meet jen
Hi, I’m Jen.
A trauma-informed coach guiding women back to the truth they’ve spent years overriding.
I work with women who’ve spent a lifetime performing, pleasing, shrinking, overthinking, and bracing their way through life.
Women who carry pressure quietly.
Women who look strong on the outside but feel terrified inside.
Women who freeze instead of fail.
Women who disappear from their own lives to avoid being seen as “not enough.”
I know them intimately because for years, I was one of them.
The Girl Who Learned to Survive by Getting Everything Right
I wasn’t the loud, high-achieving, hustle-for-success kind of perfectionist.
I was the gold-star kind.
The girl who learned early that being smart — getting good grades, exceeding expectations, never making a mistake — was how you stayed safe.
Good grades meant approval.
Approval meant attention.
Attention meant safety.
Excellence wasn’t ambition.
It was protection.
But underneath the A-student exterior was a terrified girl who believed:
If I can’t get it right, I’ll lose connection.
So I stayed in the lanes where I knew I could excel.
I watched other people rise in their careers while I held myself back — not because I lacked ability, but because the idea of failing felt catastrophic.
If I couldn’t guarantee success, I wouldn’t even start.
Freeze Was My First Language
When things felt uncertain, imperfect, or risky, I didn’t push harder.
I shut down.
I froze.
I avoided.
I disappeared.
I removed myself from the game before it could expose me.
I lived almost entirely in my head —
rehearsing conversations, replaying moments, managing outcomes, bracing for mistakes I hadn’t even made yet.
On the outside, I looked calm, steady, capable.
On the inside, I was exhausted and resentful from holding everything together with no room for error.
I had abandoned myself so quietly, so consistently, for so long
that I couldn’t even hear what I wanted — only what felt safest.
The Breaking Point That Became a Beginning
My rock bottom wasn’t subtle.
My marriage ended abruptly and painfully — a shock that left me standing in the wreckage of a life I thought I understood.
And suddenly there I was, in my 40s, staring at a future I hadn’t chosen and a self I barely recognized.
No role to hide behind.
No script to follow.
No identity to perform.
Just me.
And a question I had spent decades avoiding:
What would it mean to trust myself?
It terrified me.
But it also cracked something open.
It was my quiet revolution.
The Work of Returning to Myself
My healing wasn’t loud or dramatic.
It didn’t look like major reinvention or confidence hacks.
It looked like:
Noticing when I was bracing or shrinking.
Recognizing the freeze that lived under my perfectionism.
Learning to be softer with myself instead of self-punishing.
Letting myself try things I might be bad at.
Allowing mistakes without collapsing into shame.
Making choices without over-explaining or earning permission.
Becoming comfortable with my “no” — even when it disappointed people.
Easing the grip of fear around uncertainty.
Tending to the younger parts of me who never felt safe to get things wrong.
Learning to feel again, one small moment at a time.
It was slow.
Gentle.
Disorienting at times.
But deeply honest.
And I’m still practicing.
Because trusting yourself isn’t a destination — it’s a relationship you rebuild, steadily and compassionately.
What This Taught Me About Women Like Us
My story is not unique.
It’s the story of women who were told to be good, smart, helpful, capable — and quietly learned that their worth depended on never letting anyone down.
Women who freeze instead of fail.
Who avoid instead of risk.
Who overthink instead of act.
Who hold themselves so tightly that nothing feels safe anymore.
Women who were praised for being responsible and accommodating — and never had room to become who they actually are.
I see them because I was them.
I understand them because I lived inside the same pressure.
Why I Do This Work
Because women don’t need more pressure.
More performance.
More proving.
More “just be confident” advice.
They need a safe, quiet place to stop bracing.
To stop disappearing.
To stop living inside fear of mistakes.
To stop abandoning themselves for approval.
They need space to hear their instincts again.
To feel grounded in their own yes and their own no.
To trust themselves without earning it.
They need a revolution that begins as a whisper.
My Approach
I create grounded, compassionate spaces where women can:
Notice the patterns that keep them stuck.
Understand why overthinking takes over.
Soften the freeze that blocks action.
Reconnect with their instincts.
Stop outsourcing every decision.
Build a trustworthy relationship with themselves.
Take action from steadiness, not fear.
This is slow work.
Honest work.
Work that honors your nervous system, your lived experience, and your internal truth.
Not a performance.
Not a persona.
Not a pressure-driven transformation.
A return.
Credentials
Trauma-Informed Master Coach (Elementum Coaching Institute)
Integrative Wellness Coach (Integrative Wellness Academy)
Specialized Trauma & Relationship Work: Level 3 (Relationship Recovery Process)
Certified Yoga Teacher
MBA
Hundreds of hours coaching… and decades living the work.
