• Apparently, Later Had Arrived

    I have graduated from taking Zoloft, and it’s been a complete trip. I didn’t realize how much of my emotions had been suppressed. I mean, it did a great job while I was trying to process all of the heavy stuff that came with depression. Though now, I’m starting to understand myself differently. Here I…

  • The Audacity of My Hormones at 42

    I have become the person who carries a neck fan and a paper fan in her purse. Why? Because my body runs at 105 degrees Fahrenheit ALL. THE. TIME. I hate it. Last spring, I joined a women’s golf club that ran into fall. Every Friday, we would meet at 6 PM for practice. Practice…

  • LoJack

    This month marks a full year since my dog LoJack passed. I know I haven’t fully healed because when I think about him, I tear up and immediately have to think about something else. I was seeing my therapist when LoJack passed, but I couldn’t focus on just that event. My mom was going through…

  • The Sentence That Never Really Left

    One of my core memories as a teenager was spending time at my friends’ houses. Not to do homework, but to hang out, call boys, and eat whatever their moms were making. Every year, a new family would take me in. It felt nice. One day, after coming back from my friend’s house, my mom…

  • I’m Not Cold, I’m Processing

    Hello. My name is Jen, and I suffer from resting bitch face. I didn’t realize it for a long time. I also didn’t know there was a name for it. I was in my mid-30s when I first heard the phrase—and honestly, it felt both offensive and accurate. Sure, I could try to soften my…

  • The Energy It Takes to Be ‘On’

    For 17 years of my young adult life, I worked in retail. Women’s and men’s apparel, accessories, shoes, luxury, juniors, fast fashion — you name it, I was most likely there. Retail taught me a lot about people. Some of it was good. A lot of it was… not. The hardest part wasn’t the long…

  • The Things I Convince Myself I’ll Do Tomorrow

    How I start my Mondays usually determines how the rest of my week goes. My weekends are typically filled with family outings, time with friends, or a date with my husband. I look forward to Mondays — getting back into my routine. Unless I decide, for a week and a half, to completely rebel against…

  • The Version of Me Before Liam

    Young Jen would probably be surprised how I turned out. I’d say the 42-year-old version of me — married for almost nine years, raising a four-year-old — has found her joy. Jen BC came from the IDGAF era, but with a lot of teen anguish mixed in. A lot of that came from childhood and…

  • The People Who Think Before They Speak (and the Ones Who Don’t)

    I’ve always believed there are two types of people in the world: people who speak before they think and people who think before they speak. But there’s also a strange gray space where some of us live — people who somehow manage to do both, usually at the worst possible time. I am one of…

  • The Quiet Grief of Outgrowing a Church

    Matt and I found a church we loved in 2018. The messages were funny and easy to follow. The worship team made every Sunday feel like a concert, and I felt genuinely welcomed by everyone. At the time, I had recently been diagnosed with depression and was working through PTSD from past trauma. When I…