Jennifer Rudolph Walsh: Finding the Sacred Pause

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh is a dear friend and mentor, who in her prior life, was the global head of literature, lectures, and events at WME, the agency. During her long and storied career she shepherded many of culture’s biggest luminaries, including Oprah, Brené Brown, and Sue Monk Kidd. And yes, Jennifer is an amazing dealmaker, who can look for synergies across industries so that everyone wins, but I believe her particular genius point is finding the story—I have watched her work with people where their story, which they perceived as messy, random, unimportant, comes together in her eyes as a cogent, powerful narrative. It is incredible to witness, and truly transforms that person’s perspective on their entire life. She is one of my friends and mentors—on any given day, she might be my mother, my sister, or as she would joke, my daughter—and I have learned so much from watching her navigate the world with fierceness and power. In this conversation, she talks about her transition into a sacred pause as she contemplates how she wants to serve in this next phase of her career—and we explore story as both a tool for personal healing and an opportunity for societal change.

TRANSCRIPT:

(Edited slightly for clarity.)

ELISE LOEHNEN:

The first time I interviewed you, I barely knew you.

JENNIFER RUDOLPH WALSH:

That's right. That's right. That was my, honestly, my favorite interview ever. You're so delicious that I wanted to spend all my time reversing the questions onto you.

ELISE:

You say many things to me that I take on the road, but you said something to me too, that I loved, which you said I don't need to be a thought leader, this emphasis on cultural thought leaders. I don't think you said it was bullshit, but you were like, there's enough of that. I'm just a thought follower.

JENNIFER:

And that's very much true to this day. I love following a great thought, or a great story, and just taking it to wherever it leads me. And then sharing it, because I'm a fanatic when it comes to something that I've learned that's beautiful, or that's true, or that's sad, or that's helpful. I just wanna tell everybody about it too.

ELISE:

But this is what I think is one of your more remarkable gifts. And obviously you spent your life finding, cultivating, and setting talent free in the world, but you're an incredible storyteller yourself. I feel like you hear the thing and then can articulate it in a way that's actually so much better than the event.

JENNIFER:

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I do say that I'm the queen of the cliché, and I don't say that to put myself down. I mean, I think it's actually quite something to always have the perfect cliché for every situation. And I come by it naturally because in the birthday book, February 14th, my birthday is of the “quick quip.” Yes, that book is amazing. So I will say that I do have the ability to sum up kind of a rather large and sometimes confusing experience with just like a two sentence thing, that just cuts to the core. So I appreciate that I'm moving energy through those ideas. And a lot of the stories I tell, I can't even remember where they come from because I am an amalgamation of all the thoughts I've followed.

ELISE:

I think I've watched you do this innumerable times, and I'm thinking of one instance, where it was this prompt, because I think, okay, this is the other thing that I think is a cultural misfire. The storytelling is left to writers, poets, musicians, artists, right? And some people are more creatively equipped than others. And so many people's stories don't get told because they don't have that skillset. Or maybe their stories are co-opted or appropriated in a way that's maybe honoring and respectful, but often not. And then so many people think that they don't have a story.

JENNIFER:

Well, I would like to separate out, if we can, the idea of publishing your story with telling your story, because I do think they've gotten conflated and while it is my most firm belief that every single person has a story and that story matters, I would add to that. Every single person's story shouldn’t be published or produced, right? Because they're separate things. A published story or a produced story is a work of art. Everybody that has a story can share their story as a work of healing. And they're very different things. I mean, I'm not saying that there's not an art to the healing, but when I say that everybody has a story and that story matters, I believe that to my core, but people don't know what their story is. And you and I were at an event together and we asked the prompt, tell me about that scar. And the woman that we were with, who we adore said, I don't really think I have a story about a scar.

And I said, really? And she said, let me think, oh wait, I do. My father, who committed suicide, was bipolar. And when he was very manic, he would be wonderful to be around. And he was swinging me around by my legs. And I smashed my head into the side of a chair and I was gushing blood, but I didn't want him to know that I was hurt because I didn't want it to stop. Now, this person didn't think they had a story. That story is gigantic. And universal on so many levels and explained so much about this person. But she started it by saying, I don't really have a story about a scar.

