am really a comic,” she says.

Soon soon after shifting to Chattanooga final November, she booked a guest set at The Comedy Capture.

“She just wowed the viewers!” remembers Michael Alfano, co-proprietor of The Comedy Catch. “She is a pretty very good author and has large strength. Her comedy is thoroughly clean, and she has a good Southern aptitude,” he claims, likening her to Karen Mills and Leanne Morgan. “My audiences adore her and we are going to try out to move her up the ladder as swiftly as possible to complete as frequently as her timetable will allow.”

Speaking OUT IN ACRYLICS

“I was the child who acquired into difficulties for coloring on walls,” Barrows laughs about her propensity for generally drawing, in no way dreaming she may well do it skillfully.

Just after getting graphic art way too confining for her creativity, she continued expressing herself via her art, gravitating to acrylics in splashy, vivid hues and portraits. She also brings together the two styles in some of her do the job. When she was 30, a good friend questioned if she wished to cling her get the job done in a display at a espresso shop.

Her initial display was terrifying.

“I could not stand in that place while persons were being wanting at my function. I felt like I was placing my journal on the wall,” she describes.

“But art helped prepare me for getting into the environment of comedy. Artwork is how I get inner thoughts out without having obtaining to use text. It can be how I specific myself when I never have the phrases.”

Having just moved listed here in November, acquiring settled in a new residence and touring for comedy reveals, she suggests she is only now commencing to investigate the regional art scene. The couple found out the Hunter Museum of American Art though on a walk downtown around Easter weekend.

HER Up coming CHAPTER IN Lifestyle

Barrows expended 5 yrs producing her very first e-book via distinctive seasons of her daily life. It was released in drop 2019, only to have her e book tour canceled 5 months afterwards owing to the COVID pandemic. That could have been the final chapter for some aspiring authors, but not Barrows. She’s already started her next.

She phone calls the very first, “It is Termed a Spade: A Assortment of Challenging-to-Tell Stories,” the impetus for her lifestyle motto: Notify it like it is. Contact a spade a spade.

“It can be a assortment of limited tales celebrating some moments, and grieving other folks as you go through the seasons of lifestyle. I want persons to know ‘you are deserving, you are loved’ since I did not. And I made some definitely weak decisions for the reason that of that.

“As I got more mature and went by way of various types of remedy and recognized my voice was legitimate, I recognized so lots of of us are declaring, ‘I’m fine,’ when we are not. I failed to know it was Okay to not be Okay. It was not a reflection of your religion if you weren’t fine. As I wrote about this on my blog, I located much more people could relate. So now I simply call it like it is: Lifetime is beautiful, but also genuinely tricky.”

Obtain JJ Barrows’ e book and more at jjbarrows.com.