Meet Dr. Abby — Artist Bio

Hi, I’m Abby — an artist and a Doctor of Chiropractic who believes beauty can be woven in the healing and the pain. My art and my work in healthcare share the same heartbeat: a deep desire to help others thrive and connect more fully to themselves, God, and their community.

As a Doctor of Chiropractic, I care deeply for this community, especially women and children, since there are limited specialized healthcare options in this area for them. I’ve built my practice around creating a space where people feel seen, safe, supported, and empowered to thrive. My approach is gentle, holistic, and rooted. I see each person as a whole story, not just a set of symptoms, and I’m honored to walk alongside them as they find healing through chiropractic, functional medicine, and the neural emotional technique (NET).

My art reflects my personal journey because, in many ways, I know what it is like to be broken. And I know how much courage and work it takes to heal. Each piece is a glimpse of the world as I see it — imperfect, yet beautiful and alive with hope. I want it to remind you that you are not alone. That there is beauty even in the brokenness and that healing is possible.

When you walk away from my work, I hope you feel a little more seen, a little more hopeful, and a little more connected — to yourself, to others, and to the community we’re building together.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Title: Parents With Kids Set

Medium: Oil on canvas

Explanation: For all the weird positions that parenting puts you in-Shalom family chiropractic has your back.

5.

Title: Infertility

Medium: Watercolor on canvas

*hold until end of art show

Explanation: Infertility is a quiet ache that is constantly straddling hope and heartbreak that asks for compassion long before it ever asks for answers. Infertility is not a failure or a flaw, but a deeply human experience that deserves gentleness, understanding, and room to breathe, from others and from yourself. Let someone in to hold this with you, don’t walk this road alone, whether that’s a close friend or a licensed therapist.

Lux medicine and Dr Abby with Shalom family chiropractic can be a resource if you would like a more natural approach to trying to understand why you might not be getting pregnant. The Natural Cycles app also offers a great way to track your periods precisely so you can understand your fertility better. A few things that I regularly see with infertility is that women are highly stressed and/or are not eating enough calories overall so that their bodies cannot support a pregnancy because they are struggling to survive. Implementing breathing exercises and self-care as well as eating three well-balanced meals a day can be very helpful in these cases. This does not replace a medical consultation and will not apply to every woman. Statistically, men and women are equally likely to be the cause of infertility.
–Elizabeth Joneshttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/elizabeth-jones-lpc-landisville-pa/1415073and Rooted cousnelingspecialize in counseling women who struggle with infertility as well as rooted counseling.

6.

Title: Pelvic Floor

Medium: Watercolor on canvas

*hold until end of art show

Explanation: Pelvic floor therapy is one of the most supportive and overlooked tools for healing in the postpartum season. After childbirth, the body carries layers of physical change—weakness, tension, scar tissue, or pain—that can quietly affect daily life and emotional well-being. Working with a pelvic floor therapist helps restore strength, improve core stability, ease discomfort, and reconnect women with parts of their bodies that often feel unfamiliar after birth. It’s not just about recovery; it’s about helping mothers feel grounded, confident. Breathing exercises are actually a huge part of healing the pelvic floor and chiropractic care can be beneficial as well as a tight back will often make the pelvic floor more prone to dysfunction.

Jo a PT with https://formationwellnesspt.com/ and Jess a Physical trainer https://www.thefunctionalfoundations.com/ specialize in working with women and are local to Mount Joy and will come out to homes to help work with pelvic floor dysfunction.

7.

