All posts by : jenniferleesolin@gmail.com

This weekend, my daughter and I wandered through beaches, mangroves, and natural springs along Florida’s West Coast — soaking in birdsong and salt air.

At Honeymoon Island State Park, I spotted osprey, bald eagle, and great horned owl nests — all sturdy, artful homes in the trees. But one nest made me pause. It was square-shaped, almost like… a box? Not like any nest I’d seen before.

Then I saw the plaque.

A great horned owl had fallen from its original nest and couldn’t return. But human kindness intervened. First, a visitor noticed. Then the park team brought the baby to a vet. And finally, they built a new nest out of a milk crate, lining it with moss and pine needles, and securing it high in a tree.

They weren’t sure it would work. But it did. The parents returned. The owl grew strong and healthy, and one day, flew.

That story stayed with me.

Because sometimes we fall out of love’s nest, too.

Sometimes, we find ourselves hurt, unheld, and unsure how to get back up there, where we can find  safety, connection, hope.

Sometimes we need to just rest on the ground for a while and evaluate the damage and figure out what we most need to put our inner and outer home together. Step by step, at a pace that works for you, and honors the pain that comes from falling hard, and remembers the strength inside to get you back on track.

Sometimes what we need most is someone by our side. A calm, steady presence who can help us gather moss and pine needles… and build a new kind of nest.  That’s the gift of 1-on-1 coaching. Whether your heart is freshly bruised or just tired of circling the same sky alone, a skilled coach can help you create the solid, loving structure you need to recover, reconnect, and rise again.

You don’t have to figure it out alone. You don’t have to fly solo.

If you’ve fallen…out of love, or out of trust, or just feel out of steam, reach out. I’d love to talk with you and help you see if some coaching with me, or something else, might be just the thing you need to get back in the air.

When I was in kindergarten our teacher invited us to do a show and tell. I had taken some time to consider what I wanted to do because the moment felt important. There was a captive audience and I wanted to make it special.

At the time, I had been talking to my Godmother a lot. She had been doing a lot of transcendental mediation, was in the process of relocating to Fairfield, Iowa to a new Maharishi center, and had some of the most beautiful energy I had ever been around. When she spoke, I listened.

So when my time to share in the kindergarten class came, I was 100% clear what I wanted to tell everybody in my class. There was no toy I could show them that could compete with what I had to reveal that day. It was something my Godmother had told me that seemed super important to pass on to everybody. The biggest news I had heard to date.

So as I stood there, in my first big public speaking debut, two braids on either side of my head, a tooth missing, some corduroys and a baseball shirt, I looked at each of them, waiting for them to erupt with excitement and questions, and said:

“What I have to tell you is that you can fly.”

I just stood there looking at everybody waiting to see the joy on their faces. Many of the kids did look interested and curious, though one or two looked confused and in disbelief.

Then, as I was about to elaborate, all of a sudden, my teacher, who was standing on the side of the circle, interrupted, looked at me and said:

“Jenny, you can’t fly. What do you mean?”

I said: “Well, my Godmother knows how to fly. She told me she’s going to teach me. And when I learn, I’m going to teach everybody, so we’ll all know how to fly.”

A couple of kids laughed, though the majority of them were still there with me that day, believing it was possible.

But then, quickly, to my surprise, the teacher looked at me, rolled her eyes, looked at the other students, and declared to everybody:

“Jenny, humans can’t fly. That’s not possible. Only birds can fly” And then she asked me to sit down.

I wish I had the strength at that moment inside that shy and tender five-year-old body, to tell her she was wrong, to tell the kids not to listen to her or any disgruntled and jaded adults, and to talk with me after class about flying.

But instead, I sat down, became very introspective, and for the next 25 years struggled with public speaking and barely spoke about the magic that so many of the people in my life had shared with me.

The external environment we are living in on the planet right now is rife with kindergarten teachers who are doing way worse than the one I name in this email.

And what I’ve found is that life is a journey back to our essence and a coming home into our power, gifts, and sunshine.

There’s an opportunity and a responsibility to get back on track with those to complete our missions and to support others who are on this planet with us.

Right now, the world and the people in it desperately need us back on track, aligned with our knowing, wisdom, light, and flight.

