It’s been six days since I returned to the predictability of the United States. Traffic moves in one direction. Things open and close as they are meant to. The water is hot. The WiFi actually works. I’m not searching for centipedes and scorpions I might step on.

The concept of “like clockwork” is quite mundane, but it means that the hours in the day that were eaten up by J(ambo)F(ucking)K(enya) are now mine. Now that I have the capacity and time to reflect on my time there, I’ve been a bit riddled with guilt that I only posted once on social all summer long (as most business owners are when they don’t do everything all the time perfectly with bells and whistles and all indicators of success loudly flashing).

Seven weeks riding bikes through the Maasai Mara and wandering through the coral-lined streets of Lamu and discovering treasures from West African folk art traders and weavers using craft to connect us to their culture. All the wildlife — the elephant, rhino, lion, giraffe, cute little dik-diks, and my favorite, the topi.

I couldn’t be bothered to post one reel, one carousel, one story with “here’s what we’re up to, look how great my life is.” For seven weeks, if you were trying to follow along on Instagram, you would have thought I had thrown in the towel and fallen off the face of the earth.

But I didn’t. I simply chose to be present. And imagine, I feel guilty about that.

Perhaps this is unique only to small business owners, and the rest of you don’t feel the pressure. But I would argue that we, as a society, have quietly agreed that an experience isn’t fully real until people who weren’t there have witnessed it. That a moment isn’t memorable unless you try to make it go viral. That the actual, lived, felt thing isn’t enough anymore.

We have been conditioned to believe that it’s more important to post to IG or the Toks than it is to be present with the human beings right in front of us, the ones we are building relationships and memories with, who won’t be hidden or discovered by an algorithm.

It’s not an accident we’ve arrived here. It’s the billionaire tech world's business model. Your attention is the cash crop, and they know how to harvest it.

Every platform you scroll on is designed to make you believe the unwitnessed life is a wasted one because what is life if you aren’t comparing yourself to strangers and finding the next greatest serum or productivity hack or cute pair of shoes? Who would you be without the likes and the shares? What would life be like if we went analog and used a phone to call a friend and wrote letters instead of texts and learned about things through flyers on telephone poles and had conversations instead of scrolling? The horrors!

So what did I get, trading seven weeks of posts for seven weeks of presence?

I engaged in rich conversations that weren’t interrupted because my phone buzzed. I bonded with a group of strangers who became fast friends over a few pedal strokes and shared meals under the acacia trees. I got more hours of sleep. I spent more time being grateful for what I have rather than being told I’m not enough.

And I got my attention back.

Attention is the most valuable thing you have, and somewhere along the way (thanks, late-stage capitalism) we were told it was better to spend it on strangers in an app than on the people right in front of us.

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A few things I’ve been sitting with (and perhaps you have been too):

• If I added up every hour I spent this month on my phone, and I could “spend” those hours instead on anything else, who or what would get that time? (Asking for my girlfriend.)

• If I knew no one would ever see it, I would spend more time on ______.

• Are there ways to share my work with an audience that doesn’t require attempting to make a viral, soul-sucking reel?

• What am I hoping a post would give me that the moment itself wasn’t?

• Will I tank my business if I don’t perform for IG or TikTok?

• Where does my guilt come from, and is it rooted in reality?

If you’re a small business owner, artist, creative, or just ditching social media curious, and you’re wrestling with similar questions, I’d love to create space for us to explore all of this in a container that I’m calling the Fouth Space. Get the details on this work in progress and add your name to the waitlist here.

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And while I have you:

→ 2027 trips to Kenya are live! If that part of the world has been on your bucket list, check out my Cycling Safari and Artisan Safari here.

→ Help rebuild a village in Nepal: I started a GoFundMe for my dear friend Laxmi who lost her village to the floods in Nepal. She’s providing direct relief and aid to her community, and you can help her here.

→ In need of a creative reset? I’m co-hosting a Creative Reset Retreat in Tahoe at the end of this month: four nights, small group, hot tub, hiking out the back door, and workshop sessions with me and Andrea Slusarski, a working artist and my Art Mom counterpart. Together we’ll expand our capacity and work through that big, scary idea you keep not doing anything about, creatively. Get the details on our Fall Creative Reset Retreat in Lake Tahoe here. Only 1 spot left!

