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They say that the best business is founded when the owner sees a problem and fixes it.

Well, I had a problem.

It was an inspiration problem.

That seems odd to say because inspiration fundamentally is a good thing, except when it’s not.

I don’t know if you have experienced this, who am I kidding… I know you have experienced this, but you know when you are on your phone for a little while and that feeling kicks in? You know the one. That exhausting feeling of failure or even that mild feeling of defeat?

Sometimes the feeling is subtle. Sometimes it roars at us, and sometimes it just makes us feel totally incapable.

I may be exaggerating it, but I don’t think so. I know we have all had this problem.

I was looking at this and what was really happening with me as regards this issue I would run into. It wasn’t only while being on my phone. It would spread out into life activities or projects.

I would be hit with inspiration, decide to create or do something, not really know how to execute on it and it would stall. That uncertainty about how to execute or simply taking that first step towards my goal would delay execution. I would then feel I had failed and the inspiration to failure loop would start again.

Round and round it went.

I would see something I would aspire to create like a stylish women, a well designed home, a meal or a business idea and not knowing the path to get myself there the inspiration would immediately stall and with that came in the feeling of failure.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t bathe in failure daily. I am not down on myself constantly. I am a very capable person who has accomplished a lot in my life. However I would find myself stuck in certain areas and this did not make sense to me why until I really examined what was happening.

The Inspiration Problem

I had an inspiration problem that was two fold:

• The inspiration was not really my own but something I adopted by seeing something online or being influenced in some way.

• I was inspired but didn’t know HOW to act on that inspiration

Both of these scenarios would result in no action or maybe slight action, but I would be wholly stopped by for lack of a better word, inertia. If I took on inspiration or an idea that wasn’t truly my own the execution would stall. If I personally decided I wanted to create something but didn’t know the first step it would stall. Both adopting goals that were not really my own and not knowing how to execute on things I really did want to do would result in no motion or forward progress.

Inertia is the tendency for an object to continue what it’s doing. If it is in motion it will continue in motion and if it is stopped it will continue to stay stopped. It’s a resistance to change.

When you add scrolling on social media into the mix something additional occurs.

When you are on social media you are being hit with micro inspiration or ideas at warp speed. One video is telling you about an organized drawer, the next a new purse, the next how to apply red lipstick, another is describing a million dollar e-commerce plan and in the next a woman is describing her carnivore smoothie.

One idea thrown at you after the next all while you are making small decisions about yourself and your life.

I would like to be more organized!

I wonder if I should make banana bread.

Look at that upholstery! I wonder if it would get stained easily.

I should launch a business.

I wish I had longer legs.

I would never want to be a carnivore…. maybe I should have a salad for lunch.

It just goes on and on and on. These tiny little decisions about ourselves and our lives. Some of these decisions aren’t even our own! They are based on what we have been served by an algorithm and almost occur automatically.

There is one thing I know about decisions: when we make them, we like to try to make them come true. When we don’t make them come true it’s like we let ourselves down. We feel stuck, tired and immobile. You see… inertia. If we don’t make them come true it’s like little tiny broken promises to ourselves.

The average 10 minute scroll can expose you to 100 - 300 pieces of content. That means while you are online you could be making multiple if not 100+ decisions about yourself in a very short timespan.

Inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to feel, create, or do something. I believe inspiration can come from within and I certainly experience it when interacting with other people, creativity and art. While being on social media or the internet, it is inspiration on 15 shots of espresso.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of social media. I do not regard it as evil or something to be wholly avoided. I have worked in social media for 14 years. Social media is a communication tool that I have gained a lot of joy and connection from being both a creator and consumer of content.

With any tool, you need to understand how that tool works to utilize it effectively and not get hurt. A table saw is incredibly effective at cutting wood, but if you don’t know how to use it or you zone out while cutting something, you will chop your finger off.

Tools are much more effective when they are understood.

When I finally saw that social media was creating these micro-decisions or agreements with myself that I was constantly breaking or not executing I was able to flip the switch for myself on how I interacted with social media but more importantly HOW I ACTED ON INSPIRATION IN MY REAL LIFE.

The Fix

I was reviewing my life and sorting out for myself what had been making me feel stopped in moving forward in certain areas or projects. The most basic example was hanging curtains in my apartment.

For 10 years I wanted to hang curtains in my living room and the project would just stall over and over. I had so many excuses. I didn’t know who would hang them in our San Francisco lathe and plaster walls. I didn’t know how high they would be. What type of curtain rods do you use for Bay Windows? Why are curtains so expensive. If I get Amazon curtains now, will I regret it later because I know what I hang will be there for two decades. Should they be lined? I mean…. so many questions and so many excuses to not act, but fundamentally, at its core, I simply didn’t know what the FIRST question was or what the FIRST step was.

Finally I realized I just needed to measure how high my ceiling was and what size the windows were. That was the first step. I took that information into The Shade Store and I sat with a very kind designer for about an hour while he fully educated me on the exact type of rods, how high I should hang them, the fact I did need to have lined curtains, the type of fabric that would hold up and every single detail imaginable. It was glorious. I felt empowered. We got a price quote and it was way over our budget, but I was able to take that knowledge over to Restoration Hardware and order everything I needed, found someone to install them and BAM, a project I had stalled for 10 years suddenly moved.

It was as if something unlocked and I finally understood that I can get things done when I know the key fundamentals or starting point and then I build from there with just enough education to lead to action.

Suddenly inspiration was no longer the problem because I could see something, feel inspired and then know whether I wanted to actually execute on it and the steps to take. I found an inspiration to action formula.

Inspiration to Action Formula

1. Decide if I want to do something truly for myself.

2. Get enough education to know what the first or next step is, usually by finding the person who already knows and asking the right questions.

3. Continue the project through to completion.

4. Utilize my own key successful daily practices that help me carry things through to a done despite adversity.

I started welcoming that inspiration and started actually getting things done in my life and then came the business idea.

Dewe Life Brand Story

In February 2025 I released my 10 Day Life Support Checklist as a PDF on my website. It was based on my experiences of going through periods of extreme stress, like when I was caring for my mother in the ICU or periods of intense personal growth or hard work. There were certain things I noticed I would do in these types of scenarios to keep myself going.

This checklist included every successful thing that would create enough calm in my life so I could concentrate on the task at hand. It included key actions that would prevent my body from getting sick due to stress. It included things I knew would bring joy into my life so I could face whatever circumstance with that much more power. The steps would ensure I was getting enough sleep, not clouding myself with alcohol, taking care of key actions and serve as a reminder to ask for help.

I released this checklist as an antidote to the overwhelm of day to day living and the anxiety we are all experiencing, but remember, it wasn’t just for periods of overload or hardship, it was also a launching pad for periods of self-growth or hard work.

It was my own First Step that had helped me time and time again so I wanted to give that to you.

Before the inspiration, before the new projects, before the intense times, this 10 Day Life Support Checklist is designed to give you enough joy in the present to carry you through to the attainment of your goals.

These are the daily actions that you can come back to time and time again when you feel stuck in the inspiration to failure zone. It is essentially step 4 of my “Inspiration to Action” formula.

As of today this free PDF has been downloaded over 5000 times with minimal marketing. I think I made 3 videos about it and sent a few newsletters.

I hated the format however. I felt it would be downloaded and forgotten. To actually be utilized you would need to print it out and post it somewhere. I wanted to create a tool or app that would allow you to track your progress. That is where the idea of Dewe Life started.

I had big goals for Dewe.Life. Originally I wanted to generate an AI software that would read podcasts or social content from experts and extract their key successful actions and formulate a Dewe List, a series of steps anyone could follow to achieve a result. As I learned more about AI and copyright laws I knew I wanted to go in the opposite direction and use REAL women, real people and experts and talk to them.

From my experience running my marketing agency I know I have a unique skill to be able to sit with a person for a little while and interview them about their life or skillset and extract from them things that have become second nature. True experts in their fields get to the point where they don’t even need to think about the sequence of actions to attain something wonderful. Just like my guy at the Shade Store. He just knew and could show me. Sitting with him for one hour and asking him the right questions gave me everything I needed to know. I have done this over and over again with business owners, Swiss bankers, artists, designers, make up artists, tech executives and successful people.

I was never interested in what they knew, more so I wanted to learn what they actually DID. What actions did they take, how did they execute? What were the core bits of knowledge they used to guide themselves.

My 10 Day Life Support Checklist is essentially an extraction of my own core knowledge and successful actions I have learned over the past 30 years. They are somewhat second nature steps that click in when I am going through something, good or bad. They are the steps I actually DO that carry me through.

While developing Dewe.Life (Do Life) I released an additional PDF Inflammation Checklist in collaboration with NP Carmen and a Dewe Life Newsletter collaboration with Stylist Sara Acevedo.

I really wanted to provide women with real life action steps to improve their lives based on experts who actually do those things in a way that wasn’t overwhelming but empowering.

So no, the Dewe.Life tech company that I originally founded is not and never will be an AI tool and has evolved into a hybrid multi-media, app and journal company.

The App is Here!

Our first release is the App Dewe. This app is going to house curated expert lists of real action items to help you take your dreams and inspirations and turn them into reality, one simple step at a time.

The very first Dewe Life list we are releasing is the 10 Day Life Support Checklist as it is essentially both the starting point and the reset you can come back to again and again. In the app you will have the daily steps you will execute and check off. These will reset every day. It includes an additional series of 10 Dewe Life Actions designed to be done only once over the 10 day period that you can check off. Each step contains just enough education about why that step is important to inspire action. You will not be overwhelmed with data. Just enough info to get you going.

The goal of Dewe Life is to close the gap from where you are to where you want to be one step at a time. Our purpose is to help you take your dreams, your inspiration and your goals and make them real.

We are going to do this through a few products:

• The Dewe App as described above with the 10 Day Life Support Checklist as the starting point and foundation you can come back to again and again any time you feel stuck.

• The Dewe Life Journal: A journal format I am developing with Chloe Latch. This journal will release quarterly on each solstice and equinox. It will be illustrated each season by Chloe who is a fine artist and will fit right into your A5 journal covers. This is where you can really focus in on your own big goals and dreams and then work out your own tactical first steps to execute them. The journal will also have seasonal ideas of life activities you can do to help get you moving. Sometimes we all just need a little change of pace to break through that inertia.

• The Dewe Life Newsletter: This will continue bi-monthly and will include upcoming collaborations with experts in their field and my interviews with them.

These interviews will likely be recorded and shared in some yet to be determined format. We will turn these expert interviews into their own Dewe Life Checklists on specific topics for you to utilize on the app to improve some area of your life.

I developed Dewe Life for myself. I wanted to turn my inspiration into real action in my life and create tools that would make it easier to do that. I wanted to have resources that I could use to unstick myself when I was stalled on things I really wanted to execute. I wanted to create tools that would get me dreaming big enough to expand my life but with tactical steps to actually get me there.

My inspiration problem is now my inspiration solution: Dewe Life.

The app is now officially launched in the app store! You can download it here. The 10 Day Life Support section of the app is free and always will be. There may be a small paywall when we start building out additional expert collaborations but that is yet to be determined.

The app is intentionally simple. Right now there are no notifications enabled so I do advise you put it on your home screen so you remember to log your steps. You will be one of the first people to test the app so I am open to any feedback or issues you may run into with it.

The icon was designed by my daughter Chloe who will also be designing the journals. I am absolutely in love with it and so glad she agreed to work with me on this.

Here is what you will get with the download:

• Free access to the 10 Day Life Support Checklist in an easy to use app for your iPhone

• Be the first to test the app. Your feedback will shape what we build next.

• As an early user, help decide what future tools and resources get added.

• As a newsletter subscriber you will receive first access to all future releases and special discounts.

You can email me directly any comments, feedback, ideas or questions at hi@jenniferlatch.com

Download DEWE App Here

I intentionally built this email as a nearly 3000 word essay so you would understand the why behind Dewe Life and know this is coming from a real person who saw something that needed to be better and set out to create something that would make it better.

I didn’t want this to feel like you were entering a marketing funnel and there are no trick upsells or slick landing pages. I am sure I will eventually have some better avenues to release products as they come, but if you are reading this you are my friend and I just wanted to give it to you straight.

It would mean a lot to me if you downloaded this Dewe Life App, tried it and let me know what you think.

It is a 10 day checklist you can come back to again and again any time you feel stuck or feel like you need a boost. That’s how I use it.

Who knows, your first 10 Days may spark something incredible.

I would love to hear about it.

Welcome to your First 10 Days.

xx, Jen

ps. For now we have only released in the US and Canada. We will be expanding to more markets as soon as we can.

Your First 10 Days

It is very on trend for brands to be pro-aging rather than anti-aging while at the same time they are essentially selling the same thing but calling it longevity.

Weight loss content is reframed as metabolic health.

It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle! (I have said this over and over since my mid-20s)

Hitting your macros is just like calorie counting.

I think when you live long enough you start to see the patterns and the same thing over and over with different colored ribbon.

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe we have made progress. I work with a skincare brand I love that promotes skin longevity. I just signed a new deal with a company that calls aging ICONIC. As women, we are being educated now on the importance of muscle mass. It’s not just all marketing fluff with no substance.

We are making progress.

You may not know this about me, but a key reason I am a content creator is because of how I saw my mother relate to her own body and how she aged.

She died of breast cancer when I was 31, one day before she turned 57. The morning she passed away she had a moment of extreme clarity. It is known in the end-of-life care community that often towards the final moments of a person’s life they have a moment of intense clarity with an ability to deeply connect with loved ones. This happened the morning of my mother’s death and she made a joke about aging. We were encouraging her to make it to her birthday and she said… “Well, at least I am not 57.”

