Jessica Gordon was lost.

Here she was at Give Kids The World Village in Kissimmee, Florida, and it all looked oddly familiar.

“I just kept looking and I just kept thinking, ‘I’ve been in one of those,’” she says.

If she really concentrated, she could even picture what the little villas looked like inside.

She was there for Paint-It-Forward, a PCA program that donates painters’ time and materials for charitable organizations.

Give Kids The World Village is where Make-A-Wish families stay when their child’s wish is a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando.

Gordon slowly wheeled her suitcase to the spot where volunteers were parking their luggage for the flight home later that day.

As she walked onto the streets of the Give Kids The World Village, she had a sudden flashback.

“I recognized it right away,” she says. “But I didn’t only recognize it, I went back to a very specific night that there was a dance party in that place.”

She remembered a hat. The blue wizard’s hat that Mickey Mouse wears in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” section of “Fantasia.” 

It was her brother’s hat. 

Family Trouble

“I come from a family of dysfunction and chaos,” Gordon says.

Growing up, she lived in Ohio, though her family never stayed in one place for long. It was Jessica, an older sister, and two younger brothers. There was a lot of traffic in and out of the house. It was all parties and upheaval.

Meanwhile, her father was spiraling. He had always struggled with alcohol, and sometimes hit her mom. He was a construction worker, during the days when he could keep a job.

It was during these years that her youngest brother, Jeremy, was diagnosed with metachromatic leukodystrophy, a rare disease that attacks the white matter of the brain along with the nervous system.

Early on, it was clear something was wrong with Jeremy. Up until age 2, he didn’t talk at all. When he walked, his legs were bowed and his step was wobbly.

The pediatrician didn’t seem overly concerned, she says, until Jeremy started having trouble chewing and swallowing. “That led to taking him to a doctor and getting him diagnosed.”

With his affliction, Jeremy didn’t face a bright future. As the disease progresses, patients progressively lose their motor skills, suffer seizures, and experience behavioral and cognitive decline. There is no cure.

Doctors gave Jeremy two years to live, Gordon says. “Essentially they just guessed on a lifespan for him.”

Jeremy’s Wish

Amidst this darkness, Gordon got a glimmer of hope.

She doesn’t remember exactly how it came to be – a doctor maybe? – but Jeremy was given an opportunity to make a wish.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a nonprofit organization that grants life-changing wishes to children diagnosed with critical illnesses. The child can choose to go wherever they want with their wish.

Jeremy chose Walt Disney World in Florida.

VHS cassettes of Disney movies were one of Jeremy’s greatest joys in an otherwise bleak life. Jeremy had lost most of his hearing, but there’s a part in “Dumbo” where a mouse screams in a high pitch, and it was one of the few sounds Jeremy could hear.

Now the whole family would be going to “the Happiest Place on Earth.” In her youthful naivety, Gordon imagined that the trip would solve all of their problems.

Disney didn’t disappoint. Even before the family arrived at the park, Disney sent them snacks and mouse ears. When they arrived at the condo in Give Kids the World Village, they found a gift basket waiting for them.

In the morning, they had breakfast with Disney characters from the park. There were more gift baskets, with t-shirts and souvenirs. They also enjoyed unlimited ice cream.

For a girl who longed for escape, it felt like another world.

“It was different,” she says. “Everybody was so kind to us and that was kind of a foreign concept to me.”

Brother’s Keeper

In her naivete, Gordon thought Disney would be a new beginning for her parents.

“We had never done anything as a family before,” she recalls. “It was a big deal. I thought that this would be a trip that would save my family.”

Yet even Disney couldn’t work magic longterm. Mom and Dad broke up. The condition of the home deteriorated. So did Jeremy.

“Between fourth and sixth grade is when I was learning how to administer medication,” Gordon says. “That’s when he was bedridden”

It wasn’t so much a bed as a hospital crib. “It looked like a big metal cage,” Gordon says.

The contraption was so big that it practically filled the living room of the two-bedroom apartment the family of five shared.

Machines and medication became daily life. “He could no longer eat at that point. He was completely fed through his G-tube,” Gordon recounts, referring to the gastronomy tube used to deliver nutrition directly into his stomach.

Her own life moved forward even under the weight of caregiving. In March 2008, she had a son. Just three months later, Jeremy passed away.

Gordon found out when she got a phone call. It was her mom’s drug dealer, Bobby Dollar.

“What’s going on?” Gordon asked. “I don’t have any money. I don’t know what you want, but I don’t have it.”

“No, Jessica,” Bobby said. “Your brother passed away.”

