How Grief Became a Mission to Inspire Through Art

Then when my husband passed away, I lost all my creativity. It was about finding purpose after he died. And when you find that purpose, when you find that joy, that spark, whatever it is that can get you to the next day or the next step, you can get through grief. John Amalachek is a creative, resilient, and community-driven entrepreneur,

and the founder of J&J Paint Parties. Drawing from her journey, she transforms a passion for art into interactive experiences that inspire confidence, foster meaningful connections, and encourage others to embrace creativity while turning life's challenges into powerful testimonies.

You can get through grief, there is another side of it.

Brief never goes away, but it does get easier.

It was literally one day at a time, one step at a time, but that's where the healing comes in.

“What's the feeling like when it starts coming in again?”

For me, the feeling is like... Super high school, internet helpers. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over, I'm telling how we're... The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy.

You can live your dream! Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast. Again, I am your host, Jason Tyler, and today I am joined by Janna Malachek. Welcome, Janna. How are you feeling? Thank you, I feel great. Thank you for having me.

So you're on the other side now of film your episode. We've just finished filming what can the people out there expect to learn about you in your episode? I've been through a lot, and what I really wanted to there is that there is another side to grief and trials and hardship and failure. You can get through it. There's another side to it, so I want to promote hope and inspire people,

and that's all through my art. That's such a beautiful message. There's a quote that I really love that says grief is just love persisting without a place to put it. I love that quote so much, because I want to definitely dive deeper into your story, because we talked about it a little bit off camera. My own story with grief, I lost my grandfather,

and I didn't know what to do with that, and then I ended up putting it into my first business

that I put out, and I opened up QC Studios, because my granddad's nickname was QC, so I was just like, "All right, he was Queen's Council in Jamaica." So everybody in Jamaica just called him QC. I started QC Studios, and then that spiraled, and now here we are. Now I'm a documentary filmmaker for the last like 10 years, but I want to take a moment to just kind of highlight. I saw your tattoo there. Yes. Can we show it off for the camera here?

Yes. So it says, it's a little, it's probably a hard dream if you're watching, but it says, "I've got this. Tell me the story of that." I've got this, so that is actually my motto since my husband passed away. He passed away four years ago from COVID, when he was dying in the hospital, I just kept telling him that I'll be okay. I've got this. He was leaving a lot behind, a very large business, and then of course his family, me and the kids, and I just kept telling him,

“"I've got this. You can go." And that's when after he passed, that's why I got the tattoo.”

I'm first of all, I'm very sorry for your loss. You've taken grief and turned it into

somewhat of a personal mission in terms of being able to help people know that there's hope on the other side. How does hope persists when grief is so heavy on the heart? It's really difficult, because when you're, when you're grieving, you're stuck in it, and you feel like there's no way out. Like, you feel like you're going to feel like this forever. What I learned is you won't, you won't feel like that forever. It's been four years, and I have taken that grief. It was about

finding purpose after he died. Like, who am I now? I'm no longer Kev's wife. Who am I going to be now? And what is going to be my purpose? And I had to find that running his business. He was a farmer, gave me a lot of purpose. I had to start running that business the day he died. And I had, I took over and I didn't know anything about it. And that's no, that is no small task. No. Right. Like, jumping into the driver's seat of a car that you might not, that's like jumping

“into a car that's stick shift and you never learned how to drive. Right. That's what it felt like.”

That's exactly what it felt like. It was like, what? How am I going to do this? But it was literally one day, the time, one step at a time. I tell people, I opened the mail one piece at a time, and just because there was a lot coming in, there was mail, there's emails, there's phone calls,

thing at a time. So I'm going to open the one piece of mail and I'm going to do whatever task needs

“to be done with that piece of mail and just take that step forward one at a time. And that's what I did.”

And so it's about finding purpose. And when you find that purpose, when you find that joy, that spark, whatever it is, that can get you to the next day or the next step, you can get through

grief. There is another side of it. grief never goes away. But it does get easier. Find the passion.

