Through my prismatic lens

Hello lovely ones! Over the last few years, I’ve poured my writing efforts into my book, Midlife Emergence: Free Your Inner Fire, which was published in paperback, ebook, and audiobook in April 2023. So, I’ve been relatively quiet over here on this blog… but words are once again tapping me on the shoulder, being whispered in my ear, making their way up my throat and down my arms and out my fingertips. I’m listening.

That’s why I started a Substack. It’s called prism, and it’s a space where I share my writing, art, and photography to express what’s coloring my world each week, exploring themes like:

• the messy opportunities of midlife,

• being queer and the experience of embracing the fullness of my sexuality later in life,

• the creative process,

• hexing the patriarchy,

• relationships, intimacy, + connection of all flavors,

• wellness (of soul + of soma),

• the sacred + the profane,

• and much more.

I’ve often been called a “resource queen,” so I’m also using this digital space to curate cool, quirky, useful, and interesting shit for you, such as: music, podcasts, books, movies, tv, poetry, quotes, comedy, snacks, and ways of decorating + expressing the self.

prism is an art project in itself. I hope it brings you a full spectrum of feels — including, but not limited to, feeling artistically inspired, deeply connected/met/seen, and entertained by the silly mess of our collective humanness.

I hope you’ll join me there to receive a rainbow of beautiful truths + curated creations seen through the lens of a midlife coach, art psychotherapist, bestselling author, + queer artist. I post every Monday for free subscribers, and paid subscribers get so much more!!! Meet me over there, over the rainbow…

An invitation to begin again

Every time I open myself more - reveal more truth, more rawness, more me - it’s both exhilarating and terrifying. 

And yet, I have a deep knowing in the rightness of what is wanting to unfold.

Today marks one of those exquisitely beautiful moments, a long-awaited becoming...

A few short years ago, I found myself parked along the Pacific Ocean, staring blankly at the pale gray sky, the dark gray sea, the flat gray sand. The green, magenta, and yellow porchulaca growing between my car and the beach providing the only color. 

Drawn to the ocean, I let my tear-blurred vision find comfort there. The window was halfway down, wind whipping by as Ani Difranco’s “So What” reverberated through me at max volume:

who's gonna give a shit

who's gonna take the call

when you find out that the road ahead

is painted on a wall

and you're turned up to top volume

and you're just sitting there in pause

with your feral little secret

scratching at you with its claws

I used my music playlist as an oracle that morning, clicking the “shuffle” setting and accepting the songs that came as perfectly timed messengers. Ani’s words continued on… 

how many times undone

can one person be

as they’re careening through the facade

of their favorite fantasy

you just close your eyes slowly

like you’re waiting for a kiss

and hope some lowly little power

will pull you out of this.

The song poured through my car’s speakers like a balm for my aching heart, not because it eased my pain, but because it so beautifully met it. Sitting salt-water-face to salt-water-face with momma ocean, listening to Ani DiFranco croon about her feral little secret, I could feel seismic waves start to crack my inner walls. 

I had become unbearably restless and inflamed, figuratively and literally, but I feared looking too deeply underneath because it meant I’d have to muster enough bravery to completely change my exquisitely beautiful life. 

A life where I was so very loved by the people who felt like absolute home to me – my husband and our daughter. 

A life that felt as cozy and secure as a blanket fresh from the warm dryer. A life that I was terrified to lose.

Almost in a prayer for courage, I inhaled the salty ocean air with a ragged breath, attempting to infuse my being with her powerful, feminine energy. Finally, I allowed silent sentences to escape the pit in my stomach, and burn their way up through my heart and throat.

I told my secrets to the ocean because I knew she could hold them until I could set them all free.

I reached down to turn off the music and sat in silence, staring at the sea, bracing for what would happen when I spoke aloud what I knew needed to be said, and did what needed to be done. Tear-soaked, dirty-haired, wild-eyed, and more awake than I’d ever felt, I backed my car out of the parking lot and started down the winding road toward home.

There was no turning away from my truth now.

As I made my way through my own turbulent midlife portal, I became a cartographer, charting the course, forging touchstones, illuminating the universal signposts along this transformational passage so that those who came after me wouldn’t have to journey alone. 

