Artistry Amid Adversity: Alicia's Disability Journey in Lake County
Alicia Farnsworth has been living in Lake County for over twenty years, originally enchanted by its beauty. Local transportation, healthcare, and workforce have not always been easy to navigate with cerebral palsy, but she finds respite within an active and supportive arts community.
Photos by Amy Kumler
From City to Country
Alicia Farnsworth was living in the Bay Area when she visited Lake County for the first time. She and some friends camped out at Harbin Hot Springs for a week, and she fell in love with the weather and the landscape. After learning how inexpensive it was compared to living in San Francisco where she was struggling to make ends meet, she moved out here in 2002. "What I love is that it's beautiful, it's quiet, there's hardly any light pollution. Beautiful stars. Peaceful, and hardly any crime.”
Lake’s rurality has its pros and cons. Alicia lives with cerebral palsy caused by brain damage due to oxygen deprivation in the womb. It affects muscle use which can make it hard for her to drive, but public transportation hasn’t always been reliable. Buses currently only run once an hour. “When I first moved here, the bus didn't run on the weekend. You would see people with motorized wheelchairs on the side of the highway going to Walmart.”
“There’s hardly any sidewalks, but the accessibility has recently been improving in various places.”
Local Accessibility
Alicia remembers the times when the local infrastructure wasn’t so accommodating, but has noticed it changing. “When I was first subbing, there wasn’t an accessible entry to the school district building or even the hospital, but they eventually put it in. Businesses are apparently responsible for putting in sidewalks when they build a new place, but I think if the county took that on, they’d be more abundant.”
She envisions a future with more accessible trails, ADA-compliant infrastructure, and sidewalks being built in Lake County to accommodate the disabled population and bring jobs to local contractors.
“I seem to be the only person with cerebral palsy that a lot of the doctors here have treated.”
Navigating Disability
Alicia doesn’t let her disability get in the way of her artistic practice and passion as an educator. However, living with a disability makes it hard to make due where she lives in Middletown. She currently stays with her partner Melia, but if it weren’t for her, she believes she’d be homeless.
Alicia was working up to two days a week as a substitute teacher until the pandemic hit, using that income to fund her bigger art pieces. “It was like my milk money, because my disability benefits went to my survival, and then if I wanted to be able to do any of these big art projects or anything else, I needed to make some supplemental income.”
Healthcare Services
Accessing specialized services in Lake has been difficult for Alicia, sometimes having to be referred to UCSF two and a half hours away, which can be an expensive trip.
“Adventist Health has wonderful doctors, but doctors seem to be working on contract, so two, three years go by and they flee. Even though I've been going to the same facility for 22 years, I have to refill paperwork. I’ve known a lot of the nurses for 20 years, but the doctors keep coming and going.
“I really like it here, but the whole economy and the expensiveness of stuff is pressing.”
Over the Mountain
Alicia and her partner Melia have found it difficult to access certain groceries and other necessities, having to sometimes make two hour round-trips to Santa Rosa. “I got really good at online shopping because I couldn't even find decent shoes for myself. We go to Costco in Santa Rosa, over the mountain, once or twice a month because we need things.” Despite the scarcity of certain resources, they celebrate the abundance of organic farming around their neighborhood granting them access to healthy produce, eggs, and meats.
Thriving Arts
Through the Middletown Art Center and EcoArts, Alicia has had the opportunity to work on art that helps bring the community together and empowers other folks living with physical and developmental disabilities through inviting them to collaborate on her projects. “EcoArts has just been a wonderful thing, because it's provided this opportunity to do art, a place to do it, a deadline, and a community. It's just been wonderful because it's provided incentive to do stuff, and because of that I know she's done so much bigger things than she would have otherwise,” says Melia. Alicia’s most recent mosaic, “Web of Life”, is currently on display in the EcoArts sculpture walk at the Middletown County Trailside Park.
