jen on beach

Making It Home Without Making It Home

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Last month, I was carrying a little heartbreak. Some plans changed, and I wasn’t able to make a trip to Scotland to visit my mom. I had been longing for that reconnect with family, roots, and ancestors.

Days after the realization that I couldn’t make the trip, I was sitting on the ocean sand here in Florida, and a feeling of connection to the place I was missing began to emerge from somewhere much closer.

A melody arrived, along with a stream of lyrics that felt like the beginning of a song. More ideas began to move through me as I rode my bike back home.

I then recorded a couple voice memos and sent them to my dear friend Dar, who produces amazing music. She and her team, including vocalist Taylor Rice, wove magic around those early threads, creating a song that feels like both a remembering and a homecoming.

Sometimes the things we are longing for don’t arrive in the form we imagined. And this song felt like a gentle and important reminder of that.

It also became a reflection on how our ancestors are never truly far away. Even when we can’t return to a particular land, place, or person, our ancestors live with us, in our stories, our cells, our longings, the land itself, and even in the songs that find their way through us.

If your heart could use a few minutes of beauty, nature, and a reminder that we don’t walk alone, I hope you’ll give it a listen.

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Watching the Sunrise Through a Broken Pier

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Today I stood on the ocean sand watching the sunrise through the broken pier by my home.

For years now, the pier has remained split in two, battered by multiple hurricanes.

Most people look at it and see what is missing.

This morning, I found myself focused on the sun rising through the opening between the two pieces still standing.

A few months ago, the sun rose on the other side of the pier. The light never came through the break. Yet today, because the Earth has slowly tilted and turned its way through another season, the sun rose directly into that space.

The pier hadn’t changed.

The break hadn’t healed.

But the light found its way through.

It made me think about the places in our lives that feel broken. Relationships that ended. Dreams that unfolded differently than we hoped. The parts of ourselves that carry grief, disappointment, regret, or loss.

So often we focus on what is gone, what should have been different, or what still feels unresolved.

But sometimes healing doesn’t happen because the break disappears.

Sometimes it happens because the light reaches us from a different angle.

The circumstances may not change. The history may not change. But our relationship to it can.

The season shifts.

We gather support.

We survive something we weren’t sure we could survive.

And one day, almost unexpectedly, the same opening that once felt like a wound becomes a place where light can enter.

As a coach, these are the moments I find myself most curious about. Not how to force a repair. Not how to rush healing. But how perspective, time, support, and tenderness sometimes allow light to reach places we thought would remain dark forever.

A few questions I’ll leave you to ponder:

Can you think of a break in your life that once felt like a wound, but over time became a place where light could enter?

Is there a place in your life where you’ve been trying to force a repair? What might happen if you gave it a little more room to breathe?

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Permission To Postpone

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Last week, a dear friend, Carol, placed a small gift in my hand when she came to visit from the west coast of Florida for our sunrise gathering during Wilton Women’s Week.

It was a bracelet with a tiny manatee.

Its purchase supports the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, a place that rescues and rehabs manatees, like the real manatee named ODare, who this one represents. She’s tracked via microchip, so I can follow her travels.

ODare received a full health check in Georgia’s Savannah River by a team of loving veterinarians and researchers, where she was gently examined, cared for, and then released again, back into the wide, moving waters.

And like many manatees, her body tells a story.

If you’ve ever seen them up close, you know their backs often carry marks.

Scars from boats. Moments where the world moved too fast, too harshly, around them.

Sometimes they die.

Sometimes they are supported through rehab, like ODare.

And sometimes they just keep floating with their scars, and keep on swimming.

I’ve been tracking ODare and have been really moved by the visual of her path when looked at on the maps below.

Not long ago, she swam by one of my favorite state parks close to my home, and now she’s 200 miles north, near Daytona Beach.

The way she swims and zigzags through canals and inlets, out into deeper waters, and back again to the warm places and coves, the trajectory, the way she keeps on going.

It made me think about us and how we get hurt, how we keep going, how we keep trying to find our way.

Manatees don’t stop living because they’ve been hurt.

They don’t stop seeking warmth.

They don’t stop finding one another.

There’s something in that, that feels so familiar.

Because we do this too. We move out into the world, into love, into risk, into connection. We get turned around sometimes. We get hurt. And still… something in us keeps going.

Still looking for warmth. Still drawn toward connection.

