It was winter; it was dark and frigid. Historically, I have always hibernated in January, and this year was no different. I was cuddled up on my couch with my favorite holiday candle burning — cinnamon, balsam, and cedar. I remember sitting there, in a place of tornado-like despair.

I didn’t know how to grieve myself. I felt disconnected, invisible, and so scared.

I gained 20 lbs almost overnight.

My stomach was bloated and stayed that way for almost two years.

I felt like I’d aged 10 years; I had no energy, and my skin was red and rashy.

Fight, flight, or freeze. Was I in all three?

And I have to mention — if you, the reader, are reading this from inside that haze right now, I need you to know you’re not broken. Our bodies go through transformations in different ways, and it was never a permanent place for me. My despair was always ephemeral.

For the first six months of that year, I felt like I was in a haze that was not my own. Luckily, our iPhoto libraries have dates and times on the memories. I had to look through my photos to recall the progression of the year and the events that occurred.

Then a light came on one dreary night in January. My photo library reminded me that I’d found a documentary called “Finding Floret,” about a flower farm in the Skagit Valley in Washington State. Erin was her name.

She focused on growing dahlias. I watched the entire series and sobbed through it until 3 a.m.

My soul felt a remembrance; a lightness for the first time in a year.

Was this the explanation for my newfound gardening interests? Was this the red thread to my immediate love of dahlias the year before — a love that seemingly came out of nowhere, before I even knew what a dahlia was?

I felt a familiarity. Warm, connected. Like I had been there.
“Perhaps I was her in another life,” I thought.

I was moved, emotionally. More than I had been in a year, and I followed my warm feeling.

The very next day I enrolled in her six-week intensive Floret Flower Farming Workshop and ordered a bunch of seeds from Floret, along with eight new dahlia tubers from three different dahlia farms across the United States.

The workshop was a world-renowned program, and almost half of it focused on the business of flowers — events, marketing, budgeting, forecasting. I loved it. It brought structure back into my life, and I spent my cold winter days learning about sunshine, soil, and flowers.

I felt in my bones that this was going to lead to something; I just wasn’t sure what yet.

The Downhill

The next week, I was invited to Vermont to ski with new friends over my birthday weekend. I was ecstatic. I felt included and excited — it would be the first overnight adventure with new friends I’d had in years.

I came home on crutches. I’d endured a very bad fall, and an even worse trek down the mountain alone to get back to the lodge. I was not an avid skier, but I always held my own at Hunter. Vermont is not Hunter, as I would learn!

So, I celebrated my birthday with a big ice pack and a glass of bourbon with the friends who cared for me after the fall. I celebrated through the pain, and truly made the best of it.

I later found out I’d torn my inner adductor and severely bruised my psoas muscle, and would need eight to twelve weeks of physical therapy to heal. They also call the psoas the “muscle of the soul.”

I have never endured physical pain or injury like this in my entire life — not even during my competitive sports years.

I didn’t leave my house for most of February and March, and relied on my neighbors and friends to buy groceries and support my well-being. I couldn’t drive; getting down the 17 stairs was challenging during an icy winter on crutches.

After eight weeks of physical therapy, I’d strengthened my body and was walking without a limp, but I was months away from any yoga or pigeon poses. I felt incapable at that time — having to rely on other people was extremely unfamiliar to me. What a normal thing, to let someone love you, help you, care for you — but at that time I didn’t know how to invite that into my life or accept it without feeling like a failure.

In March, my high school friend came to visit — the same one I went to Laguna Beach with the year before. She was piggybacking her work in New York City with a few days out on Long Island with me. I made dinners, we had champagne, and she came to social events with my new friend groups; I even met her college roommate. And yet I felt like I was visiting with a stranger the entire time — and the stranger was me. What had felt like instant sisterhood since 1989 now felt cold and distant. I wasn’t the same person, but I also didn’t know who I was becoming.

The theme of coldness continued into March; temperatures would reach the 60s but drop into the 30s in the evening. My cats always loved to venture outside in the early spring to breathe some fresh air — ever since the summer of 2022, when I trained them to be outside for small moments with me, I knew they loved it more than anything.