Postpartum Depression

Title: #Postpartum Depression

Medium: Watercolor on canvas

Explanation: 1 in 7 first-time mothers will suffer from postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is due to hormonal changes that take place as a woman’s body adapts after her baby is born. Women with postpartum depression may appear to be happy with their families, but many women report that it is hard to be present with their family and have a hard time enjoying and connecting with their baby even if their baby was long-awaited. American women in this modern age tend to be professionals, so having a baby majorly changes their lives and challenges them to reconfigure their values and plans for their lives. This can increase their risk of postpartum depression. Isolation, the stress of caring for a new born, or a traumatic birth or pregnancy can put women at a higher risk for depression. Postpartum depression can also look like increased anxiety or aggression/anger and sometimes will be as severe as postpartum psychosis (a very serious condition marked by rapid mood swings involving mania/depression, confusion, hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thoughts). Postpartum depression can be very serious for mothers and infants. If you have or are struggling with postpartum depression, please know that this is not your fault and this does not mean you are not a good mother; hormonal shifts are normal after birth. Women with strong community and support systems and reliable childcare are less likely to suffer from postpartum depression. Chiropractic can help support mothers in the postpartum period and can help to decrease pain after delivery and help them regain their health. Dr Abby can also refer you or connect you with other professions if that is needed.

Included is a list of providers that can support women with postpartum depression.

Elizabeth, a Christian counselor in the Lancaster area who specializes in women’s health, can provide care during and after the postpartum period, birth trauma, and infertility.

Rooted in lancaster, counselor who focuses on womens health.

8.

Title: Pelvis, Nonfloral

Medium: Watercolor on canvas

9.

Title: Primitive Reflexes

Medium: Embroidery on cloth

Explanation: Thse set of embroidery pieces represent three common primitive reflexes. Primitive reflexes are patterns in the nervous system that are present in an infant to help him or her survive and lay the foundation for nervous system and basic muscle patterns that help with things like holding a pencil or crawling. These reflexes are supposed to present for a limited time before the brain integrates them, if they are present too long this often due to the brain being a little out of touch with the body and not getting information from the bodyo to develop correctly, chiropractic is great at restoring that communication between the brain and the body and the body and brain so it is a great place to start with working with children with developmental delays or sensory processing. However a combination approach is often necessary which may involve reducing stress such as identifying mold exposure, or eliminating a food that the child is sensitive to such as gluten or may require physical therapy or occupational therapy.

10. Floral Uterus

Title: The Fifth Vital Sign

Medium: Marker on paper

Explanation: Do you know that women’s periods are considered a vital sign? Periods are a sign of health. It means that a woman’s body is healthy enough to care for herself and healthy enough to attempt to support another life. A woman’s cycle is an extraordinary and complex work of art that is extremely complex. When things are off in the body, it can cause a lot of pain and discomfort. Extreme pain with your period that limits your ability to work, go to school, or live a normal life and engage in a variety of activities is not normal, and it is a sign that something is not right. Explanations can range from having high levels of inflammation or hormonal imbalance or point to something more severe like endometriosis. I highly recommend seeing a health care professional such as Lux medicine or a functional medicine doctor such as Dr Abby if you are experiencing these symptoms regularly. If you would like to understand your cycle and what is normal (and not normal), I would highly recommend tracking it regularly with an app like Natural Cycles. Included is also a link that will take you to a web page where you can learn more about how your cycle works.

https://www.naturalcycles.com/cyclematters/what-is-the-menstrual-cycle

A couple of things that often significantly decrease period discomfort is limiting gluten, sugar, and caffeine around the time of your period as well as taking a magnesium supplement. This does not replace a medical consult; I am just reporting what women often find to deliver good results.

11. C-section

Title: Scars That Bring Life

Medium: Clay

*hold until end of art show

Explanation: This pot represents a woman’s abdomen after a normal C-section, although sometimes the C-section is more involved and extends up to her belly button. C-sections can be lifesaving at times for mother and baby but always leave scars physically and often emotionally.

This piece attempts to communicate that there is beauty in the scars; the surgery helped bring a life into the world and my hope is that you will find healing. Seeing a chiropractor or physical therapist after 2 weeks postpartum may be helpful in recovery.

12.

