Hi I am Jenna
Before I can help you find your story, it matters to me that you know I had to find mine too. I left an unsafe life while I was seven months pregnant…
I was becoming a mother while trying to protect my child, navigating separation and an incredibly difficult court process, and eventually complex medical systems for a little boy who needed me to protect him. What followed was the hardest decade of my life.
There was no clean break followed by a fresh start. Life became court dates, medical appointments, documents, phone calls and decisions I never imagined having to make. I was trying to understand systems that were supposed to help us, but didn’t always.
I had to communicate with people I didn’t agree with, ask questions when answers were hard to find and make decisions while scared, angry, exhausted and unsure of what the right decision even was.
I became very good at functioning.
I got up every day and was a mom. I worked a corporate job in the medical industry. I showed up, answered messages, attended appointments, kept track of information and handled whatever needed to be handled next.
From the outside, I looked capable. And I was capable. But I was also carrying more than anyone could see.
My mind was always thinking ahead, and my body rarely felt fully at rest. Even in quieter moments, part of me was still preparing for the next phone call, appointment, decision or problem that might need me.
There was always something to remember, something to document, someone to follow up with or something I could not afford to miss. I kept going because my child needed me to.
Until I couldn’t keep going that way anymore.
In 2022, I had a breakdown.
My body stopped cooperating with the pace I had demanded of it for years. I could no longer push through, hold everything together and tell myself I would rest when things finally settled down.
Things had never really settled down.
For the first time in a long time, I had to stop focusing only on what needed to be done and begin paying attention to myself. Not the capable version of me who could manage another crisis. Me.
There wasn’t one thing that brought me back.
I went to therapy. I spent more time outside. I found people who supported me, and I learned how to play again.
I started noticing small things. Fresh air. Water. Trees. Laughter. The feeling of being somewhere without needing to solve anything.
My creativity began to return, too. I found a love for writing and started putting words to feelings and experiences I had carried for years. Writing gave me somewhere to be honest, curious and fully myself. It helped me hear my own voice again.
I began exploring parts of myself that had gone quiet while I was focused on surviving. I became curious about who I was outside of everything I had been carrying and what I wanted my life to hold now.
Slowly, life began to feel different. Not because it suddenly became easy or because everything was resolved. I began to feel like I was in my life again instead of constantly trying to survive it.
The changes didn’t stop with me.
As I began changing my life, it changed the way I showed up in my relationships, especially my relationship with my son.
I had always done everything I could to protect him from what I was carrying. I never wanted him to feel responsible for my fear, exhaustion or stress, and I tried not to let him see how difficult things were.
But children notice more than we realize. They can sense the tension in a room, the weight a parent is carrying and the difference between someone who is getting through the day and someone who is truly able to be there.
As I became more present in my own life, I became more present with him. There was more room for laughter, play, honesty and the small moments that make a life feel like yours.
Our relationship had always been full of love, but it became even more open and connected. He got to see more of who I was beyond the person protecting him and holding everything together. And I got to know him with more space, curiosity and joy.
We have a beautiful relationship. Not because I handled everything perfectly or protected him from every hard feeling, but because we have built something honest, safe and deeply connected.
Changing my life did not only change how I felt inside it. It changed what became possible for both of us.
I also began to understand myself differently.
I was diagnosed as neurodivergent later in life.
For years, I thought the way my mind worked was something I needed to manage or work around. Now I understand it as part of how I experience the world.
It is why I notice patterns and connections quickly, why I can see more than one side of a situation and why I feel things deeply. It is also why I often notice what sits beneath the words being spoken.
Being neurodivergent has challenges. It also holds some of the things I value most about myself.
Two things can be true.
That understanding changed the way I looked at my past and the way I began imagining my future.
The hardest parts of my life are not my whole story.
I don’t share this because I want to be defined by what happened to me. I share it because those years shaped me.
They taught me that leaving can be both brave and terrifying. That protecting someone you love can ask more of you than you knew you had. That systems can be necessary and still deeply difficult to move through.
They taught me that compassion does not require you to abandon yourself. That understanding another person does not mean something has to be acceptable to you. That boundaries and connection can exist in the same life.
They also taught me that agency does not mean controlling every outcome or always knowing the right thing to do. It means recognizing where you have a say, hearing your own voice among all the other voices and knowing that even when the choices in front of you are complicated, they are still yours to make.
And there is more to life than getting through it.
After spending so many years focused on survival, I had to learn that joy did not need to wait until every problem was solved.
I could feel grateful and still want something different. I could be healing and still laugh. I could carry what happened without allowing it to become all that I was.
I did not come out of that decade as a perfectly healed or completely different person. I came out of it more honest about who I am, more compassionate toward what I have carried and more aware of what I want my life to feel like.
And after spending so much of my life getting through it, I know this now:
The goal isn’t to endlessly work on yourself.
It’s also to live your life.