I was nestled on my couch watching TV one night; it was nearing 11 p.m., and Zoe was sitting next to me peacefully.

“Where was Blaze?” I wondered.

I searched the house three times. My intuition screamed: He’s outside. I opened the back deck door, walked out, and started gently calling his name.

“Blazeeeeeee, Blazeeeey, Blaze — are you out here?”

I heard a faint meow. It was 33° out.

I walked to the corner of my deck steps, down to the grass that led to the space beneath my deck where he liked to visit, and saw his green eyes staring back at me in sheer terror.

I had left him outside for hours.

Over the course of an hour, I lured him out from under the deck, but he ran frantically to the front of the house and hid under my car (quite normal for cats needing shelter in the cold).

After another hour, I got him near the garage with some treats.

I picked him up and cuddled him, thinking it would comfort him. We made it halfway up my front steps, and he exploded in a hissing terror in my arms — howled like a wild animal, bit my left hand, and leapt away.

Blaze and Zoe had never bitten or attacked me, or anyone, before. I knew he was terrified.

“What had I done?” I thought.

I stood shaking; I thought my hand was broken. I had puncture wounds between my thumb and pointer finger. I went inside and into robotic mode, pouring antiseptic from my emergency kit over my hand. I grabbed my keys and my bag and drove to Huntington Hospital at 1:30 in the morning. They treated the puncture wound, gave me a tetanus shot, X-rayed me, soaked my hand, and bandaged it. Nothing was broken. No bones or veins were damaged — but the pain I felt was measurable, emotionally and physically.

I came home. It was 5 a.m. I cracked the garage door, put food in the garage, opened the door from the garage to the basement, placed food there, and prayed that Blaze would follow the scent and arrive safely back inside.

At 8 a.m., Zoe woke me up, crying. She jumped off the couch as if to signal Follow me, and looked back at me.

We walked through the kitchen. She looked back at me.

She walked down into the basement. She looked back at me.

She walked into the corner — and there was Blaze, safe and sound, eyes completely dilated, terrified. I closed all the doors.

I thanked God and my angels for bringing my sweet Blaze back to me. It took a few days before he’d come upstairs. All that week I spent every moment with him, reassuring him it would never happen again, telling him how sorry I was. His eyes blinked slowly every time I talked to him. I’m pretty sure he understood and forgave me.

For the next two days, I didn’t leave my meditation room. I prayed for clarity. I prayed for help. I prayed for forgiveness, and I prayed for someone — anyone — to help.

Tell me how to move forward. Because I knew, in that moment, that I was not doing what I was supposed to.

No one said growth was easy

I shared my innermost pain with a handful of people I trusted at the time, one being the shaman I was working with then. I joined a soul-led women’s group, and through energetic healing sessions I began to truly understand how energy worked — the law of attraction, soul contracts, and the traumas our bodies hold. I also uncovered that I was a very gifted empath.

For years I had wanted to put meaning to “my feels” — my inner knowing, my intuition. Ideas and answers came to me easily, especially at work. I could sense how other people felt just by looking at them. I felt all the things.

This was equally as comforting — to finally have an explanation — as it was overwhelming.

For years this had freaked me out and sent me into periods of isolation. But in 2023, I finally felt ready to understand that it was, in fact, a gift. Spiritual gifts used in unhealthy ways, by unhealthy people, are a recipe for mayhem — and I had a lot of healing to do before I felt capable and confident enough to truly lean into them and accept them.

Over time, this became part of my mission and purpose: to accept and master my spiritual gifts — a journey I have been on, and am still on, through the present day in 2026, and one that now brings me so much comfort and soul alignment.

At the time in 2023, though, I was highly unregulated and uncomfortable. I was resistant. The energy was intense. I felt like I had signed up for experiences I didn’t want and wasn’t ready to process — but I willingly participated, because at that time it felt like a road to healing, and I was desperate to heal. I really have so much compassion for 2023 Jess.

