But here’s the deal.

I’ve been on a healing journey. And over the past decade, much has been revealed to me in the realms of all things WTF.

I’ve tried some wild shit. Things that would make my Midwestern aunties faint.

And when it comes to trying out the stranger things in life, I’m pretty weird-agnostic.

Groundbreaking science. Ancient traditions. Modern witchy-woo-hoo. If someone says it works, no matter how off-the-wall it my seems, then HELL YES I’m gonna wonder why they care enough to make an Instagram Reel about it.

I might even care enough to get certified in it.

But at the very least, I’m going to go with it, right on down a late night rabbit hole that may end in 2-3 Amazon purchases and a subscription for pills that purportedly revert your gray hairs back to colored strands (these actually did kind of work, but I got bored of taking them every day and decided I actually kinda like my gray hair.)

Needless to say, I’m a really curious person.

Like. Really, really curious.

Baby, I was born this way.

And the current state-of-the-internet is a wellspring for anyone who spent their childhood continuously getting swatted for putting her sticky little fingers on anything featuring a color or texture that seemed even remotely interesting.

What is life to be lived, if not a little dangerously?

Where it started

So yeah. The internet is full of intrigue, adventure, and opportunities to buy into things.

Which is exactly how, about six months ago, I started swathing my face in beef tallow. I was sold on the story of a farming family whose kids came up with the concept for their school project - a way to tenderize your skin with the buckets of wasted cow fat hanging around their barns.

As you know, it didn’t stop there.

Tallow is the gateway drug to period blood.

Because one night (probably right after washing my face and slathering it in farm waste) I was doing one of those night time scrolls on Instagram when I was stopped cold.

A photo of a girl had snatched my attention.

Instantly repulsed, I started to scroll again, but slowly, I swiped my thumb back down so the picture was fully visible.

“Is that…blood…on her face?”

Period blood, the caption confirmed.

W.
T.
actual
F.

My first reaction to this new information confirmed my initial repulsion.

“That is disgusting,” I thought.

Why in the world would somebody…

Well...hm.

Why would somebody…

I didn’t think too much more about it in the moment. I kept scrolling, probably watching a few videos about quantum mechanics and alien conspiracies and a final pre-bedding palate cleanser of fainting goats or silly dogs.

But it was too late.

The seed had been planted. And when I got my cycle a couple weeks later…

I stood in the bathroom.

Looked at the tallow.

Looked at myself.

Looked inward for a different answer, knowing damn well I wouldn’t find it.

And that’s how – earlier this week — I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror prepping for an Epsom salt bath to officially complete a Full Moon ritual, suddenly realizing I was on day two of my period and the timing could not have been any more serendipitously in favor or partaking in more weird shit …

I did it again.

How we got here

Like I said, over the past few years, I have tried all kinds of wild and crazy things my family would faint over.

Things only “weird hippie women” would do.

But hey.

Ya don’t know it till you try it, they say, and there is something delicious to me about the nature of getting intimate with things society has cast out.

Most of those things just so happen to have something to do with a women’s body, women’s interests, and women’s natural state of being.

And by natural state of being, I mean to say that we are feral fucking lionesses.

I can understand why this has been tamed out of us. It’s powerful. It’s sexy. It’s unpredictable. And – like the second day of my period (even at 43 years old and semi-deep in the throes of peri-menopausal bliss) – it can be downright violent.

Last Spring, I went to a women’s retreat.

On the second night, we were invited to a “White Party.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I should have been clued in that something was going down when we were instructed to bring something to put on the Goddess Alter. Two hours in, I was rolling around on the floor and crawling over my new friends as the leader of the event shouted for us to prowl and preen like the sexy lionesses we are.

RAWR.

We were encouraged to roar and scream with violent rage.

The night I got home from that retreat, I told my husband I was leaving him.

So, yeah.

I understand why practices like lioness rage circles and power period masks might have been dulled out of our culture.

Like most things related to the feminine wile, it’s definitely outside of the box ticked “normal”, feels borderline culty, and is absolutely terrifying to everyone but the participants.

Pickleball, much?

You’re probably wondering…

Why would someone put period blood on her face (other than to be a feral beast)?

What are the supposed benefits of it?

How do you gather the…ingredients?

Is iron good for the skin?

What happens if I get period blood in my eyes?

If any of these questions have crossed your mind, I get you. I OBVIOUSLY Googled every single one of these things. (the last one was obviously the result of a little… incident.)

So I’ll answer these for you, one by one, without referencing AI, Google, medical journals. Just my brain’s half-lucid post-epsom salt bath take on why the hell I went through with doing it.

1. Why the hell would someone do this?

The reasons a woman might put period blood on her face vary everywhere from the supposed benefits of some kind of hyper-awesome stem cells scientists are finding in our uterine unsheathing to more spiritual and soul-level medicinal reasons.

I chose to try it for all of the above. Something in me said, “Try it, you’ll like it.” And I’ll admit, while it still feels like a really effing weird thing to do, that voice wasn’t entirely wrong.

2. What are the supposed benefits of doing it?

Apparently scientists are experimenting with using period blood for healing because – TURNS OUT – women are magic. Who know? Yes, I guess period blood may have some kind of super charged healing properties. It seems there have been a small number of outcasts who’ve been shouting the benefits of it for decades, and there’s still a ton of skepticism about the whole thing.

But some folks say it makes your skin soft and brightens your complexion. And menstrual blood has been used in everything from ceremonies to art to healing to communal connection across history. It’s actually only recent history that speaking about it, thinking about it, touching it, or even fathoming DOING something with it is so taboo.

3. How do you gather the…ingredients?

I guess people who do this regularly use a menstrual cup and paint it on like artists. I’ve never used one of those cups, and honestly the idea of gathering my blood into a little condom-looking plastic cup freaks me out a little. So, I just…dipped. And then wiped. And I can see how THAT method might freak a person out, too. So uh. You do you, boo.

4. Is iron good for the skin?

In hindsight, it’s a pretty natural question to pop into one’s head as you wipe menstrual blood across the space between the nose and upper lip. Sadly, a quick Google search mostly garnered articles from dermatologists and doctors warning you not to try this technique at all. (Not that I’m telling you to try it - to be fully clear, I am not giving any medical advice or suggestions here, only my honest-to-God experience as a curious and experimental soul on this planet.)

5. What happens if you get period blood in your eyes?

Well, if you’re me, you panic-rinse it out really fast and pray for the best.

Would I do it again?

Well, seeing as how I’ve done it twice already – I don’t know.

There are many things I try a couple of times and set aside for life. Like the gray-reducing pills, it’s interesting to give it a shot but not sure it’s gonna last.

But I will say, and who knows if it’s the placebo effect, but my skin genuinely felt very soft and quite radiant immediately afterward.

The most intriguing benefit, and I cannot say whether this is firmly related to a period mask or not, is how I am sensing a big internal shift inside of myself lately. That stretch could have led to the willingness to try this experiment, or the action itself perhaps opened me up to myself in a new way.

Could the act of rubbing something we’ve been trained is disgusting onto our faces be the key to massively increasing self love and acceptance?

Mine, at least, has been on a stark uptick lately.

So, will I do it again? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see in approximately 26 days.

And my chest felt like it might implode on itself.

It was a normal Monday, could have been any Monday. Except this one was different.

On this Monday, I had attempted all the normal things, and none of them were working. I’d meditated. I’d prayed. I’d affirmed. I’d shifted my frequency to the tune of gratitude and abundance and the free flow of joy and ease and freedom and wealth and, and, and…

I still wanted it all to burn.

“FUCK IT ALL,” I thought, still trying to convince my arms to move. But nothing I said to myself seemed to will my torso upright.

The plight of the common midlife business owner

The coaching world has convinced us that we can heal our way out of being human.

That we can simply decide to CTRL, ALT, DELETE the emotions that are part of the normal human experience.

And while I believe we CAN make major shifts and changes in the patterns and behaviors we have either intentionally or unintentionally picked up over our lifetimes, we cannot heal our way to perfection.

Perfection was never the point.

That’s not how this whole experience of being human works.

I am a certified breathworker, somatic practitioner, and mindset coach. Over the past decade, I have been blessed by the tools, practices, and work of mentors of the highest caliber, and my mindset, health, and experience of life have been completely transformed by them.

Still, I woke up on that Monday feeling like I never wanted to get out of bed.

And if I did, it would be to buy a plane ticket, take myself to PDX and hop on a 17-hour flight so I can go go live in a Hobbit Hole in New Zealand.

So, what gives?

The truth is that the modern business requires things of us that are not natural.

Posting on social media and being visible on a platform with 5.8 billion users is something our nervous systems haven't had much time to titrate into. And right now, a lot of solopreneurs are spending more time marketing their work than actually doing it. (For early stage entrepreneurs, this is a particularly sticky trap.)

Add to this things like aging parents, shifting relationships, and growing families – and keeping your mindset focused can feel like a full time job, even when crafting a life around the things we love the most.

That doesn’t mean I think anyone should give up on their dreams right now.

Quite the opposite!

I believe we are at a time of transition where the divine feminine is awakening, psychic gifts are coming online, and we need practitioners, strategists, and communicators of all kinds who can support people during this transition.

We need joy-bringers and light houses who are showing the way for others.

Which is why a woman wanting to burn it all down usually does NOT mean she actually wants to burn it all down.

Still, there are – understandably – days we wake up and want to say, “Fuck it all.”

What to do when you want to burn it all down

I can’t guarantee you’ll never wake up like I did on that Monday.

In fact, I’d dare say it’s healthy for it to happen.

The human experience is multi-faceted, and your body is hyper intelligent. We have spent much of the past few decades trying to “fix” the brain, but in my experience as a coach and practitioner, I’ve found the best path through is to love it instead.

Because when you wake up feeling like your arms won’t move and your thoughts won’t budge, it might not be a sign to push them out.

It might actually be a sign to let them be, to exist, to rest.

Or at least, to ask them, lovingly, why they don’t want to move. In my experience, the body always has a message attached to a feeling, and when we get quiet and curious enough to ask it what TF is up, we are often shocked to hear how quick and clear they are to respond.

This is not to say that you should give into every command your brain offers, and I want to be clear that I am not offering psychiatric advice. I am, however, offering the novel concept that listening to your body – especially in moments when you feel out of sorts – might be a worthwhile endeavor.

The intelligence of your internal guidance system is deep and vast, and for most of us – unexplored.

On that Monday, when I got quiet and asked myself why I felt this way, I heard my heart say, “Slow down. Be quiet. Listen.”

And so that’s what I did. I went outside, hopped into my hammock and laid in the sun for hours, only finally arising when I was struck by what felt like an astounding idea I’d never thought of before.