ELISE:

Yeah. And then didn't she go on to talk about needing to go to the emergency room. And then in that moment, trying to comfort her parents?

JENNIFER:

Her mother, and comfort her father, and being the go between. I mean, her story was ginormous. And by the end of it, we were all in tears and we looked at her completely differently, but she was walking through the world as a person who didn't believe she had a story.

ELISE:

Why, where does that? I don't even know if I'd call it an essential wound, but since we're talking about scars, why not? Where does that come from?

JENNIFER:

Well, I think that, I'm not gonna say that people come in two different categories because that's too reductive. But I do think people tend to either think I have the hugest story or I don't have a story. And I can talk about my own, my own journey from, from midwifing 2,000 books into the world and thinking that I didn't have a story to tell, to realizing that I could be going around the world, telling everybody that you have a story and that story matters and thinking that it didn't apply to me. So part of my journey was to realize, oh, I also have a story. And that story matters. And even though the nadir of my young childhood wound was my parents getting divorced, which is pretty ordinary and happens to probably 50% of all kids in this country. It doesn't mean that my story is ordinary. And the way my parents divorce impacted me is unique. And in sharing that story, I was able to travel the distance from the personal to the universal.

ELISE:

And you shared that story in the introduction to Hungry Hearts, but will you tell it in summation here?

JENNIFER:

So when I was a young girl, my parents told us that we were gonna have a family meeting after school. I had never been to a meeting. I couldn't have been more excited. I ran around school like a Mad Hatter asking every single person what happens at a family meeting. And the consensus was that my family was going on a vacation and that this meeting was going to be used to decide where we were gonna go. So I spent that afternoon, I got myself a yellow, legal pad. I tried to make the strongest argument that I could about how Disneyland was an educational experience. I knew my brother would probably be voting for Cooperstown, the baseball place. And I knew my sister would want to go someplace glamorous. And I just realized I had to make my case. And so I got to the meeting all ready to advocate for my choice. And my parents told us they were getting divorced. And I literally sat there clutching that yellow pad feeling like my entire life was over, and feeling like there was no way back to the person I was entering that meeting. And I carried that division and that schism inside of myself for many, many years.

ELISE:

So interesting knowing you in the way that I know you now, too, and I can't imagine it wasn't your gift before this experience, but you strike me, well, one I love, I don't love, but the vulnerability that you express, like when you're surprised by someone's action is so sweet.

JENNIFER:

Well, I mean, you know, a friend of mine said to me just three years ago at work, something was happening and, and it was really not going well. And I bumped into my friend at the airport and he goes, Jen, your parents are not getting back to be together and we're not going to Disneyland. And it's like, oh I've literally been carrying around this desire to get the family back together and go to Disneyland to the point where on Together Live, I actually named the last portion of the show, “the family meeting.” Like in my own way, I had been trying to redo that meeting over and over again, and keep myself from being blindsided and keep my family from being divided.

ELISE:

No, and it's true because so first, what I've observed in you is this anticipatory, emotional reading of everyone involved and understanding what they need and how to fulfill those needs, which I'm assuming is, was your gift before, but now you've supercharged it in order to anticipate what's going to happen so that you're not taken by surprise. You're still taken by surprise. Always.

JENNIFER:

Always. Always. My friend Suzanne says I'm like Lucy with the football: Not again. I'm always taken by surprise because there is such a purity in my belief of other people, and in my belief of the power of love, and the power of story. So I mean, the reason I love stories so much is because there's a beginning, middle, and an end, but in real life, the beat just goes on and on.

ELISE:

It really does. With no tidy summation. But let's talk about family because you look for it. I mean, you've said it to me before, when we've gone to meet someone, you're like, “you're meeting the rest of your family.” So friends and family, like you can sense it in the way that you gather people around you, who you love and protect them fiercely. How do you take that and extend that? How do you turn that into a culture? We were just talking about the flip side of that, which is companies that insist on pretending like they're your family and then are not, which I think has been a cultural fallout from COVID for so many people.

JENNIFER:

Well, I mean, I think that the extension is the belief that every single solitary person matters. And their humanity is at the very core of that value. And if you don't lose sight of somebody's humanity, no matter what, even in the most defended position, then it really enables you to sort of see everybody as your brother or your sister or your child. And I mean, certainly that's aspirationally the way I like to treat people.