During that time, I also leaned on my financial advisor. I laid it all out to him. It’s kind of crazy who you talk to in your lowest, most vulnerable states. I wonder how many financial advisors double as psychiatrists?

He was a wonderful friend and listener, and had been for the entire six years I’d known him. We spoke regularly, as he managed my deferred compensation account, my investment portfolio, my 401(k) rollovers, and my future planning.

One Wednesday we were on a scheduled call, which always began with friendly updates on family and life. He was a true friend.

Eventually I launched into my concerns and let it all out:

“I’m at a point right now where I’m not sure what’s next for me, and I feel so stuck. I have never been in a place in my life where I didn’t have a stable ‘job’ — and leaving my career is supposed to help me learn a different kind of stability. I know this deep inside me, but I feel so resistant. I’m terrified to lose control of my life, which at my core is really a fear of losing freedom. Individuality. Financial freedom. I swear I must have some really painful past lives or ancestral traumas, because my upbringing was very privileged and comfortable; I did not have any flavor of this hypervigilance or financial fear, whatsoever. I feel like this is a growth area for me, and I have no idea how to bend in a different direction,” I said, almost embarrassed.

“Yeah. You know, I truly understand that. You and I aren’t so different. Many years ago I was in a vulnerable place — I was starting a family and wanted to change careers, to really leap into a new space, but I lacked the confidence. And I know it had to do with my past conditioning and beliefs. I was stuck, too,” he shared, with a warm expression over our Zoom.

“A friend referred me to a specialized therapist who focused on repatterning traumas and limiting beliefs. She helped me uncover and identify my past traumas, reframe them, and repattern them into new memories and imprints in my neural pathways,” he said.

I gasped. “Oh my God. Really?! She’s a credentialed therapist?”

“Yes,” he responded quickly.

“She helped me change my life and leap into the person I am today.”

He emailed me her information.

She had the same name as my mother.

I called her an hour later.

For a long time, I had suspected I was here to break ancestral cycles — for the women in my past, and for myself. It was time to end the cycles and patterns that continued in our lives. I deeply, deeply wanted to understand and heal everything living inside me that was keeping me from moving forward. I knew these cycles ended with me.

I enrolled in a 12-month package with the repatterning therapist, focusing on trauma-based cognitive and emotional healing.

To celebrate the beginning of our sessions, she sent me a book — “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks — and a special kit of Bach Flower Remedies (tinctures) called “Hope and Joy.” They contained Star of Bethlehem for grief, Gorse for hope, and Sweet Chestnut for optimism. I had never heard of or seen these flower remedies before.

Looking back, I realize my healing literally arrived as flowers — a year before I understood that flowers were my medicine.

I stepped away from the group spiritual healing. It was certainly cracking me open, but I needed something that could put me back together.

I stopped taking my .25 Xanax. I wanted to learn how to sit with my feelings and soothe myself. I was reminded of how strong I’d been when I weaned myself off my SSRI, Paxil, in 2005 when I moved to Hoboken. If I could do it then, I could do it again. And I did.

Mental health is a real thing. Medications are here for us, for a reason. I do not judge or diminish their necessity or their positive effects on people’s well-being. They helped me for a very long time.

Healing through living

Therapy was different. I nestled into it like a hug. They were two-hour sessions. Afterward, I always found myself baking — bread, cinnamon rolls, comfort foods. My body was aching to nourish my own heart.

The seeds I’d ordered from Floret in January had arrived. My dahlia tubers were on the way.

“It’s time to plant a garden,” I told myself.

In May, I planted a huge cut-flower garden in my backyard; I used every inch of available soil. It brought me a feeling of newness, growth, and beauty. Flowers would give me something to look forward to every day.

That spring and summer, I spent more time in my backyard, in nature, than I ever had in my life. Nurturing those seeds, watching them grow, planting them in the ground — it felt like a prayer. A moving prayer. It was the most grounded I’d felt in years. I felt connected to something.