I like to tell my clients to “get that D” 😏 which usually means Decision, because it’s the thing entrepreneurs struggle with the most – making quick and confident Decisions.

But at a time when you are questioning it all, it’s the one D I’d tell you to avoid. Making decisions on a day when you’re feeling down in the dumps is likely to land you in a dumpster fire (or a Hobbit Hole).

And while my husband graciously offered me another kind of D to brighten my Monday 🤡, the D I reached for before getting into that hammock was the final one: Devotion.

I needed to remember who I was devoted to becoming in this season of my life. The kind of business owner I am being. The kind of wife I am being (even when I decline the🍆🫡). The kind of human I am committed to being.

Because the work I am putting into the world, what I am devoted to being and becoming, is a woman who values herself first.

The kind of woman who pauses to listen and ask herself what SHE needs before jumping out of bed to service anyone else.

The kind of woman who doesn’t guilt or shame herself into any behaviors that do not serve myself, and therefore, the collective.

The kind of business owner who asks herself, “Does this social media post serve me and my personal growth? Does it serve MY intentions before anyone else? Do I love it? Does making it bring ME joy?”

“Do I love who I am being while I do this? While I create this?”

These are the questions to ask, especially during a time when your mind and body are asking for a reset.

So, on a day when you feel burned out with a capital B, reach for that D: Devotion.

I can’t guarantee you’ll never wake up and want to kick it all to the curb.

But I can guarantee you’ll be proud of the version of you who honors herself enough to be lovingly curious, to listen, and to devote herself to this version:

The one currently living and breathing her work into the world.

Keep slaying.

It all started two weeks ago, when I took one look at the title of my latest few podcast episode and felt physically repulsed.

“What a f**king limp noodle,” I thought.

Every title was technically accurate. All the right SEO, optimization, all the whatnot. But it was BO-RING AF.

My show is called F**k Around & Get Paid. And here I was whapping limp noodles all over it, one bland, beige title after another.

So I changed it from whatever this was to “Kick Overwhelm in the Red Hot Arse.”

Then, I sent an email about the switch that elicited the most unsubscribes I’ve seen from my list in months.

To which I say: GOOD.

I got a pocket, got a pocket fulla limp noods

I read a lot of copy for a living. Sales pages, headlines, the “About Me” paragraph everyone agonizes over (and nobody remembers. There’s a phrase I noticed I’ve started using constantly in reviews:

Limp noodle.

You know it when you read it.

It’s not wrong. Actually, it usually ticks the boxes of everything being “right.”

The grammar is good. The transformation is technically described. And it does absolutely nothing to you.

It could belong to anyone. And it probably already does, word for word, somewhere else on the internet, attached to somebody else’s face.

Limp noodle content is what Claude and ChatGPT love to dish up because, try as they might to be human, they simply cannot express the essence of a real, genuine, hit-me-in-the-gut FEELING.

It’s someone describing their work instead of speaking from the embodied state because their nervous system is hiding from the actual felt truth.

It’s the difference between the way a Taylor Swift song moves you and the nutrition facts on the back of a box of Cheerios informs you.

Or how “I help you find clarity and confidence” is the same as, but very different from “You’ll feel the tide split when you walk into a room.”

Same premise, totally different feeling.

Send noods

So, yeah. I lost subscribers.

I anticipate, as I de-noodify my content more and more, others will wriggle away, too.

But that’s okay, and it’s actually the entire point.

I don’t want a bunch of limp noodles on my email list looking for limp noodle content.

I’m not a noodle, but more of a hot shot of whiskey that you grab when you’re feeling a little frisky.

Because when you’re done dreaming about the business and ready to create it? That’s when you call me in.

When you’re ready to send back the “basic bitch meal” life handed you and you’re ready to take this shit up a notch? Call me, babe.

My work is not for the weak of heart.

Anything less than interesting or spicy or a little extra is not really gonna sit right with my people, and it’s definitely not gonna call them into a buying decision that lands them on the side of “LIFE F**KING CHANGING.”

And while this may or may not be the same for you and your work, the premise is the same: Stop tossing bland noodles to your mushroom risotto clientele.

It’s important that you know who your person is, what they really want, what it’s costing them to NOT do that thing, and speak to that sweet (or spicy) spot.

Anything else?

Limp noodle.

Where this sneaks in (even if you’re doing everything “right”)

I had a client whose sound healing business was doing fine. Burgeoning community, real momentum, but lemme tell ya – she was werkin’ for it.

When we sat down and peeped her biz, it was clear that her messaging was pure limp noodle. “Reduce stress. Find peace. Connect inward.” All true, and completely forgettable.

We popped the hood and realized what she actually offered wasn’t peace in the abstract. It was a very specific 45 minutes where a woman who hadn’t stopped moving in years finally, physically, got to lie down, shut out the outside world, and feel the actual vibration of her soul for the very first time.

She found clarity in a sea of chaos. Yes, the sound baths reduced stress. But they did something else. Because these specific 45 minute sessions were crafted for the woman who, like her, dreams of a better, bigger more vibrant life.

She went from the hum drum of corporate life to buying a set of bowls, and she’s bathing in a new life that’s being lived in full effin’ color. THAT is the vibration of my client.

So here’s what we did:

– She started talking out loud about her visions.
– She started sharing content that inspired others to talk about theirs, too.
– She started having fun posting content about how sound baths and the vibration of music has created a resonance with her dreams. How her frequency has shifted and she’s tuned into her vision more and more as it is manifesting.

She started hosting Vibrant Vision Soundbath sessions, and they immediately started selling out every week.

Her community started growing, but not with anyone. It is packed with women who are absolutely buzzing about their visions for the future - the exact thing she LOVES to talk about.

Suddenly, she found herself surrounded by everything she loves, all at once. Effortlessly, her dream clients were arriving week after week, and they were staying for more.

Okay, this is a fake story about a fake client.

But it could absolutely be real.

Because the point isn’t that she magically discovered some new marketing tactic. She stopped describing her work in the most technically correct, universally palatable way possible and started talking about what she really cares about.

She took the limp noodle out of her messaging.
She started talking about her actual passions publicly.
She started creating sessions that would light HER up to host.

And suddenly, the women who were already hungry for the thing she loved talking about were like YES PLEASE. Because they could feel her enthusiasm, and they wanted some of the juice.

That’s what good marketing does. It doesn’t make you sound more impressive. It makes the right person feel something, want to be part of something. They see themselves in it, in the best way possible.

How to check if your content is a wet noodle

Here are four questions you can use to check if your business content is limp or alive.

1. Could this sentence belong to five other people in my industry with the names swapped out? If yes, LIMP. Rewrite.

2. Would I actually say this out loud to a friend, in this exact wording? If you’d say it differently to a real person, LIMP. Rewrite.

3. Does this describe a moment or does it describe a category? If it can’t be felt, LIMP. Rewrite.

4. If a stranger read this with your name covered up, could they guess it was you? If not, you’ve written something anyone could have written, and anyone will forget it just as fast. LIMP. Rewrite.

Pull up one piece of your own copy right now, your bio, your offer description, whatever’s open in a tab, whatever you just pulled out of ChatGPT and run it through these four.

You’ll know within a sentence which side it’s on. SPICE IT UP BABY. Add some damn flavor, whatever your flavor is.

Stop writing like everyone else

Especially if you’re a writer.

Look, Chat GPT has made it SOOOOO tempting to let the robots do all the work, but nothing will every be more valuable than your own thinking.

That’s not to say you can’t use it - I certainly DO. But use it in the situations that matter, like helping you add structure, finding a new way to describe something. Use it for a starter draft and use your own words in between.

We don’t all need to be writers. But the best business owners understand the power of a powerful energetic exchange (aka, communication.)

The thing that has always set you apart is who you are, and your energy. It’s important now more than ever to have it encapsulated in the way people meet you.

You aren’t like everyone else.

Don’t market that way either.

P.S. I'm hosting a workshop in September where we'll be diving deeper into where your energy, message, and money meet. Get on the waitlist for it here: jenliss.com/waitlist

Catch the partner episode on the F**k Around & Get Paid Podcast:

If you’re like me, you have a little system to loosen them up: First, lunge forward with the right leg. Then lunge with the left. Finally, spread both legs wide and crouch into a Sumo squat, wiggling the hips back and forth to stretch the fibers.

Born with thick thighs and an affinity for chips and guac, I’ve been doing this little series of stretches for most of my life. Long enough that, on more than one occasion, the final squat has resulted in the ass of my pants busting open.

The first time it happened, I was 17 years old and on my way to see my favorite band live for the first time. The show was a two-hour drive from my hometown, and when I got out of the car, I went to give my pants a little post-road trip stretch.

As one does.

The problem was, as I went down for the home stretch, the pants didn’t just rip. The entire crotch blew out, from front to butt.

It was 6 p.m., the concert was at 7 p.m., and everything in downtown Lawrence, Kansas, was closed. I was starting to freak out a little when, finally, we saw a beacon of hope! One store was still open.

Sure, The Gap was a bit pricey for my part-time J.C. Penney salary, but airing out my crotch at a ska show wasn’t exactly a square on my Bingo card that day.

We began to hustle across the street, but just as we did, the most dreadfully amazing thing happened: We ran head-on into the band we had come to see.

Yes, I was suddenly standing in the middle of a street in downtown Lawrence and face-to-face with who I, at that age, deemed the superstars of all superstars.

What’s a girl to do?

I reached down, opened up the hole in the crotch of my pants, and blurted to the entire band:

“I’m so excited to see you guys, I blew my pants clean open!”

Blow ‘em wide open

They laughed. Then the lead singer of the band asked, “Were you doing calisthenics in the car?”

And that’s exactly what I want to see anyone doing with their dreams: training them so hard you bust the ass right out of them.

Or better yet, get those babies in a better fitting pair.

Because the truth is that most of us are trying to manifest our dream businesses and lives in a pair of too-tight denim trousers when we were made for something more like a sparkly cheetah print stretch jumpsuit.

We’re wearing The Gap when we’d be so much freer in a flowy skirt.

I get it, though.

Everyone wears jeans. They’re “comfortable.”

But are they?

Is anyone actually comfortable in a pair of jeans, or are they just saying they’re comfortable because that’s the narrative we’ve been given?

I, for one, have never found jeans to be comfortable. When I was in elementary school, I refused to wear them. Much to my mother’s dismay, I insisted on wearing only dresses or my matching purple sweatsuit that made me look like Grimace.

But I didn’t care because sis could dance and play unencumbered.

My dreams are built like my thighs: big as hell and ready for the world to take notice.

And this is what I want for you and your dreams: to dance, unencumbered, as the world takes notice.

To stretch and move and shift with the breeze.