ELISE:

Well, one of the things that I'm very grateful to you, for many reasons, is your bravery in holding people's hands, regardless of what they're going through, and how unsavory it might be. But two, you're unwavering and sometimes painful honesty. Like you will say the thing.

JENNIFER:

Well, I mean, I will say that brutal honesty is only brutal if it's intended to be. So I try to always come to honesty with as much compassion and kindness as I can, but I do think the ultimate sign of respect and admiration is honesty. Which is to say that when you look away from something that somebody is going through, or when you're only there for the good times, there's a very painful tear that happens inside a person when the messages they're being told are you're only valuable or worthy when things are going well. And so I try very hard because I know what that feels like to not be more attentive to the hard times because they're also the friends that are always there when things are going bad, because that's sort of their lifeblood in some way. But I just look at it, all the good stuff, the hard stuff, the boring stuff, as like the most important thing. And so I try to be there equally for all, for all of it, and not weight the good stuff over the bad stuff.

ELISE:

Going back to honesty, and then I do wanna talk about friendship and the different types. And I feel like so often people are dishonest because they're scared. Or because they fear losing the attachment and in a way you lost the attachment, right? Like your family fell apart in some way. And do you think that that's made you braver?

JENNIFER:

Well, you know, it's interesting. You just made me think of something. My father, I used to go to my father's house every other weekend. And my stepmother who recently passed away, she and I had a pretty difficult relationship, but we never really discussed anything. And when I was in my early twenties, I said to my father, one day, how come we never talked about anything? And he said, because I didn't wanna risk the weekend. And the irony is because he didn't wanna risk the weekend. We risked our relationship because he didn't wanna have a bad weekend, we never had a true weekend. And so I've thought about that a lot, like the risking of the weekend. And it's like, I'm willing to risk anything to be, to be real and to be true. And, and as I said, I do think it's the highest form of respect. I mean, you and I were laughing earlier today because you know, we had to come up with a nine. We, we were doing a workshop together and we had to come up with nine words that defined ourselves, and I couldn't get to my nine words because I was so busy arguing with you about your words. It's like, why do you fucking care about my nine words? It's like, because you're spectacular, but we're gonna get these words right.

ELISE:

No, and another thing I'm very grateful to you for is you're one of the strongest people I know you're certainly one of the fiercest women I know. There aren't enough of us. In some ways you have taught me how to fight and have conflict and love. I mean, I don't even know if you'd consider it that way.

JENNIFER:

You're being so sweet, but you're killing me. You know I can take anything but a compliment, but what I will say is that I do feel very comfortable in disagreements and in conflicts. I don't feel like, and I was with this way with my kids. Like if you've done something wrong, there's a consequence, but you're not in trouble. Like you have to pay a consequence, but I love you. And I'm as proud of you when you're sitting in time out as I am when you're sitting on the stage, accepting an award. So I think that there's a way to have conflict, but where the bond is unshakeable underneath. And there's never a moment during that conflict where you feel like the love is in danger of being taken away from you.

ELISE:

I was talking to Gabor Maté, and he was talking about the essential nature for children. And since I think of myself as your child sometimes, but how the simultaneous needs of any child for attachment, and your favorite word, authenticity. And so often children sacrifice authenticity for attachment, which makes a tremendous amount of sense. Like you're bartering for your safety and security. And I think what you've taught me as an adult is, no both can be present. I mean, it's funny. We argue all the time. We were arguing, we walk to lunch and there's not always resolution. It just dissipates…

JENNIFER

I forget what were we arguing about?

ELISE:

We were arguing about, our two versions of reality, but who taught you that?

JENNIFER:

Well, I actually had to teach that to my myself. Because I didn't have that growing up. And I felt that there had to be a way where you could actually be heard and be seen and have your needs met, but not have to feel like your safety was in question. And I know that with my kids, for example, when they were at Chelsea Day School, which I loved, the woman that ran the school, Jean, was so wise about stuff like this. So if a child did something wrong, she wouldn't make them apologize because she felt like she was forcing them to be insincere. And what she helped me to realize is the way to do it is they pay the consequence. But then afterwards you ask them if they're sorry, and the answer is, yeah, yes.