→ Two ways to explore Japan: My new friends at the International Potato Institute are hosting Field School, a five-day immersive in Fujino, Japan, exploring how art, ecology, craft, food, and everyday practices can help us imagine—and practice—different ways of living. In February, I’m hosting a trip to Nozawa Onsen, which has been called magical and the trip of a lifetime. Only one way to find out ;)

→ What happens when what’s making your outdoors unsafe is a person? Laura from Sex Outside has launched an Outdoor Safety & Culture survey to answer that exact question. You can help shape the future of the Outdoor Industry with 10 minutes of your time.

Lots of links, lots of things to think about. I appreciate you being on this wild ride with me.

Thanks, friends, and until next time,

Jen

Laxmi is not only an 11-time national mountain bike champion (super rare for a woman in Nepal), but also someone who has always shown up for others, especially women and her local community. In 2020, Laxmi founded the Nepal Cycling School to help local Nepalis access coaching and build an athlete development program led by Nepalis, because they believed the next generation of cyclists should be even stronger and better supported.

When I learned of the floods in Nepal, I sent her a message. Her response was heartbreaking:

“Hello dearest Jen, my village Betrawati, Nuwakot is swept away. I took some relief to them yesterday with the help of an NGO. Assumptions are that 400 people were swept away with their houses.

The first phase search and rescue by the government is almost done. Now second phase of distribution of relief materials has started.

I took one truck of 200 packs of food, 10 sacks of rice, plastic tents, basic plastic mats, soap, and toothbrushes.

Now I have seen there are a lot of things to do. Electricity is cut off so they cannot convert paddy into rice. So I need to drop more rice at the village.

I am completely heartbroken Jen. I will figure it out. Now I can feel the pain of all humans. I need some time to overcome from lots of sorrow and pain.”

I asked if I could help, and she said, “Yes, I am open only for you.”

Laxmi doesn’t share her feelings with others that often, and it was a lot for her to ask for help. So if she can ask, I can ask too.

—> Help raise funds for immediate relief for Laxmi’s village here

It feels like we are engulfed by tragedies. It’s one after another, and it can be easy to think that there’s not much we can do to ease the pain and suffering of other human beings. It’s even easier to tune it all out.

But today I’m asking for your attention. I’m asking for your help. Even in the middle of this disaster, Laxmi has already found an emergency route back to the village and carried food for 45 families. I want to help Laxmi reach many more people, and that’s where you come in.

I started a GoFundMe, and funds from this fundraiser will be wired directly to Laxmi so they can be used right away for urgent relief, including food and solar banks for charging phones.

Again, here’s the link: https://gofund.me/da542cbfb. Please consider donating any amount that feels good to you, and share this with people with open hearts and the capacity to help our friends in need. Stay up to date with Laxmi’s efforts via Instagram here.

Thank you :)

Jen

I’ve yet to fully wrap my mind around that experience — the five days in the Maasai Mara, casually passing giraffe one moment and Maasai women beading the next. The familiar route through the sisal farm with the herd of zebra running alongside us, and down the old Kasigau road full of history both mine and theirs. Not knowing if my body or mind would hold up, as both are new to me. The new friends that soon became old friends.

It was an experience of a lifetime, to say the least, one that has left its mark on me. After a year of scars, I’ve been waiting for the salve, and this trip delivered.

More words to come once I’ve more fully wrapped my mind around it all, but for now, a lil’ photo dump that in no way does it justice.

→ Get on the waitlist for next year’s trip here.

Until next time,

Jen

PS: I’m co-hosting a long weekend in Tahoe this fall — four nights, small group, hot tub, hiking out the back door, and workshop sessions from me and Andrea Slusarski, a working artist and my Art Mom counterpart. Together we’ll expand our capacity and work through that big, scary idea you keep not doing anything about, creatively.

Curious? Fall Creative Reset Retreat → · Lake Tahoe, Sept 30–Oct 4 · 4 spots left

If you don’t need a whole weekend but would love a little advice, paid subscribers can Ask Me Anything once a month. Check out your perks here.