Still learning, in our own way, where the safe waters are.

What touched me most about Odare wasn’t just her journey; it was that moment of care.

That pause. That someone said: let’s bring her in for a closer look. Let’s check in. Let’s tend to what might not be visible from the surface.

In so many ways, that’s what coaching can be. A place to pause in the middle of all the swimming. To come in, just for a moment, and take stock. To look at what’s working, what’s hurting, what’s asking for care.

Not because anything is wrong with you, but because you matter. And being able to pause and take in where you’ve been, and where you might want to go next, matters.

This weekend, someone I love needed their own kind of check-in. And it was a quiet but powerful reminder that sometimes we have to stop.

Rearrange.

Cancel what we thought we were going to do.

And come back to what’s most important.

The waters will still be there.

But presence, care, tending to ourselves and the people we love — those are the moments that matter most.

On that theme, here are a couple questions for us to ponder and come back to now and again…

What’s one thing you can let go of right now… to come back to what matters most?

And how might you put yourself, and your loved ones, first in a way that truly honors everyone involved?

Like ODare, you don’t have to stop swimming.

You are allowed to pause.

To be cared for.

To cancel what doesn’t need to happen right now.

To find your way back to the warm coves that hold you.

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Choosing Your Perch One Twig At A time

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For the past couple of months, I’ve been watching a mourning dove build her home just outside my window.

First, the twigs.
One by one.
Carefully chosen, dropped, rearranged.

Then the searching.

She tested different places around the property.
AC units, electrical boxes, shrubs, little corners of the house.
Perch after perch.
Trying them on alone, and then for a few days, with her significant other.

I found myself watching her and thinking how she was modelling great principles of healthy dating. 

That quiet discernment.
Not rushing.
Not forcing something to fit just because it’s there or the first spot she finds.

Eventually, she chose a small nook in the backyard, just above my bedroom window, on top of the electrical box for the internet.
Not perfect.
Not polished.
But right for her.

And then… she sat.

For two full weeks, she barely moved.

A kind of patience I don’t think I’ve witnessed much before.
Not passive.
Not waiting.
It was a special kind of devotion.
Holding onto and believing in something not yet visible.
Trusting what was forming with so much inner calm.

It reminded me how rarely we allow this in our own lives, in dating, in love, in becoming.

We try a perch.
We analyze it quickly.
We decide too fast.
We rush to impatience.
We lose faith.

But what if dating discernment looked more like this?

Trying different spaces.
Noticing how your body feels in each one.
Letting yourself leave what doesn’t quite fit, without making it mean failure. Without making up a whole bunch of stories, like becoming a victim of the overcrowded bush, the AC unit facing the noisy street, the sun exposed roof top chimney.

And what if when something does feel right, even with its imperfections, we stay long enough to see what wants to grow there.

What I’ve found is that sometimes what grows in those places, isn’t what we expected, planned on or eagerly waited to find.  And sometimes that can be the best gift of all, often one we can’t see until we’ve flown a few more miles.

This past weekend, her babies hatched. Two beautiful new born morning doves. I felt like an aunt.

Tiny heads lifting.
Soft movements.
Drinking from her chest.

I felt something in me melt watching them. So much tenderness.
A kind of quiet joy. 

And I have to admit, I worried about her choice.

The nest is small, not a lot of space for this growing family.
It’s a little flimsy, a handful of twigs and whatever she could gather.
Perched on an electrical box that honestly didn’t seem like the safest place.
Though I trusted her instinct .

And I did what any aunt would do and thought about how I could lend a hand. I found the hammock that had fallen (with me in it), the one the squirrels had chewed through, the one I had been frustrated and wrote a whole piece about weeks ago, in which I said i didn’t know what to do with the fallen hammock, and I hung it underneath her nest, attached it right below her, along with yard furniture pillows on the ground, should anybody take a tumble.

A soft net.
Just in case.

While I was standing there after I put the hammock up and arranged this bizarre scene from my life, I had this moment…

I never would have imagined that something that felt like a loss at the time, like my hammock crashing down, would become support for something new being born.

And isn’t that how life goes?

The relationships that didn’t last.
The plans that unraveled.
The homes we thought we were building that shifted or fell apart.

We don’t always see, in the moment, what they’re making space for.

But something is always being repurposed.
Rewoven.
Used in ways we couldn’t have planned.