What are you sorry for? What exactly are you sorry for? And you realize that most children don't really have a sense of what they're sorry for. They're sorry that they're in trouble really is what it is. But if you let them come to it on their own, the consequences paid, they don't have to say, they're sorry, they've already paid the price, but that they can come to the idea of their part of the equation themselves, if they don't feel like their safety is in question. And I came to realize at a young age that anytime I had a conflict with somebody, particularly somebody that I cared about, I would make myself be quiet until I could think of one part of it that I was sorry for, literally one part of it. It could be the smallest thing, but until I could find something that I felt that I had mismanaged, then I wouldn't speak. And I would find the more I did that, the easier it was for me to find the thing that I was sorry for.

ELISE:

So powerful.

JENNIFER:

It really is. And it takes you out of that victim consciousness, right? It's like even in the times where I feel like I've been most wronged, I can still find a place where I feel like I could have communicated better. I could have been more transparent. I could have been less reactive and being able to lead with what my responsibility is and what I had wish I had done differently. I find that very liberating and empowering. And the interesting thing is I think people think that it's a weakness, you know, never apologize. Never explain. I'm the opposite. It's like, apologize, explain. True connection is on the other side of that.

ELISE:

Yeah. I was talking, I was interviewing this psychotherapist, Galit Atlas. She wrote this really beautiful book, Emotional Inheritance. And anyway, she's Syrian, Iranian, Israeli, and she was talking about Israel in this context, but it’s from the micro to the macro, she was like, it's really difficult when people get so mired in their victim consciousness, which we all want, and need, and never deny anyone their suffering. And then simultaneously, to recognize, how unable so many people are to recognize when they have slipped to be the aggressor. And so often, we never take responsibility for that. And it could be 95% victim, 5% aggressor, but there's always a projection of our pain typically on someone else.

JENNIFER:

I mean, for one thing, we're all, all the things. And certainly, as children, you know, a child would never. It's like never, not yet. You know? I mean every child, everything, every time. It's developmentally appropriate. And we like to see ourselves as one thing, but we're micro-climates. We're many things. And we're many things in many different situations. And, you know, to go back to the story piece, which is, you know, religion. I'm a storytelling evangelist. But the reason I am is because once you know somebody's story, you can never look at them as other, again. You take them into your heart in a completely different way. I mean, somebody was just asking me about Blackberry Mountain. Now Blackberry Mountain is the most incredible place, but all I can think about is Celeste story, Celeste Bee, the woman who runs it, whose husband suddenly died and left her with four children. Like the story is the thing that lasts. It's the tattoo on your heart. And if you really let somebody's story in, it changes the way, not just the way you think about them, but the way you think about yourself.

ELISE:

It's interesting going back to the how we started with this idea that only certain people get to really tell their story, like, what are the forums like, how do we accelerate this idea of, I mean, we've talked about it a lot in the context of a dream that we have to build—not badging, which sounds so gamified, but this idea that so many people have been through so many things that are imperceptible unless expressed. And I wish we had a culture that made it like you had your girl scout

JENNIFER:

Badges. We do believe in this, right. You can go up to somebody and say hello. And instead of making small talk, you see a badge that said my family lost all their money and we had to move house 12 times. It's like, oh, now we can have a totally different conversation. Let's have a real conversation. You know, because my grandfather also came from a family that had lost all their money, or I also had a parent die by suicide, or whatever it is. We hide the things that actually make us most compelling to one another because we've been sold a belief that that's where our weakness is, as opposed to that's where our beauty is.

I mean social media makes it so easy to share our stories, but there's more to the process than just sort of sharing blindly. I mean, there has to be an understanding of who you're sharing with, and a certain safety that you're not going be judged, or held responsible for something that is not your responsibility. So I do think that sharing stories are incredibly powerful, but that there has to be an like an awareness of safety. And you have to know who is witnessing you in your full humanity.

ELISE:

Yeah. Certainly. And this might be a different type of thing, but I've seen you give feedback to people who feel like they really need to share their story because it has universal truth, but in the sense they haven't processed their story, they haven't metabolized it. They might be covered with sort of gaping wounds.

JENNIFER:

Well, you've heard me say before, you really need to share from the scar and not from the wound, because when you're sharing from a wound, I think that's more potentially for a therapeutic setting, or for a very close personal friend or a family member. The problem when you share from the wound is that it's dangerous for the person sharing from the wound, but it's also dangerous for the people who are listening.