To run and play and enjoy the freedom and abundance of living YOUR dreams, not someone else’s narrative about what is a comfortable fit for you. Not to play it safe in a too-tight pair of pants that someone else picked out for you.

But in a world where basic blue jeans are still the norm, where going your own way can still feel more uncomfortable than just squeezing your thighs into a denim sausage casing, how do you actually make room and stretch your dreams?

How to Actually Stretch into Your Dreams

1. Be willing

First, you have to be willing.

Willing to invest new thoughts into your dreams. Willing to give up old ones. Willing to be wrong about the past. Willing to be right about your possibilities. Willing to remember you never signed a contract to do life anyone else’s way.

I think about the version of me who insisted on the purple sweatsuit. She wasn’t trying to be brave or bold or stylish. She just hadn’t yet agreed that jeans were the price of admission. She was willing to go her own way, even if it meant kids telling her she looked like a purple grape. Willingness is at the root of humility, and humility is at the root of every success.

2. Expect a busted ass

You have to be okay with the fact that you might, and you probably WILL, bust your ass. In fact, you will probably fall flat on it, many humbling times. No one gets to where they want to go without a few blow outs. It's how you recover from those blowouts, how you integrate them, how you sustain progress even in the midst of them, how you learn from them and implement the lessons, that impacts how you move forward.

3. Go further than you feel comfortable

Imagine you live in a 300 square foot apartment. You decide to make this 300 square foot apartment the nicest possible apartment it can be. So you buy all kinds of luxury furniture, you get top of the line appliances, you decorate it to the nines. It’s nice! But it’s still a 300 square foot apartment. You can keep fixing it up, but you’re always gonna be a little cramped in there.

Think of your mindset like the apartment. Yes, you can do all kinds of things to freshen it up, and I’m sure you have. But in order to make space for your dreams, you’re gonna need a bigger space (or some stretchier pants).

That’s why I want you to go SO MUCH FURTHER than you feel comfortable with your dreams. If you want to make $1M, imagine what it will feel like and what exactly you will do with $2M, with $22M, with $222M. If you want to have a thriving business, I want you to imagine what you will do when your business has businesses.

4. Detach from the outcome

This is where step 3 becomes really important. Because I want you to intentionally go so far with your dream stretch that you’re like, “I don’t even know if I want that.” The point is to imagine what it would be like and simultaneously be completely detached from needing that outcome. This can only happen when we push the edges far enough that we don’t actually care if it happens.

Neediness and wanting energy are useful for helping us understand our direction. But held too long, they shrink you back down to the size of the thing you’re gripping. Stretch the dream past your grip and you have the space you need to create the real home of your dreams.

Stretchy dreams, happy life

So here’s your permission slip to stop trying to squeeze your biggest dreams into a life that no longer fits.

Stretch them until they scare you a little. Stretch them until they make you laugh. Stretch them until other people think you’re ridiculous. Because the point isn’t to predict your future with perfect accuracy. The point is to create enough space that who you become has room to grow.

And if somewhere along the way you blow the ass out of your pants?

Good.

At least you’ll know you weren’t sqeezing yourself into something that’s a size too small.

I’d rather be the woman standing in the middle of the street with a ripped pair of jeans and a story to tell than the one who spent her whole life trying not to split a seam.

Go stretch your dreams.

I also spoke about this same thing on the F**k Around & Get Paid podcast this week, which you can watch here:

A friend said to me the other day, “Wow, you have been spicy lately.”

And she’s not wrong.

Truth be told, I will not tolerate anything right now other than feeling really fucking ALIVE.

On Sunday, on a hike with a friend, I let out a bellow that echoed across the mountain.

Today, on a coaching call, I jumped up and kicked my leg in the air and screamed and hit my fist on the desk in celebration of a client’s massive “aha.” (I forgot that I was wearing some shorts with really big leg holes, and if you’ve been following along and have read THIS article, you know jumping out of my seat to do a high kick in loose shorts might have given my clients a show, in more ways than one. 🍑)

Just grabbed a screenshot and realized the chair saved me.

This afternoon, I took one look at the title of my podcast episode and felt so repulsed by the blandness, I instantly changed it to “Kick Overwhelm in the Red Hot Arse.”

Ten minutes later, I sent an email about it that elicited the most unsubscribes I’ve seen from my email list in months.

To which I say GOOD.

Because I don’t want those people on my email list.

And girl, maybe it’s that I’m in my luteal phase (true) but I’m over feeling like when the internet says duck, I’ve got to say duck, too.

Because, BITCH, I’m a goose.

Maybe you, too, cannot tolerate for one more day swimming in the sea of sameness. Doing what the internet has told you to do.

I suspect that, just as I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Just as I hold my own individual views about how I see the world based on my unique experiences and I refuse to vote for something because “It’s a win to the other side if you don’t” – I do not agree that I have to build my business online by following the herd.

And I don’t think you have to either.

For goodness sakes, I hope you don’t!

Cuz, baby, I think you were born to be YOU. And YOU are not meant to do what anyone else is doing.

I’m allergic to doing what everyone else is doing

And for a long time, I thought that was a fault. Especially in business. But what I have realized is that it might actually be the greatest opportunity for people like me.

They say when they zig, you zag.

But I think the real zag being asked of the most courageous people right now is actually to neither zig nor zag. It is to go an entirely new direction – to go your own freaking way, and let people follow you.

BuT iSn’T tHaT rIsKy???

Yes. Absolutely it is. But so is following the damn herd.

And actually, I’d propose joining a herd of ducks is a far greater risk, and here’s why:

1. Doing what everyone else is doing means you aren’t actually doing what feels good to you. You’re doing what you think you’re supposed to be doing, which leads to nowhere but a burned out resentful career and life. I speak from experience as a coach, and also from my personal experience of following this path straight to Hashimoto’s, food intolerances, an adult stutter, extreme and unrelenting exhaustion, and a dysregulated nervous system that took years of healing to right itself.

2. If you need another reason after what I just said in item #1, try this one: Joining the herd means you’re invisible. A herd going in the same direction creates a whole lot of noise. One duck going the other way is easy to spot.

Don’t be a duck. Be a goose. Better yet, be a white pigeon.

We’ve all felt it:

Everyone else is doing a thing. Even if it doesn’t feel great to you, you feel the pressure to do it, too. You might think to yourself, “Well. In order to be successful, I’ve just got to suck it up and do it.”

To which, with all the love in my heart, I would reply to you and say:

Is that true?

Because there is a white pigeon that sits outside my husband’s office window. I notice it every day, and I think, “I sure do like that pigeon.” There is a whole pack of other pigeons sitting out there every day, but I don’t know any of them. I don’t say, “I sure like that same looking grey pigeon who looks like all the grey pigeons.” No, I only know one pigeon. The one who is different. I love THAT pigeon.

There is more space than ever before for people to differentiate themselves simply by doing what feels good to YOU.

But with algorithms, there’s more temptation than ever before to do what everyone else is doing.

Don’t be everyone else. (You couldn’t really, even if you tried. All it’s doing is frying your nervous system and confusing everyone, including yourself.)

Oops, I did it again.

There was a period of my life where I forgot who I was and what makes me special.

I forgot what brings me joy, and what truly lights me up. I forgot how I like to talk, how I love to work, and why I quit the corporate world in the first place.

But what recently knocked me on my red hot arse is that I’d done it again.

Even after speaking to thousands of women.

Even after coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs.

Even after forming my own methodologies specifically centered around finding your joy, embracing what lights you up, and being yourself.

I hadn’t taken the time to pause and use my own methodologies. To look at where I was, once again, suppressing the best parts of myself.

But when I did - lo and behold! There it was again.

Just like I had done in my corporate stint, I had crunched myself into a box that fit the mold. I snuffed out the most interesting parts of myself to fit the role of “coach” and “healer.”

Oops, I did it again.

What’s a goose to do?

Maybe you’ve done it again, too.

Maybe you’ve caught yourself hedging your best parts.

Maybe you’ve done things because the algorithm told you to.

And maybe you’ve realized it and have committed yourself to never fucking doing that again.

If so, the world is your oyster right now.

There is so much space for the true individuals, the weirdos, the mystics, the contrarians, and the people who live in either the gray or in full living color when the rest of the world is screaming in black and white.

There is more space than ever for you to be you.

In fact, it is the most valuable thing you can do.

So unsubscribe from the rest.

It was the middle of summer, and I was nose-deep in book #14 of an easy-read mystery series when the line hit me straight in the gut. A line I’ll never forget.

Because there was something inside me that was screaming, a part I had long ignored, pushed down, and tried to pretend wasn’t there. But as I read that line, I felt a wave of something so freeing, so refreshing, so unbelievably unfamiliar – it took my breath away.

I felt exposed. Like someone had crawled underneath my skin and up into my brain where they had taken a flashlight and shined it on every part of me I’d been holding safely in shadow.

I sat there, reading the line over and over.

I lost my faith, but kept the guilt.

And with those eight words, everything I had been holding together for more than a decade began to unravel.

The White Girl Healing Journey

Like most good girls who embark on a healing journey, mine has been long and tumultuous.

What began on that summer day, snowballed, peaked, and is now in what I believe to be the descent of an experience that often felt so intense and confusing – I was certain no other human could possibly understand it.

I’ve since realized my case of The White Girl Healing Journey is so basic, so classic, that nearly every moment of it could have been predicted. (Except, of course, for the moment a few years ago when I chose NOT to run away and go to Bali for a six month off-the-grid yoga adventure. Which I, of course, deeply regret.)

As annoying as it is to realize your experience isn’t quite as unique and extraordinary as you once thought, it’s equally relieving when you find out nearly every woman goes on a similar quest.

Midlife is, after all, basically a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book where you have about 5 different key opportunities to either keep going and push forth into the forest – or turn tail to tuck & roll your way out.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a tucker and roller.

When we climbed Mt. St. Helens a couple of years ago, I cried when we got to the top – not out of pride or because of the majesty of the moment as we looked into the smoking crater – but because I turned around and realized we had to walk all the way back down that hellhole of a climb.

Going backward has always felt a far more daunting task than pushing ahead.

And that’s probably how I’ve found myself – often somewhat begrudgingly – near the front of the pack, alongside others who chose to ignore all warning signs about mothers being disappointed in you, fathers who lose hope, siblings who wonder WTF is wrong with you, and picking up other lonely souls whose previous friends took one of those 5 turnarounds.

It’s a lonely road until you find your people.

On that St. Helens climb, I remember a solo climber. She looked to be in her mid-30s, and appeared to be lost. When we noticed her, we were hesitant to approach. It’s hard to know if a person wants help or if they’re aiming for the pride of sorting it out for themselves.

We kept and eye on her, though, and she was keeping an eye on us. Eventually, she timidly approached and asked if she could stick with us while she decided if she could finish the job.