Title: If

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Explanation: Meet my niece Joanna VandeHei. Joanna was born in March of this year with severe deformity of her limbs and trouble breathing that was not given a diagnosis. For the first 5 years of her life, her condition was unstable and it was not known whether she would survive or whether she would have severe disability and brain damage. This turned around when she got her tracheostomy. You can see that the trach in this picture is not painted because it is my hope that Joanna will not need this one day and will be able to live a normal life.

By God’s kindness, Joanna is still with us and she is expected to make a full recovery without brain damage, and 5 surgeries later, should be able to lead a normal healthy life. My family is so grateful for the medical team who cared for Joanna and for all the babies in NICUs. Pediatricians and nurses in the NICU describe their careers as both rewarding and incredibly draining. Thank a medical professional today. Medical doctors, nurses, and chiropractors sacrifice much of their lives to help you and your family keep yours. If you know a family with a child in a NICU, support them; they are often going through a lot.

13.

Broken Pieces of Lancaster County

Title: Broken Pieces of Lancaster County

Medium: Ceramic

Explanation: These dishes are more local to America and Lancaster County, and I picked them to represent the brokenness in our country, state, and county and the healing that is possible. The art of repairing broken pieces of pottery with gold is a Japanese art called

Kintsugi (金継ぎ). Instead of treating it as something to hide, Kintsugi restores and honors what has been broken. The broken object is worth more and stronger than it was before it was broken. It embraces the flaws. We live in a world that is broken with people who are broken, and it breaks us. It breaks all of us. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. And yes, some things you can forgive but you will never forget and sometimes time doesn’t always heal. Sometimes our bodies hold the memories of these things long after the event has passed. But there is so much hope my friend. The things that break us don’t have to be our legacy or our future. It can make you stronger, more resilient, and more precious and beautiful.

While creating this project, I learned quickly that with more complicated breaks I needed someone to hold the pieces with me or the pot would break again. Healing emotionally can be that way too. A lot of the emotional wounds we carry are from broken relationships, and relational wounds require a relational cure. We need healthy relationships to help mend that. That can come in the form of a healthy community, friends, or even professional counseling.

For trauma that is stored in the body, look into NET, the neural emotional technique that helps the body release stored trauma and can also help with stuck thought patterns.

14.

Title: Yawning baby

Medium: atercolor on paper

Explanation: Births can often be a traumatic process for infants, and it is found that 98% of infants are born with dysfunction in their necks due to the pressure and force of childbirth. This often leads to trouble nursing, sleeping, or extra fussiness. Having infants adjusted can calm and soothe the child and allow for better nursing and sleep for the parents. Other things that can help if your baby has colic are infant probiotics, gripe water(I recommend Welmonts) and limiting the amount of water that the mother drinks while eating-drinking too much water with a meal can decrease stomach acid and lead to indigestion.

15.

Quilt

Price: Not for sale

Title: Grief

Medium: Fabric

Explanation: The loss of miscarriage can be a heavy burden, the loss of someone you will never meet in this life. Many women, sisters and friends, have told me that they feel isolated in their grief as they grieve something that will never be. My friend, if you can relate to that, please know that you are not alone. There are many women who also struggle with the grief and loss of miscarriage or secondary infertility.

This quilt is a memorial for those who have miscarried a baby. If you would like, you can attach a piece of fabric using the safety pins and it will be sown together into the finished quilt.

16.

Title: Digestive Tract

Medium: Watercolor on paper

Explanation: The gut is incredibly sensitive to our emotional world, and chronic stress can disrupt everything from nutrient absorption to the balance of the microbiome. Supporting the nervous system—through rest, breath, movement, supplements, or chiropractic care—often becomes the first step in restoring digestive health and helping the gut feel safe enough to function the way it was designed to. As always it is advised to talk to a doctor about your health specifically.

17.