ELISE:

Say more.

JENNIFER:

Well I think that it can be potentially very triggering to hear somebody sharing from an open wound and those people sometimes haven't processed everything entirely and they can potentially be inadvertently dangerous to somebody else with how they're sharing. I do think that digesting the story and really working through the pieces of it is central for it to be part of healing and connection.

ELISE:

And again, going to owning of some part of it, which I think potentially when you're projecting from an open wound, it is almost, you can become an aggressor as you were saying inadvertently.

JENNIFER:

I think that without realizing it, because the feelings are so wild and unprocessed.

ELISE:

And painful, exactly.

JENNIFER:

There is like almost a primal experience. And I think those are ideally best suited therapeutic settings or for somebody who really knows you so well, and is able to kind of sift through the parts of the story that are essential, and maybe get rid of some of the woundology.

ELISE:

Woundology.

JENNIFER:

Well, woundology, to me, is the use of your wounds to manipulate somebody else’s behavior.

And I think a necessary part of healing. I mean I don't blame people. You know, when my husband, 15-years-ago had cancer, I was like, here's a cancer card. Use it every single day for 12 months. Like never hesitate, just put that card down. Like I'm a believer in processing your wounds and woundology is a piece of it. But you can’t get stuck there, and it's not really a place to connect and heal from.

ELISE:

I've had this conversation with some friends who are psychiatrists, therapists, et cetera. And they do talk about when the attachment to story becomes unwanted luggage. And we certainly know people who are so attached to their story, they can't find a new one.

JENNIFER:

Well, I mean, like all things, we can get addicted to an identity, and a story can be an identity. I remember on the stage of Together Live, Bozoma St. John, who wrote a beautiful essay in the Hungry Hearts anthology, she told a story about how she's a widow and every year on the anniversary of her husband's death, she would write this huge thing on Instagram and get the 2,000 comments. And it was a beautiful healing experience. But this year that we were having this interview, it was like the seventh year. And she thought of the idea of having to write that whole post and having all the people come to her with their sympathy. It just felt like a lead blanket. And she suddenly realized that she didn't need to do it that way anymore, that she could still love and honor the memory of her husband without having to go to the, like the darkest, saddest, most broken-hearted place. And so it's a brave thing to let go of an identity, and a story that's given you sympathy, and given you support. But we do outgrow our stories. And if we want to write, you know, as Brené says, a brave new ending, we gotta stop telling the same stories over and over again.

ELISE:

It’s such a powerful idea. And it's so hard to do, but I think that there is that moment, particularly when you're done processing, when not that the story stops being relevant, but it certainly might lose its barbed teeth. It might stop feeling so essential to who you are and you do wanna put it down.

JENNIFER:

Right. I mean, I think you know the person who just tells the same stories over and over again, and they're not even listening to themselves anymore. That's not an interesting story. I mean, part of an openhearted, authentic sharing has to be that the person that is telling the story is also connected to the story.

And therefore connected to you in the witnessing of it. So when someone's just like phoning it in, or sort of what my phrase is, playing themselves on TV, then it's not really interesting. Then it's sort of like a verbal masturbation at a certain point. It's like, I just happen to be in the audience. And I already saw the matinee, so I don't need to see the nighttime show.

ELISE:

And when the story starts to feel like a manipulation, like when it's the Jamie Wheal’s calls it, like your carpetbag of catharsis, where he talks about the experience. If you see someone telling something and you're like, oh, that's really moving. And then you see them telling the exact same thing to someone else for the same effect. And it's, it's like a deadening of that connection.

JENNIFER:

Right. That for some reason reminds me of the Seinfeld where Julia Louis Dreyfus’ character meets this guy and he calls her delicious, and she's so excited. And then she overhears him calling the couch delicious, and the dog delicious. And just like how upset she is because she thought it was like the best compliment ever. And that is me with the word delicious. But it's deadening and it makes you feel like you're oddly being used and that you’re just an audience for them to get off on. That's not connection.

ELISE:

Alright, friendship relationships, which you've also taught me a lot about, can you talk about this idea of like the, the different types, from transactional, which are completely acceptable, but often we confuse those with something deeper.