She did. Afterward, she thanked us, saying she would have totally bailed if we hadn’t gone all the way.

And that’s how it is, I think.

If you don’t find your people, or the right people don’t somehow find you, your mission ends. You take the turnaround.

There’s no shame in it, of course, but you do miss out on the view from the top.

The View from the Top

I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this today. I’d planned to share a rant with you about purity culture and how it’s been rebranded as spiritual coaching & healing. (I do have a podcast coming out on that this week, so maybe I’ll get to a companion article on it. Or maybe not, we’ll see.)

What I do know is that I’ve reached some kind of a summit on my journey. Maybe it’s a false summit, and I’ll keep going, or maybe I really am in the descent. Either way – in the past few months – the view has changed.

It has really, really changed.

Something new is coming through for me. I feel like a different person, but also the same person. That’s why I think it’s a descent. It’s like I’ve been revisiting myself again, but in a new way.

And the fun thing is, I like her this time. I really like her.

I don’t feel like there’s anywhere for her to get anymore.

There’s no guilt or shame around where she’s been, or hasn’t been.

And that feels really, really different for me.

The Descent

As someone who has always loved the climb, and who has dreaded the descent –

To be coasting along, and okay with that? This is something brand new for me.

It’s requiring a new level of trust that this is okay, that nothing is wrong, that perhaps it’s simply the latest leg of the journey.

Maybe there’s a large group of us who have all gotten to the top of a metaphorical mountain, and we’re now in the descent.

Intuitively, I believe I know the answer to that.

Losing the Guilt; Keeping the Faith

I grew up what you might call “Very Catholic.”

I went to Catholic school, went to church 3-5 days a week. My aunt was a nun and my grandma played the organ. It seemed all of my grandparent’s friends were priests and my earliest memories of family events took place in the church basement.

So the moment, with that book in my hands, when I realized I was holding my faith together on guilt alone (thanks, Janet Evanovich) – it was an epiphany of Biblical proportions.

It began a climb I didn’t know I was embarking on. And on that mountain:

I lost my faith.

I lost the guilt.

And somewhere along the way, I found my faith again.

It looks different than it did before, and it even looks different today than it did this same time a year ago.

The difference is, I’m not grieving the shift.

I don’t feel like anything is wrong. In fact, I know everything is right.

And I’m actually excited to see what happens next.

And before I tell you what I did, I need to tell you something: I know how lame it sounds. I absolutely know.

Alright, ready? Here it is:

I went on a ski lift.

Yes, in the middle of summer.
And, yes, again, I know. Laaaaaammmmme.

Here’s the thing, though. I have done plenty of scary things in my lifetime.

I’m not just talking about things like when I moved 1,500 miles away from all my friends and family or the time I left a super cushy corporate salary to start a brand new business.

I’ve jumped out of an airplane, and I’ve bungee jumped. I’ve tossed myself off the 108th floor of the Las Vegas Stratosphere. Once, in Rio de Janeiro, I entrusted my life to a man who knew exactly four words of the English language, which I only realized when he whispered them to me moments before we hurled ourselves off a 1,700 foot cliff: “You trip, you die.” Wow, thanks Paulo.

By any reasonable measure, I am not a person who should be nervous about getting on a measly little chairlift. And yet, this past Sunday, there I was, placing my feet on the tiny red square that would line my booty up with a moving bench that was coming toward me alarmingly fast.

“Scared?” my husband asked.

“No!” I shouted, nowhere near believable.

Yeah, I was scared.

Scared as hell.

Because no one told me that a ski lift doesn’t stop. No one told me there wasn’t a lesson on how to sit down on one without missing. No one told me you’re expected to confidently step out and let a piece of horizontal wood buckle your knees and thrust you into the sky with no regard for life itself.

Thunk.

Before I knew it, I was 50 feet in the air and swinging back and forth in a rickety contraption that looked far too old to be trusted.

It’s fine. Everything’s fine.

“Five-year-olds have ridden this lift,” I assured myself, gripping the bar between my husband and I.

“This is a completely normal and safe thing to do,” I reminded myself, moving my hands to the thin bar across my lap, noticing that it’s completely unsecured.

“Nothing to worry about. A million people have probably done this.”

But my nervous system didn’t give a flying fuck about my assurances.

I was going up, up, up in the air on something that looked like it should be taking a cue from Clint Eastwood (who seems to have finally pulled the retirement card at the ripe age of 96).

As we neared the top of the mountain, I was equally nervous to get off. Again, the thing does not stop moving.

I survived it!

And then, I immediately proceeded to sit myself down onto what is essentially a plank on four wheels and gleefully hurl myself down the mountain at warp speed on something called the “Alpine Slide.”

Because fear has zero logic.

Your nervous system doesn’t know the difference between a ski lift and a live launch.

Yes, fear has zero logic.

Your nervous system does not give a rat’s patoot if whatever you’re doing is reasonably safe.

It does not care that old people ride ski lifts. Nor does it care that literally no one has ever died from embarrassment after posting about their business on social media.

Your nervous system does not care whether a million people have done the exact thing you are about to do. It does not care that you could make a million dollars doing it. It does not even care that you have done harder things than this before, or that the next thing you do will be no big effin’ deal.

Your nervous system only knows one thing: This is new, and I don’t like it.

That’s it.

So I confess to you that, even though I help people to confidently chart their own course into brave new waters – I am, every day, taking the “confident” steps of a shaky-kneed newborn pony.

Because I am here to grow.

It’s absolutely essential that we entrepreneurs continuously expand beyond our comfort zones, and the act of doing anything new is utterly terrifying.

Paradox much?

Even when it’s small, objectively safe, and even when you’ve already done something so much scarier before – if your nervous system hasn’t learned what it feels like to survive this particular version of scary? It’s gonna give you nothing but a big, fat NOPE.

Just like me standing on that little red square on Sunday, you might be feeling uneasy about something today. And even if you’re reminding yourself that it’s totally okay, the fear might be showing up anyway.

Unlike my shaky knees, though, fear around business expansion tend to show up in other ways.

It looks like overthinking a decision, hesitating, convincing yourself you need “a little more time to strategize.” It might look like distraction, scrolling on your phone, taking an urgent call from a family member who “needs you.”

Fear has zero logic, and it is also sneaky AF.

It disguises itself because it cares about you, and wants you to stay in your zone of comfort, even if that comfort means putting everyone else’s needs before your own. All of these symptoms are simply a nervous system doing exactly what a nervous systems does when it meets something unfamiliar.

It slows you down. It blocks your access to your intuition. It clouds your judgment. It makes you feel needed, but elsewhere. Anywhere but the place where you will grow.

Whether you’re a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or selling your purses on Etsy, fear shows up for everyone at the threshold of expansion.

It doesn’t matter if the thing you’re trying to do is normal to everyone else. Because normal to other people does not mean normal to your body. At least not yet.

You can know, logically, that what you’re trying to accomplish is totally normal and safe. You can look at other people who are doing it every day without blinking.

But your body will still freak out. It will still grip and brace, because your body isn’t running on logic. It’s running on whether it has done this exact thing enough times to trust what is coming next.

That gap is your Expansion Zone.

This is the entire ride your soul signed up for.

Fear doesn’t give a flying F.

No matter what you’ve already accomplished or how far you’ve come in your life, fear will always be there. In fact, it is a good thing. When you feel fear, you know you’re in the Expansion Zone, which is where all new possibilities arise.

I think about this a lot in business, because it’s the same lift.

You have an idea, you take action – and finally, this time – you not only share about it, you commit to doing a full launch. Huzzah!

But then, when no one responds, when your first two posts get crickets, you start to freak out.

Yes, you’ve committed, and yes, you’ve done the thing. And now, the fear is back. Because you’re at a new threshold of the unknown. You’re standing on the red square and the potential for embarrassment, for failure, it’s coming – sideways, and full bore.

Do you bail, or do you let it buckle your knees and see where the newfound lift takes you?

Up, up, and away!

I have done terrifying things.

But it’s the seemingly “normal” little things like a chairlift that have thrown me the most off track.

Instead of fighting it, making fear bad or wrong or something to conquer, I’ve decided it’s just how this works.

Fear will always be here, and that’s a good thing. It’ll show up at the doorway to your dreams, every single time you open it, regardless of what you’ve already proven you’re capable of.

For those of us with the biggest dreams, especially for those of us who are really going for them, know this is going to happen. And it is SO okay to get caught up all the things you thought you were past.

In fact, whenever you think anything to the tune of, “I should be past this!” or “Why is this happening to me again?!” This is actually the moment to pause and recognize the most amazing news possible – you are in your Expansion Zone.

You are ready for lift-off.

And that is a beautiful thing.

My dog Alfred and I were standing on the bank of my favorite lake in Portland, and something had just captivated us: A momma duck, floating on the water, looking Buddhist monk-level calm.

I stared at her, enamored.
Alfred stared at her, hungry.

Meanwhile, her brood of ducklings were paddling their little hearts out, wreaking lakeside havoc.

One was butt-side-up, rummaging in some floating trash. Another was curiously approaching two boys, who were coaxing it closer using a couple of sticks they’d found on the bank. And one tiny rebel seemed intent to run off and join another duck family.

I looked at the chaos.
Back at the momma.

“How is she over there looking chill AF?” I wondered, watching a baby duck swim dangerously close to a ledge where the lake cascades over rocks and into a nearby stream.

Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about a duck at all, but the 1988 version of my Aunt Jan.

I spent most summer afternoons of my formidable years splashing around my aunt’s neon blue raft, trying not to get chlorine in her hair while she caught rays in her hot pink bikini.

This was the main objective – no splashing Aunt Jan – while we showed our best cannon balls and played keep-away with a blue-toned plastic ball that was always in the pool.

One day, my cousin’s friend grabbed the blue ball, held it high in the air, looked me straight in the eye, and yelled, “It looks like Uranus!” Pausing for effect, he continued: “YourAnus.”

I was six years old and didn’t know what an anus was, but based on the smirk on his face and the way he said it, I sensed he probably wasn’t talking about the planet anymore.

My younger cousins and I also spent good chunk of our pool time dodging my oldest male cousin, who was twice as big as the rest of us and loved holding our heads under the water until we thrashed free.

All the while, my aunt floated peacefully on the water, visor poised against the afternoon sun, lubed up in her best Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil, with her nose in the latest Danielle Steel novel.

…Until a speck of water hit her hair.

“CUT IT OUT, KIDS!!!”

Her calm veneer cracked as the energy of “I’ve f**king had it” reverberated across the pool.

With zipped lips and clenched butts, everyone but YourAnus slipped beneath the water.

Ahh, Mother Ducker.