I reframed the midlife transition as a midlife emergence to make meaning of my own transformation during this time of life when I dared to reveal the raw, sometimes inconvenient truth of who I am. Using my own experiences, as well as decades of working as a psychotherapist and coach with women facing similar dire crossroads, I created a personalized roadmap to midwife the modern, awakened woman through her unique, midlife emergence.

And today, I’m writing to share this brand-new offering with you.

After months of seeking, dreaming, and crafting, I am delighted to announce that early-bird enrollment for the founding cohort of Midlife Emergence is NOW OPEN! 

Beginning September 21, Midlife Emergence is a 26 week-long online experience that will guide you through questions to consider as you seek to become the freest version of yourself. I blend accessible teachings on psychological and spiritual approaches throughout this journey, integrating self-discovery prompts and grounding practices to empower you as you navigate midlife and emerge into your own constant becoming. 

Your Midlife Emergence journey includes:

• A foundational guide: A video introduction + guide to help you understand, embrace, and apply the self-inquiry practices and mystical supports included in each module

• 13 self-discovery modules: Starting September 21st and released every two weeks thereafter, a new module opens featuring a video sharing my own stories and experiences around a specific midlife theme, as well as personalized self-inquiry practices and exercises to illuminate your own journey, explore the intricacies of your transformation, and weave together the aftermath of your metamorphosis.

• Inclusive, private, online community: In our private community, we will connect with those who can relate to the quaking within. Here we will co-create a safe, welcoming, inclusive space to honor our transformation, share our stories, and speak our truths.

• 3 live community calls with Jen and your Midlife Emergence cohort: Our exploration unfolds over the three stages -- Illumination, Innovation, and Integration. After each stage, we will meet via a live video conference call to connect around the themes we’ve explored. (All calls will be recorded and shared to allow you to honor your own pace and timing.)

• An optional upgrade with a personal touch: Add two 1:1 Midlife Emergence coaching sessions to your package and infuse your experience with personal support.

Embrace Your Emergence

Be part of the founding class of Midlife Emergence and help shape the journey for seekers who follow in your footsteps. Take advantage of special beta offer pricing and the opportunity to share your feedback to guide future offerings as a member of the premier Midlife Emergence cohort. 

PLUS! Early birds who register before August 31 receive their very own gorgeous, personalized gift bundle delivered right to your mailbox. Packed with loving, supportive intention, your early bird care package includes a few sweet offerings to support you as we open the midlife emergence portal: an essential oil, a stone, a candle, and some special surprises!

Give yourself permission to step into your longing and own your truth - to become a more whole, more integrated, more genuine version of yourself - and live life on your own terms.

Your midlife emergence awaits.

Inviting in

What a year it’s been for us all, holed up in our Covid-19 quarantine cocoons. After this transformative year, I’m ready to emerge with all my authentic colors and freak flags a’flying! So here’s a very personal invitation from me to you — this is me, inviting you in to know more of me.

I've acknowledged my fluid sexuality from a young age. It was one of the first conversations I had with my now ex-husband when we met in January 1999, when I had just moved to NYC, hoping to eventually find a girlfriend. Instead, he and I fell in love, which was and still is an absolutely beautiful part of my life. My sexuality was involuntarily cloaked during the years I was in heteronormative relationships. Even when my relationship was not on display, most people incorrectly assumed I was heterosexual because I present as "feminine." Our society is quick to conflate who our current partners are and how we dress with sexual orientation. But sexuality is not defined by who a person sleeps with, nor is it defined by gender presentation or appearance.

About five years ago, the invisibility of my queerness festered inside me in ways that felt toxic — literally sickening. This post is simply about visibility - it's not about "coming out." “Coming out of the closet,” is a term that feels vehemently incorrect to my experience, as I've never considered myself to be in any sort of closet; I was just in a relationship with a man. "Coming out" also panders to assumptions of heteronormativity. By saying “coming out,” we continue to accentuate the otherness of being queer, instead of normalizing it. The idea of “coming out” places the responsibility on the queer person to correct wrongful assumptions about sexual or gender identity. Some people in the LGBTQ+ community, myself included, prefer terms like “letting in” or “inviting in” over “coming out.” Words are spells; they carry energy and they matter deeply. It feels more self-loving and in alignment for me to say that by becoming more visible, I’m inviting others to get to know my authentic self.