That statement and her passing set something off inside me. I was not going to loathe aging and I was going to do everything in my power to not have her fate become my fate.

When she passed my daughters were 6 and 3. Two years later I had my 3rd daughter and I became somewhat overwhelmed with laundry, managing my finances, staying healthy, working and all the other things that come with parenting in your 30s.

I started blogging in 2012 on a site called Our Urban Playground. The tag line for the site was, “Turning Life Into Play”. My work there focused on turning the grief associated with my mother’s death into valuable lessons of growth for myself and my family. A lot of my early content centered around how I was going to deal with raising my family without her. It focused on taking the mundane, the laundry and the day to day acts of motherhood and turning them into more creative pursuits. I wanted to inject joy into this incredibly difficult time in my life.

Over the years my career and creative pursuits shifted and changed. For almost a decade I actually did marketing and content management for other creators, entrepreneurs, celebrities and brands. I produced very little on my own platforms.

By 2023 I found that I had lost my way. I hadn’t created for myself in many years and somehow thought that maybe I had become a fraud. Here I was telling other people what to post on social media and despite the viral campaigns I was a part of, maybe I was just riding on the coattails of other successful people.

I challenged myself to come up with a concept I could openly speak about on social media and I landed on aging.

I knew aging was going to be something that would happen for the rest of my life and I knew that it was closely aligned with my purpose to find the joy even in the hard things.

My relationship with my aging body had shifted over the past 3 years. I am fully in perimenopause now with night sweats, hormone replacement therapy and lower abdomen weight gain. I do understand why the idea of “anti-aging” is a marketable commodity, but I have found it even easier to commit to the concept that aging is cool.

Today I launched a new series on social called, Aging is Cool. In this series I am including my life philosophy of injecting joy in to every aspect of it, even when it is hard.

Some recent research I’ve done showed a frequent search term for adult women was “how to lose weight”. I understand why, I myself have gained 30 pounds over the past 3 years, but what we really should be researching is our gut health and how to build muscle. Those two things alone will take care of a lot of things from supporting our hormones to preserving our bone density, not to mention making our butt look great.

Your butt looks great right now btw, just as it is, in case you were wondering or worrying about that. ;)

So here I am at 47, around the time my mother's own perimenopause started to rev up its engines. I watched her fear of aging set in. I watched the medical field betray her, until she was dead a decade later.

I want a different story for myself.

I want a different story for all of us.

So my take on aging is not just the same old anti-aging jargon repackaged as empowered positive thinking or marketing.

I truly want a better outcome.

I want to be strong.

I want to enjoy food.

I want to enjoy my body.

I want to enjoy aging.

What if the best is not behind us, but right around the corner and well into the future?

That is what I want for myself and that is what I want for you.

I hope this new Dewe Life series on aging delivers that to us.

I will be sharing everything I learn along the way because after all, Aging is cool.

Love Jen

ps. Dewe Life (pronounced do) is my company that was founded with the purpose to help women close that gap from where they are to where they want to be in all different areas. I have an app coming out soon that will initially be a lifestyle reset called the 10 Day Life Support. In September I will be launching a new product with my daughter. Dewe Life will also be doing collaborations with experts in all areas of work, art, health and lifestyle to bring you their core life lessons and strategies through the app or this newsletter.

Skip all the reading and go right to the best of everything.

skip right to the best of everything

Listen to me read this newsletter to you.

What I am about to write is going to be so annoying that I am even annoying myself so bear with me.

There is nothing worse than people who have been bestowed with some kind of good luck or fortune complaining about the riches they have received.

It’s like when rich people complain about the baseboards needing to be finished while touring you through their 5 million dollar estate.

With all that being said, knowing that I am annoying myself and quite possibly annoying you, I am going to move forward with my complaints.

I am actually quite overwhelmed with the amount of products I have access to as an “influencer”.

I don’t consider myself to be an influencer. In a way I am, but influencing you to buy things is not at all what I am trying to do… except sometimes when I am. I do at times want you to buy from the brands I choose to collaborate with, and who support me in what I am REALLY trying to do.

What I am really trying to do is help you feel better about yourself. Help you feel more confident. Help you overcome the day to day setbacks that come with growing up and growing older so together we can create a better future for ourselves. I am not trying to sell you things, I am trying to help you live a better life.

Sometimes products fit into that goal of helping you feel better and so, if I use them, I will promote them.

So I am not an influencer. I am a content creator, writer and storyteller who has the goal to help you achieve your own goals. Sometimes products fit into that story and sometimes they don’t.

The thing I really don’t want to have occur is for our relationship to turn into a bunch of marketing noise. I guard against that in the brands I choose to partner with, the campaigns I will agree to and how I present the products to you. I never feature a product that I have not genuinely worked into my daily life.

I don’t believe marketing and selling is dirty. It certainly can be. Recently a Telehealth company used my image, my voice and my kitchen to create an AI ad marketing a GLP-1! They used my cadence, my urgency with which I make certain points and they even used my messy kitchen countertops in the background to market a low cost tirzepatide.

I find this to be quite dirty.

My agents and I are in touch with this company and soon lawyers will likely be involved.

So yes, while that marketing and selling is unethical, not all marketing and selling is unethical. In fact, I believe the ability to sell is a vital skill everyone should learn. Ideally a product is so good it simply sells itself, but why let a good thing sit on a shelf waiting to be discovered if you could actually just tell people about it so they can make their life better with it?

My background since the age of 14 when I was selling door to door coupons for dry cleaners, is marketing and advertising, but my passion is storytelling. The fact that I have been able to create a career of telling stories on the internet and then periodically market brands is like a dream job.

It is wrong to complain about a dream job but here it is in all its annoying glory.

I have become overwhelmed with the amount of access I have to new products.

My niche is primarily in the health and beauty space. I get offered so much make up, skincare, supplements and devices that I have an entire cabinet in my office filled with items.

This is for sure something I am very grateful for. I have been able to give products to all my friends. My daughters raid the cabinet all the time. My middle daughter Ella even filmed a TikTok recently holding up all the products that were on her “influencer mom’s” desk. So this is certainly a blessing and a curse.

My husband refers to my dresser as Sephora and has become apathetic on trying to bring order to it all.

I have been working recently to streamline my routines and really sort out for myself what I truly love independent of whether it was free, a paid partnership or something I bought and I realized what was actually bugging me about the whole thing.

Fundamentally what I am overwhelmed with is too many choices and I think this is something you may be overwhelmed with too.

Maybe you don’t have a huge cabinet full of products, but you certainly are being BOMBARDED with messages every single day about the next best serum, the must have shoe and the perfect protein powder.

No doubt you have accumulated many different supplements or lip glosses. I know you must have a drawer full of products you have stacked up on your hunt for the best one.

I never want to have the situation where I am causing you to feel overwhelmed by too many choices. I don’t want our relationship to simply turn into a bunch of noise or random pitches.

So I am very selective on the brand partnerships I choose and I have become more selective on how many products I will accept and test.

I have gotten to the age where I actually want to use the best of everything that I can afford and from brands I feel deserve my money. I do get a lot of free things which is why complaining is uncalled for. However, not everything I use and promote is free. I buy my own hormones from Alloy, Kosas has never sent me anything despite using their brow product in over 200 videos and I buy my Frame jeans when they go on sale.

I have been working on narrowing down the products that I turn to again and again. Together with my eldest daughter Chloe, we pulled this into a list of my core products I will buy over and over and use again and again. They are simply the best from my view after trying so many things.

If you have watched a lot of my videos you will recognize many of the products because they repeat over and over again in my content.

This list may change or adjust as I discover new things or find that a certain product doesn’t work for me anymore.

I have worked to narrow things down to ONE in each category of product. For example, one oil cleanser, one regular cleanser, one eye cream, one hairbrush etc.

Every brand I feature has a number of other wonderful products too, so I hope you will take the list as an introduction to some new brands.

I have called this list the Best of Everything… at least according to me.

Some products on this list I will make affiliate commission on. Some products I won’t make a dime. Some brands I am a brand ambassador for and will have discount codes to share with you. Some brands don’t know I exist.

I wanted to narrow down the best of everything according to my experience and that's it. Bonus if I make a commission if you buy it, but not necessary to make it onto the list.

I know I am still going to test new products. I will never lose the thrill of discovering something new, but I am also enjoying just finding the best one and sticking with it for a while.

I hope you find it helpful and discover your new best thing too.

xo Jen

The Best of Everything

Style is not something you have. Style something you do.

What my stylist Sara taught me about dressing yourself at any stage of life

A few weeks ago I sat down with my stylist Sara Acevedo for what I thought was going to be a conversation about clothes.

It wasn’t really about clothes.

It was about freedom.

Freedom is a strong word to apply to the activity of getting ready, but when you can get ready and feel great about yourself without feeling stressed out or overwhelmed in the process, that is more than just getting dressed.

Sara’s whole goal as a stylist and image consultant isn’t to make women look good. She wants women to be so confident in how they look that they stop thinking about it entirely. The end game is that you walk out the door, you feel like yourself, and then you get on with the actual business of your life.

Style in service of something bigger.

To me that is freeing.

Because if I’m being honest with you, over the past several months getting dressed has felt like a problem. I’ve gained 30 pounds. My body is different. The things that used to work don’t work the same way anymore and I found myself overwhelmed in fitting rooms, frustrated in my own closet, and unsure of how to still feel like me in a body that felt unfamiliar.

I simply had no idea how to dress these new curves and that made me feel overwhelmed sometimes.

The change in my body made me realize that often what I wore had been dictated by what had been marketed to me, what I could afford and what I could fit into. Somewhere along the way I had lost my own sense of style while going through the different phases of my life. Strangely, and this is a little hard to admit, I don’t think I had ever really figured out what my personal style really was.

I came to Sara not just wanting to look good. I came to her wanting to feel confident in how to navigate getting ready in this new phase of my life.

What she ended up giving me was way more than that.

She gave me a framework to understand my point of view when it came to getting ready no matter what role I was in or what extra curve I had.

I want to give this framework to you.

First, let’s clear something up

There is a myth that style is something you either have or you don’t. That some women are just born knowing how to put themselves together and the rest of us are just out here hoping for the best.

That’s not true.

Sara was very clear about this: everyone has personal style.

Every single person.

What most people are missing is the understanding of what they like, why they like it, and how to execute it on their actual body in their actual life.

Personal style is two things working together. Personal, meaning you. What fires you up. What feels meaningful. What makes you feel like the most true version of yourself. And style, which is simply the manner of executing that. It’s not a thing you have. It’s a thing you do.

And like anything worth doing, it takes practice.

The four things you actually need

Sara broke it down into four areas: discovery, body knowledge, shopping, and styling.

Here’s what that actually looks like in practice.

Discovery is where you start.

Before you touch your closet or walk into a single store, you need to understand what you are actually drawn to. The best way to do this is to pull images. Create a Pinterest board, save to Instagram, screenshot things that catch your eye and don’t overthink it. Cast a wide net. You’re not curating a feed. You’re taking inventory of your own taste.

Here is my Pinterest board I pulled together for myself.

Doing this experience for the first time of very rapidly just pulling images of outfits that really represented my view of how I want to dress and what I find interesting was actually a wild experience. It was as if for the first time in my life I established my own point of view on style. If you take nothing from this newsletter but this it will be worth it. Do this self-discovery process. You may be shocked what you find.

I was shocked. I actually teared up a little. Dramatic, I know.

Once you have a large collection of images, sit with them and start writing down adjectives. Not “I like that outfit.” More like: “structured, effortless, a little undone, confident, colorful, monochromatic, not trying too hard.” Those words are your compass. They’re what you’ll come back to again and again.

Also pay attention to who is wearing the things you love. Finding people with similar body types and personalities whose style resonates with yours is incredibly useful. Not because you’ll copy them, but because seeing a style translated onto a body similar to yours gives you real information to work with.

Body knowledge is not about judgment.

This part is purely practical and it requires you to be objective. You are not looking at your body to critique it. You are looking at it the way a tailor would. What are your proportions? What are your measurements? What are the lines of your silhouette? What do you want to accentuate and what do you want to smooth?

One thing Sara taught me that I hadn’t thought about before: style is a lot about applying the laws of aesthetics. Specifically the rule of thirds. Humans are wired to find things beautiful when they’re divided into two thirds and one third rather than split fifty-fifty down the middle. This is true in art, in architecture, and in how you put an outfit together. Knowing this one rule alone will change how you look at proportion and how you get dressed.

Here is a great example of a reel from a wonderful fashion educator friend of mine named Jennine Jacob.

You don’t have to follow it rigidly. Breaking rules can be interesting too. But you have to know the rule before you can break it with intention.

Gaining an understanding of what my body really looked like and what the proportions were, allowed me to separate size on the label from my value. This gave me freedom to simply apply an artistic view to it.

Sara had me take all my measurements and take photos of myself in leggings and a sports bra so she could simply look at the body.

Earlier in my life I had so much fixation on fitting into a small size. I literally bought pants just because they were a certain size I could zip up. This is CRAZY TOWN.

You have to be able to look at your body, understand its measurements and understand its shape to be able to express yourself through it.

When the size on the label is separated from your personal value, suddenly you are no longer fixated on “fitting into the pants” and more so looking at “does the cut of this garment feel good and work well on my body”.

Knowledge of your body is not about judgement. It allows freedom of expression.

Shopping needs a list.

Sara said something that made me laugh because it is so obvious and so true: you never go to the grocery store without knowing what you need for dinner. If you do, you end up confused and overwhelmed and you buy things you don’t actually need and forget the things you do.

Shopping for clothes is the same.