Still standing by the pond, I –
Thought about at my aunt
Looked at the duck
Started at the water

“How many menthols did it take for my aunt to keep that level of cool?” I wondered, thinking about the moment when the porcelain cracked.

Because when I squinted to see beneath the surface of the lake, I noticed something. The mother duck’s webby little feet were going berserk.

Like the duck’s feet, my aunt’s cortisol levels on that hot summer’s day may have revealed the reality of two entirely different stories playing out in the same frame: Peace above, chaos below.

And that’s when I realized something that struck me to my core.

“Mother ducker,” I thought.

“I am totally mother ducking it. And I am done.”

Just keep posting

There was something in my life that was feeling… very un-zen.

Which was odd, because life was feeling more peaceful than it ever had.

All of the healing and feeling and shifting and releasing I’ve done over the past decade hit a sweet spot. It was a far cry from a year ago when my marriage had fallen apart and I was teetering on the verge of a big career shift.

During that time, I told myself I wouldn’t get on social media and smile for the camera. I wouldn’t pretend life was okay with friends and family.

But I caught myself doing it anyway.

It’s just so normal being a duck.

We’re Mother-Ducking Over It

Women have always been expected to perform – even if the audience is their own family. Sit nice, smile, be sweet, and for God sakes don’t you dare make anyone uncomfortable… (anyone except for yourself, of course.)

The world often values a woman’s performance over her truth. Whether at home, in the workplace, in business, and even in most social circles, we've learned that looking okay is rewarded more than actually being okay.

Social media didn’t create the performance.
It just gave us a new pond.

And then monetized the shit out of it.

With the advent of these little portals in our pockets, every woman suddenly had her own audience, her own little stage. And the women who look the most effortlessly held together get rewarded the most.

“Fake it ‘till you make it,” on a global scale.

The influencer era birthed an ideal. You know the drill – travel influencers, happy dancing families, boss babes. Then came the wave of life coaches (ahem) showing you how to achieve that ideal.

When attaining this ideal proved more challenging than the twirly girlies on social media made it look, we started fiddling with our brains, then our emotions, and basically anything we thought might be the culprit to our incurable existential dread.

And now, when we can’t seem to single-handedly heal every familial wound graced upon our lineage and regulate our nervous systems into a state of pure, unadulterated bliss, we do what any human does when faced with total frustration:

Scream with the hellfire of my aunt on a flimsy turquoise floaty.

Where to paddle from here?

Watching myself let go of the things I felt like I “should” be doing on social media has been a trip.

As someone who, for decades, believed my job was to keep the peace in every scenario, my instinct to be two different women in the same frame is strong.

Look, I’ve been on this full circle journey, and it is a passion of mine to help women courageously create a life they love. (Because, of course, that’s what I want for myself.)

But I often ask my clients: Where are you moving from? Because it’s not the smile that creates your reality. It’s what is beneath it. What energy is curving your lips?

And it raises a question for me –

Because the social performance era is cracking as we speak, but what will replace it?

I’m not the only one who is craving authenticity. Something is actively shifting on social media, praise the Lord for that. But I think most of the pop-talk about authenticity misses the point.

The shift isn’t “be more vulnerable online.” That is guaranteed to lead us right back to performance. Vulnerability as a shiny ‘brand move’ makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

The real ask of us, as women, as leaders, is smaller and more challenging than that.

What we're really craving from each other isn't vulnerability. It's coherence.

I want what’s above the surface and what’s below to be the same woman. I don’t care if it’s on social media or at a coffee shop, there is true peace in meeting someone who shows you their cards.

The same peace is found inside you when you start showing yours.

I don’t know about you, but my entire nervous system settles around anyone who is confident enough in themselves to show their real human experience.

Not a duck performing calm.

You can send that shit to Uranus.

I Confess to the All-Mighty Ducks

I confess, I have spent a lot of my life looking like I have it all together.

And I don’t think any of us need to spend one more moment getting better at that.

I want to feel safe to be exactly who I am. I want the kind of peace that comes from true coherence. I want to live in a world that celebrates this.

Because when the woman above the water and the woman below it become the same person, that’s true peace.

I am not a duck. And neither are you.

I’m still not sure whether or not he knew the proper pronunciation of the word vagina, or if it was an attempt to sidestep saying an inappropriate word. At that age, I thought calling my sister a “fecking shite-head” somehow circumvented the sin guaranteed to rain down on me, should I speak the real words out loud.

But somewhere along my childhood trajectory, the fecking turned to fucking and the shite turned to shit – and I actually quite liked the way those words rolled out of my mouth.

I confess that I love to curse. I love to swear like a sailor.

I also say and do inappropriate things. Mostly on accident. When I was a hairstylist, I once lost a client because I described my nephew, a three-year-old with the most adorably thick, tightly curled tendrils, as having a “Jewfro.” Turns out, she did not appreciate my crude cultural appropriation. She canceled her next appointment.

It wasn’t intentional. I thought I was being funny, like when I mimicked Jim Carrey thrusting his crotch, Ace Ventura-style – in front of my aunts, uncles and my horrified parents – at a family event. I was 10 years old, had just watched that movie and thought that particular scene was a riot. Funny and offensive aren’t always the same thing, and I do sometimes (often) forget that lesson.

When I started a podcast back in 2020, a friend texted me with a request: “Will you please stop cussing in your episodes so I can actually enjoy it?” I sincerely don’t understand how cursing makes anything worse. It mostly makes things better.

The same is true for me about oversharing. Please tell me all the weird things that are happening in your life. The more uncomfortable the subject, the better. Get loose with it, let Bruce Bruce hit it.

Today, I blurted out a story to my coaching cohort about how I shook my titties on my husband while he poured his morning cup of coffee. Yes, I should have stopped there. But no, I did something even better. I doubled down.

Looking straight at my husband’s little picture on the Zoom screen (we run a coaching business together), I said:

"Would it hurt if you jangled your junk around like this?” I jiggled my ta-tas with flourish so they could see exactly what I meant. (In case you’re curious, he responded, “Yes, it would hurt if done that aggressively.”)

I assume my clients listen to my coaching calls with headphones securely plugged into their ears to avoid children getting educated in the art of pure, hot seduction.

I’ll get to the whole ‘whale’s vagina’ thing very soon.

Based on what I’ve shared so far, it may surprise you, then, to hear that I did once put a hard stop to the regular flow of profanity and inappropriate behavior. For quite an impressive stint, actually.

“Oh my, Jennifer! How did you accomplish such an amazing feat?”

I assumed you’d ask this question, and I’m so glad you did.

Corporate America. That’s how.

For nine full years, I was impressively successful at holding back my foul tongue and titty talk. So much so, I developed an actual stutter.

That might sound dramatic, but here’s the thing – I came from the world hairstyling. Standing behind the chair, chatting with clients, in a space where I felt comfortable to be exactly who I was.

And, sure, that person had evolved over the years.

I was no longer the 21-year-old who would stay out until 2 am drinking vodka crans with the other girls from the salon and then spend the following day taking turns hugging the porcelain god between clients.

This one girl, Sasha, would tell her clients, “Yeah, I’m still drunk” and snip, snip, snip her way through the rest of the haircut. Sasha’s clients loved her, though, and they somehow didn’t GAF about her loose chair-side manner. She said all kinds of things that amazed me, and I was equally amazed her clients kept coming back for more. I later realized why – but that’s a story for another time, on the topic of client magnetism.

All this to say, when I started this corporate job, I felt like an imposter. I’d been doing hair for 10 years, and outside of watching The Office and the movie Office Space, I had no idea what it meant to do cubicle-style work.

So, even though I’d gone back to school, finished a degree, and nailed an interview before graduation, I walked into that job interview thinking there was no way they’d hire me. No. Freaking. Way.

I showed up as myself – bedazzled sandles, a floral print dress, and bright blue hair. Oh, and a facial piercing. I figured it was a practice round, and I was loose as hell with them. I said what I thought, and I was honest AF. I left that interview even more certain there was no way in hell these buttoned-up bros were going to hire me.

Until they did.

I think I can help with this vagina/virginia situation

And suddenly, I realized I had a serious job that I needed to take seriously.

On my first day in the office, I snapped a selfie and Snapchatted it to my family with the caption, “Corporate Jen is entering the building.” And boy, did she.

The place I worked was a tall, black rectangle of a building on a sprawling campus. My coworker lovingly referred to it as “The Death Star.” And the Death Star’s shiny, all-black exterior was countered by an all-beige interior.

It was an eight-story cubicle farm where all the men wore khaki pants with blue shirts and the ladies mostly looked like accountants. Conservative was the culture. I didn’t want to give up the blue hair, but after a few days on the job, I decided perhaps my facial piercing AND the blue hair was too much, so I took the piercing out.

And that, my friend, was the first of many “necessary concessions” I traded for a corporate career. Because, in my eyes, a job as serious as this required me to be serious(ly boring).

Over the 6 years I was there, slowly, one by one, and with all the good sense in the world as I did so, I removed, snuffed out, or toned down bits and pieces of myself that didn’t feel like they fit into this new model I’d claimed for my life.

Corporate was a place to be straight-laced, to be professional, to be impressive. I was a “writer” who was sending “deliverables” to prestigious “clients.” So I traded my usual bright colors for corporate black and real talk for water cooler conversation.

Corporate Jen was livin’ the Corporate Dream.

Outside of work, I was shrinking, too.

My husband had recently befriended a new group of people. They were intellectuals, and they terrified me. I refused to be alone with them unless he was there to act as a buffer. At parties, I practically clung to him, hiding behind him like a little kid behind her dad’s butt. Heaven forbid someone asked me a question. My brain would spin into overdrive, editing and re-editing every sentence until the words tumbled out in a stuttering mess.

The same thing happened at work. It got to the point where every time I had to speak, I braced for it. And the more I braced for it, the more I overthought every word, and the worse my mumbled, jumbled speech became.

A whale of a tale

Then, something happened.

On a Wednesday night, at nearly midnight. My husband and dogs were fast asleep in the bedroom down the hall, and I was sitting on the couch sweating bullets.

I’d been on the job for a few years (long enough to develop a crippling fear of opening my mouth to say anything.)

My supervisor had decided, though, that it was time. Time for me to step it up and join the big guns. Yessss, I had finally received an invitation to the Real Writer’s Room. Me! The blue-haired girl who had spent years rounding her edges to squeeze into this very exclusive space was officially In like Flynn.

HUZZAH! My chance to write and pitch scripts for a massive ad campaign had arrived.

I was excited. I was terrified. And, as the clock struck midnight, I was sitting on my couch with complete and total writer’s block.