This week’s newsletter comes to you from 38,000 feet as I attempt to clickety clack through the tears, a thing I do on all long-haul flights, a natural consequence of getting less than four hours of sleep paired with an odd mix of overwhelm and relief. That Jeff Buckley documentary didn’t help, nor did ’s latest newsletter, written by Megan Falley (IYKYK.) At least I’m in good company.

I’m en route to my second home, Kenya, where the start of my cycling trip with Zawadisha will mark the one-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis, and this trip feels like a reward for good behavior.

For the first time in a very long time, I truly took care of myself, prioritizing my physical and mental health. I quit drinking (boring). I started doing things like walking after dinner and lifting weights and eating more protein. I closed a business that no longer served me. I started one that feels like the antidote to [gestures at everything around me]. I say no more. Sometimes I don’t say anything at all.

Business in front, party in the back

Despite how much I’ve grown and what I’ve accomplished, I’ve only become more invisible, a relatively normal occurrence for women over 40.

While waiting in the TSA Pre-Check line this morning, two men literally walked right past me as if I weren’t standing there waiting for my turn to approach the agent. I was so gobsmacked I forgot to tell them to fuck off. I just stared at their dumb faces, adding one more line to my long list of “why there is a male loneliness epidemic.”

Just another reminder that with my short, grey lesbian haircut (not a dig, simply a statement of fact), I’m absolutely invisible to the male gaze. Those long, curly, dark locks were lost to the chemo, along with so much more. All that’s left is a woman who clearly looks over 40 and has decided that if she can’t have her old hair back, she’s growing a mullet.

You’re welcome, world.

The hair I have now is a gift. When I look in the mirror, I don’t feel horrible about myself the way I did when the reflection looking back at me had no hair on my head, no eyebrows, no eyelashes.

I remember when my hair started growing back after the chemo. I was so excited and didn’t care that it first appeared as stubble where my eyebrows once lived, as if I had done a horrible, half-assed job of penciling them in. I was so excited to share the news with Liz and Mary, who had come to visit me after my surgery. We sat in my kitchen nook, the morning sun pouring in through the windows, sharing Perrin pastries over coffee, reveling in my revival.

The day that changed everything

This Saturday, July 18th, is the one-year anniversary of receiving my cancer diagnosis.

I remember that morning vividly, too.

As I scrolled through my emails while drinking coffee in bed (a bad habit I’d like to break, but since quitting drinking, I have to pace myself), the MyChart message appeared in my inbox with the results of my biopsy.

I clicked. I Googled all the words that read like a foreign language. I called Raquel because she’s one of my smartest friends and knows smart people. Her doctor friend called me. I had breast cancer, and it had spread, and because nothing in my life follows a straight path, it was an unusual diagnosis.

Permission granted

Although I’m on the other side of the awful treatments where you poison your body to kill the cancer before you cut the last remaining remnants out with a scalpel, I know I’m not cured. I’ll be living in limbo for years, waiting for the results of blood tests to tell me if the cancer is back.

Every time I look in the mirror, I’m reminded of this thing they call a journey. Growing my hair out and coloring it won’t get me back to the “old me.” She doesn’t exist anymore.

And while that might mean that strange men don’t pay attention to me anymore, I’ll take that, along with everything else, as a win. Because I’m still here.

But what feels a bit embarrassing is that I made every one of those changes — the drinking, the business, the boundaries — only after something tried to kill me. Not before, not when I had the feeling that things weren’t right and I was stuck in a hamster wheel that I couldn’t get off of. It took a diagnosis to give me permission to live the way I already wanted to live, and that might be one of the things that’s making the person sitting next to me wonder why I’m crying into my bag of pretzels.

So, if you were the person sharing an armrest with me, here’s what I’d ask you while I sip on my sparkling water with a lemon and ice because I need to use my imagination to fly economy sober:

What are you waiting for permission to do?

Not what you should do. Should makes us feel shitty, and while sometimes we do things we don’t want to because that’s what it means to be in community, it’s not the best north star.