That there's so much power in that testimony. And like for me, one of my models for a period of time, my cousin passed away in 2022. And he was my personal trainer. So we would go to the gym every day. And every morning he would call me to go to the gym and he would call me at a time that I was not awake at. And he would call me and be like, "Yo, we gotta go to the gym. This is our thing." And I'm like, "Bro." And he's like, "Before you even say nothing, no excuse is not today." And so

when he passed, he was also a pilot. He passed in a plane crash. When he passed, I decided, "All right, I'm going to go to the gym every day because Kyle would want it that way." And every time I don't feel like it, I'm just going to say, "Not today." Today is not the day that I give up on this. Wow. Just giving one more day. And after that was 2022, we're now four years removed and I've been going consistently for four years now. Now it's a secondary thought I don't even think about it

and more because it's just one more day, one more day, one more day. Yeah. You were able to take grief and these feelings and put them into art. Talk to me a little bit about your art and then talk to me a little bit about the paint parties, which we were talking a little bit about earlier, which I'm very interested to learn about. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about that. I actually was a graphic designer, my entire career. And I started painting when I had foot surgery like a decade ago.

And so I had the surgery and I'm like, "I can't sit around for six weeks doing nothing." So I decided

to learn how to paint my mom's an artist. She's a painter and I never really thought anything of it,

but she's amazing and I absolutely love her work and I was like, "I can probably paint. I'm an artist. I already do graphic design." So I picked up a paintbrush. I started a 100-day Instagram challenge where I painted a painting every day for 100 days. All right. What's the canvas size here that we're talking about? My mind. I'm thinking painting. Giant painting. If you had to paint the Mona Lisa every day, that is an incredibly tall aspect. It would be yes. Yes, it would be. So no,

it was I had a nine by 12 paint pad and it had like 150 pages in it or something and I painted on paper and I just painted flowers in nature and animal, you know, whatever. Whatever. It was a 100 day. So I had to come up with 100 different things to paint. But it was mostly nature. I love flowers and animals and water and all of that. So it was just a small, simple painting every day, but it taught me how to paint and I absolutely loved it. But then I had to go back to my graphic

design career and raising my kids. Then when my husband passed away, I lost all my creativity. I was done. I was like, I can't go back to graphic design. I'm not opening that computer again. And so I was kind of stuck. I mean, I was running the forum, but I was creatively. I wasn't doing anything. I met my boyfriend about 18 months after my husband passed and he saw my paintings in my house and he said,

“you need to paint. Why aren't you painting? He pushed me and he encouraged me and I said, okay,”

I'll pick up the paintbrush. I don't know if I have it. And I didn't. The first couple paintings I

scrapped. I'm like, no, I don't know how to do this anymore. I'm not creative, but I kept going and kept picking up and he kept encouraging me. And finally, after about six months, he's like, well, why don't you do something with this? Now that you're painting, do you can do something with it? And so I said, okay, well, I remember a few years ago, probably about six months before my husband passed away, my mom also told me I should do something with my painting. And so that was in the

back of my head and I was like, well, let's start this paint party company. I can teach people how to paint. And we can do it. We can all do it together. It'll be fun. So that's what I did. I just set up. So the first party I had, I set it up with his family. He was 13 family members ages 10 to 70. And they absolutely loved it. I asked for their feedback. I said, what would you pay for this?

“And, you know, they all gave me such great feedback. And they're like, you should go do this.”

Did you want me to give you a hard time? I told you to do something with the paintings years ago. How, now this guy comes along and now you're going to do something with him. This guy. It's funny because I was just doing a podcast with another client. And they were telling me that I should go back. My dad's a psychologist. So we were talking and she was a psychologist, well, so we were talking about psychology and she was like, oh, you should go back to school.

We should go do psychology. I was like, listen, my dad's been telling me to do that for a decade. Yeah. If on a whim, I went back and did it now, he would be

Yeah. But you know, it's funny. Like, I don't know if this is just unanimous amongst kids,

but like listening to your parents. Yeah. Never feels as good as like when a friend tells

you, hey, you're good at this. Like, that's right. I don't know what, I don't know what that is. Well, your parents have to believe in you no matter what. Like, I feel like my mom thought I could do something with painting. And I'm like, well, okay, of course, you think I can do something with painting. You're my mom. Like, you have a lot of, you have a lot of faith in me. And you believe that I can go do this. It was just not the right time of my life, though. It just wasn't

right. And so I wasn't ready for that. And I didn't really, I didn't really believe her either. So, yeah, it took some pretty big life happenings to get me here. But that's where the healing comes in. When I picked up that paintbrush, I was like, I'm a new person. I can do this. I purpose again. I have joy. I have hope. I am filled with my creativity again. Like, I feel alive. And I want to share this with other people. I feel this is unanimous amongst all creators. But like,

there's a period of time where creativity is you are an antenna. And the universe is going to send you things. And the better you are at your creative discipline, the more accurately you're able to manifest them into reality, right? And there's just a period of time for all creatives. There's no radio signal coming in. There's no creativity flowing in for me to have inspiration

“to go out there and create. What's the feeling like when it starts coming in again?”