Movement

Title:

Medium: Watercolor on paper

*hold until end of art show

Explanation: Did you know that there is a fish called a sea squirt that eats its own brain? It’s true! As a larva, the sea squirt is a free-swimming creature with a brain and spinal cord, but when it finds a spot to settle, it eats its nervous system—apparently creatures don’t need brains if they don’t move. Movement is incredibly important for health, and its benefits are far beyond staying in shape. Movement helps keep the brain plastic, able to adapt to its environment. Movement is crucial to helping reduce depression and anxiety, improving digestion, keeping your bones healthy, and so much more. Interval training or HITT exercises in particular are amazing for managing depression and anxiety as well as increasing your metabolism. Here is a basic plan for these exercises, but please talk to a medical professional if you have heart disease or any complications where you should limit activity: Run at max capacity or heartrate for 30 seconds and then at about 60% capacity for about 90 seconds. Repeat 8x. In all, this exercise pattern should only take you about 10 minutes to finish and you can start out with doing this 3x a week. Personally, I find that morning workouts can be great at waking me up and making me alert. This is especially important when I am stressed because I already did something hard at the beginning of the day and worked through it.

If you have pain with movement that is keeping you from exercising, please consider seeing a chiropractor to help get you back to healthy functioning. Chiropractic can help a lot with pain in the spine and/or the extremities. If you know that you could improve the way that you move or are afraid of injuring yourself with exercise, here are a couple of other resources for you.

Jo a PT with https://formationwellnesspt.com/ and Jess a Physical trainer https://www.thefunctionalfoundations.com/ specialize in working with women and are local to Mount Joy and will come out to homes.

18.

Rosie

Title: We Can Do It

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Explanation: In the fast-paced society within which we live, it takes a lot to balance everything and care for everyone—whether you work as a stay at home mom or out of the home. To moms and moms-to-be out there, you can do it and you are doing a great job :) keep going.

Seeing a chiropractor during your pregnancy can significantly decrease pain during pregnancy, and making sure the body is aligned before birth can help decrease complications with pregnancy as well. The Webster technique is a safe and gentle technique that is very effective with balancing the pelvis and has amazing results with babies in a breach presentation. Studies show that up to 82% of babies will turn by balancing the pelvis with chiropractic care, specifically with the Webster technique.

African Americans in the U.S. face significantly higher maternal mortality rates, dying from pregnancy-related causes at over three times the rate of White women. I am not here to address the why of that, but there are organizations out there that are trying to close that gap. One of them is a local group in this area that provides free doula services for women of color. https://www.patientsrwaiting.com/ddi

19.

The Broken Mirror

Title: The Things That Break Us

Medium: Glass

*hold until end of art show

Explanation: Explanation: Kintsugi (金継ぎ), meaning "golden joinery," is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the cracks with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, restoring and honoring what has been broken instead of treating it as something to hide. The broken object is worth more and stronger than it was before it was broken. It embraces the flaws. We live in a world that is broken with people who are broken—and it breaks us.

It breaks all of us. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. And yes, some things you can forgive but you will never forget and sometimes time doesn’t always heal. Sometimes our bodies hold the memories of these things long after the event has passed. But there is so much hope my friend. The things that break us don’t have to be our legacy or our future. Have the courage to do the hard work of healing. So let this mirror reflect you. This might have broken you, but you are still whole, you are precious, you are stronger, more resilient and more beautiful.

A lot of the emotional wounds we carry are from broken relationships, and relational wounds require a relational cure. We need healthy relationships to help mend that. And we are seeing this now more than ever, as we live in a society where loneliness is an epidemic (feeling lonely increases your risk of dying from any cause by 14%, 32% for individuals who are isolated). Healthy relationships can come in the form of a healthy community, friends, or even professional counseling.

For trauma that is stored in the body, look into NET, the neural emotional technique that helps the body release stored trauma and can also help with stuck thought patterns.

Other paintings in the display

Title: Pelvis With Flowers

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Explanation: This art piece was created by pressing real flowers on the canvas to make the prints.

Title: Passy

Medium: Watercolor on paper

Title: Floral Painting in Embroidery Loop

Medium: Oil pastel on paper

Title: Mom and baby under moon

Medium: Watercolor on canvas

Title: Mom and baby oil in snow

Medium: Oil on canvas