JENNIFER:

Well, I think transactional relationships are vital and certainly vital to the workplace. But transactional friendships I think is where the gray zone gets kind of confusing. And I think as long as there's transparency, and both people are viewing it the same way. Then there is no issue. But if one person, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, is viewing it as a true love friendship and the other person is treating it as a transaction. That's where the that's where the pain and the discomfort comes in. And so for me in the two and a half years since I've left my work, which was very much a people business and very much for me, a business of love, but for a lot of the other side of it really much more transactional than I recognized. When I left work, I, as a result of COVID, found myself in an opportunity of being still for the first time in my entire life.

I had been moving a thousand miles an hour, my entire adult life. And I suddenly found myself at a sacred pause where I just realized that the most powerful luxury that I could give myself was the luxury of stillness, with no plan of how long it was gonna be. And no idea where it was going to lead me. I just decided that peace was the energy that I was gonna cultivate every day and whatever I had to do to keep the peace was gonna be how my day went. And in that process, I recognized the lack of reciprocity that I had kind of fostered in a lot of my relationships, and a big piece of it was that it was easiest to always be the person doing and the person giving. And I really thought there was a certain honor in never being the person that received.

And I told myself a powerful story about that, but the truth of the matter was I really very much wanted to be in the receiving in the receiving end of things. And I wanted reciprocity and I wanted to be held as much as I wanted to hold people. And I wanted intergenerational wisdom that went in both directions. And the sacred pause has really given me the opportunity to sort of shed whatever, being in a powerful business position, whatever that shadow that was cast for people is gone now. I can't do anything for people professionally. I'm not looking to, but I can hold the space and I can laugh and I can, you know, make some food and we can have a great time, and we can cry, and we can tell each other things, and we can hold those stories inside of our hearts, but it's not transactional for me. I'm not really interested in the transaction anymore. And so that's been a distinction that I've definitely shared and I've modeled.

ELISE:

Yeah. I mean, it's so powerful that stripping down and it's interesting having been present for your sacred pause, as you call it, which is the best phrase ever. And then watching you resist and try and sort of stagger to your feet and then like getting knocked back out.

JENNIFER:

That's right. I mean, I really didn't wanna be still, I had to be still, but I wanted more than anything to continue being a human doing. And the universe was insisting that I became a human being. And it's profound. I mean, it's the greatest transformation of my life. You know, I went from being extremely supported on a business perspective to having to go buy stamps. And it takes me all day to mail a letter. You know, I'm only able to do what I can do in a day and I love it. I really love it because as I often said, like, I can do bad all by myself. I don't need somebody else confirming a reservation and rubbing somebody the wrong way so that when I get there, the energy is weird. It's like now off I get somewhere and the energy's weird it's because of me.

ELISE:

That's amazing.

JENNIFER:

So I love it. And I mean, you know, at this point in my life, I'm relearning things that a lot of people learned in their twenties and their thirties and because of the way my career went, I farmed out a lot of the parts of my life. And you know, now I get to do all the things that I farmed out and I'm really not very good at a lot of them. I mean, I try not to say I suck instead I say I'm a beginner.

ELISE:

A beginner driver.

JENNIFER:

Yeah. I'm a beginner. I'm a beginner at so much of this stuff. I'm a beginner at running errands. I'm a beginner at driving. I'm a beginner at doing things for myself in a way that you can say, oh, you know, poor you, well, you know what? I just didn't do those things for 30 years. So with no value judgment on them, I'm learning to do them now.

ELISE:

Yeah. But it's interesting sort of going back to what you said, which was so powerful and made me want to hug you, but this role that you, this JRW right. One of the most powerful, the most powerful literary agent, don't slap me across the table, but this fierceness that you exhibit on behalf of other people. The veil of protection, the armor of protection, the going to the mat to ensure that the people that you love are under your care are taken care of appropriately. And then what I recognize in you in this desire, and I've experienced that. I'm not your client, I haven't experienced it in a business sense, but I've experienced it as your child, adopted child. But it's really powerful to hear you say how you also want that for yourself.