Watching those flowers grow every day brought comfort, peace, and calm into my life. I started bringing Blaze and Zoe outside with me — five or ten minutes at a time on the deck at first, then out onto the grass, on cat harnesses. By July, the cats would nestle beside me on the grass while I sat in awe of the flowers that had begun to bloom. They stayed still with me, as if to witness the beauty too.

Friday mornings were my favorite part of the week. I would bring in jars of flowers and set them all over my house. There was a feeling of bliss that floated through the rooms — something I hadn’t experienced before.

My Garden Club was front and center that summer, and I loved connecting with nature on farm and winery visits out east. As “VP” of program development, I was in full swing — organizing floral experiences to surprise and delight our members, from a floral design class to a celebration at the Vanderbilt Mansion unveiling the rose garden our club had planted the year before. I even helped modernize the club’s logo and set up a swag store. We were all having so much fun.

Looking back, it was fun because I was flexing the familiar muscle and vibration of “working” — but the difference was that I enjoyed it, and it didn’t feel like work.

There were also birthday celebrations, brunches, and parties. My friends talked me into buying a paddleboard, which turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made; since that first Memorial Day weekend in 2023, I’ve never looked back.

I was invited to spend a weekend back in Vermont with friends — a redo, I thought — and immediately said yes. It was glorious. I’d never been to Vermont in the summer; the colors were vibrant, the trees full. We hiked up the very ski slope I’d injured myself on months before, and I felt a sense of renewal.

There were beach celebrations, Memorial Day barbecues, gatherings, dinners, fire pits, and Fourth of July fun. I was starting to feel like part of the community, and I truly liked the people I was meeting. I hadn’t had a social life in years. This was all new.

That was also the year I did something that scared me more than any home renovation: I signed up for a year-long dating coach and started dating again, after more than a decade away from it. I went on almost twenty dates. I was uncomfortable through nearly every single one — I didn’t quite know how to be seen anymore, how to receive, how to let someone in.

But I kept going.
That was the whole point.

I wasn’t looking for the one; I was practicing being me, in front of someone new.

I was learning how to let myself be met.

Getting out of my own way

But inside, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was avoiding so many other important things — finishing my home renovations. Learning how to “work” again, instead of all the over-volunteering I’d been doing. I wanted to learn what “work” could be now.

I wondered: “Is this what life is supposed to feel like on my yellow brick road?”

Was I learning to have more courage? Was my brain leading the way, making good decisions? Was I learning how to have a heart — to feel empathy and compassion for myself and others?

I wasn’t sure.

Amongst all the social activity, I still felt like an empty vessel inside. I started looking on the outside for answers. I’d scroll social media constantly, asking for signs. I downloaded a positive-affirmations app and relied on the notifications to “tell me who I was.” At that time, I had no idea who I was, and I certainly didn’t know how to embody the woman I would eventually grow into.

I’d stay awake at night wondering what was next for me. This uncertain stretch was full of fear and unknowns. Looking back, I felt as though I’d lost my connection to the universe for a hot minute; the faith I’d once built felt fleeting.

What I did know was that my finances were uncertain. I wasn’t bringing in any income, and in the back of my mind, a number was running the show — and each month, that number kept decreasing. I had invested well and had savings that allowed me to take this time to calibrate myself; I also had my 401(k). But none of that changed the truth that owning a home, running a home, and maintaining a home — single, alone — was so beyond exciting, but also expensive.

Someone said to me once, “You have to live into the life you want to understand it. You can’t plan for everything.”

Wisdom. Perhaps the truest words ever spoken to me.

To this day, I believe that was a wink and an unspoken hug from the universe.

“Get out of your own way”
My intuition whispered to me over and over that week.

For weeks toward the end of summer, I was so worried. Doubt and fear ran on repeat, and the cowardly lion screamed in my head:

“How do I do this alone? How do I become strong enough to figure out the right thing to do?”

My intuition was whispering to me again: “You can’t heal and release what’s blocking you, because you haven’t fixed your septic yet. It’s stuck. It can’t get out. And you can’t get in or out of your driveway either — so please, fix it. Take the next step. Take the next step.”