I am overtly aware of my privilege in not having been an immediate target for homophobic violence and harassment for decades when I walked down the street wearing a dress and holding hands with my husband. I’m certainly not asleep or immune to the marginalization and discrimination inflicted upon the queer community, especially now when I proudly kiss my girlfriend in public. On the other side of any hetero-passing privilege I experienced was the pain of not being seen, acknowledged, or met for the fullness of who I am.

I write about my personal story, queer invisibility, and so much more in the book I've been working on during this bizarre year. The working title is Midlife Emergence. It is a combination of memoir and personal growth/self-help for women who are burning to claim more (more passion, more depth, more grit, more truth) in the second half of their lives. Publishing details are in the works, but it's all happening. Stay tuned for all the juicy details by subscribing to my newsletter.

Welcome the mystery

I confess… I've SO been hiding out! A couple years ago, I listened inwardly to a deep and undeniable call to pause my private psychotherapy practice because something new was screaming to be birthed. In this time, I began a midlife emergence (You like that? That's my lil euphemism for a midlife crisis, but I'm here to report from the inside thick of it that it's no less of a fiery, intense soul-f*ck as the crisis bit. Ah, semantics.) I moved my family from the Bay Area to Boulder. I nested and waited, almost uncomfortably pregnant with a million possibilities and bursting with new ideas that I've only allowed to peek out partially and leak out quietly via my daily Instagram habit. Then shushing them and shoving them back in the oven (closet? womb?) expecting them to cook longer to become fully packagable, digestible, marketable GRAND OFFERINGS... you know, all wrapped in hand-painted papers, tied with a raw silk bow and a sprig of dried lavender, please. 🙄 OMG, the pressure!

As I've waited for this New Path to reveal itself to me -- I walked in the darkness, envied all those around me with seemingly clear direction and distinctly specific medicine to offer the world. What was mine to do next? I went through it all: I hated the mystery of it. I got angry, sad, complacent, and stubborn with the mystery. Over time, I began to challenge the mystery to just freakin' bringggg itttt and to absolutely werk me. From that stance, I began to welcome the mystery. I actually fell in love with how exciting she felt - how open, how free, how wild. I courted her, and she absolutely seduced me in turn. What we seek is indeed seeking us! (Dude, Rumiis always right.) This mystery and I have been wining, dining, dancing and making spicy and sweet love. One night she whispered into my ear: "The pathless path IS your Path." Boom.💥  

Not only is the pathless path the New Path, it's the Always-Has-Been and Always-Will-Be Path. I've always been one who dabbles in a zillion forms of beautiful, multifaceted magic and shares them to connect with others, and to connect others. I can't not be this medicine in the world, even if I tried. In hindsight, my stressing over how to massage this into a concise elevator speech to recite when asked "aaand what do you do?" feels so trivial. Even if my ego/personality had signed up for a subscription to that patriarchal, linear, left-brained way of being in the world ages ago (to assimilate out of fear,) my Soul never (ever ever ever) did. And I have a hunch that many of yours may not have either. 

So it's time to stop the silly shame game of "I don't have all my shit together yet" and proudly stand for the feminine, the shapeshifting, the non-linear, the mystery, the messy, the deep, the raw, the creative, the authentic, the wild, the soulful, the pleasurable, the esoteric, the vulnerable, the edgy, the witchy, the unseen, the playful. To do this work requires that I make what I'm already up to absolutely and unapologetically visible and transparent. (Something that was harder to do in the past when in a psychotherapist role.) Ahhhhhhh... on the other side, there is such ease and such fun to be had. In the world we're in right now, this feels like a radical act. 

I'm inviting all of you to come with me - to watch curiously or voyeristically or supportively or even cautiously through squinted eyes and slightly parted fingers -- or to celebrate this rise in yourselves by participating where you're drawn. I can't know what's going to happen, but I do know it'll be juicy -- with depth and levity, with the sacred and the profane. Both sides of these paradoxes are absolute necessities to me -- honest and whole, they keep me awake and engaged.