For me, the feeling is like, I need to pick up the paintbrush. But I want to go experience like, I want to get into nature. I want to go for a walk. I want to go see the water. And then I want to paint it. And it's just inspiring. It's just feels so good. It brings me, like I said, it's so healing. And it just brings me this free openness. Like, I can just share my creativity. I can put it down on with paint and paintbrush onto a canvas. And it's beautiful. It feels really good.

I want to take a second here to talk about the paint parties. Yes. You know, you've found

this creative passion and being able to give that and teach that to other people. What's the feeling behind that? Well, I want to with my painting and I and with any creative, any type of creativity and you're sharing with other people. You're going to inspire them to do something too. And that's what I feel like I'm doing. I bring people in. We get 20 or so people into a room and usually like a coffee shop or a someplace that has room for 20 people and me to paint in front. They all come in like,

I can't paint. I can't do this. Are you sure I can paint that? And I'm like, yes, trust the process you can do this. And what I see in my paint parties is people seeing something in themselves that they didn't know they had. It's just inspiring. And it just I can see a little bit of confidence coming in, you know, when they come up with this painting that they were like, I can't do that. And then here they are at the end of their paint party. And they have this beautiful painting that we just did in two

hours. And so it's about inspiring hope and inspiring people to take that step. Pick up that paint

“Russian start painting. A similar thing she my sister was out in Toronto. And like I think once a month”

she goes to like a like a sip and paint like a wine night where they paint. And you know they have

an instructor there that's and she always she has this thing where she'll send to the family group

trash. She'll send her paintings after her sip and paint. She's like, I'm not a painter. I'm not any good at this, but here's my painting from this month. And she doesn't know this, but I'm looking at it as a creative and being like, okay, but you're actually getting really good. She doesn't realize it because in her mind if it's not you know a Picasso or you know the Mona Lisa, she's like, she's a perfectionist. Yes. So she's like, ha, it's it's no good, but I'm looking at them and I'm like, no, you're actually

building a discipline here and you're getting better and better at it. The last one she sent, I was like, this is actually kind of good. Are you sure you did that? Are you sure your date didn't paint this one? Are you sure about that? That's so amazing. I think that's so great to be able to give creativity to people as like an outlet and outlet for emotion. Sometimes pains, sadness, grief, but being able to just give people a space where they can let that out onto a canvas, I think is

so important. We in society have kind of lost the place of work creativity and expression should be like it's not something that we celebrate a whole ton unless you're in like certain different niches or you're able to create a vertical off of it for a business. But I think it's really

“important to like lean into that. I think everybody in some way shape or form should have a form of”

creative expression. So I'm really happy that you're providing that for people out there. For anybody that's still listening at this point in the podcast, I want to make sure that you guys tune in to Jenna's episode of Women in Power, which will be dropping shortly after this episode of the podcast drop. So make sure you stay tuned to that. You're going to get her whole story, her upbringing, everything that's going on in her business and everything that she has going on in her life. So make

sure you guys tune in for that. Where can people find you on social media, your website, where can they

and we travel all over Minnesota. This J and J because it's with my boyfriend Joel. So we're doing this

“together. But so when I say we, that's who we are. And we go all over Minnesota. We've been three”

four hours. We even went into Wisconsin one time. We're mobile and super mobile because I know

a lot of mobile places are not going that far. Yeah. So I want to go, you know, where people want us. I'll go. So if somebody wants me to get on a plane and do a paint party, I'll do that too.

“I remember you heard it here. You heard it here first. Sorry. Yes. But we're booking her to come out”

to Australia. All right. I want to see it happen because of this episode. Bring me to Australia. Oh,

I would love that. That would be so amazing. Yeah. So I'm it's J and J paint parties, J and J

“parties dot com. I'm J and J paint parties on all social media. I also have a TikTok that tells my”

story too. I want TikTok is Jana Eva. And yeah, that's where you can find me J and J paint parties. Make sure you guys are checking all of those places out. And especially if you're interested in learning how to paint and becoming the next Picasso. All right. Again, this has been another episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host Jason Tyler and we will catch you guys in the next one.