JENNIFER:

Yeah, of course. And, and it's a powerful desire to want to give what you want to also receive. Certainly for me, you know, you and I talk about what are some labels you've outgrown. JRW is one of them. I don't respond to that anymore. Like I understand that those are my initials, but JRW has an energy in the world that I am not interested in. I'm grateful to that energy. I'm grateful to all the things that had helped me do in the world, to the ease in which I'm able to live my life as a result of it, to the stories that I helped birth into the world. But I'm not interested in walking into a room six feet before I get in there. I don't want my shadow. I want my light.

And I just, I very much to, to connect insides to insides with people. And so, you know, that's why I moved to California because I wanted to be in a place where I wasn't known for certain things. And I wanted to just take walks with your chiropractor, who you connect me with, or with the real estate agent that rented me, my rental, like I just wanted to be able to connect with people, not based on what I could do for them or what they could do for me, but based on what we have in common and what we can learn from each other, and where our stories overlap and where they're completely different. And I just find the quality of those relationships to be so exciting and liberating and comforting.

ELISE:

It's interesting though, because being around you, you have a very, and your Eight Enneagram self, you're a very powerful person. And it is interesting to watch you try to shed. AndI recognize like some of the baggage of that, of JRW, and I feel like I've done a really good job of retraining myself to say your full name.

JENNIFER:

Everybody calls me Jen now, which is so funny, because nobody ever calls me, Jen, my whole life. And now just all of a sudden people knew people. Everyone's just a Jen. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. Love it, Jen Walsh, Jen.

ELISE:

But you do have that power and it's interesting to watch you try to break that cycle. I've just been in rooms with you where people, it's like a moth to a flame. And then you're like, I don't underststand. Why do people keep coming to me? Well, that's who you are.

JENNIFER:

Right. Well, I certainly don't wanna stop the magnetic force that brings people towards me. And especially if I'm able to be of service to them, if I'm able to be clarifying, because I am very clear, and I recognize that I have clarity, which doesn't mean that I have certainty. They're very different things. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know? But I have clarity about how I'm feeling and how I'm experiencing somebody else's feelings and experience.

ELISE:

You're and oracle. You’re like a truth touchstone, but it is really interesting to watch how follows you even in rooms where you would theoretically be anonymous. It doesn't happen to me.

JENNIFER:

I mean, literally I was like, I'm naked getting acupuncture, literally naked. And the acupuncturist, this beautiful woman I met in San Francisco and she's, you know, doing acupuncture on me, but all of a sudden I see that she needs to talk about something. And so I like open up the forum between us, for her to share. And before I know it she's sobbing, I'm getting up and hugging her fully naked.

So no, I don't wanna lose that part. I mean, that is the sacred divine inside of me. And it's a spark that was given to me by God. And I don't wanna lose that part, but I don't want it to be part of a transaction.

ELISE:

Is it the expectation?

JENNIFER:

Yeah. I mean, it's like I used to say at work all the time, come to me for I would say three CS. It was like the creation of a relationship, crisis, and then celebration. And even when I was leaving my job, I said to people still come to me for crisis. Because I'm good in a crisis. I think very clearly. But I realized that I don't want people just coming to me with their crisis. And it's unfair for the few people who kept coming to me with crisis. Because I had told them that's what I wanted them to do. But then I had to revise it. It's like, if you're not coming to me with the creativity and you're not coming to me for the celebration, like I no longer wanna be the human pooper scooper.

And my husband tells me all the time, Jen, it's okay to change your mind. And that's new to me because I didn't think so. I thought you say your word is your bond and if you said it, you have to be that way forever. But it's okay to say, I know I said, come to me for crisis. If that's all you're coming to me for that doesn't feel that doesn't feel reciprocal or nurturing to me. So I'm gonna step off that.

ELISE:

It's interesting to watch those relationships play out too where there's certainly, it seems like there, the invisible pattern is that if you, I don't know like that if there isn't a crisis, if there isn't something to fix, then they won't feel their worthy.

JENNIFER:

Like that's what's interesting. That’s what's interesting. And I think that that's why I have to be really careful and I have been with, well, tell me what's working. What are you excited about right now? Like let's get into seed planting, you know, let me plant a seed for you. You plant a seed for me. Let's get outta that whole drama cycle because you know, my daughter Hadley is such a powerful teacher for me. Your birthday mate. And when she was young kindergarten, first grade, I would say to her, oh my God, so tell me who got in trouble today at school. And it was a way for me to get her to tell stories. But one day she, she told me, I don't really like telling you that because it doesn't make me feel comfortable talking about people I care about in a way that that is not nice or flattering. And it really hit me. Wow. I'm reinforcing this idea of bring me drama.