Before you step foot in a store, do the work first. Go through your closet. Try everything on. Take photos of yourself in each piece. Look at what you actually wear versus what’s just hanging there. From that exercise, you’ll see the gaps. Then write an actual list. What do you need? What’s missing? What would complete what you already have?

Then, and this is the mindset shift that changed everything for me, go into that store as someone who is in charge. You are not walking in hoping something will make you feel good enough. You are walking in knowing what you need, knowing what works on your body, and deciding whether this particular store has earned your money. Most of the time it hasn’t. That’s okay. Another one will.

Try things on even if you aren’t sure. Take photos. Make notes. The goal of shopping is not just to buy things. It’s to learn what works on you in real life versus what you loved on a hanger or on someone else.

The other day I went into Anine Bing and tried on some very cute green pants. I asked for the size 10. I knew that would be the right size and I didn’t care that 7 years ago I would have been a 4. I asked for the 10. Do you want to know what I discovered? Anine Bing does not know how to cut for someone with a butt. Even in size 10. The pants “fit” but my butt looked as flat as a pancake. For the first time in a long time this didn’t make me feel overwhelmed or bad about myself. I literally thought, “Anine only knows how to cut clothes for her body type even if the size is larger” and that is not my fault. I will spend my money with someone who knows how to do it properly. Full stop. Also, no shade on AB, her Dylan coat is divine and I wore it all over Europe. It’s perfect.

I told Sara about my experiences at Anine Bing and she said, did you know there is a known problem in the styling world that very few clothing companies know how to do sizes 8 - 12 well? SHOCKED. I had no idea.

She pulled some looks together from brands that work really well in the 8 - 12/14 size range. I have linked it at the end of this newsletter.

Styling is how you make it yours.

This is where your personal point of view comes back in. Styling is the difference between wearing an outfit and owning it. It’s knowing that a pair of barrel jeans, a t-shirt, and Birkenstocks are a foundation and then deciding what you add to that to make it say something. An accessory, a proportion play, a layer. Something that communicates your specific point of view.

This is also where the rule of thirds comes back. Where are you breaking the line? Where are you creating visual interest? What do you want the eye to land on?

I think for this step, the actual styling, it is important to really do the work on discovering what your personal style viewpoint is. That is what makes jeans and a t-shirt different. How it is styled.

After doing this framework with Sara, I packed for the trip I am on right now. A few months ago, getting ready for this trip would have been overwhelming and I would have panic shopped. That didn’t happen this time.

I was able to pull looks together very quickly. I reviewed my Pinterest board and thought about the activities I would be involved in on the trip which was a combination of school events and parties with a fair amount of walking in the Pacific Northwest.

Sara had taught me that once you understand your own point of view, you can adjust the styling to fit what you will be doing and the destination. How you will dress on a beach in Mexico will be different from how you will dress at a school fundraiser in Oregon but you can maintain your point of view in both settings.

My first outfit was a pair of wide legged cropped black denim, paired with a graphic tee, a structured coat, cowboy boots, a cross body yellow bag and a green scarf around my neck. I felt confident, comfortable and it fit what I would be doing that day.

I got out of the car and saw a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. The first thing out of her mouth was:

This outfit is amazing. I want everything in my size.

I told her, it’s not this outfit specifically you want. You want the styling framework. You need the Dewe List.

In case you don’t know I am developing an app to help bring the expertise of women to the world. The app is called Dewe and the overall brand Dewe Life. I believe all women have unique superpowers and knowledge that they have gained after years of work and practice. In their ability lies fundamental simple truths that if we learned and applied could dramatically improve our own quality of life on that topic.

The dewe list: your style discovery action steps

These are the practical steps from Sara’s framework. Do them in order. Take your time.

1. Pull 50 or more images to a Pinterest board or Instagram saves folder. Save anything that catches your eye without overthinking it. Cast wide.

2. Review your images and write down every adjective that describes what you see. Look for patterns. What words keep showing up?

3. Write down adjectives that describe your personality, how you move through the world, how you want to be perceived.

4. Compare your lists and find the words that show up in multiple places or feel the most true. Narrow down to three adjectives that define your style direction.

5. Take your measurements and take photos of your body in clothes that clearly show your body shape. REMEMBER: this is about knowledge. Not spiralling into hating your body.

6. Go through your closet and try on everything you actually wear. Take full-length photos of each outfit using your phone timer so you can see your complete silhouette.

7. Review the photos. Notice what you gravitate toward. Notice what works and what doesn’t. Look at the proportions and the lines.

8. Create a list of what you need. Real gaps. Specific things that would complete or improve what you already have.

9. Visit a few stores that reflect your three adjectives. Try things on even if they are outside what you would normally choose. Take photos. Ask yourself: do these clothes reflect my three style adjectives? Do I like this in real life as much as I liked it on a screen? What themes keep appearing?

10. If you get to a store and nothing works sizing wise, don’t stress, go to a different store. Remember, it is a known problem that the mid-size women (size 8 - 14) are a widely underserved category in fashion. Strange, but true.

11. Begin putting outfits together with intention. Consider proportion. Think about what you want to communicate. Add one element that feels like you.

12. When life shifts, come back to step one and start again.

This will take work. and then it won’t.

Here’s the thing Sara was honest about: in the beginning, this takes time and effort. Getting dressed will not be automatic. You have to do the organizational work to teach yourself. You have to try things, take photos, look at what works, and build the knowledge.

But eventually it becomes second nature. Like anything, once you understand the fundamentals you can move through them freely. You stop having to think about it. You just know. And that’s when getting dressed stops being a problem you’re solving every morning and starts being something that just happens, the way brushing your teeth happens.

That’s the freedom Sara is after.

This is not a one-time thing

Here’s what I found most reassuring about everything Sara shared: style isn’t something you figure out once and then you’re done. You’re going to go through phases. Your body is going to change. Your life is going to change. You might be a young mother and then an executive and then a woman who has completely reinvented herself three times over and is doing it again.

Each time you hit a transition, you go back to the beginning. You look at what you’re drawn to now. You look at your body now. You look at your environment and your life now. What makes sense for someone who spends her days on the playground is different from what makes sense for someone walking into boardrooms. Personal style in Costa Rica looks different from personal style in Toronto in January. Context matters.

What stays consistent is you. There’s a through line in all of it. The things that have inspired you, the art you’ve been exposed to, the people who have moved you, the life you’ve lived. That thread is always there even when everything else is shifting.

The biggest lesson I learned from Sara is that style is something you do and it’s not a magic quality that just exists. It takes some education and practice. When you do the steps she laid out you will attain a new level of expression independent of marketing or that feeling of overwhelm with a pile of clothes in the corner of a dressing room.

The framework and steps give you the ability to put enough foundation in to have fun and create. That is freedom… at least to me. :)

Have fun getting dressed.

L Jen

Sara Acevedo is a personal stylist and image consultant. You can find out more about her services at saraacevedostyle.

As promised, here is Sara’s links to pieces that work great in the 8 - 14 range!

Midsize Finds!

Some women refer to phases of their lives as their “era”.

You have probably seen it on social media or when you are out for coffee with friends.

I am in my “hot girl era”.

My “mom era”.

“It’s my entrepreneurial era” - Someone cool told me last year I was in my entrepreneurial era and it made me feel quite extra due to who it was. Looking back on it now he was trying to close a deal with me so…

My “IDGAF era”

You get the idea. I am sure you are in some era of your own.

Here is the thing though, identifying your era doesn’t matter. Your life is not a viral social media trend and you can’t sum up all the layers of yourself into a tidy little phrase.

However, if I was to classify what era I was in currently it would be called my digestion and exfoliation era.

There isn’t really anything that compares to well moving GI tract and the satisfaction of sloughed off dead skin cells. When your digestion is on point, you feel like you are absorbing your nutrients, you have regular bowel movements and the body doesn't feel as sluggish. When you combine that with truly great exfoliation where you get into the nooks and crannies like behind your ears, your fingers and toes, your upper back, your armpits and your chest, you feel somewhat reborn. Like a lizard who had a great shed both externally and internally.

This is especially important in midlife and here is why it matters beyond just feeling good: your body processes hormones through your gut. There's actually a name for the gut bacteria responsible for clearing your hormones, it's called the estrobolome. When your digestion is sluggish and you're not getting enough fiber, those bacteria can't do their job, and your used estrogen gets recirculated instead of eliminated. In midlife, when your hormones are already all over the place, the last thing you need is your gut putting them back into circulation.

This gut factor for females and especially women over 30 is why you see so many midlife influencers pounding the microphone about fiber and getting the number up to an astronomical 30 grams a day.

I personally was having a really hard time getting enough fiber because my husband cooks our meals and he loves steak and veggies. I love a man who cooks, especially my husband, but we needed to adjust the menu for my sake. I started sending him dense bean salad recipes and interesting ways to dress up quinoa. I even tried the viral chia seed berry yogurt and it was surprisingly incredible… Here is a link to a video showing a version of it.

The Layer Peeler

The routine I am about to explain to you is not something you can do every day unless you are an independently wealthy boring individual with no passions or interests outside of the care of your own body. All said this routine took about 16 hours including 10 hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep. (10 hours!!!!)

Step 1 - Gut Support and Sleep

It started the day before with a pressure point. On the inside of your leg, just below the knee right at that soft spot where your calf meets the top of your shin on the inner side, find the spot where it’s sore. That soreness is telling you something. Rub it for about 30 seconds on both sides. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, this is the Yin Mound Spring and working that area helps to resolve digestive stagnation. Whether you believe in TCM or not doesn’t matter. It works.

That evening I made the viral chia seed yogurt as my bedtime snack, took some ozonated magnesium oxide and used Seed’s Sleep + Restore bio-identical melatonin which also has other gut microbiome boosting ingredients. I am on HRT and my progesterone also helps with restful sleep too.

This combo resulted in 10 hours of uninterrupted deep sleep. I fell asleep at 10pm and woke up to birds chirping like I was Disney Princess at 8am and took my probiotic on an empty stomach with water.

10 hours.

That much sleep does an interesting thing to the body. Sleep is when the body actually repairs itself. A 2026 study out of UC Irvine found that sleep disruption impairs the intestinal stem cells responsible for maintaining a healthy gut lining. When you are sleeping well, those step cells are doing their job. When you’re not, that repair process breaks down.

The pressure point + chia seeds + magnesium + great sleep + a probiotic = the best BM ever.

Things moved. Beautifully.

Step 2 The Bath

I filled up my bath with piping hot water and added Epsom salts like I was rich. It wasn’t the whole bag, but almost. I added this incredible body oil from Wonder Valley and I soaked.

While soaking I did an oil cleanser on my face, neck, chest, upper back and armpits with some good lymphatic massage while cleansing. I followed this up with a gel cleanser and topped it off with an exfoliating mask for 10 minutes. I applied the mask to not just my face but my neck, chest and upper back too.

While the mask was doing its magic I pushed back my cuticles on my fingers and toes with the best beauty tool investment I have ever made… a simple wood cuticle pusher.

The combo of the hot water and various cleansing agents loosened up some skin behind my ears and in other areas and it all just sort of sloughed off. I probably could have made this even better with a good dry brush before the bath.

I rinsed off, got out and was genuinely shocked at how good I felt.

Step 3 A little exercise and skincare

After the bath I slapped some skincare on my body, put on some clothes and did some squats and pushups. Not an excessive amount, but enough to feel like the muscles had been worked and then I started my day.

I wasn’t quite sure what to call this thing I had just done. I felt so strangely rested and renewed that I decided to film a little video explaining what I did just in case you may also benefit from the activity.

This is for sure not something I would advise you to do daily. I don’t even think 10 hours of sleep daily is healthy or necessary, but there are some aspects of this routine I am going to keep in such as the pressure point and increased fiber. I also do well with my nails when I push my cuticles back daily. It helps to prevent hangnails and they grow nice and strong that way.

I am in my digestion and exfoliation era. I like it here. ;)

L Jen

PS. I made this salad yesterday that was so insanely good. It consisted of the following:

• 1 Jar of Garbanzo beans

• 8 or so carrots peeled like ribbons

• a whole diced English cucumber

• a handful of arugula

• 1 yellow bell pepper

• 4 green onions

• 1 endive

• 10 - 12 marinated artichoke hearts chopped

• 2 - 3 oz of feta cheese

• the juice of a whole lemon

• 2-3 oz of olive oil

• Greek seasonings

• balsamic vinegar

• maldon salt

Here are all the products I used for The Peeler:

• Chia Seeds

• Seed Sleep

• Magnesium

• Progesterone (code: JEN20)

• Probiotic

• Bath Salts

• Bath Oil

• Wood Nail Tool

• Oil Cleanser

• Gel Cleanser

• Exfoliating Mask

• Body Lotion (code JENNIFERL15)

Can we be honest with each other?

Are you sure? Because I am going to be pretty straightforward in this newsletter and I am not going to worry about hurting your feelings or saying something that might trigger you. I am going to lay it out right now exactly how I’ve experienced it and how I see it.

Over the past year or two I have gained 20 pounds and I don’t hate myself because of it.

If that line scares you and makes you not want to read further or take the advice I am about to give you I understand. Why would you take advice from someone who had “let themselves go” like that? Ten to fifteen years ago that line would have scared me too. I would never have even dreamt of taking health advice from someone who had gained weight. But come in a little closer, because I am going to let you in on something.

Gaining 20 pounds at 47 is the best thing that could have happened to me this year and I had a really, really good year so that’s saying something.

I actually am up about 30 pounds from where I was in spring of 2022 after having lost that final 10 pounds after a bout with covid and a stressful few months.

I am not advising you to intentionally gain weight if you don’t want to, but for me, gaining this weight has taught me something very important about myself.