I had ZERO good ideas. Frustrated, I flopped onto my back. I whined, I cried, I called myself names, I screamed into a pillow. And then I did the thing that changed everything –

I still can’t quite explain it but, for some reason, I got the urge to dangle my head off the edge of the couch, upside down. And laying there, feet up on the back of the couch with blood rushing into my face, I started giggling. Because the most hilarious idea for this ad campaign had just rushed into my head, too.

Spinning upright, I thought, “Welp, there is no way I am pitching that.”

I tossed the ridiculous idea aside, opened my Macbook, made the finishing touches the two measly ideas I’d mustered. “At least I’ll have something to show them,” I thought. Closing the laptop, I went to bed.

The next day, there is a buzz in the air. It’s campaign pitch day, and everyone is excited. Except me.

We gather in the writer’s room, and I take a seat on the far side of the big, oblong table. The room is packed, expectations are high, and I am clutching the warm pages I’d just grabbed from the printer. They reeked of fresh ink and total failure. I flipped the pages over so no one could sneak a glance (and be overwhelmed by boredom.)

“This is clearly about to be the embarrassment of the century,” I thought. My one-and-only chance to take my best shot, and I ain’t got shite.

One by one, the other writers share their pitches. Some of their ideas are awesome. Everyone claps. The pits of my shirt are damp. These guys are serving hot prime rib and I’ve got nothing but a crinkly package of Buddig Beef, at best.

Finally, they all turn to me. I kid you not, it was like a movie. The only woman in the room, 10 sets of eyes fixed on me.

I look down at the pages in front of me.
I breathe the shaky breath of someone bracing for utter humiliation.
And I couldn’t believe what came out of my mouth.

It happened so fast. I was saying it before I even knew what I was saying. The idea I’d had at midnight, the over-the-top, silly absolutely insane “I don’t even know how we could make this a reality” idea –

I’m speaking it out loud. I’m sharing it. I’m describing the vision I’d had with my head upside-down on the couch, in vivid detail.

I finished.
Everyone was staring at me.
Their faces looked weird, and I didn’t know why, and my internal dialogue started to scream, “YOU IDIO–”

And that’s when our creative director burst out laughing.

“I FUCKING LOVE IT!” he exclaimed, hitting his hand on the table so hard it shook, his head kicked back as he let out a boisterous guffaw.

That idea got written, filmed, produced, and streamed to millions of people’s phones during March Madness. The production was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was a blast, and I’ll remember it forever.

I realized in that moment that my ridiculous upside-down ideas, perhaps, aren’t so ridiculous.

Maybe being myself, even in this big beige box of sameness, wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

What this has to do with a whale’s vagina

I’d love to say that this was the end of it for me. That I realized I can be my full and unbridled self in any room, and that I lived this out happily ever after.

But that’s not what happened at all.

Eventually, I left corporate to further pursue my spiritual quest where I’d discovered the joys of life coaching. The problem was, as I “climbed the ranks” of this new career field, I caught myself doing the exactly same thing.

I was getting opportunities based on who I am, and then systematically removing my joyful creativity, my silliness, and definitely my “inappropriate” expletive-laden banter. The more “serious” the job felt, the more I would assimilate to what I assumed a job this serious required.

Last summer, I had an experience that gave me the FINAL wakeup call I needed.

“This is it,” I promised myself. “No more. I will not put myself in rooms where I feel like I cannot be ME, and if I do find myself there, I will be myself anyway.”

And that is how, a few weeks ago, I found myself sitting at my first appointment with a gynecologist ever, telling her that my crotch smells like a whale’s vagina* and I don’t know what to do about it.

She laughed – hard – and then told me to sleep without underwear on for a week.

And you guys – she was RIGHT. I feel called to proudly proliferate this knowledge for all other women to know. (Mostly, so we can all stop stankin’ up the bathrooms.)

But here’s the thing. Prior to my decision to be myself in every room, I would have been different at this appointment. I would have been proper about it. Honestly, I probably would not have even brought up the question to her at all. I would have just kept obsessively Reddit searching and trying products like these Olly Happy Hoo-Ha gummies, which kind of worked, but definitely didn’t seal the deal like the no-underwear trick.

It occurred to me, while writing this article, that my doctor had kicked her head back and laughed just like the creative director had done that day. Not only that, I got the relief I was seeking, and she even a good story to tell, should HIPPA laws allow it.

And heck, maybe your ripe virginia was just set free.

win-win-win-win.

So next time you find yourself feeling like you cannot be a certain kind of way, I hope you think about me laying upside down on a couch – or better yet, think of me shaking my boobs inside a whale’s vagina. And then, decide to just be your whole effing self anyway.

The world will be so much better for it.

*You know that smell that’s sometimes present when you go into a women’s bathroom? It’s pungent, it’s weird. I mean, funkier than blue cheese on a tater tot sundae. My older sister has always called this “rotten crotch smell.” Well that never made sense to me because while my crotch may not smell like roses on hot summer’s day, it has never smelled like that. Until it did. And that was terrifying.

Here it is:

I don’t want to do any of the things I see my colleagues doing online right now.

I don’t want to pretend that life is the picture of perfection so people will buy my coaching packages.

I don’t want to go to an influencer party where I get together with people I’m not actually friends with and pretend to be BFFs so we can create “content”.

I don’t want to have my phone out every time I’m having fun so I can record every detail of my life to attract and grow a massive digital “community.”

I don’t want to do it.

And I confess, I have fallen into the trap of feeling like each of these things is something I “should” be doing. In order to build my “Personal Brand” I need to make sure I’m living the fantasy and have enough space on my camera roll for one more video of me playfully frolicking in Bali*.

This seed has been growing its wily little legs since the moment I found myself uncomfortably tucked into a corner of my house, trying to look cozy and high vibe in this “nook” while my feet were secretly falling asleep and I sweat beaded down my face, the air conditioning off, my arm mid-air trying to hold the camera still.

“This is f**king ridiculous,” I thought. “But I guess it’s what we’ve gotta do to get the views.” My whole body was likely screaming in protest but I couldn’t feel it because my legs had gone numb and I was busy grabbing a rag for the sweat.

This was a year ago, and the funny thing is, I do really love where I live. But it’s not like I’m currently living 24/7 on a villa overlooking the Aegean Sea that makes for perfect “content.”

I love social media, too. I love the internet. I love online communities. I love connecting with people from all over the world and learning new things. I sure as hell love beaches.

But even more than that, I love living a really good life.

And the truth is, I don’t want to spend my days striving for an ideal that doesn’t match the actual experience I enjoy living.

I want to do exactly what I did this weekend with my husband, which is to peacefully sleep in until 9 and then drive an hour to Mt. St. Helens to climb rocks and explore caves all day.

I want to go to silent discos and have picnics and explore obscure treasures and try new restaurants around Portland.

Okay, but…

I also want to wake up to room service at as many Ritz Carlton hotels as I possibly can.

I want to roast s’mores on a campfire and sleep in a tent.

I want to order the most expensive thing on the menu, and eat at In-N-Out.

I want to have a lot of experiences, how I want to experience them, with great people who like experiencing those things, too.

And YES! I want a clean house. And YES! I don’t always want to be the person to do it. But I can tell you what I don’t want – after witnessing it firsthand – a full team of people parading through my home 5 days a week to upkeep it.

That is not the life I am curating. Admittedly, it’s the life I was sometimes picturing. It’s the life I have, sometimes, clumsily, without full awareness of what I was doing or how to even do it well, attempting to sell in my own social content.

I have, like many ‘life coaches’ who came before me, mindlessly fallen into the trap of selling what we’ve been sold.

And it’s been sold to us, HARD.

Since the advent of the influencer era and “content creation” took it’s stronghold on us all, we’ve been shown a certain kind of ideal.

The millionaire lifestyle.
The perfectly healed nervous system.
The optimized, bio-hacked, 200-year-old body.

A status symbol at the top of the hierarchy of life.
A destination, somewhere to get to.
But…who chose the destination?

Who is driving the bus called “Your Life”?

We been soliciting the idea of “well-BEing” taught as something one must “get to” in order to be happy. I’ve certainly been wrapped up in it. I’ve certainly sold it, and I have helped others to sell it, too.

But there comes a point in your healing journey where you out-heal your need to heal, and you look around and feel… disoriented. Because you have done so much inner work that you’ve realized all that striving, all that healing, all that optimization – underneath all of it is a fear of impending, unavoidable something, labeled as “the optimal life.”

I must also confess to you: This is the real thing I’ve wanted to write since I began this Substack a couple of months ago.

And it wasn’t in some mad tirade about social media and the algorithm, either. It happened, immediately after I had one of those moments where I paused, looked around at my life, and said:

“Holy shit, I have done it! I have the good life! The rich life, the happy life. I feel so effing good.”

That was really, really disorienting. Because, currently, I do not have a butler, or even a maid. I am not flying around the world hosting retreats, speaking stages, or spending one night a week at the Ritz.

I was at home, under my big white comforter, looking out at the blossoms on the peach tree in my yard. A house I do not own, mind you. Waking up to the most peace and ease I’ve felt in my body… ever.

All of this has been leading me to feel a certain kind of way.

Confused, mainly. Like a fraud, mostly.

My mind reminds me that this is silly because, over the past few years, I have hosted international retreats, I have traveled all over the country for speaking engagements, I have stayed at the Ritz, and I have been served by a team of butlers (okay, it was totally awesome. Just not in my house, please).

My mind reminds me that I have been, in fact, very well paid in many ways for doing the work of a “life coach,” an “online business woman” and a “healer.”

I’ve been deep in the realm of learning, implementing, and teaching feminine wealth energetics for a decade. So I know how it all works - you feel it first, and it manifests later. It’s actually about the feeling, and by feeling it now, it is real. What we teach is real, it’s true. I am proof.

But sitting there in my bed and having such a luscious moment, and then feeling like I need to go tuck into a corner for an IG live afterward to get some good content? That felt…kinda f**ked.

So, it’s taken me a minute to get the courage to write this. Because I have been doing these things, teaching these things, telling business owners to just get out there and do it because you gotta, for the ‘likes.’ But I don’t want to.

And the part of me that’s a “smart business woman,” the part of me who teaches other smart business women, the part of me who is leading a community of smart, intelligent, capable, astute business women (some of whom are healers and coaches in the wellness space), and the part of me who has made friends with many wonderful, good-hearted, talented people who work in this space and do these things…

She felt one word. The one word that grabs ahold of a woman and places her in direct competition with her own intuition: DISLOYAL.

I’ve been afraid to hurt someone’s feelings. To hurt relationships. To accidentally close doors. To do the wrong thing – and friends, colleagues, and myself – we will all be harmed for it.