It whispered louder: “You can’t exit through the same door you walked in through.”

I heard it over and over. I was freaked out.

Did that mean I would move? Did it mean someone would move in? What did it mean?
I was so literal back then.

All I knew was that I needed to take the first step.

That next week, in a casual conversation, I learned that a friend’s brother in our town was a highly respected builder who specialized in septic systems and hardscaping.

JACKPOT!

We connected on every level. I trusted him immediately; I just knew. A week later I had an estimate for my septic and driveway retaining wall — the plan was to demolish, widen, reset, and rebuild it all in tandem so nothing fell during the process. It was the ultimate balancing act.

I’d need engineering drawings and plans; I’d need permits; I was told I’d likely need a variance, since seven inches of my driveway sat on the Town of Huntington easement. I learned so much so quickly, and my contractor and engineer walked me through everything and promised to hold my hand through it all.

This is what it feels like to be supported when I take aligned action. The feeling of faith returned to me almost immediately.

But how would I pay for this? The work was well over $100K, all in.

I was sitting on my bed. Blaze was next to me. I felt so uncertain; dread flowed through me. I knew I would have to liquidate my 401(k). I’d started saving late, in 2009, but every year I maxed out my contributions — I was proud of what I’d built, retained, sustained, and grown through so many market events. They teach you that retirement is for your future. To live without worry. To live comfortably. It’s all fear-based marketing, really.

I started crying and talking to myself. “How will I do this?” I cried.

At that moment, my overhead ceiling lights flickered. And then they flickered again. And once more. But my lights were not on.

I sat there for ten minutes.

Five minutes later, I sent a message to my financial planner: “Hi — are you able to connect tomorrow? It’s time for us to make some changes to my retirement account.”

Within a week, I had almost half the funds from my retirement account; I lost the other half to penalties and taxes. I was beyond devastated. I cried when the news was shared with me. I cried because I truly knew that, in order to separate from my “old career,” this was part of how it would happen. I wouldn’t be multiplying or translating this into future wealth.

It ended here.

It was a sobering revelation, and I accepted it quickly.

I put down a deposit for the engineer’s plans.

I needed a new survey, and a new plan for the septic, the widened driveway, and the retaining wall. My house is on a slope — no easy task.

My contractor counseled me: “Don’t expect these till spring, Jess — Huntington’s backed up for months. It’s been a real delay since the pandemic.”

I applied for the permits, with hope and determination.

I received the permits in my inbox the very next day.

I was dumbfounded. I was approved to start work at any time, the town told me.

The lights had flickered. I had listened. And the path cleared in a day.

I called my contractor and shared the news. He was silent. Finally, enthusiasm surfaced: “Okay then. Well — let’s go pick out some stone for your retaining wall!”

And we were off.

They broke ground in late September. Through Thanksgiving, my property looked like a war zone — but everything went smoothly and perfectly. I did have to submit for a variance, something I’d been cautioned could take months. It was approved by the town in one day.

I also had my broken cement walkway leveled and repaved, and new steps built for a softer entrance into my backyard. That was my soul contract with the home — I knew it, and I built it into the plans.

I felt my body changing as my driveway was widened, safely constructed and seal-coated. It was surreal. I felt bigger. Greater. Like I’d just built a swimming pool for my mind, body, and soul to float in.

Déjà vu: Rejection Is Redirection in Disguise

In parallel, sometime during the summer, the shaman I’d been working with for the last few years called and asked if I would help her with her website — user experience, content, strategy, creative.

I hesitated; my intuition asked: Do you want to go back to that, even though you know how to do it with your eyes shut?

She pleaded with me.

I was reluctant at first, but once I got into it, those old muscles came right back — I felt useful, purposeful, creative. I tried to find new ways to execute old tricks, but I kept falling right back into the working patterns of the past 20 years.

She ended up with a beautiful, gorgeous website, built with my guidance. I was proud and happy for her. She thanked me and recognized my inherent talent — how quickly and intuitively I pulled everything together. I thanked her for the recognition. This was always something that came easily to me.