Two years ago I decided to quit all my weight loss tricks and embraced a concept called nourishment, rest, strength and joy. It was a new concept, at least for myself, that emphasized what was important to me and how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

I know how to lose weight. I have done it my entire life. I could very easily drop this 20 pounds with 2 months of “clean eating”, intermittent fasting, cutting all carbs, cutting all dairy and of course saying sayonara to all chocolate. Then I could get some sort of flu and 10 more pounds would fall off and I would lose 30 total. Yes, I know how to lose weight. I learned how to lose weight in the 90s from my mom, Oprah and Jenny Craig. I know how to do it and I know how to do it fast.

But here’s the kicker: I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to lose weight fast. I want nourishment, rest, strength and joy and that is what I want for you as well.

You don’t need to gain weight to experience nourishment, rest, strength and joy. My journey had the side perk of a few extra curves because I embraced this philosophy and stopped intensely restrictive diet cycles at a time when naturally my body would start to carry more weight through perimenopause.

I intentionally did not fall back into my earlier patterns and quick solutions. I stayed true to my philosophy of nourishment, rest, strength and joy while also figuring out hormone replacement therapy, increasing my walking, improving my gut health and building strength. It’s a longer road, but it’s a better destination and a happier journey along the way. Would I like to be a little smaller? Absolutely. Am I enjoying my boobs being this big? Sometimes, they are fun, but not really. I am happy and I am fulfilled and gaining this weight has exposed a tendency that I truly needed to change within myself that went well beyond just weight management.

I came of age in the 90s. You were supposed to be either a Kate Moss waif or an Anna Nicole Smith vixen. I didn’t fit in either of those stereotypes so I was never really satisfied with the state of my body unless I was obsessively doing something to change it as fast as possible.

Gaining 20 pounds this year finally broke my habit of going after the fast, but not always the best solution, because I simply refused to. I refused to do that thing I had done since I was 20 years old.

As a society we are often after the instant solution or the fast fix. If you have a headache you take a pain pill. Small wrinkles? Do botox. Gain a few pounds? Go on an intense diet. We chase the thing that is going to bring the most immediate relief instead of determining the root cause and the best long term solution. Instead of finding out the underlying reason behind why your head hurts or why you are losing muscle, the tendency is to go right for the instant fix and expect instant results. The lengths that we will go through and the amount of money we will spend as humans to experience instant success is wild.

Instant solutions and instant results are not necessarily the best solution or the best result. When I was 42 after the covid lockdown I lost 20+ pounds through extreme dieting and intermittent fasting, but with that weight loss went a lot of muscle too. Losing all that muscle at 42 was the worst thing I could have done for my body at that exact time of my life. I needed that muscle to protect my bones, my immunity and my long term health and metabolism. Losing all that weight so fast actually damaged my body because I lost muscle along with it. In the long run that muscle loss translated into some of the weight gain I am experiencing now.

This isn’t just about body image. My refusal to fall back on a fast fix this time has shown me a tendency I have had my entire life to take the fast and easy way out. In school I used to skip pages of my books because I just didn’t want to do the work. When I was a young mother, laundry would sit in baskets because it was easier to pull the clothes from the hamper when I wanted to wear them. I know the joys of an ibuprofen when it brings down inflammation fast and I know the crutch alcohol plays to relieve a hard day. All of these things in some way were quick methods to handle problems that needed actual solutions.

I am not saying a quick solution is always the wrong solution. Obviously there are easier ways to do things. Evolution of a society or culture is rooted in finding simpler ways to solve complex problems or make survival more abundant. The wheel was invented, thank goodness for indoor plumbing, antibiotics, electricity, the internet. All of our tools that make life easier are in a way, a faster and better solution to our problems. Not all fast solutions are bad, but if they avoid the real situation or even worse damage the thing you are trying to improve, then it’s not really a real solution is it?

The same could be said for shortcuts. Shortcuts can be wonderful. They get you there faster, they save you time, but sometimes shortcuts mess you up. One time my husband tried to take a shortcut on our way to the mountains and we ended up on a side quest that extended our trip for 5 hours. Our daughters still complain about that car ride. Shortcuts are not always the best route to where you want to go. Shortcuts can actually just be avoiding the problem all together by covering it up with something that makes it seem like the problem went away when it really didn’t.

I think sometimes we take shortcuts because we want the result but we don’t want to do the work. Or maybe it’s that we want the result so badly that we can’t stand to wait the amount of time needed to have it. The problem with this mindset is that you start to expect everything to be instantaneous. So much so that even when you are doing something that does take a lot of time and effort, if you don’t have it instantly or haven’t accomplished rip roaring success immediately that means you have failed.

It’s like we cannot face the time and work necessary to achieve something meaningful.

My entire life I have had the goal to be able to do a pullup. Well maybe not my entire life, but probably since I was 13 and fell flat on my face while doing the arm hang test in gym class. At that moment I was so hurt and embarrassed I decided that I must know how to do a pull up. I have chased this goal for years and have never succeeded.

Do you know what actually stopped me from attaining that goal? My failure was caused by expecting I should be able to do something or fix something right away and if I couldn’t it meant I had failed so why even try. This expectation that I should be able to have or do something instantly resulted in me feeling like I had failed even without doing the necessary steps to train my body properly.

It’s like I had failed before I had even begun and that was keeping me from building on the small wins that would eventually get my chin up over that bar.

This is why I constantly feel back on restrictive eating patters to make the weight come off fast in the past. I needed that fast result. The instantaneous success.

It was gaining 20 pounds and refusing to fall back on my fast fix solutions that exposed these two big problems within myself:

• I will sometimes avoid the work necessary to accomplish things

• If I don’t achieve something fast it means that I have failed

Gaining 20 pounds over the past 12 months (30 if we compare to where I was at in 2022) and refusing to do my fast methods to fix that perceived problem exposed these weaknesses I had so thoroughly, that little moments throughout my life where I had either taken the half-assed fast route or given up before I had begun came bubbling to the surface.

We all need to be able to reflect on habits or actions we take that do not really serve or help us.

Recognizing that I had these tendencies was valuable to me because when I am aware of something I am doing that may not be the best for me, I can do something about it.

I could look at my body now and see this weight I have put on as a failure. Like it is physical proof of lack of discipline or that midlife has finally arrived. As someone who creates content about health and self-acceptance I could view myself as somewhat of a fraud. While I do have those thoughts sometimes, I am very grateful for having gained this weight at 47. It has taught me so much about myself, my relationship with my body and how I want to live the next 47 years of my life.

I gained this weight because of the fast fixes of my youth and I consciously broke that pattern.

I don’t want to feel like I am in a constant state of trying to fix myself.

Do I want to be healthy and strong? Do I view my body as art? Do I want to feel beautiful and confident as I face the world?

Of course.

Getting there is not a shortcut through the forgotten highways that leave us stranded for hours on our way up the mountain.

Getting to where I want to be is the slow climb, building my muscles so they carry me to the top, while stopping to enjoy the view, smell the wildflowers and eat a croissant when the moment deserves it.

I am done with the fast fixes of my youth and I want nourishment, rest, strength and joy for my future.

You don’t need to gain 20 pounds to learn this lesson for yourself. This is simply my invitation for you to review your own approach to your body and how you want to care for it going into your future.

Love, Jennifer

links to things that make me happy.

• the perfect white T-Shirt for $5. It is boxy and looks incredibly cute even with slightly larger midsection. ;)

• The dress I bought yesterday that made me feel incredibly beautiful.

• My HRT that has actually stabilized out the weight gain I was experiencing

• The Sculpt Society and Evlo that have inspired me to build muscle

• The best hydration spray, but there is also this one and then the ultimate luxury of this one.

• I have been taking Arrae MB-45+ and it doesn’t make me nauseous or dull my enjoyment of food and has other hormone support benefits

• These pajamas are incredible. Better than being naked and especially great for night sweats.

Does your mother-in-law do something every time you see her?

My mother-in-law has a habit that is both annoying and endearing.

She doesn’t know I am writing this and she is a paid subscriber to this newsletter so hopefully this doesn’t come as a shock to her.

When we are together she will comment on something I am wearing, something my husband cooked or something I posted about and ask where I got it or how to get it.

This has occurred in every single interaction we have had for many years.

The last time we were together I was wearing a sweatshirt that the Sculpt Society had sent to me. It was a deep wine color and had a dropped shoulder. She reached out and touched the fabric and said, “I can tell that this is 100% cotton. Is it new? Where did you get it?”

Honestly I had not even looked at what the fabric for this sweatshirt was. We were headed out for sushi and I didn’t want to be cold so threw it on. When I got home I checked the label… she was right. 100% cotton.

The thing about my mother-in-law, is that while she will ask us for the recipe or the location of our latest find, she has impeccable taste and is very resourceful in her own right.

She has begun monochromatic dressing and shows up to most social events with coordinated shoes, jewelry and a matching jacket. Because of her I understand the value of a cashmere sweater. This woman knows how to get what she wants. She doesn’t need to be asking me where to get things.

Regardless of her own ability to find exquisite items much better than myself I don’t think she will ever stop asking for my sources and maybe that is how she’s honed her skill for curation over all these years. She sees things she likes and asks for the source.

I am embarrassed to admit my annoyance with her sourcing requests because in all honesty I would never want her to stop.

I have pulled together some of her most requested items into a list. Of course it includes the sweatshirt (which I actually really like btw), but it also includes some frequently requested recipes and a few things she turned me onto as well.

Strangely, when all the items are pulled together you will see why she asked about these exact things. It’s actually a great list with a few discount codes too.

I will update it from time to time with any new links she asks for. It will be a resource for her but also a resource for you of home goods, recipes, clothing or beauty items that pass the mother-in-law test.

Thank you to my mother-in-law for inspiring this list. If you know her in person please tell her to never stop asking for the source of things she loves. She’s an incredible curator.

My Mother-in-Law List

xx - Jen

Back in January I signed a new brand partnership with Nature’s Way Alive Women’s Ultra Multivitamin. I can dive into why I am partnering with them if you would like, but that might bore you and this isn’t a sponsored newsletter, but I will say I really like the fact they test every single ingredient they source for their vitamins for efficacy. That is very similar to what OneSkin does and it’s a very involved process I admire.

I was mulling over the content I would create for Nature’s Way and they gave me a bit of creative leeway which was great. I decided instead of creating a video that just talked about vitamins, because tbh no one needs a video about vitamins these days, I wanted to incorporate Nature’s Way into some activities that I was planning to do and share with you regardless of whether a brand was involved.

My 60 days actually started January 30th. I realized I had exactly 60 days until I turned 47.

I decided to set some personal goals for myself to accomplish:

1. Walk 300 miles

I know this seems like an insane amount of walking, but it actually averages out to 12,000 steps a day.

So far I am averaging 7,762 steps a day so I need to kick it up in order to make up for it and do about 15,000 steps daily over the next two weeks.

The reason I am prioritizing walking is it has an amazing effect on my body. I feel better, I drop extra weight, it moves the lymph and it’s great for me mentally. Walking and moving is always a good idea for me.

2. My backyard

I have come to discover that a yard or garden is not something you can fix up once and just leave it. In fact, I don’t think anything in life is something you can just create and leave without minimally tending to it every once in a while.

Our little backyard garden has become neglected and I want to clean it up. do a little landscaping, some planting and create an outdoor retreat for us when it starts to warm up.

Here is a little video of what it looks like now. If you have any ideas let me know!

3. Pushups

I had the goal last year of being able to do ONE pull up. I didn’t make that, so we are modifying. I want to be able to do 10 off the knee pushups with perfect form. I can do 10 on the knee but not 10 off currently. I started training every night to be able to hit 10 by the end of March.

So, those are my three personal goals for this quarter. I have other deadlines I need to hit for my book, content for brands and of course building my upcoming App Dewe.Life which I hope to have ready for you to test soon.

I would love to know what goals big or small you might have over the next 60 days.

I went shoe shopping today and got incredibly annoyed trying to find shoes to walk 300 miles in. I finally decided on these.

Nature’s Way Alive Women’s Ultra Multivitamin (Can you imagine how many takes it took for me to say that in a relaxed way without forgetting the order or stumbling? A. Lot. You can see that content here)

I have been wearing this jean shirt almost every day.

This just launched from Well People

Love Jen

ps - I started on HRT, also called MHT this past week. Menopause Hormone Therapy. So far it is going very well. More details coming soon.

I finally made my appointment to get my boobs squished today. It had been delayed because I had lost access to an old yahoo email linked to my Kaiser login.

I am one of those people who will have 18,000 unread emails. If this changes your opinion of me I understand, but the notifications somehow do not bother me. I manage the emails by skimming everything and sorting out the ones that actually need my attention. I get about 100+ emails a day and that was a volume I could comfortably deal with.

Last February I created the 10 Day Life Support Checklist. I had no idea how many people were going to download it and within a few days this Yahoo account had over 3000 download alert emails which was overwhelming, so I moved that account off my phone to save myself from the notifications. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated all the downloads very much, in fact I am building an entire Tech Company, Dewe.Life to help bring that checklist and many more tools to you, so I did appreciate the emails, just not that many showing up on my phone all at once.

Unfortunately, this was the very same email that was tied to my old blog accounts. Moving it off my phone turned out to be a very costly mistake.

Here’s what happened.

I had one Yahoo account linked to another Yahoo account as the “recovery” email. For whatever stupid reason I didn’t put my phone number as the recovery method. After some time of not logging into either of these accounts I got locked out of both of them because I needed to get into the other one in order to verify the log in. It was like a snake eating its own tail situation.