Watching my morning dove neigbhor and her babies tucked just above my window, I thought… 

We get to choose our perches.
We get to leave the ones that aren’t right.
We get to stay, too, when something feels true, long enough to let life unfold.

And we don’t have to grip so tightly to what we think each spot should become.

Because sometimes what’s being created is even more tender, more surprising,
and more alive than anything we could have imagined.

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Monarch Walk Into Spring

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Yesterday, on the first day of spring, my daughter asked me to go for a walk. She’s 13 now.

There was a time we walked every day, loops around the neighborhood, side by side, talking about everything and nothing.

But this past year, something shifted. She’s been finding her own rhythm, walking ahead, walking alone, walking with friends, walking into her own life. So when she asked me to go for a walk yesterday…

I felt it. One of those quiet returns that only comes in certain seasons.

We must have taken over a thousand walks together by now. And on this one, two monarchs crossed our path, dancing, circling, landing together on the ground, then flying up together, meeting mid-air.

And I thought about how these exact monarchs won’t make the full migration north. But something of them will.

Generation after generation, carrying something forward
they’ll never personally see completed.

It stayed with me.

How life is like that — a long trail of seasons: seeding, planting, weeding, harvesting, releasing.

Sometimes we are the ones who arrive.
Sometimes we are the ones who begin.

And what we plant isn’t always in our children. Sometimes it’s in a conversation, a moment of care, with our friends and community, a way we show up and rise again.

Seeds scattered in places we may never walk again.

This moment has me wondering…

What season are you in right now?

Are you planting?
Resting?
Tending something tender in a greenhouse, not yet ready for the open air?
Are you refining your soil or experimenting with a flower
you’ve never quite dared to grow before?

There’s no rush to be in bloom.
Each season has its own intelligence.

And sometimes, having a place to tend those seeds with intention, with support to envision what is possible in the garden of your life can change everything.

If you’re in a season of becoming, or reimagining what’s next, I’d love to walk alongside you as you tend what’s emerging. One of my greatest joys and honors is witnessing my coaching clients move through their seasons.

For the rest of the month of March, to celebrate Spring, I’m offering 20% off your first coaching session with the coupon code MONARCH.

And I’d truly love to hear — what season are you in right now, and what name would you give it?

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The Squirrel Who Broke The Hammock

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The limerence is over with the squirrels in my backyard.

We were having a great time in our co-housing community, or so I thought. I had just built them little platforms off the ground to eat the peanuts I set out every day. I even put up those tiny drink umbrellas to protect the peanuts in case it rained.

When we moved in a couple months ago, I was clear it was they who ruled the yard. I told them so, and felt like I acted accordingly. As soon as I noticed their presence, I began the peanut offerings. I would sit and drink my coffee, thinking we were communing quite lovingly. I even placed a squirrel sculpture, complete with baby squirrel, that my aunt had made and gifted me, right near their feeding area.

We had a thing. It felt like it was going somewhere. I thought they really loved me.

And then something happened.

Out of nowhere. No red flags. (Though, to be fair, I have missed quite a few in the past.) They seemed like old-fashioned squirrels, like Bushy, my childhood squirrel friend, who would eat out of my hands and whom I visited first thing every morning.

But this was not something Bushy would have done.

Sunday morning I went to get in my hammock, as I sometimes do when the world feels slow and I give myself more than usual permission to rest. I had recently set up another hammock and climbed into the new one, at about  9am, sun rising into the yard.

And then, boom.

The hammock fell to the ground. With me in it.

It hurt. A lot.

I knew I had set it up properly, so I was perplexed, along with dizzy and startled. I looked up and saw someone had gnawed through the rope on both ends. Not tree friction. Teeth. Deliberate teeth.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. In shock, I got angry and started talking to them. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they heard me. I told them it wasn’t funny. That I would not be bringing more peanuts. That it hurt. Not cool. At all.

I was fuming in this infantile way. It had “ruined” my day — the one I had planned to be productive after hammock time. Now, with dizziness and a bruised body, I needed to be horizontal. I felt sideswiped by my “friends” and turned it into a pretty wild mental ride.

From my bed, though, I tuned into my meditation class and heard what I needed to hear. The class was about karma — how difficult moments can be spiritual teachers. The old adage: if you don’t like your circumstances, change your mind about them. Be thankful for the hard times; it’s karma catching up so you can purge it, accept it, ride it out.