She suggested I take our success and package it for other women — entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to start something of their own. Something turnkey for branding small businesses, especially women in the holistic space.

I paused and said I would think about it.

I was enjoying my garden. I was enjoying my social life. But I also knew I needed to create income to live; I didn’t know how long my investments would support me.

Hello, fear.

On August 22, I registered an LLC through a company called Zen Business — I named it Centerd LLC, which would become my branding consultancy, Bloom.

I jumped in as if my life depended on it. Looking back, I hated that feeling. I hated the fear, the lack, the not-having-enough, the doing-something-I-didn’t-want-to-do. I did it because it was what I knew how to do.

I have forgiven myself so many times, and held compassion for the Jess who was growing into herself. Today, I’m beyond grateful for those low points — because those exact feelings eventually helped me flip and transform my beliefs in 2025, into an abundance mindset.

But back then in 2023, I’d been here before, hence my hesitancy.

I was experiencing déjà vu.

You see, in 2013 I was working at a big advertising agency, frustrated and sure I was ready for more. I asked for a big promotion over lunch with one of the CEOs. I laid out my plan; I talked about expansion — and she told me I wasn’t emotionally ready. So two weeks later I quit, like an angry 15 year old and promptly started a strategic consultancy called Cretegic, a blend of creative and strategy. For a year and a half I hustled and hustled and hustled, with all the masculine energy I held previously bred and conditioned inside those agency walls. I fought for projects. I didn’t have fun, and eventually ended right back in a job role in the PR and agency world.

Now it was ten years later, 2023. Was this my chance for a redo on my 2013 failure?

Was it even a failure — or just my path, the same lessons resurfacing until I paid attention and learned them?

In October 2023, on the biggest new moon of the year, I launched Bloom, my branding consultancy for holistic entrepreneurs and small businesses.

I created accelerated branding and website packages, plus exploratory workshops for $30 to open doors to new clients. I offered free downloads, branding worksheets, DIY resources. I posted everything to social media.

In November, I attended a greenhouse conference in New Hampshire for three days, hoping to meet new clients in the nursery and gardening space. Loyalty points covered my hotel, and I was excited to “go somewhere” that felt like work — that felt useful, purposeful, that felt like it could bring me income and keep me safe.

I have such deep compassion for 2023 Jess. She was so traumatized, always in survival mode, and at the time, didn’t know why.

While I was in New Hampshire, my father was admitted to the hospital with severe pneumonia and almost died. When my brother text me, my body felt like shock waves were passing through it. Like a volcano erupting and there was nothing I could control, or do. I felt like I was always bracing for something. I deeply wanted (and needed) to learn how to soften and relax.

I’m forever grateful my brother had the foresight to check on him, and was able to be there and care for him at a time when my mother couldn’t — and that he kept caring for my mom, too, taking her to her clinical-trial appointments every two weeks at UPenn.

By the grace of god, my Dad recovered within a month, but it was a long road, but one that also helped him see the importance of reclaiming his own health and well-being during a time when he was depleted— through acts of love, fear and survival to care for my mom.

More trauma.
More fear.
More uncertainty.

Setbacks were always a great wake up call for me for pause, and recalibrate.

In New Hampshire I learned a lot about farming — government grants, legislation, greenhouses, subsidized growing operations.

But I didn’t make a single new client contact, and my soul didn’t want to, either.


And yet — that very same Fall, while I was pouring myself into a business that kept not working, something else was quietly, effortlessly working.

I entered my first flower show with my garden club. I entered a single dahlia in the horticulture category — the very flower that had come out of nowhere — and I entered a mass floral design too: a moody, October arrangement that I built on my kitchen counter without ever once opening the rulebook. I intuitively made what I felt good in my body, dancing around to the Knocks for 2 hours.

I won first place for both.

I still think about that. The flowers I grew from love, and the design I made purely from instinct, walked away with blue ribbons — in the exact same month the business I was forcing from fear was not blooming. My hands already knew what my head hadn’t caught up to yet.

The flowers were showing me the way. I just hadn’t learned to trust them all the way. Not yet.