I wasn’t too concerned about this and knew I would handle it eventually but in October GoDaddy tried to contact me about hosting payments for my old blog, Our Urban Playground. The credit card on file for automatic renewals had expired. I had kept that blog going for 10 years after my final post because it had so much sentimental value and was honestly a digital diary for my children. Due to missing these emails, GoDaddy sent my blog for deletion and fully removed it from its servers. I had not granted GoDaddy permission to call me, but I do believe it should be common decency to make at least one phone call or text before you delete something forever. They had my phone number after all.

I sort of broke down crying on the internet over this and had a flood of comments telling me to use the internet archives service. Thankfully a programing and web hosting friend of mine reached out and he was able to rebuild my site. It is missing some photos but the text is all there. I am really happy to have it back and I have learned my lesson to link all logins to my phone so I can receive text notifications to verify the process. I paid my developer friend of course for his work and while I am sure he gave me a deal, it was a costly process.

That brings me back to my boobs.

Two years ago was when I had my last mammogram. They are never fun. I sweat the whole time, get a little dizzy and then worry for a few days. Regardless of how much I hate them, I am not going to skip this screening so I had to work out getting onto my log in.

I had of course forgotten the password for my Kaiser account and it was sending the recovery to that old Yahoo email. Earlier research I had done made it seem like if you lose access like I had it meant you were essentially fu7ked and there was no way to get back in. Thankfully after many clicks on Yahoo’s website I was able to find a path where I could get someone on the phone to verify my identity. It took a little while but then I GOT IN!

Access to both Yahoo email accounts have been restored and all the settings are arranged so I can receive a text to authorize log ins.

While all of this is very annoying, there is a part of me that appreciates the hoops I need to go through in order to verify that I truly do have access to these accounts. I don’t want any random person to be able to hack the system with a password alone.

Sign… oh yes. My boobs.

With my newly restored logins the appointment is set and I am ready to show up at 7:45 am before work in two weeks to get them squished and imaged. I am going to make Steve come with me and sort of make a morning coffee date out of the whole process.

I do regular self-exams, lymphatic massage of both sides and my armpits and whether good or bad, I haven’t used traditional deodorants for 25 years. I am not scared of getting cancer. Fear of cancer is something I have worked to dismantle since my mom died, but I do believe in screenings and doing every I can to support the health of my body.

Many lessons were learned in this whole debacle I could list:

• ensure every electronic account is set up with proper recovery methods

• save all your passwords every time you change them

• you can also book an appointment by just calling the doctor

• and of course you can’t just allow a website to sit for 10 years without checking on it every once in a while.

Those are all good lessons, but as I was taking the time yesterday to talk to Sherry at the Yahoo Office the biggest lesson learned was to give myself some grace. This whole process took more time than I would have liked. It pointed out my faults. It highlighted my lack of organization and failure to expertly handle every exacting detail of my existence, but somehow despite that I felt proud. Proud that in the face of these annoyances and setbacks I carried on, got it handled, restored the website and booked my breast press.

The most important lesson in all this was not that I needed to be more organized. The most important lesson in all this was that even when things are falling apart or you are running into stops or barriers, it doesn’t work to invalidate or demean yourself. That won’t fix the problem. The important lesson is you put on a cozy sweater, run the space heater in your office, get on the phone with Yahoo and get it handled while giving yourself some grace.

I think it’s also important to remember to never accept that it is impossible to solve a problem.

My website was 100% shredded and yet now it is back.

All signals pointed to the fact I would never be able to get access to these email accounts again and yet now I do.

These are small problems in the grand scheme of things, but I think when facing big problems the same rule applies. Never accept the idea that what you are facing is impossible to solve or invalidate yourself because you are facing a large problem. Those two attitudes, that you are unable and that it is impossible, are the exact attitudes that will make the situation impossible to resolve.

So many times as women the default is to make less of our abilities. So many times in society the default is to state that things are impossible to make better. The truth is we will only make things better if we believe in our own abilities and know that nothing actually is impossible.

Ok… this newsletter has become much more than an update on my boobs and a lost website it seems. It is a reminder that while you are facing the challenges of your life, hold back the inclination to cut yourself down and hold firm to the truth that nothing actually is impossible. Some things take more work, education, skill and finance than others to solve, but nothing actually is impossible.

L Jen

ps

This is the best mascara I have every used. LIKE EVER EVER.

This is the sweater I wore yesterday and it made me feel better.

My eyebrow product in all my videos.

All my hair essentials

Every year up to the age of 26 I had been a contributor to a Thanksgiving feast but not the full blown host. I had never made the meal on my own.

My mother had a way with Thanksgiving. In fact she had a way with all holidays, but that traditional Thanksgiving meal she had down. I knew how to make mashed potatoes and cut up the bread for stuffing but that was about it.

When I was 26 my eldest daughter was a year old and it was going to be our first time hosting Thanksgiving. My mom was in Chicago at the time and we were not going to be together. I was getting pretty frazzled and nervous about the whole thing so I asked her to send me all her tips and recipes.

She emailed me the whole thing and closed it with… “It’s really easy honey.”

I have learned since that first Thanksgiving hosting experience that it is in fact one of the easiest meals to make if you keep it simple. In fact I wrote a whole blog post about it in 2013 on my parenting blog, Our Urban Playground along with her full email, recipes and other tips.

As I stood there talking to my friend I searched up my blog to send her the post and something horrific showed up.

What the actual ef?

The site was GONE.

I had not posted on this blog since 2015 but I was keeping it alive with GoDaddy all these years because from 2012 to 2015 this is where I wrote about the death of my mother, raising three young children and really finding myself as a creator. It had letters to my children, family photos and it captured a time in my life that was so challenging but yet so beautiful.

The blog had been linked to an old email address that I never check and a credit card that apparently expired sometime in 2025. In the end of October GoDaddy had sent an email saying the website was fully discontinued. I didn’t notice until last week.

Because I am eternally optimistic I figured I would just call GoDaddy and the whole thing would be fixed. I waited until the weekend, I made my regular Sunday “3 Things to be the best version of yourself this week” video and I decided I would get the old blog up and running and write you a newsletter with all my hosting tips and recipes to make this Thursday the best.

I had already pulled together this list of Amazon products that all have two day shipping in case you needed some last minute things for cooking or your table Thursday. I was going to write you a grocery list, give you all of my mom’s tips and do everything I could to take the stress out of this week for you.

I was pretty stoked about making this week really easy for you. I just needed to handle this one little thing with GoDaddy so I could access all the blog data and put all the recipes and lists together. Easy peasy right?

I got on the phone with GoDaddy, explained that back in 2013 I was not savvy and did not do backups and that my yahoo email from 2005 was just not the way to reach me anymore. The customer service rep explained that my website had been fully deleted and maybe if I paid $3000 plus a month $350 GoDaddy could possibly get it up and running again by searching the internet archive and piecing it together. I asked if there was another person I could talk to and he pulled another person into the conversation who said the same thing. After 30 minutes on the phone trying to solve this, I was about to burst into tears so I decided to hang up and come up with a new plan.

Strangely despite this setback from GoDaddy, I still knew there had to be a way to handle this and that someone in the world existed who could solve this easily. I was not willing to just roll over and decide it was just gone forever.

I did the only thing I knew to do and made a video to ask the geniuses in my community for their best advice and help.

You all certainly delivered.

The DMs and comments flooded in. I received texts. I got called. I felt like a damsel in destress in the best of ways. Some very intelligent and resourceful web developers reached out and it looks like the site can be recovered.

This was a lot of emotions to move through to kick off this Thanksgiving week but I must say this was also a valuable lesson.

• Don’t lose access to emails that are associated with tech products you want access to. Store all the passwords and set up the needed recovery methods.

• BACK UPS

• If you work in an industry where you store someone’s website or information, give them a text before you destroy everything. A lesson for GoDaddy but also for me as I am building my new Tech Company. — side note, it is interesting that I am building a tech company but thought the best solution was to reach out to the entire internet with my problem instead of just texting my CTO. oh well.

• There are people smarter than you in the world that are kind and do want to help you.

• Always hold onto that optimism when facing a problem.

Interestingly enough, that 2005 email address associated with the GoDaddy account is the same one my mom used to email me her recipes in 2005. I haven’t shuttered that account for the sole reason that it stores many emails from my mother between 2005 and up to her death in 2010.

I had printed that email and was able to give it to my friend in lieu of the blog post.

Here is what she wrote November 21st 2005:

“Hi Jen,

Couldn’t sleep… a lot on my mind. (editor’s note: perimenopause!) Paid some bills and decided to get this off to you. Couldn’t remember exactly what you needed but I think this is it. Call me if I got it wrong.

Stuffing:

• Bread..day old about one loaf. small cubes

• onions

• celery

• butter

• poultry seasonings

• (Jen’s note add carrots too)

Fry onions and celery (and carrots) to soften in butter. Mix with bread cubes. Salt, pepper and poultry seasoning (about 2 Tbs). Stir up with hand. Put more melted butter in there. Also, fry the liver, dice it up and mix it in. Put (stuffing) in back cavity and put the rest of it in the neck cavity. If you have more you can’t fit in the turkey, throw it in a baking dish and cook it in the oven for about 45 minutes or so.

Turkey:

Remove the giblets from the cavity. Save the liver and toss the rest. Prepare a wash by mixing the juice from a whole lemon with two tablespoons of salt. Then rub this mixture over the bird, both inside and out. Let it sit for 30 minutes and rinse with water. The lemon and salt destroy any bacteria and take away the “turkey smell”

editor’s note: I do not know if this is true about the bacteria but regardless I still do it. I also do this with the turkey the day before cooking. Get that bird out of any plastic bag, clean it and let it dry out a bit overnight.

After cleaning, let the turkey sit out for 2 hours basting it every half hour with a marinade consisting of 1/3 cup of tamari, 2/3 cup of water. Letting your turkey slowly approach room temperature with ensure it cooks evenly. Reserve marinade for basting while roasting. The tamari will give your turkey a golden color.

Editors note: butter also gives that turkey a golden color! Stuff butter with herbs under the skin of the breast. It’s GLORIOUS!

Call if you have any questions… it’s really easy honey. Hope it all turns out great!!!

Love Mom”

I really wish I could spend one more Thanksgiving with her. That would be quite something.

I have a video going up tomorrow morning. Three Things to be the Best Version of Yourself this Week - Thanksgiving edition.

Here is an early preview just for you:

This can be a very intense week for many of us. If you work in any sort of retail, especially e-commerce I see you! I know this is your Superbowl. I have a Black Friday video going up Tuesday with my incredible partner OneSkin. They will be having a great sale you should definitely check out tomorrow!

Black Friday and the pressure to shop can also be insane. I am going to attempt to shop with intention this year and not feel the pressure to log on Thursday night at midnight like I have in the past. I gathered together a gift list for moms, daughters and mother-in-laws. You likely don’t need another gift ideas round up but here it is in case you want it.

Family get-togethers and last minute grocery runs can be stressful. Do your best to roll with the day and give everyone some grace.

I hope you have a wonderful week and as always I am available by email or in DMs. Don’t worry, your responses don’t go to that 2005 email. ;)

xo,

Jen

Links:

Amazon list if you are hosting and forgot something

OneSkin - this is where I get my HERO HERO eye cream I have used for 3 years. It truly lives up to the hype.

Gift Guide for yourself, your older girls and your mom

Hello there -

You may be wondering why you are receiving this email from me. If that is the case you probably ended up here because you downloaded one of my Life Support or Inflammation checklists over at JenniferLatch.com and subscribed for email updates.

If you are not wondering why this email is here in your inbox, hello, thank you for being here and for reading this inconsistent newsletter. I appreciate you more than you know.

Regardless of how well we know each other, I figured it was time for a re-introduction.

So hello. My name is Jennifer Latch. I am a content creator and story teller with a strong background in advertising and a dash of theater kid that never fully went away. I have raised three daughters in San Francisco and I am currently 46 and moving through my second puberty - perimenopause.

There are many roots that led to my journey as a content creator. The death of my mother when I was 31 coincided with the birth of my 3rd daughter and a shifting commercial acting career. It was the perfect combination of grief, motherhood and trying to figure out what was next in my industry that led me head first into blogging and social media.

Over the next 15 years my career went through many turns until I landed at 42 facing my own aging body and shifting hormones and decided one day that I was tired of hearing about how bad aging would be. I saw my mother go through menopause. I saw her lack of education about what was occurring with her body. I saw her struggles and I wanted a different future for myself.

I decided that AGING IS COOL and set out on a mission to spread that message and make it true.

My content has evolved and grown and this month I am celebrating having reached over 850,000 community members across the various social networks. That is wild to me and something I never truly expected would happen when I was first starting out.

You may be here because you have seen some of my “What I wish I knew when I was 19” videos. I have made over 150 videos in that series over the past 2 years! Crazy right? That series has been so valuable to me personally as I have been able to review and examine my past and choose from that past the important life lessons I learned along the way and share those with you.

This newsletter started out with the title of Never Stop Growing. That basic concept that we can always be improving through every stage of life is still very present, but I am updating the title to align with a new tool I am building called Dewe Life.

My whole life I have been able to accomplish my goals or tackle problems if I get myself educated about the problem or the steps necessary to reach that goal. However, sometimes I have so many big ideas I get a little lost in execution.

This newsletter, upcoming app and eventual podcast is aimed at solving that problem. What is the first step of accomplishing everything you want to achieve in life? How do you systematically get yourself to the finish line? How do you bring your ideas into reality? And most importantly, how do you keep agreements with yourself?

Of course this newsletter will continue to have some life updates, skincare products, aging tips, fashion finds and general tidbits I find interesting enough to share with you.