It’s not a coincidence that my Godmother sent me this photo and simple text yesterday that read:

“I caught a rainbow for you.”

And that’s what she has been for me.

A rainbow light under which I have been accepted and loved with all of my parts.

We can be that for each other and for ourselves.

We can put the wounded in our community under the rainbow light in our hands.

We can take turns picking each other up when we fall out of the light.

We can remind one another that we can continue to fly and shine, no matter what happens out there.

We can be the oasis for our lesbian and queer hearts & souls to find refuge to get back on track.

We can be that for ourselves when we put ourselves in the rainbow light offered by that beautiful sun outside and then offer some up to somebody else.

I saw this little one a few days ago on my morning walk.

An ant, walking down the road, with a leaf piece about ten times their size, one of many ants in a tidy line, all headed toward a special tree in the woods.

Some of the ants had tiny leaf bits. Some had enormous ones. Some were just walking in rhythm, carrying nothing visible at all.

And it got me thinking….

Sometimes what I carry feels like that leaf. Too much for my soul. Too much for my heart. Too much for my body.

But here’s the thing… the ant wasn’t struggling. It wasn’t flailing or collapsing under the weight. It just walked, purposefully, steadily, part of something larger than itself.

We’re all carrying different weights at different times. But when we move together and when we’re witnessed, supported, and part of a shared path, it lightens the load.

This is your reminder to be like the ants.

Surround yourself with people who are moving in the same direction. People who’ll carry leaves beside you. People who will carry your leaf for a bit when it feels too heavy. People who remind you that you’re not alone.

And if you don’t yet have that kind of community, or don’t know how to build it, that’s where coaching can help.

A skilled coach can support you not just in carrying your own leaf, but in creating the kind of loving, grounded, queer community that knows how to walk beside you.

You deserve that kind of circle. That kind of relief. That kind of belonging.

So if you’ve been walking alone too long, consider this your invitation….to find your line of ants. To rest. To connect. To keep walking, together, toward that special tree in the woods.

And to all of you who’ve carried leaves with me and let me carry yours, I am so grateful and honored.

I’ve been thinking about shorelines lately. Last week, in utter exhaustion, in the midst of a virus, I took myself down to the beach, threw a towel on the ground, and melded into the sand. Sun beaming down on me, I gave thanks for that shoreline, as I listened to the waves, taking in the calm. Sinking in, I asked the Earth to take it all.

I could feel her doing that, just taking it in, no hesitation. She could handle all of me, like no problem. The physically sick part, the exhausted single mom part, the CPTSDing survivor part, the find the magic in it all part, the let’s just sing and laugh the way through the hard times part, the over reactive dramatic anxious part, the wounded healer part. She just took it all from me and went into transmutation mode.

I thought about how this particular shoreline has been there for me for almost 3.5 years. My daughter and I had gone to Florida just with flip-flops, bathing suits, some shorts, jeans and t-shirts for a couple of weeks. We had no idea we’d be staying. Yet a turn of life events led us to stay and seek refuge here. And this shoreline took us in and loved us up.

Sometimes, suddenly, you have to leave shorelines you love, ones you’re deeply attached to, that feel like an integral part of your soul. Sometimes something happens, that has your entire shoreline disappear, out of nowhere, in a moment, overnight, unexpectedly it’s all gone.

And sometimes there’s no shoreline in sight anywhere, and you have to figure out how to create some semblance of one in your imagination. And sometimes a hurricane comes in and creates a totally new shoreline that feels like quicksand. I think most of us are feeling that way right now…

When these landscape shifts happen, you are left with some choices to make about how to be with the brand-new scenery. 

The amazing news is that in all this radical change, we can be and become the shorelines we need.

Amidst the chaos in the world, the fear, the panic, the threats, the attacks, whatever external circumstances we’re dealing with, we can be those soft shorelines for one another, right now and going forward, with whatever new scene comes our way.

We can gather and support one another with the ever-dynamic internal and external landscapes.

We can be for each other what this sandy coastal beach was for me — a place where you can land, sit, and be held, exactly where you are, and feel loved. We in the LGBTQ community are landscape shape-shifters together. We always have been.

How are you doing in these times? And does this invitation or reminder strike a chord for you?