Gordon rushed back from Columbus to the family home in Dayton. By the time she arrived, the coroner had already taken over. 

“When he passed away at 16, he was a complete vegetable, honestly,” Gordon says. “He was very twisted up, kind of curled in a fetal position. His muscles were very tight.”

Gordon felt sad, but she also felt a sense of relief. Jeremy died peacefully and was no longer in pain. Her burden was lifted.

Finding Her Calling

Gordon thought she had her life mapped out. She enrolled at Wright State University and spent four years working toward a degree in early childhood education.

But when it came time to teach, the reality of teaching unruly kids hit her hard.

“They put me in an inner city school,” she recalls. “And I knew instantly there was absolutely no way that I could be a teacher, because it was very triggering for me.” 

She worried she would become too emotionally involved. “I just wanted to take care of all the kids,” she says.

After so many years of caring for Jeremy, she didn’t want to risk becoming a surrogate mother again. “So I went to my career adviser and I said, ‘Listen, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

Jessica transferred her credits into a new program—organizational leadership—and found herself drawn to building teams and developing people. All the while she was juggling full-time work on campus, waiting tables on weekends, and raising her children as a single mom.

But she still felt something was missing. “I always had this voice in my head, that was like, ‘This is not who you’re going to be. You were made for more.’”

Her creative outlet had always been painting. Even as a renter, she bent the rules by painting her apartments. “Growing up, I moved so much, nothing ever felt like a home,” she explains. “I just wanted to create something that felt like a home.”

Friends started asking her to paint their places too. “For a bottle of wine and a pizza, you know what I mean?” she laughs.

Soon, word spread and she began taking on more ambitious projects. It was perfect work for a single mother. “I could take my kids with me,” she says.

The turning point for Gordon’s business came in 2014, when she answered a neighborhood Facebook post. A woman was preparing to adopt a young boy and wanted his room to feel special. Jessica offered to help.

“I said, ‘I’m a decent painter. I can do pretty good and for free,’” Gordon says.

She transformed the room with Spider-Man stripes in bold reds and blues. “That room was badass,” she says proudly.

The mother, Connie, became a lifelong friend and advocate. Days later, Jessica found a box of Shari’s Berries and custom business cards waiting on her doorstep. Connie had named the fledgling business Go On and Brush.

From there, Jessica became known as the “Go Girl.” She charged $99 a room, losing money but gaining a reputation. Eventually, a banker encouraged her to form an LLC. She settled on a new name: Visionary Home Solution (VHS).

“I didn’t know the definition of visionary,” Jessica admits. “I just knew it came to me.”

For her, the acronym also carried a personal connection: VHS tapes, the Disney classics she and her late brother had watched together as kids.

Wish Upon a Star

At first, Jessica Gordon only mentioned the story in passing.

“It was funny because I would share a little bit of the story and then I would say, ‘Hey, somebody came in and said we need a two-coat,” Gordon recalls.

As the PCA event wrapped up, the leaders waved her over and said, “Hey, we have somebody that we want you to talk to.”

They introduced her to a man named Chip. She told him her story. When she was done, he asked, “Would you like to see your brother’s star?”

“I don’t know what that means, but—”

Chip led her to a castle with an automatic door that opened like magic. The inside felt like Alice in Wonderland. It’s called the Castle of Miracles.

All around her were thousands of golden stars. Each was about two inches tall by two inches wide and had names written in black Sharpie. They were everywhere, from the hallway to the corridors and the ceiling to the floor.

Jessica was the first to spot it. “I knew the handwriting,” Gordon says. “Jeremy could never write, but I remember watching my mom hold his hand and write his name. So on Jeremy’s star, the handwriting looked like somebody held a toddler’s hand and wrote. It’s J-E-R at the top and then underneath it’s E-M-Y. “

Later, at lunch, another staffer walked up with something in her hand. “We want to gift you this,” the woman said.

She handed Gordon a keepsake card with a removable star attached. It’s something that Give Kids the World Village does for the families it serves, but for Gordon it took on added significance.

“That star meant a lot to me, because when my brother passed away in 2008, he was cremated,” she says. “My brother’s ashes were moved along and I didn’t have anything. … So that star was the only thing that I had of my brother.”

A New Light

It would take Gordon months to process the revelations from that event. A half year later, she  started to see her life through an entirely new lens.

“That Paint It Forward event made me realize that my whole life has been about taking care of other people,” she says. “I never realized how much I neglected myself.”

It’s been two years since she found her brother’s star. She feels rejuvenated and inspired. She’s focusing on herself and growing her business.

“I’m a dreamer,” she says. “I feel like I can dream again.”