Some upcoming newsletters include a gift guide I created with my super cute assistant Finely, what it’s like to work with a stylist & newly find your style in your 40s, some book updates (I have an upcoming book with DK Publishers! what?!!) and an at home facial routine.

Thank you so much for being here. I hope you stick around.

L Jen

Sometimes we think big drastic changes need to be implemented in order to improve. While that can certainly be true, it is also the small things done consistently that can build on themselves and help us make the big changes.

Lowering your inflammation just a tiny bit can create enough energy or lightness to feel like you can take the stairs or go for a walk.

Getting rid of some old bras (20 YEAR OLD BRAS) that were completely stretched out gave me a little bit of space to go get measured to buy some bras that actually fit.

Booking an eye doctor appointment for my daughter brought a little piece of mind so I could start planning more easily.

I believe that small steps build to big wins.

This is my new series.

Every Sunday I will be releasing a video and newsletter of three simple things I will be doing in the coming week to be the best version of myself.

These will be simple things, but they will be things that I want to implement so I have the energy and mental space to build my business, help people, create time with my family and live a healthy life.

I would love it if you would do these things with me.

This week to be the best version of ourselves we are going to:

1. Go to bed.

   I do really well on 7+ hours of sleep.

   This past week I was really mad about something at night and when I woke up I was not mad anymore and had the solution. I never try to solve things at night when I am tired.

   I know if you are in perimenopause sleep can sometimes be hard. This salt bath can help and so can this magnesium. I also find doing some self lymphatic massage helps with my sleep. And of course sugar and alcohol will wake me up at 3:30 sweating so…

   If you are a late night scroller or fall into Netflix binges, try to change that this week and go to bed before 11.

2. Organize some part of your life.

   Do not go wild with this one and plan an entire house project. Start small. For me, this was just a little bit of content creation organization. I put the videos for the upcoming week into a folder on my phone. This took about 15 minutes, but is going to save me about an hour this upcoming week of time I would have otherwise spent on trying to find the exact videos I need.

   That time freed up some space so I am able to get this newsletter out to you which will then make me feel motivated to get some words down for my book. For me activities build on themselves and with each thing done that opens up more space for me to get more done.

   Then when I feel like my work is on track, I can spend more quality time with my children. This afternoon we are headed to the De Young Museum followed by a family dinner. Having these organization steps done allows for more creativity and production which opens my time up to enjoy not working.

   So this week start with a small task. Clean out a drawer. Drop off something at Goodwill. Clear out your emails. Start with one small thing and see where it leads.

3. Move your body for 30 minutes.

   You are an intelligent person and I don’t think I need to explain to you why moving your body is important but just in case, movement keeps your lymphatic system pumping, it keeps you joints healthy, it gets the circulation up, lowers inflammation and it lifts your mood.

   This week I am going to walk to work as often as possible and take the stairs at every opportunity. I am also going to do some of my home weights and stretches at night.

   I don’t have any intense or structured workouts planned, (I do want to do some of that soon) but this is more about incorporating movement into the day.

   If a 30 minute walk seems overwhelming or you don’t know how to fit that in, start small. A lot of little movement bursts throughout the day can add up to 30 minutes too.

Let me know how this goes! You can reach me by replying to this email, leaving a comment here on the Substack platform, on IG or TikTok. If you are a Facebook person we can build community there too.

Link Roundup:

• eyeliner shadow

• eyeliner brush

• mascara

• cream blush

• blush brush

• powder blush

• lip gloss ($12!!)

• Jean Shirt

• Gold chain I am coveting

• NEW BRAS

• Lymph Massage Book

• Magnesium

• Salt Soak

Have a great week!

J

We’ve always had a philosophy that we would never commit ourselves financially to something or engage in activities that would create unnecessary demand or stress to support or keep going.

Let me give you an example. We bought our car in 2008. It was paid off fully by 2013 which brought the insurance payments down. We raised three kids and two dogs with that car. Needless to say over time that car got dents, stains and it was even stolen once on Christmas Eve! The theft was my fault. I left the key in the car while it was parked in the driveway. It acted as a shelter for someone for 7 days when it was finally recovered in the Tenderloin District of SF. By 2021 I was really ready for a new car but not having a car payment and low insurance and how low stress that is was the pay off for not having to experience the pressure of coming up with an extra $700 to $1000 a month for a new car. Those funds were otherwise allocated to food or school tuition. So we kept our Honda CRV until December 2023 when it just died on I-5. This forced our hand and we bought a new car.

Interestingly enough that new car payment is hardly noticed now. It’s sort of like life has a tendency of scaling you up. I always wanted three children but after having two kids and knowing where we were at financially, a third baby didn’t feel like the responsible choice, but that third baby in 2012 did something to us. It lit a fire within us very different than a dumpster fire. She came and awoken something within both of us and life just started to go better. I think the upturn our life took with the addition of our third baby has a lot to do with the type of person she is and how she enhanced our life and made us bigger. I wouldn’t advise having a baby in order to scale your ability, but who knows. There is some truth to learning to swim by jumping in.

This mindset of not over committing ourselves has either held us back from full success or has been the key to everything we have accomplished. I think it’s a little bit of both.

I guess you could call this “living within our means” but more so it’s deciding what is important to us and where we want our attention to be. I have no doubt that if I spent less time volunteering, working on self-improvement or otherwise doing activities that don’t have a huge monetary pay off I could make the funds to support 2 new cars and an Equinox membership. But that brings up a very interesting question. Why? Why do that? Maybe an Equinox membership would have so much joy payoff that it’s worth it to me to figure out how to make an extra $400 a month to support it but I don’t think so.

It’s also not just about material things. As your children grow and as your interests in life expands the simple fact of the matter is that life costs money. Renovating a home. Building a wardrobe. Healthcare costs. Travel. Taking up a creativity pursuit. Food. Creating time to have meaningful conversations. All of it takes some form of money. So where is that balance between hard work, finance and joy?

These thoughts are not fully flushed out. I am in an interesting period of my life where I started my own business in 2020 and it has morphed and changed over the past 5 years to an incredible online community (YOU) and I am building a tech company right now. I am making more money now than I have ever made in my life, but with it comes more spending and more commitments. While I’ve been scaling so have my children. We have new schools, college, weddings and things we want to do together as a family. Then of course there are the inevitable disasters like last week when my husband needed surgery, the dog had a blockage in her stomach and life just felt a little TOO much.

Honestly, If I am not following my own advice and keeping in my 10 Day Life Support Checklist sometimes managing all of these different areas of my life and work starts to feel more stressful and I sit and wonder… is it worth it? Why am I working? What am I trying to do?

While my husband and I were talking about life and our goals over the next few years he gently pointed out to me that while we are expanding, creating more experiences, upgrading our home and building our businesses it’s not worth it if we are just stressed and worried all the time. Right in that moment I realized it was not the work itself or the recent life experiences that were stressing me out, but more so my approach to them.

That baby in 2012 brought so much more work and demand but somehow she expanded us and made life so much better. The new car in 2023 didn’t stress us out. In fact feeling safe during very dangerous road trip through an intense winter storm in February 2024 made every dollar I am needing to make to pay for that car worth it.

Money is interesting. At the end of the day it is just energy that gets used to accomplish goals and as long as you maintain your ethics surrounding its use there is a magic quality around creating it.

I would never ever want to become the type of content creator or life coach that tells you, “Here is how you manifest 1 million dollars.” “Buy this course to learn how to make an extra $10K.” “Think these thoughts every morning and it will all come out right.” “The most important thing in life is for you to make money.” - I actually detest all of that high-performing life coach content that feels like a veiled sales pitch mixed with manifestation and sprinkled with advice that leads you to a black hole of debt. I don’t want to be like that.

One’s relationship with money, success and what is important in their life changes a lot as time marches on. It certainly has for me. So discussing money and big goals is a natural part of my story having come from a position where I was living week to week on food stamps after my mom died in 2010 to where I am now.

So I did a little review of what I am trying to do from a very high level goal standpoint with this community we have built, the content I am creating and my new business venture. That helped me to clarify why I am working and gave me more understanding of what I am working to build.

Ultimately what we were trying to do in the past while not over-committing ourselves was simply ensuring we saved energy for what was truly important to us. The stress of over-commitment was not worth it, but there does come a time when that concern for over-commitment is just an excuse that will hold you back from greatness.

The reason why it was important for me to review the overall goal of what I am working to accomplish, which is not a financial goal but more so a creative and community pursuit, is it rekindled within myself joy connected with work alone.

When I understand what I am working towards and can see myself heading in that direction, work is no longer stressful and the work itself brings the joy.

I think this is something that can be applied to all areas of life.

As a woman we are taking care of so many things. Some things pay us and some things don’t. I need to care for my body, my pets, my home, my business, my community and my family. Working out your purpose for all of those different endeavors can at least create a stable base from which to build a life.

My tech company - Dewe.Life (do life) has the purpose to help women act on their goals by assisting to establish the basic first step and build from there. I am going to start by refining and upgrading my 10 Day Life Support Checklist to make it more user friendly and more effective. There are a lot of ideas for Dewe and I can’t say too much now but I am pretty excited about it.

I don’t believe in work-life balance. I feel that is a marketing line designed to sell wellness products. What I do believe in though is finding joy in all activities and endeavors in life whether it be work, taking care of yourself, or cleaning the house. Sometimes, like last week for me, life can get a little overwhelming. Sometimes, during a period of growth or hardship you will be all in on one area while another part of your life goes underwater. While I was nursing my mother through cancer our finances went into the trash bin, but I would not trade that time for anything.

This is a long and introspective email and thank you if you have made it this far. I do not know exactly where you are in your life journey. I do not know if you take care of your family while your partner works or are the primary financial provider for your family like I am — both roles are equally valuable btw. Where ever you are in your life journey and your relationship with money and building a life I thought it might help you if I shared some of the things I was going through in mine.

This past month has shown me that if the work itself and the activity of living starts to feel like a chore it’s possible I have lost sight of the overall goal. It has also clarified that while you cannot be reckless with money or commitments, you cannot allow fear to hold you back from growth.

You build a life step by step. You Dewe it step by step. ;)

L J

__________

Here are some things I have been enjoying this summer. These are affiliate links by the way. I do need to pay for college after all.

1. These fisherman sandals

2. Vitamin C Serum

3. Lip Oil (cheap and good!)

4. My eyebrows

5. OneSkin (jenlatch15)

6. Jeans - these are awesome and so stretchy but tailored at the same time

7. I bought a bra

8. Violette_fr everything she makes is great

Subscribe now

In 2020 when we had lots of time at home and I was working for hours from my small closet office I decided I would paint it and spruce the space up a bit. So I gathered some paint samples and got them up on the wall and there they sat for 5 years.

It took me 5 years to renovate my office.

One day last year my middle daughter walked through the house and said, “Are you ever going to finish painting? We have had swatches on the walls for years.”

It hit me.

I am terrible, wait.. I WAS terrible (I am working on changing how I talk about myself) at finishing house projects.

I could never decide if I wanted to go with a dark paint. I knew I wanted to upgrade the electrical because the outlet was 6 feet off the ground above my head, but I didn’t know where to hire an electrician. I needed a different storage solution but the white cubbies I had gotten for free from my in-laws worked just fine.

So the project sat stalled.

I made an agreement with myself at the start of the new year that I was going to take some of my advance from my book deal to finally complete this office. I set a goal to have it wrapped by March.

March came and went and the paint swatches were still very visible in all meetings and just like I don’t use filters when I create online content, I never blurred out my background or did one of those generated images people do on zooms. If you were on zoom with me you saw my office just as it was.

I have finally discovered that getting home projects, or any project done for that matter requires two key elements:

1. Basic education about how to execute it.

2. Knowing the first basic step to do and build upon.

Of course there is the financing. Money always makes things easier, but even when I had the funds the project was still stalling out.

The first step design wise was actually choosing a chair. I found this beautiful chair on Craigslist that was a dark chocolate velvet. That chair started the design process which led to finding the wall paper and then the cabinet.

From there I had a consultation with a contractor, who we did not end up hiring due to his price quote, but he taught us a lot about how to do the electrical very simply and educated us on how to properly prep the walls for wall paper.

The wallpaper I chose was pricey and definitely leaned into the original dark vision I had for the room. I coveted it for weeks and weeks before ordering the sample and I knew as soon as I saw the sample it was what I wanted. It is from a company from London called House of Hackney and it turned out better than I could have ever hoped for.

Side note: I have not been a fan of wall paper since my mother re-did my room in 1993 with Laura Ashley pink florals and blue ribbon on every single surface but that room helped her flip the house so… I guess it was worth it.

Given the fact I had already invested so much into buying the wall paper I did not want to mess it up trying to hang it myself. The pattern does not repeat every sheet which is part of its beauty and why it does not feel claustrophobic in this small space. I think it repeats every three sheets, so getting everything lined up properly was very important to me. We asked around and from some family connections we found a guy who had been doing wall paper installation for decades. He was not cheap but he got the entire room done in one day with (almost) zero errors so it was worth it.

The room is just about complete. I am deciding now between a lighter rug and a dark green one so if you have any feedback there let me know. I am thinking the darker one due to the inevitable stains, but I am wondering since the room is already so dark the light version could help to create some bright warmth and play off the lampshade. Let me know what you think on that.

Creating such a beautiful space in my home has been somewhat shocking for me. I am simultaneously proud that I have been able to build my life up to a point where I have the resources to do something like this while also thinking, “why didn’t I do this sooner?” - “Why did I allow these false disabilities and procrastination to stop me?”. It makes me wonder where else I may be holding back progress.