If I’m being SUPER honest, I’m afraid to hurt the feelings of the past versions of me. It’s hard AF to look at a version of you, straight-in-the-eye and tell her she was doing some weird and misaligned sh*t. It’s embarrassing**, realizing there were probably people who saw it unfolding and had thoughts and questions about it. Friends and family who were like, “What is she doing, exactly? Does she think she’s an influencer***?”

That’s the kind of thing an ego might decide to just keep plowing forward without ever looking at, because the shame is just too much to bear.

So, I had to be sure this is real. Because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t knee jerking it. I wanted to ensure this is coming from a clear place - not a reaction from some protector or shadowy, misguided wound. I said to myself, “Jen, don’t run out there and make some kind of hit piece against the industry successes because you suck at your own social media growth. Don’t be that girl.”

“Am I regressing? Falling backward on my own inner development?”
”No,” my intuition said. “You just don’t like doing it.”

I have made a promise to myself to only do things that are fun... So, still wrangling with the uncertainties, I sat down tonight to write.

I’d rather be that girl than someone who isn’t true to herself.

And dude, I’ve prayed on it, talked to not one but TWO psychics about it, journaled, lamented to my husband, and talked to my dead Aunt Peggy (the spirit of my dead aunt is so much sassier than she was IRL.)

So, while this article is finally being written 1 am on a Sunday night in my usual off-the-cuff stream-of-consciousness way, and I’ll probably still sit on in for a few days, surely coming back to it in a moment of “What the f**k, send it!” and hitting “post” before giving it a proper proofread, I know in my soul that sharing my raw and genuine thoughts on this is the single most responsible and loving thing I can do for myself, my clients, my friends, and anyone else who might be reading this right now.

Because the tide is turning, and it’s turning fast.

All signs are pointing to it.

It’s actually SUCH GOOD FUCKING NEWS.
And I hope that by the end of this, you feel a deep confirmation in your belly of what your soul has been crying out for, too.

The truth is, people don’t want to be sold a fake ideal anymore. They simply do not. We’ve bought it, we’ve tried it, and we’ve healed our way to the other side of it.

We know what’s not the goal. And we’ve all been practicing the healing arts enough to start to feel what is.

And since the world is feeling really unsteady beneath out feet right now, all we’ve got is the only thing that actually feels like truth: our intuition. The real truth.

With the wisdom we’ve gained, we want soemthing REAL. Now more than ever in our lifetimes, we want something we can FEEL in our BONES. In our essence. To the CORE.

As AI increasingly becomes the norm, I predict it’s gotta be truth ringing to the tune of the intuition in our guts – or bust.

The business owners who get this, I mean really get this, will win. Some already are.

I don’t think social media as a function is going anywhere, but I do think it’s changing. I saw Gary Vee call this new format “interest-based media.” People are keenly, for the foreseeable future, interested Truth.

It’s why astrology is taking off. People are seeking meaning, answers.
It’s why psychics are thriving. People are seeking , from new sources.

In the coming decade, both work and science will be completely rethought.

The divine feminine has come back into our collective consciousness and we are seeing biggest boom in collective-focused practices in a thousand years. Anything that guides, leads, and teaches intuition? It’s thriving.

Because when you can’t trust any other sources? You go to THE source.

I also predict we are about to see the biggest boom in anything that gives physical thrills. Hands-on creating. Fun culture. Whimsy IRL.

Authenticity is hot right now.

So for my clients, any anyone else who is building a business, while the Earth is moving beneath our feet in a bit way, I truly think this is a time RIPE for your gifts.

The world absolutely needs coaches, healers, creatives, and it always will. It is not about stopping on your mission. It’s about changing the energy you are moving from, and allowing how you create to move from that place.

Stop selling optimization of the perfect life. Start offering something real. A moment. An experience. A chance to be part of something. Guide people on how to trust their intuition, on how to become intuitive.

You don’t need to go out and do a full about-face on your offers, or maybe you do. But do think where you are moving FROM. Start asking yourself the important questions. Where do you truly stand right now? Where are you in true alignment with your honest belief system as it stands right now? Where can you adjust to be more in resonance with the truth you feel?

You are not the same as you were in 2020.

None of us are.

Do I think life coaching is going anywhere? No. Humans will always need help making sense of this wild and wooly experience. Maybe we call it by a different name, maybe we will use co-bots to help us, but we will always need humans to help humans.

And as for me and this article?
I’ll guess I’ll give myself the same advice I’d give to any client:
”Will it free you? Then just do it.”

*I’ve never actually been to Bali but it sure does look nice.

**I regret nothing.

***I did. (I am.)

Not Enoughness: Activated.

And look, I love new beginnings. Fresh starts. The feeling of growing into something new, trying something, experimenting. But when that gets coupled with the feeling of “needing to get it right” or “catching up with everyone else” - it is a recipe for disaster, every time.

The entire experience was a powerful reminder to me of what my clients face – the overwhelm-induced freeze state of being a beginner again in a world where it seems everyone else has it figured out.

Still, it’s part of the journey.

So I took a step back. Remembered why I’m starting this Substack. And for me, it’s actually not because it’s a bold new business move. It’s because I want to write. I want to share. I want to say things in the way I love to express them.

That’s the real reason I am here.

Of course, my mind has been saying things like, “Your past clients are going to be disappointed in you.” “People will trust you less when you share your vulnerable and honest thoughts.” “You’ll lose respect when you say the things you want to say.” “These kinds of articles will devalue your work.” “You need to have a strategy.”

But my soul knows that while some of those things may happen, and that there are “strategic” ways to use a Substack to grow your business, and that many people are doing that right now – it’s not why I’m here. Because what matters more than any of this is that I’m doing what feels alive to me. For me, that is what being a human is all about. My soul came here to experience things, and to share it back.

That’s the real strategy. The strategy of enjoying life. And I’m in this amazing place in my journey where I get to help others do that, too. If I limit my limitlessness now, that does a disservice to everyone. Because it does a disservice to the most important person in the equation: Me.

So, maybe eventually this Substack will be something radically different. I don’t really care. What I want right now is a place to write the thoughts I just had out loud. For me. And if someone else reads it and feels freed by it, amazing.

Of course, the irony is that this is what I’ve found to be the best business strategy of all. Be yourself. Be honest. Do what feels fun. All the rest follows.

If I start a show, I will plow through it like a snowmobile. (Except for the last episode. See this previous article regarding my problem with finishing things.)

This weekend, I watched the new Duffer Bros show The Burroughs, and before I even reached the conclusion of episode 1, I was down a Reddit rabbit hole about Geena Davis’s fabulously youthful appearance.

I’m human, ok?! The woman is 70 years old, and in the show, she is having a spicy tryst with someone who appears half that age. I do not doubt the reality of how this could happen. She is smokin’ and I want to know HOW.

But here’s the wild thing about that rabbit hole - when I got to the bottom of it, I found a whole lot of nothing.

No real facts about Geena having had any procedures to procure her youthful looks. And nothing on the opposite either. There are, however, LOADS of articles talking about her skin. Talking about her looks. Plenty of people wondering, questioning, making assumptions of their own about it.

But nowhere could I find any direct commentary from Geena herself about it, and this is what I find so interesting. Why would she not say something?

To be loud and clear, I do not think that anyone owes anyone a single bit of commentary about their appearance. I recognize that we live in a time where we are juuuuust beginning to crack open the door to a better world where we do not value a woman based on the lack of wrinkles in her forehead.

But here is what I cannot understand: Why, oh why, do people not just state the obvious thing?! Why not just tell the truth and be done with it?

If my face really looked that amazing, I’d tell people the truth about it. If it was the result of cosmetic surgery, I would also tell people the truth about it. Why B.S. around about it, leaving people to wonder and make up stories about you? Why not take control of your own life narrative?

Perhaps we can chalk this up to me being a truth-telling Sagittarius. But it’s also because of the Egg McMuffin.

Yes, the Egg McMuffin.

Growing up, my dad worked nights. He would go to work around 11:00 pm and arrive home around 7 am, just in time to take us kids to school. There were five of us, and at one time we were attending 4 different schools, so getting us all where we needed to go by 8 am was quite the ordeal.

Really, though, I loved it. Dad took us to school in the mornings, and then he was just waking up from sleep when we got home around 4 pm. So we got to see him a heck of a lot. Way more than my cousins saw of their dad, who worked 3 pm to midnight and was basically absent from their home experience except on weekends and during the summer.

But on Fridays, my dad wouldn’t just get off work early enough to wrangle all of us kids into our white Dodge minivan.

On Fridays, he would rush out of work to quickly do the sweetest little thing for my mom: He would stop at McDonald’s and get her an Egg McMuffin.

Every Friday, for years. Dad would stop and get himself a Big Breakfast and he’d get my mom an Egg McMuffin and a hash brown.

One morning, probably during a fit of frustration at four teenage daughters for being the way we were (primarily, fighting with each other over complete nonsense and whining about having to go to school where we would essentially hang out with our friends for 8 hours), my mom let it loose to me and my sister –

The big kahuna.
The thing I will never forget for the rest of my life.
The single fact that has shaped my adult decision-making process.

“I don’t even like Egg McMuffins,” she said.

My sister and I looked at each other, and then back at her like she’d just told us the TV Show Friends was canceled.

It could not be.

My mom does not like Egg McMuffins.

For YEARS. My dad had been doing this sweet thing for years, and my mom had been quietly huffing down a dry ass english muffin she didn’t even like because she didn’t want to tell my my dad, who thought he was doing something so sweet, that she wasn’t that into them.

What was my mother to do now? She’d let it slip and we were aghast. But it had been happening for so long, she couldn’t possibly tell him now. What would become of all the kind actions he had done? All the intentional moments he’d sat in the drive thru thinking he was being a good husband getting his wife her favorite Friday treat.

So, my mom did what any good wife would do (right?). Yep, the McMuffins kept rolling, and my mom kept eating them, and my sister and I kept looking at her.

At first, with disbelief. And then, with pity.

If she had just been honest back in 1990 when he brought her the first one. If she had said, “Hey, a breakfast burrito would be preferred.” Maybe then she would have had a decade of something she actually loved.

Instead it became awkward, something to hesitate around every single week.

“Should I tell him? No, I’ll just eat it.” She ate the dry disk with its rubbery ham and plastic cheese as she simultaneously ate the looks from her girls who couldn’t believe she was still doing it.

And this is how so many people live their lives.

Instead of telling the truth in the awkward moment right away, we hesitate. We think we’re doing the kind thing when really we’re actually just doing the nice thing. The kind thing is the uncomfortable thing, the honest thing. And the nice thing is almost always a compensating tactic to avoid saying the real thing in the moment it needs to be said.

It gets thick, and it gets thick fast.