I began wondering about the gift in the fall. Writing this was a gift, a release, and gave me an opportunity to lean into the messages here, and share them. The fall had also kept me in bed all day and made me confront how I still have so much to learn about being able to fully rest. The unlearning of Protestant work ethic is still a work in progress. It made me reflect on how I build houses for people, and squirrels, they don’t even want or need. How I overdo it.

It made me consider how far down rabbit holes I’ve gone over hurt done by others. Former partners who snapped love nests to the ground. Or the ones I’ve gnawed through myself. How all we really have is this moment after the fall, and the choices we make about it. How we see it. How we care for ourselves. What gifts we extract from it.

Sometimes this is the quiet work we do in a coaching session, sitting together after the fall, gently untangling the story, and harvesting the gifts, without pretending it didn’t hurt.

I’m not pissed anymore at my squirrel neighbors. I’ve already started giving them more peanuts. I told them this morning that I’ve forgiven them, though I still don’t totally understand why they chose to chew off rope. Maybe some little one needed to do some filing. Bottom line, I sank into my Buddhist meditation a bit more, If that fall helped purge some harmful action from this life or the last, it was worth it. Full acceptance. 

I still don’t know what I’m going to do about the hammock. Will I put it back up? Seeing it hanging there in the trees feels important for now. Going to see what other threads come through as I watch it glow in the sun and the squirrels continue to use the trees as wildly entangled free way in the sky.

What lessons have you harvested from your falls?
What squirrels can you now be thankful for — for getting you where you are?

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Lessons from Ani, The Anole, During The Cold Snap

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I found Ani, the anole, this past Sunday — frozen.

She was in the pile of sea grape leaves I was raking, her body turned brown, completely still. The same sea grape tree she lives in had dropped its leaves around her.

At 31 degrees that morning, I thought she was dead.

Anoles here in South Florida glow a vibrant green when they’re warm and alive in the landscape. But when the temperature drops, they go still. Under 60 degrees, their bodies can’t function well. Under 40… they can become cold-stunned.

I brought her inside.

For the first 12 hours, nothing changed.

Then one eye opened slightly.

At 24 hours, her color began returning.

At 48 hours, she had moved — barely — and climbed out of the container to hang on the leg of a stool.

She stayed there almost a full day. Completely still. Gathering herself.

I found myself talking to her about the doorway. Letting her know it would be open when she was ready.

Exactly 72 hours after I brought her in, she was perched facing the outside world. It took her nearly 30 minutes to move from inside the doorway to out of it.

And then, instinct intact, she scurried straight back to the sea grape tree.

It was a moment.

I wondered if I should have kept her longer.

What if it got cold again?

What if a hawk saw her?

What if all that tending had been in vain?

I noticed how attached I’d become.

Loving her.

Watching her come back to life.

Witnessing the slow return of color, strength, instinct.

And it had me thinking about something else.

How we, too, can become stunned by the cold ending of a relationship.

How our color changes.

How we go still.

How we need a container.

A breezeway.

A blanket.

A voice reminding us the door will open when we’re ready.

Coming back isn’t dramatic.

It’s incremental.

It’s 12 hours. 24 hours. 72 hours.

It’s hanging on the stool leg gathering strength.

It’s rebuilding a nervous system.

Reclaiming warmth.

Trusting instinct again.

And yes — sometimes loving fiercely means we risk the cold.

Sometimes relationships crash and burn.

But even knowing that, I suspect I would still love as deeply as I do.

And more importantly, I know that recovery is possible.

And I know we are not meant to thaw alone.

This is part of what I hold in coaching — a steady, warm container where you can come back to color at your own pace.

Where no one rushes you through the doorway.

Where someone is quietly cheering as your life force returns.

A refuge.

So you can eventually scurry back toward the sea grape tree, toward what most feeds your soul and warms your heart.

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The Mockingbird on the Plumeria Tree & the Song Beneath Your Story

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I had just wrapped up an inspired profile writing session and was still taking in the resilience and shine this client had shared. I went for a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the afternoon sun and let it all settle.

About 500 feet from my house, I looked up and saw these beautiful mockingbirds, looking quite regal, perched on the bare branches of a plumeria tree. There was a single bright pink blossom blooming right where one of the birds sat.

I paused with the moment, thinking about how many times I’ve heard mockingbirds in South Florida on my afternoon walks. Not once had I seen them in such striking light or positioning. And it got me thinking about their songs.