The good news is I have isolated a key method to get things done for myself. Enough education to know what that first basic step is and then build on each small step until the goal is met.

That is the key element that I am working to build into my new company Dewe.Life (Do Life). I want to help women turn their ideas and inspiration into reality through finding that first step and building from there.

I received many messages asking for the wall paper I used so I thought I would share every element from the new office.

You can find everything here: LINK TO ALL PRODUCTS

Those are all the details aside from some pre-existing elements like the old kitchen table I use as my desk and my mother’s pineapple safari lamp from the 90s.

I hope you had a good week and are not too swamped with back to school or other life projects.

I am somewhat shocked by how fast this year is moving and feel about 6 months behind but I am building this life step by step.

xx J.

I find talking about supplements weird.

I think it’s tied into how much betrayal has occurred in both the marketing and medical industry.

We are constantly fed ads that tell us that this ONE supplement is going to be the game changer that will make you skinny, have endless energy, solve your gut, grow your muscles and amazingly enough only this new company has found the only formulation that will actually work.

Does that sound familiar?

It does to me. I see the ads all the time. In fact I have BEEN in the ads.

Here’s the thing. There is never a one button solution for anything. A supplement won’t work just on its own. It needs to be balanced with a whole stack of other habits and routines that will support your overall goals for your body.

I could take all the probiotics in the world, but if I drink alcohol every night it will wipe out the good bacteria in my gut. No supplement is going to fix habitual alcohol use or a sedentary life.

Other times I have talked about taking vitamins I get inevitable comments such as… these are dangerous. You should really get full labs. Everything should come from food. YOU DON’T NEED THIS.

Fundamentally all of those statements are true in their own way. A supplement CAN be dangerous. If you have a thyroid condition taking large amounts of iodine could be really dangerous. If you overload high levels of Vitamin D and your body can’t utilize it that can cause problems.

It is important to make educated decisions about what is important for your own body and to not believe every single argument both for and against a certain vitamin or mineral you see online.

For a long time I never got a full blood panel. When I finally did through my doctor I had to pay extra in order to get just my Vitamin D levels checked which turned out to be incredibly low. I have talked about Function Health before, but it’s an incredible service I now use for a flat fee and over 100+ biomarkers tested.

Through vitamin D supplements I was able to get that back up into a healthy range.

The real test for me when I take a vitamin is how I feel. Sometimes I can tell almost instantly. There is something I do experience when I put something into my body that it needs the body has a sort of instant response to it. This doesn’t happen with every vitamin but with some it does.

I get that instant effect with Seed probiotics and Trace Minerals. I have a 24 hour lag on collagen that I take. After two weeks of steadily taking my Perelel Peri Support Pack I get an overall feeling of better health. The final supplement I am adding to round out my routine is fatty15.

I am adding fatty15 C:15:0 Essential Fatty Acid to address cellular health, brain health and my blood health. C:15:0 is the first essential fatty acid to be discovered since omega-3. Interestingly enough my omega-3 levels are coming up low on my labs with my omega-6 too high, so I am curious to see if it will affect those levels.

I don’t really notice an instant difference taking fatty15. I have been taking it for about 3 weeks now.

What I am finding is that I enjoy taking the vitamin which is not the case for everything I take. I also find that I am not forgetting to take it. I seek it out so I feel like that’s a good sign.

The science behind fatty15 is also really solid. You should check it out. They sponsored some content of mine and I agreed to work with them due to their research and data.

I just recently got my updated labs and will be doing another set in about 6 months. Most of the vitamins I take are based directly on those labs and the feedback from the clinician.

I thought I would share with you everything and give you some discount codes. If you are in midlife this routine may align with what your body needs right now.

But please… this is your body and your money. This is what I am doing with my body and my money to best support myself.

1. fatty15 C:15:0 Code: Jenn15 for 15% off your first subscription order

2. Perelel Peri Support Pack

3. Seed Probiotics

4. Concentrace Daily Mineral Powder

5. Ingenious Collagen - I am not sure if it ships to the US but if you are in the UK to not sleep on it.

I know if you are a “wellness” person the amount of supplements you have in your cabinet right now are absolutely overwhelming and ridiculous. This was my problem too and it’s why I have narrowed it down to these 5 things.

It still seems a little much but here we are. I am doing what I feel is best for my overall health and longevity.

I am actually really excited about what the addition of fatty15 will do for my cholesterol and overall cell vitality and metabolism. They don’t make any claims about cholesterol because they are not allowed to but based off everything I read I am hoping to move the needle there.

What supplements have you been taking?

At least I do.

I am a starter. I get very excited in the beginning of new projects but then fall a little short on execution. Ideas and creative dreams sit around for years without coming to fruition for me sometimes.

In areas where I am more educated I am able to fully follow through to completion. If I am highly motivated I will do the needed research to get myself educated enough to figure out the first basic step and build from there.

The best example of this recently was finally, FINALLY (like a 10 year delay finally) getting curtains hung in my living room.

We renovated our San Francisco Apartment in 2015. For 10 years my bay windows went bare. I pretended that I liked it that way, but honestly, the sun damaged my couch and we just ended up with a higher electrical bill running our wall heaters for longer periods in the winter because the cold would come in through the windows. Curtains, especially the velvet ones I eventually chose, have a unique ability to keep the heat in during the chilly winter months.

I had all of these concerns about choosing curtains. How high do you hang them? Where should I order them from? Do I need a sheer and a curtain? I have lathe and plaster walls, how you properly mount in a wall like that? What kind of rod do you use for a bay window? What should the break be? Why are curtains so expensive? Should I just order the Ikea ones? What about custom? What if my husband messes up the install? What if I go with a cheaper option to just be disappointed for the next 10 years?

My god.

The list went on and on with all of the reasons this project could not move forward. It is a bit ridiculous to look back on all that mental activity now that the project is actually done.

The key thing I did to get beyond all of the confusion was the following:

1. I set aside enough money to not allow financial concerns to stop the project.

2. I got myself educated on curtains by way of the internet and talking to real live experts.

The money part was important. I have lived a long time on an extremely tight budget and I am proud of the accomplishments I have made and the things I have pulled off. But I am going to tell you, having some extra funds to actually carry out a project is important.

Honestly the internet was a pretty terrible resource to address my very specific concerns about hanging curtains in a bay window with lathe and plaster walls. The best thing I did was go into The Shade Store and spend a full hour with the consultant asking tons of questions. I brought in full measurements and we went through every detail. This included:

1. Lined, durable curtains are a must due to how much direct sunlight comes in all day.

2. Instead of attached rods for a bay window, do individual ones.

3. You need more panels than you think to create a full effect.

4. Hang them between the top crown moulding and the top of the window.

5. You want a slight break on the bottom or have them just kiss the floor

6. Tips on different styles

We priced everything out at the Shade Store and it would have cost 10K. No way was I going to spend that much, but I walked away from the experience feeling empowered and knowing what I needed to do next.

Side note, when you are getting yourself educated by an expert do not be afraid to ask them what the big words mean. He was dropping lingo left and right and I would stop him and ask him what each thing meant.

I took all of my knowledge to Restoration Hardware and ordered everything for the project. Because I was so educated, I knew I did not want to install these on our own so I found a installer who had tons of experience working in old SF homes.

This was a 10 year project that finally got completed due to two key elements being solved. Finance and Education.

I would say the most important thing is the education though. You can have a lot of money and still not be able to get something done.

That small bit of education empowered me to act and get the project done.

My recent project is how to lower my cholesterol while maintaining a joyful relationship with food and my body.

Over the past several months my weight has been creeping up as it does pretty cyclicly. I have gained and lost 20 pounds routinely since 39. I know how to loose weight very efficiently and it’s detailed in this post. But what I haven’t learned is how to create a nutritional and lifestyle routine that keeps my metabolic health going while also having joyful restaurant meals, a cocktail every few weeks, a croissant on Sundays and cheese whenever I want it.

I also know that as the body gets older and hormone levels begin to dip metabolic health will naturally decline so right now at 46 this is important for me to figure out.

I love my body. I am satisfied with how it looks. I just want my cholesterol in a good range, my joints and bones to be healthy and my muscle mass to be maintained. Weight and body composition plays a role in this goal. To put it bluntly, I don’t want to gain and lose 20 pounds for the rest of my life.

I am tired of that roller coaster.

So I utilized my newfound approach which is a little bit of money and education from an expert and met with a nutritionist.

We worked out some habits that I thought I would share with you because I have found them useful:

1. In the morning before coffee, drink warm water with lemon and salt. - I didn’t belief that this would actually make a difference but it 100% does. I stay more hydrated and I haven’t been dependent upon electrolytes for a week. It also creates a good environment for digestion.

2. Walking daily 2-3 miles.

3. 2-3 times a week cardio bursts - this morning I ran for the first time in years. I went for just 20 minutes so I wouldn’t overdo it and quit.

4. Weightlifting exercises doing reps until muscle failure with a heavy enough weight that it happens below 30 reps.

5. More mindful bread and butter consumption. No restriction but I found I could cut the amount of butter I was using in half and still get the same satisfaction.

6. Cut back on nuts. I was eating WAY too many nuts without realizing it.

7. CHEWING FOOD THOROUGHLY

I lost 3.5 pounds the first week without doing calorie restriction and I also went out to dinner and enjoyed gelato.

So the plan right now is working and I want to keep this approach up.

In the past I would have resorted to intense fasts and cutting back on everything but I know that I do not want to do that ever again. Unless of course I had a disease or a real issue I needed to handle. Keto, fasting and other food guides have their value and uses, but for me right now, food is for nourishment and joy.

I want to eat and move my body in a way that is joyful, sustainable and for my future self.

I don’t think I need to punish my body into health.

I am making these small changes for my future self.

I hope you are having a lovely Sunday and do something for your future self today.

L Jen

ps - Here is my run video I posted on IG today. And here is TikTok if that’s more your jam.

When life starts to feel like it is moving too fast and that I am falling behind on my goals It helps me to take a step back and review the facts of the matter.

Sometimes things are not as bad as they seem but sometimes they are. A pile of real or imagined unfinished tasks will start to collect dust and even worse occupy my mental energy wondering how to tackle them.

When my husband was working as a project manager for a fast-paced construction company he would often wake up in the morning to tell me his dreams about the numbers. All night he would be thinking about cost overruns, planning, permits, receipts and getting all the numbers to align just right. We often refer to that time period and say “at least I’m not waking up in the middle of the night worried about the numbers.”

I had a lot of big goals for 2025 which included writing my book, launching a podcast, renovating my office, starting a new company, taking care of my health, building my relationship with you here on this newsletter, guiding my older daughters into adulthood and creating quality time with my family.

Now that I write that all out it seems like I may have put a little too much on the 2025 goals list, but at the same time I believe that it is possible to accomplish a lot if you have the information and help you need to get you there. It is also important to know what the priorities are.

Many of these goals are well underway but some are lagging behind.

In January I had a goal to complete my office by March and we are just now in the final stages 4 months behind schedule. Despite it taking twice as long, I am beyond thrilled with the results so far and can’t believe this is the room I get to sit in while typing this.

My husband and I go on walks where we review things we need to be taking care of and create plans on how to tackle them. It’s a good exercise and allows us to be distraction free for about 30 minutes to discuss things that are occurring and how to move forward. Sometimes these walks get too hyper focused into immediate things that need to be fixed. We kind of get a little lost in the “numbers”. Similar to his dreams that had a lot of worry about the details that actually didn’t move us forward toward our overall goals.

This week on our walk we made a point to review what we had accomplished so far this year and got ourselves re-aligned towards what our purpose is as both individuals and as a family. Reviewing what we had actually gotten done and where we were headed relieved some of the worry connected with real and imagined incomplete tasks. It was very productive and we have a rekindled sense of purpose and for lack of a better word, alignment.

I am excited to see what we will be able to accomplish this second half of 2025.

Part of being able to accomplish everything I want to do lies on the base of ensuring I am healthy and have enough energy to do it.

Last fall I had my first meeting with Midi Health and had my bloodwork done through Function. These two steps were empowering because they gave me data about where my health was at and my options that allowed just enough knowledge to be able to implement the needed changes.

When I got my blood work back my Vitamin D levels were low, I had an inflammation marker that was quite high and my “bad” cholesterol was way up while the good cholesterol I wanted was too low.

Midi offers an Age Well visit and I was able to talk about my rising cholesterol and got some great tips from my practitioner there who was open to my desire to not start statins while also giving me full data about them.

Thankfully I didn’t start worrying about these numbers in my sleep and getting the data actually allowed me to come up with a plan.

In January I began working on my 10 Day Life Support Checklist and implemented my own past successful actions on how to care for myself while going through a stressful time or even a period of intense personal growth or hard work.

From there I switched up but simplified my supplement plan and around March I worked to create a 10 Day Inflammation Guide with a Women’s Health Practitioner named Carmen Stansberry FNP-C.

I implemented both checklists into my life, added a weighted vest and some home weights to my routine and kept up my daily 2 mile walks.

These were small steps. I didn’t do anything drastic. I didn’t change my diet, in fact I have gained some weight over the past 6 months. I was actually a little nervous to see what the updated numbers would be.

I went last week to get my results and waited as the numbers started to come in.

The first number to report was my Vitamin D levels. I had successfully gotten those to raise to healthy levels through supplementation and lunchtime walks.

Then the inflammation marker called High-Sensitivity C-reactive protein result came in. That number had been brought down significantly and was in a healthy range.

Finally the cholesterol readings came in. My LDL (the small bad ones) cholesterol went down 33 points. I have another 38 to go in order to get it down lower. My total cholesterol went down 41 points and I have 21 more points to move there.