Write it down. Sit with it. Imagine yourself living it. Don’t worry about doing it yet — no need to make it feel more overwhelming than it already is.

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But if you’re ready to take the next step, here’s your permission slip: I’m co-hosting a long weekend in Tahoe this fall — four nights, small group, hot tub, hiking out the back door, and workshop sessions from me and Andrea Slusarski, a working artist and my Art Mom counterpart. Together we’ll expand our capacity and work through that big, scary idea you keep not doing anything about, creatively.

Curious? Fall Creative Reset Retreat → · Lake Tahoe, Sept 30–Oct 4 · 8 people

Until next time,

Jen

PS: If you don’t need a whole weekend but would love a little advice, paid subscribers can Ask Me Anything once a month. Check out your perks here.

In the meantime, I’ve just opened up registration for the fall Creative Reset Retreat I’m hosting with Andrea Slusarski in Lake Tahoe. If you’re looking for a long weekend to expand your creativity and capacity, you’ll want to check it out here.

Dear friend,

One thing that I’ve grown to cherish with this newsletter, and writing for your eyes in general, is the conversations that my words spark. It’s not necessarily that I’m giving you something new to consider; it’s that I’m reaffirming what you already believe.

Regardless of the platform — whether it’s here in this newsletter, on social, in a workshop or retreat I facilitate — I tend to share perspectives that go against the grain of the story we’ve been told about what it means to be human. Anytime you deviate from the status quo, you’re met with resistance, and oftentimes, that resistance comes from within.

My hope is that when you sit down to read (or listen) to my newsletters, you realize your thoughts aren’t so wild and that you are not alone in thinking them. In fact, you’re in very good company.

Better cover up, your communism is showing

For those of us who live in the United States, when we express the desire to have our basic needs met, from universal healthcare to affordable housing, our value system is aligned with the “radical left.”

I’ve been called worse, so I tend not to get myself in a tizzy over labels designed to separate us. But I do find it fascinating to watch the very people who tell us they’re on our side not know what to do with the rising political power of Democratic socialists.

First, there was NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who won his 2025 election by a landslide. In the June 2026 primaries, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Melat Kiros, and Claire Valdez, all affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, unseated top establishment Democrats.

The response from moderate Democrats? “We are capitalist, not socialist.” Talk about not reading the room. These out-of-touch politicians are more worried that the Republicans will paint the entire Democratic Party as extreme (as if they haven’t already and won’t regardless) than about what will get their constituents excited to vote.

The irony, of course, is that the Democratic Socialists are about as radical as the Republicans during the Eisenhower administration. And despite the rants of our current president about how communists are taking over, he’s the one who’s responsible for a heavy government hand in the private sector. And the cherry on top? For the entirety of the United States’ existence, we’ve been subjected to socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

The internet kept score at the World Cup

47 countries, from Qatar to Panama to Croatia to Switzerland, all provide universal healthcare to nearly 1.9 billion people. The United States is the only high-income, industrialized nation that does not guarantee universal healthcare for its citizens.

As someone who saw her premiums double while undergoing intensive treatment for cancer and currently has more than $10,000 in medical debt despite being fully insured, this hits close to home.

Don’t sugarcoat it

Despite not being able to remember this morning, I have a vivid memory of speaking with someone from the hospital’s billing department on a cold January morning. My surgery date was less than a week away, and yet the procedure to remove the cancer from my body had not yet been approved by the insurance company.

I asked the person on the other end of the phone what she thought would happen to people who couldn’t, for whatever reason, advocate for themselves the way that I could. Her response was sympathetic, but it wasn’t accurate.

So I clarified it for her: They die.

The lack of universal coverage leads to approximately 68,000 avoidable deaths in the United States annually. And then there are people like me, who are a part of the 36% of U.S. adults who skip or postpone medical care due to costs. If that MRI hadn’t cost nearly $1,000, perhaps I wouldn’t have skipped a year. I thought an annual mammogram would be enough, and yet it missed the cancer growing in my body.

So I ask you, what is more radical — wanting my tax dollars to pay for universal healthcare so that families and communities are healthy in every sense of the word, or giving tax breaks to a small majority at the expense of an entire population?

Until next time,

Jen

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