Years ago, I vowed to Joey that I would not Egg McMuffin him. And it has led to many uncomfortable moments where he thought I was being mean but I was really being honest. (Admittedly, Sagittarians and tact don’t always get along. Add the McMuffin fiasco and I may have taken it next level for a few years there.)

But back to Geena.

Again, she has every right, just like my mom, to keep her truth to herself. But not stating the genuine and honest thing right away leads to so much unnecessary strife. People making up stories, Hollywood gossip, even false hope. All of which, I suppose, can be good for media coverage.

Maybe she doesn’t give a lick about any of it, and that’s totally ok. No matter what, it’s her choice. But I have to believe she gets asked about it constantly and just straight telling people the truth of the matter would avoid the annoyance of the pondering.

(I could write a whole separate article about obituaries and how I would prefer if we just stated out loud how a person died. Look, if I choke and die on an Egg McMuffin, just write it out and post it. Shout it loud and clear for all to know about. I’m dead. I cannot be embarrassed by the folly of my own inability to stop inhaling while I chew. And I don’t want my entire family feeling like they have to dodge questions from Facebook rubberneckers.)

Again, you owe nothing to no one. But perhaps you do owe yourself some peace.

And look, people evade the truth under the guise of niceties all the time. Protecting themselves or someone else. It’s normal. It feels like the ‘good hearted’ thing to do.

But people rarely talk about how much telling the truth right away actually saves you. How much guilt and resentment you avoid. How much happiness it buys you.

Just come out with the truth early, and you avoid having to stress about everything it creates downstream.

Sometimes I think we forget so much as we get older because our brains are full of garbage patterns we’ve created to avoid saying the truth and somewhere in the maze, we lose what’s actually real. We forget that just saying the real thing might sting for a second, but the suffering of avoidance is forever.

So, maybe people aren’t prodding you about whether you’ve had plastic surgery, or gifting your with Friday morning McMuffins, but we all have versions of truth avoidance in our own lives - and the unnecessary rigamarole it creates.

Think about something in your own life. Perhaps someone recently invited you to an event and you immediately knew you didn’t want to go. But instead of just saying, “Hey, that sounds great but it’s not for me,” you said, “Oh, I can’t. I have XYZ happening.”

And now you have to remember not to post anything on social media on that specific day because you told a friend about a fake event you’re not actually going to because you lied to avoid hurt feelings. (What? You’ve never done this?! Have you even LIVED?!)

Next time, maybe you can try cutting out all the unnecessary garbage and tell them from the get-go:

You don’t like Egg McMuffins.

Well, apparently during that time, I also reached over and turned my alarm off because an hour later, I woke up again and noticed the same thing. Something felt different. (And not just from that pang of, “Oh, shit!” after realizing you’d accidentally slept another hour. It was something else.)

I started to jump out of bed to check the time, but pushed myself back down. And that’s when I realized I was resisting doing my own morning practice. Heck, I hadn’t even DONE it yesterday. WTF.

You see, I am ADAMANT about setting your energy before getting out of bed. It’s the very first thing I do in the morning. It’s the first thing I have any new client do. Tune your energetic field to your most delicious energy before you get out of bed, and you’ll be fed it back to you all day long. I have a method that wrangles my madness and channels it into manifesting magic. Next to coffee, my retainers and my thyroid pill, it’s the only thing in my life that’s consistently on purpose and on-time. Every. Day.

But I didn’t want to do it today, and as I had this thought, I realized - crap - I hadn’t even done it yesterday. And the day before had been a struggle, too.

“There you go again, not living your own message you dumb FRAUD.”

My mind, ever the happy helper, fed me this oh-so-encouraging thought. Encouraging, only to once again encourage me help me to shift back into looking through a lens that has felt like home for most of my life.

“You are a bad person. You hurt people. You suck.”

That lens.

But I know the true fraud when I see it, and it’s these silly little protective thoughts. It’s my system trying to keep me from expanding beyond my cozy comforts and into new pastures. That’s what was really happening, and that realization felt like a relief.

My morning ritual isn’t bunk. I’m not a fraud. I’m simply expanding.

Most people have heard of the power of an intentional morning practice. I’m not talking about “Get up, drink raw eggs, work out for two hours, read a book and write 6 chapters of your own book all before the sun comes up” kind of morning practice. Mine is an under-10-minute energetic shift that changes the way you move through your day. Your actions, your choices, your decisions, your responses – all of them begin with the energy you start with. This is a FELT thing.

So, even though I was waking up an hour after I thought I would have, I decided to take a few minutes to get curious about why I was resisting doing something that I usually drop into effortlessly.

Usually, resistance around supportive practices points to one of two things:

1. Fear

You’re coming up against something. Expanding into a new level, on the edge of a bold move – or you just made the bold move. In any of these instances, you’re tapping the edges of your nervous system’s capacity and it’s letting you know. Specifically, your system is trying to get you to return to the comfort of “home.” It will do this by engaging thoughts and behaviors that stop you from taking steps forward.

That’s why the things that help you make the bold move, that tap you into the energy of miracles and possibility, can suddenly feel inaccessible. You don’t “feel like” doing the things that support you because your system wants to pull back into comfort and out of this uncharted territory you’re trying to explore. It wants to keep you in the familiar and the protected.

But there’s also another possibility.

2. You’re ready for an upgrade.

Sometimes the reason you’re resisting a practice isn’t because you are afraid of what’s next. It’s because you’ve done the work and you are ready for the next evolution. The morning practice you are doing literally isn’t doing it for you anymore. It’s time for something that stretches you.

And this morning, I realized I was in the second one. The version of my Expansion Ritual that I’ve been doing for a few months, the one that has helped me expand in massive ways, isn’t doing it for me anymore. This took me by surprise.

My first Expansion Ritual helped me manifest the most magical things, and I leveraged that same morning ritual for years. The next version lasted nearly a year. This one, mere months.

I’m sharing this today because it genuinely caught me off guard. I’ve never “blown through” a ritual so fast. But as I laid there, I realized the integration does feel complete and it’s time for a new one.

So I did what I know to do. I breathed, I got quiet with my soul, and I listened. What came through shocked me in its simplicity.

Lead with Love.

I FELT it. Something inside of me felt activated, alive, excited. Like a big, magnificent WOW. I knew it was right.

And I also knew that this message, this frequency, this feeling was not just for me right now. It was meant to be passed along immediately. A Mother’s Day gift.

Something I’m learning about the way my guidance works is that I’m not just meant to tune to frequencies only for myself. I’m meant to pass them along. But not always at first. Sometimes I am meant to integrate it for a while before I pass it down, but today, I knew this was something I’m meant to pass right now to others, for us to embody together. It feels something like, “Love is more powerful together.”

And OF COURSE we have a Frequency Shift happening tomorrow in The Expansion Room. And of course that’s exactly what we’re doing tomorrow. Lead with Love is happening on Monday May 11 at 9 am PT tomorrow.

We’ll do together what I did this morning. Get quiet, tap in, shift out of pressure, scarcity, and force and into the energy that creates powerful leadership.

If you want to do this shift with me and be in the room with us, it’s only $27 to join.

Go to jenliss.com/expansion

Do you have a morning practice? I always love hearing what works for people. I created my method because of how well it works for me.

I find beginnings and endings to be the most difficult part of a journey. When I used to run marathons, the most difficult miles were Mile 1 and Mile 26.

This was not the case for my husband, however, who could prance along in his first mile like a gazelle and sprint to the finish in Mile 26.

Perhaps my difficulty with beginnings has something to do with a long-time and deeply ingrained tendency to have one foot in, and one foot out the door at the beginning of a project. I’m talking about the hesitancy to go all-in, I mean REALLY go all in.

That mental struggle, the push-and-pull, is energetically exhausting.

In part because every thought you think is reflected in the body. A tendency to toggle between “Am I doing this?” and “I am f**king doing this!” is not just in your brain. It’s felt in your bones. The body physically hesitates, even if the tiniest bit.

Yes, thoughts show up in physical form. This is manifestation at play.

And it’s not just running. It’s the version of you who knows exactly what to say – and still doesn’t hit post. It’s when you want to start something, and don’t follow through.

But, for me, once I pass that point of the toggle. Once I get to Mile 2 and I’ve decided, “Well, f**k. I guess I AM doing this, after all.” It gets easier. I love the work once I’m in it, once I’m past that beginning part where I question if it’s worth the all-in energy.

Until the end.

If you walked down to my pantry right now, you would find 5-10 bags of “almost done” foods. A pinch of granola. A handful of nuts. Chips I held onto for a soup I may never make. I am notorious for not finishing TV series. I don’t finish books.

I chalk this up to watching my dad, who would dilly dally around on starting a project, would make amazing fast progress, and then would stop just before the end. My parents moved into their current house when I was 16 years old and he’s still never finished putting up one single piece of trim to finish the kitchen cabinets.

There is just something about extending the misery of Mile 26. My nervous system loves it. It feels like home. Like loyalty to my father and his way of being. And that is why my accomplishments, as hard as I have strived for them, never feel as good upon arrival as they do in miles 2-25.

Here is the cool thing.

The longer I have studied this and experimented with it myself, working with top coaches in the life coaching industry, watching millionaires work, and helping people to DO the things they say they want to do – I have learned something. Something that is, actually, a pretty easy fix.

Because the problem for most of us is less in the completion and more in the starting – more specifically, in the moment we refuse to fully decide. I dragged my feet for MONTHS (years?) on starting this Substack. (When I hooked it up to Stripe, the story told a tale of many false starts. The proof was right there for me to see – I bailed during Mile 1 with Substack exactly 8 times over the past 5 years.)

But, today, when I was walking my dog, I felt the desire to start again. And I thought, “You know what? I’m just going to follow my own advice I’d give to a client. I’ll start with what feels easiest and fun.”

And for me? That was talking about how starting is so effin hard.

So, welcome to this new Substack. I’ve missed long form writing, especially writing that is free and fun for me. I work best when something is not tied to any specific outcome, but also it makes sense for me to be doing it. When it feels easy and fun and right and good in my system. And that is my commitment to this space. I’ll follow it for as many miles as it feels good.

This publication is for those who want to hear the real talk on real things we deal with on our paths to living our fullest, most fun, most adventurous and free lives. All of my work ladders up to that. Whether you are lacing up your shoes at Mile 1, or looking to maintain the fun at Mile 10, my nervous system and coaching work may support you.

If this is our first time meeting, it’s wonderful to meet you. I look forward to interacting with you here. 🦄

And if you want a little bit of a deeper business dive, I talked about the process of starting and hitting “go” on an idea quickly in my podcast episode today. Check out Sell the ice cream before it melts (because waiting is costing you money!) on the F**k Around & Get Paid Podcast HERE.

What do you think? Is starting hard for you? Endings? Somewhere in the middle? Sound off in the comments.