It was interesting to experience what this little small win with my health did to my mood. While the numbers are still out of range and not where I want them to be, it is important to concentrate on the fact they are improving and to keep doing the things that are improving them.

For me this will include:

Water before coffee

Fiber into my diet

Staying consistent with my supplements and adding some strategic ones

Cardio bursts 2x a week while continuing consistent walking

Weight lifting

I will be getting new labs in about 6 months to see how things are progressing.

How are you doing?

Do you feel like 2025 is going by like a whoosh?

I know the state of the world can also weigh heavy. Even during those times when all seems dark it is so important to find the things that are going right and do more of that.

I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment or reply to this email and let me know how you are progressing along.

L Jen

ps. I have a paid partnership with Midi Health. The don’t tell me what to write and all my experiences are my own. The Function link is also an affiliate link. Even if I wasn’t paid I would tell you about both of these companies but of course money helps me buy wallpaper and eggs so… I will take it.

About 8 months ago I had my first call with Midi Health. Midi is a Telehealth provider designed by women to fill the huge gap that exists in our healthcare industry particularly in the perimenopausal and menopausal phase.

After seeing my mother go through menopause and how rough it was for her and the complete lack of real solutions and support she did not receive, I knew first hand that there was a gap in how women were taken care of in midlife.

For most of my life I had thought hormones were my enemy. They made me “hormonal”. They made me break out. They were responsible for weight gain and they made my mom get breast cancer.

None of that was true.

My hormones are not my enemy. They are my protector. They provide vital triggers, coordination and support for every single bodily function. They support digestion, energy, sleep, brain functions, heart health, metabolism and so much more.

My hormones are NOT my enemy and they are not your enemy either.

For whatever reason I did not learn much about my hormones, how to track my cycles or what was really going on with my own body until my 40s. I credit this newfound knowledge to social media and access to so many health experts I otherwise would not have an opportunity to meet with.

There is a shift occurring for women’s health. Doctors and experts are being pushed to make up for the decades long lag in women’s health and our community is screaming for answers and support which leads to more research and support.

It’s a bit of an awakening so to speak but there is a lot more to do.

I was very pleased to hear, Joanna Strober, the Midi Health founder speak with conviction that the very first thing someone seeking help with their marriage in midlife should do is see a women’s health practitioner for a full review of her labs, hormonal health and medical history.

So many times a physical problem is assigned to a mental problem and the only answer many women in midlife were given was anti-depressants or “drink a glass of wine to unwind”. It’s actually infuriating.

Rant below:

Midi reached out recently to tell me about a new program they are launching called Age Well. This is designed for ALL women. Not just women in midlife. It is like your annual exam but with the option for advanced testing and labs, checking certain biomarkers and a tailored plan to help you live your best and healthiest self as you navigate your life. This will cover such things as your unique health and family history, your diet, sleep, inflammation, the right type of exercise, wellness practices, any health concerns that may need medication and advice on supplements and integrative approaches. It’s a telehealth model and you get 1 on 1 time with your provider in the comfort of your own home or wherever you may be.

I talk more about the program here:

Of course at 46 I am thinking a lot about my hormones, my digestion and how to lower inflammation. I am still ovulating but my periods are getting a little closer together.

Starting HRT could be a very powerful tool for me to help me lower my cholesterol, protect my bones and give me energy, but right now I have decided to hold off because I feel I have enough juice in the tank to regulate things on my own for a bit longer.

After my labs that showed the elevated cholesterol and the low vitamin D levels I updated my supplement routine and decided I needed to start increasing my fiber intake.

Fiber actually is very important in midlife. You can see this article here on Midi’s website but to sum it up fiber helps you create a diverse microbiome. This in turn works with your liver to help you metabolize hormones. These two areas working in harmony keep things flowing. Fiber can also help rid the body of cholesterol so I have been adding two cups of cooked vegetables and I created this fiber rich protein yogurt bowl inspired by my teenage daughter who makes these incredible yogurt bowls on the regular.

To add some additional hormone support and a little extra fiber I have been incorporating seed cycling. Seed cycling is utilizing certain seeds to support hormone production in tune with the 28 day menstrual cycle.

I have been eating this bowl about 4 times a week and I love it. It gives me sustained energy, my digestion has been perfect and my periods have become somewhat enjoyable.

Basic Ingredients:

1. Greek Yogurt - 16G protein

2. ½ cup of blueberries - 1.8 grams of fiber

3. 2 Dates - 3.2 grams of fiber

4. Beeya seeds - 2-3 grams of fiber

5. 2 Tbs cacao nibs - 4 grams of fiber

you can increase the protein in this bowl by adding some unflavored protein powder - this is my current favorite.

Let me know if you make this yogurt bowl and how you like it. It has brought me so much joy and I always do a little dance after that first bite.

It makes me feel so good that we are living in a time where community leaders, companies and doctors are pushing for better research, answers and support for women.

If you are feeling you need some support to age in the bed away possible, book with Midi Health. They are available in all 50 states and take most insurance plans. Additionally their out of pocket cost is quite reasonable if you want to go that way.

BOOK YOUR AGE WELL VISIT

When the results started to come in one of the first out-of-range items was my High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein or hs-CRP. I had no idea what that meant so that led to some research.

Function has deep dive science built into the labs with explanations of each result which I really like about the service. They explained to me that hs-CRP is a protein my liver releases in response to various triggers. It is essentially what the body creates in response to things that are causing inflammation.

Now the body NEEDS inflammation. It is a natural thing the body does in response to injuries or infections. However, when inflammation becomes chronic or caused by lack of movement, hormonal changes, poor diet, allergies or microbiome disturbance it can be VERY uncomfortable.

Function went on to explain that inflammation is a primary precursor to many diseases and fundamentally is what breaks down or ages the body.

So while I had many good indicators in my labs, this inflammation marker was not one.

Now for full transparency I did do the test right after recovering from a cold. It is possible that it could have had an influence on that marker. Regardless, inflammation is tied to so many thing that doing something to lower my inflammation was not a bad idea.

In the end of 2023 and early 2024 I went through a period of getting very into intermittent fasting. I cycled through 12, 16, 24 and 36 hour fasts. I did these fasts in coordination with my menstrual cycle to try to optimize hormones and I was FIRMLY convinced that this was the KEY to lowering inflammation, health and some weight management. I was wrong.

My hair fell out.

It eliminated joy.

It was not sustainable.

I knew I needed to find a more sustainable way to lower inflammation.

For me the inflammation has shown up with joint pain, heavier periods, some mild headaches and dizziness and a bit of extra belly weight.

I know that if I wanted to really lower my inflammation fast I would simply need to cut all dairy, cut all processed foods, eliminate all added sugars, cut all alcohol, buy all organic, never eat a chip, walk for an hour a day, drink 80 oz water, do a daily red light sauna, spend 10 minutes in the sun in the morning, etc, etc, etc.

If I was to do every single wellness trick and eliminate every single inflammatory trigger from my life I would likely feel “great” and to be completely honest, if I was struggling with a chronic condition or illness I would be more extreme in my approach. However, I have found that I do best with a more sustainable approach.

Back in February I wrote my 10 Day Life Support Checklist. Many of you downloaded that checklist and some of you reached out to me letting me know more specifically what you needed help with. A lot of the feedback I was hearing sounded a lot like the inflammation I had been experiencing.

A lot of anti-inflammatory practices are built into the 10 Day Life Support Checklist but it is not a complete list.

As I am not a fully trained or licensed health professional I didn’t feel confident in providing specific directions so I reached out to a connection of mine named Carmen Stansberry. She is a board certified women’s health practitioner and family nurse practitioner. She is ALL about educating women on how to lower inflammation as the first action to address health.

Get Your Guide

This guide is a 10 Day program that incorporates very doable steps that will assist in lowering overall inflammation. It also gives helpful education on the steps and why.

While reading the guide I found it helpful if there was a term I didn’t know I would hover it on my phone and look it up. That way I was really understanding what Carmen was teaching me. Many of her steps I was doing, but didn’t know they related to inflammation regulation. Some things were new to me such as a bit of salt in water and two cups of cooked veggies daily.

Everything in the guide is simple, doable and more importantly SUSTAINABLE.

This is not a diet or detox.

It is a way to sustainably lower inflammation without your hair falling out or feeling like you are on a yo yo restrictive diet.

In a month or two I am going to do my follow up labs. It will be cool to see if I am able to move the markers through these lifestyle changes.

I hope you are doing well and feel free to write me any time at hi@jenniferlatch.com.

L Jen

I had my first baby at 25.

This was intended.

It was always my plan to have my first child at 25 just like when my mom had me. I was going to have three kids because I believed this would lead to less sibling rivalry and I had it all mapped out.

At least I thought I did.

As society has changed and moved along, having children in your 20s has become less popular. I can understand this from a very practical perspective. Using your 20s to gain an understanding of yourself and your early 30s to build enough financial security to support a family honestly seems like a great idea.

I did this the opposite way. Babies in my 20s and then gaining an understanding of myself when my kids were older in my mid to late 30s. Now I’m apparently in my “entrepreneurial era” as someone most interestingly pointed out to me yesterday and financial security, a fulfilling creative career and building a future for my family has become a new goal.

One of the benefits of having children so young is the amount of energy and muscle mass you have. It is sometimes startling to see the things that I was able to pull off and deal with while having young kids simply because of the body’s age. I was exhausted, but I had strength and endurance.

At 28 I drove 14 hours non-stop to Utah from San Francisco overnight to visit my mother with two toddlers aged 3 and 16 months for Mother’s Day. The only side-effect from this trip was some altitude sickness when I hit the Park City elevation which was swiftly handled by 1200 IU of Vitamin E.

Doing a 14 hour road trip alone over night with two toddlers is actually insane and somewhat dangerous now that I look back at it. But that was how I rolled. It was both my weakness and my strength to be able to throw myself into something without fear of consequence. It was also sprinkled with the perfect dose of naiveness.

Last week my middle daughter graduated from High School up in Oregon. Sending our children to boarding school for high school is a choice we make together as a family because of the quality of education and the practical approach this school incorporates into its learning philosophy. We also qualify for financial aide and have support from family that has allowed us to do so. I miss them like crazy but it is an investment in their future and so far this has worked out well.

Due to various factors we needed to be at the school at 11 am on Friday May 2nd to see her announced. Flying 5 people last minute was over $2000 so we decided to drive. We left Thursday afternoon and due to needing to drop the dogs off for boarding we didn’t really get going until 4pm.

The plan was to drive until midnight, stay in Southern Oregon to sleep for a while and then complete the drive starting at 5 or 6am. We got distracted by a craving for Mexican food which delayed our arrival to Medford to about midnight and I knew I wouldn’t get to sleep until 1 or 2 anyway.

At that point my wild side kicked in and I said, “why not just go all the way? There is an amazing bed waiting for us where we are staying for the weekend. A 4am arrival doesn’t sound too bad. If we sleep in until 10 we will get more sleep than stopping!”

This turned out exactly as planned. I did end up getting more sleep than I would have and it was very nice waking up at our final destination, drinking some coffee and sitting in the sun for a short while before heading over to her school. We then had the very emotional experience of seeing our daughter graduate and share her educational story with her peers and teachers.

However, pulling an all-nighter plus a drive back to SF was much harder on my body now that I am 46.

All week I have been suffering from inflammation in my neck combined with TMJ on the right side of my face and pretty consistent headaches. I am doing all my tricks to bring inflammation down and slowly everything is healing up which is a relief.

Her commencement ceremony is in June and we were planning to drive again, but this past week of pain thoroughly disabused me of that idea and the flights are booked at reasonable hours to avoid stress on our bodies.

I often think about if I had children later in life what it would be like right now at 46 to have young kids or even toddlers. If a 12 hour drive gives me a headache for a week, I can only imagine what having two kids under 5 would do to my body.

Certain things would be easier. I am much calmer now than I was in my 20s, my values are a bit different and I actually feel I would be a better parent to young children overall. We are also more secure financially and that does make a difference if only in the amount of time you can dedicate to your children instead of working.

The exhaustion I was under from 25 - 35 when my three kids were young was pretty intense and I didn’t realize it until I was on the other side of it. The thing I had back then was strength and endurance. I am not quite sure how I would handle the same level of physical duress that comes with mothering young children now at 46.

I guess this experience shows me that I am getting older. That ultimately my decision to have children so young was the right one for me and that I am going to need to implement some changes in how I go about things.

I’ve also learned that I need to do things that improve my strength and endurance. Maybe not for a 12 hour road trip or an unnecessary red eye flight, but to ensure I continue to have the energy to go on the adventures that life brings without the body “talking back” with pain or random injuries.

It is Mother’s Day today and of course whatever age you became a mother doesn’t really matter. Ultimately having a healthy child and loving relationship no matter what timeline that occurred on is what is important. Many women struggle with fertility, finding the right partner and so many different factors that make having or not having children difficult.

Of course there are women who choose not to have children and those women deserve to be celebrated as well. I believe that if you choose that for yourself it is 1000% the right choice and there are likely things you are doing to support life and our collective future in a different way than child rearing.

Having children does not necessarily make one whole.

At 46 this Sunday morning in May looks a lot different than that Sunday at 28.

Today I woke up with only some slight pain in my jaw and was able to fully close my mouth for the first time in a week. My children are grown and slept in leaving me alone for a quiet morning to collect my thoughts for this newsletter. This afternoon we are going for a walk and picnic and I am looking forward to a laid back day with minimal expectation.

I am happy with my life choices and the path I took that led me to motherhood and the relationship I have with my children today. It really is quite something to have these three girls.

Happy Mother’s Day! Here’s to no expectations, finding your own path and lowering inflammation!

L Jen