ELISE:

Like a conflict entrepreneur.

JENNIFER:

And it was so not her nature. And so not her Sagitarian her that she was able to articulate it for me in a way that was really was really eye opening for me. And I stopped it instantly. I couldn't unsee that. It was like seeing your sister in a crowd, you can't unsee it. And I never did it again.

Because it's not a healthy correspondence to make people feel like they have to bring you a drama to be interested.

ELISE:

I know. But it it's how so many of us bond.

JENNIFER:

We don't though. It's true. I mean we almost never talk about drama. I mean, if something's hard, we're there, but all the time we're talking about what music we're loving, what show we're watching, what we just read, what we just listened to, you know, an idea. We’re excited about a new puffy sleeve sweater. Like whatever it is, it's joy. And we're focused on the light.

ELISE:

I know you well. I don't think you're gonna be in sacred pause forever.

JENNIFER:

Who knows?

ELISE:

But what are those qualities as you reimagine that next chapter What do you want, what's the next, is there another chapter, another legacy in the world?

JENNIFER:

Well answer is, I don't know. And the one thing I'm never gonna do is compete against myself. You know, I feel like I did something for 30 years with my whole heart. I left nothing for the swim home. I'm complete, I'm full. So I don't have something like unfulfilled inside of me. I do love collaboration as you well know. And I love watching people reach their potential and setting up the circumstances for them to do that. And I love sharing stories. So all of that is still true. And even though it's been a pause for me compared to the thousand things that I used to do, I've still published a book and I'm working on collaborating on this idea of storytelling, storytelling clubs, where people get together. And instead of talking about books, talk about their stories. So I'm doing little stuff. You and I are playing with something that we're very excited about, about transitions, but it's all service through joy for me. I mean, if it's not joyful, it's not happening because it has to beat the joy I get from being in my garden, or playing with my dogs, or watching TV, which is obviously my all time favorite thing. Love is blind Brazil.

I mean there's a high bar for me and believe me, I never, in a million years expected it to be two and a half years down the road. And I have no idea how much longer it will be because I don't think in terms of a line anymore. I mean, to be truly surrendered is to just be present in every day for me. And to just be so grateful that I get to have this experience of stillness and I'm not really focused on how being a human being doing is gonna look like. Because right now I'm very focused on just human being.

ELISE:

When you think about JRW and then you think about Jen, what are the sides of work that you feel like you haven't got to taste. Like what are the parts that you would bring forward and then what would you wanna create entirely new?

JENNIFER:

That's a great question. I think that what I would love to bring forward is the purity of co-creation and creativity and the power of art and storytelling. That's something that even if I just spent the rest of my days, like, you know, never working again, I would be spreading the joy and the light of that. What I never really got to do is to create with people something that wasn't in somebody else's name. Or something that wasn't on behalf of another person. And so I guess if there was something that I would like to do, it would be to create something that was mine too.

ELISE:

Oh, that hits.

JENNIFER:

Yeah. And something that I could love and live inside of for all the days. Just to say, you've said so many beautiful things about me, I just wanna say, I mean, you inspire me to wanna to co-create and your brilliance is only paled by your compassion and your love and your generosity. And so being with somebody like you, who one day is my daughter, the next day is my mother, you know, often my sister, it makes me, you know, it makes me wanna build a cathedral together and it makes me wanna create opportunities for people to share in the, all the incredible wisdoms that you've brought to me and into my life.

ELISE:

Oh, thank you. So meaningful.

Well if you can’t tell, I love Jennifer. Who I had always known as JRW, but no more. And she often asks me, and we talk about this in the context of relationships, but it’s such an interesting and powerful somatic example, she talks about people where you can really sit in their lap. I know that’s a strange idea when you’re a grown woman. But I think as children, we can remember this. When your legs are flexed, because you’re worried about your weight and you’re holding your weight off of someone, because you’re scared to let go. Versus when you trust someone enough to hold you, that you can really release the fullness of yourself into their care. And I think about that a lot. And which of the relationships in my life are ones of full release, and where I need to do a little bit more work.