These careful listeners take in a multitude of sounds as they look out over the landscape, and then they offer them back — refined, rhythmic, with a kind of poetic grace and ease.

That’s often how I feel when I offer profile writing support. Together, we take in the song — the sounds, the rhythms, the stories — and capture the essence each person carries in their backpack of life experiences. The ones they’ve already lived. The ones they dream of packing for. The ones that help them feel steady and uplifted along the path. And the ones they’re ready to leave behind.

We also get curious about the playlist they want to hear, and be heard in, as they move forward.

Writing a great profile is, ultimately, the art of filtering in and filtering out the soundscape you want for your life. It’s your song to sing from the depths of your heart. Your unique birdcall cast out into the universe, so that whoever is walking by feels touched by its beauty and pauses to step into the scene, just as I did when I saw these mockingbirds today.

If you’re looking for support in writing your song, I’m here. Some people feel ready to sing it out into the world for others to read. Others want to pause and write it just for themselves — as a kind of therapeutic massage, a gentle wordsmithing for the soul.

You can read more about what we do together through inspired profile writing below.

And I’d love to hear from you: when was the last time you paused while walking outside — a moment, an impression, something that stayed with you and spoke deeply? When you reply to these emails, I truly enjoy reading your words.

Thanks for being you out in the world.

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Have a Favorite Resting Spot?

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In places like this, where the morning sun lands perfectly in the hammock in my back yard, I tend to slow down enough to let in deeper thoughts and questions. Not ones that demand answers, but the kind that gently keep me enjoyable company for a while. They’re similar to the questions reflected in the Manatee Love & Connection Cards: simple on the surface, quietly meaningful underneath.

For many people, a question like Do You Have a Favorite Resting Spot? doesn’t come easily. Not because they lack imagination, but because rest itself was never modeled as something sacred, skillful, or safe.

Most of us inherited ways of living shaped by urgency, productivity, caretaking, or constant motion. Rest, if it happened at all, was often something earned after exhaustion, or something tangled with guilt.

Because of that, many adults move through their lives without a real experience of intentional refuge: places where the body can soften, the breath can deepen, and the nervous system can settle enough to hear itself again.

What I’ve learned, through years of practice and coaching, is that rest isn’t passive. It’s not the absence of effort. It’s an active relationship with safety. It’s a way to bring ourselves back home.

When we allow ourselves to create places to land, and to return to them regularly, something subtle but important begins to shift. We become a little more regulated. A little clearer. A little more available to ourselves and to others.

In my coaching work, the container itself is often one of those places to land—a space to rest, to be met in loving witness, and to gently explore what’s asking for attention without having to perform, fix, or rush.

Wherever you are this week, may you find a place to land.

May your nervous system feel a little more supported.

May you create—or rediscover—the refuge your body and soul needs.

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Lesbian Love Tips From Seagulls

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Many of the people I work with have been out dating in what I often call the lesbian seas.

They’re courageous. Open-hearted. Willing to love.
And more than a few of them have been stung.

They come to coaching after relationships that were both beautiful and painful, connections that shimmered on the surface but carried hidden barbs underneath. By the time they reach shore, they’re often tired, unsure, and wondering how to stay open without getting hurt again.

This morning, sitting on the beach at sunrise, I watched the seagulls gather in soft circles near the shoreline.

They were flying with such grace,  hovering and spinning gently above the coastline, seeking food, and wisely choosing not to throw themselves into danger.

They knew which currents were theirs to ride, and which were better observed from the air or from shore.

Nearby, many Portuguese man o’ war had washed in with the incoming eastbound winds.

Translucent. Striking. Adrift in the sand, with an almost otherworldly beauty.

And deeply painful, too, if you don’t know what you’re looking at.

That’s what discernment in love looks like.
Not closing your heart.
Not forcing yourself back into the water before you’re ready.

But learning how to recognize what is nourishing — and what might require distance, information, or protection.

In my coaching work, some of the central skills we practice are:

  • How to move with intimacy intelligently
  • How to trust your sensitivity without letting it be exploited
  • How to read the relational waters before diving in

Watching the seagulls this morning, I was reminded that wisdom doesn’t rush.
It hovers. It observes. It chooses.

When we allow ourselves the same spaciousness, we often discover that we already know which currents are ours to ride.

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