Healing isn’t linear

It was almost Christmas.

The paperwork for my LLC incorporation was “lost,” according to the Zen Business representative. My EIN was never generated.

I booked exactly one workshop attendee — who paid me $30. The pattern had repeated itself. I kept Bloom alive for seven months into 2024, and eventually let it g

I desperately wanted to change. To be different. To be “accepted.” To be “healed.” To be “enough.” In 2023, I thought I was none of those things.

And here’s the part my mind always wants to skip when it only reaches for the hard: that year was so full of beauty, too.

I saw the New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show for the very first time, and I stood in the glow of it like a child, completely enchanted. I went to 4 holiday parties. I spent Thanksgiving with one dear friend in Centerport and Christmas with another. I didn’t go “home” for the holidays that year — but I was surrounded by people who had quietly become my family, and I felt supported and safe.

The business wasn’t working.
But the flowers were.
The friendships were.
The beauty was.

But it felt dimmed in comparison, because I was measuring myself by all the fear I felt.

I think it had everything to do with the fact that I was “working” for life, instead of letting life work in my favor.

2024 started with a bang — a broken table and a rebalancing act, one that would ask for more surrender, more faith, more self forgiveness, more forgiveness of others, and deep healing for the Jessica I came here to be in this lifetime — I put on my red sparkly shoes and leapt, again.

The beginning of 2022 felt like pure freedom!

The United States had almost returned to normal, and we were almost in our post-pandemic era! Airports opened back up, hotels and resorts too, and the first thing I did was book a few getaways.

In January I enjoyed an annual trip to Arizona with my highschool friend group, one we had enjoyed for the past 10 years together. We often visited the same bougie indigenous Arizona Resort and Spa for spiritual wellbeing, massages, and time to connect– it was our sacred space, reflexology of our hearts and bodies and minds.

In February, an executive retreat at work took me to a luxury resort in Cancun, Mexico for a week! I was ever so grateful for that opportunity for a little work & play.

I booked a long weekend in Charleston, SC for late June with my best friend to visit her daughter who had just moved there.

I booked a trip with one of my high school girls to the West Coast for the Ohana festival in September– headlined by Eddie Vedder and Stevie Nicks! My 2 favs both in one place! On the beach in Dana Point! That 5K travel certificate was finally being redeemed for a week in the Southern California sun. My friend had also manifested a move back to San Diego with her family at the same time I moved to Centerport; we had a lot to celebrate together!

Life felt like it had returned to normal. Travel was always my escape. Hop on a plane. Go somewhere. Enjoy life! (Late in 2024, I would learn this was a protective mechanism of mine)– a distraction to ignore my reality of loneliness and inadequacy. I had seldom traveled for pure wonder or pleasure; it was always under the guise of “I need to get out of here”.

“Getting out of pandemic lockdown mode” felt like the right thing to do.

And, I hadn’t made my new friends in Centerport, but I still wasn’t trying that hard either. I didn’t know how to make friends as a single adult woman. Apparently there wasn’t a book on that– and at the time I had no idea how “to live into my question,” which I would learn years later is the answer that would open every door for me.

Tug of War

In February, I had some time to kill before my train into NYC and wandered into a small cute boutique in Greenlawn. I was talking to the owner about flowers and my love of dahlias, which came out of nowhere during the summer of 2021. She said to me, “You should meet my friend. She works at the Harborfields Library, and she is in the Centerport Garden Club.”

I inquired, “What is a garden club? What do they do?”

She responded joyfully
“They garden, grow flowers, and share experiences and service within the community”

I immediately smiled
“That sounds fun. Can you give me her number?”

I messaged the woman in the garden club. I also found the Centerport Garden Club website and emailed them inquiring about membership. How could I join? What was it like?

Within a day, I received a response letting me know that there was usually a waitlist, but this year they were accepting new members. I was invited to the first meeting as a “guest and prospective member” that would be held in March. I was ecstatic. That day, I purchased the book Hope by Jane Goodall on Audible.

I joined my 1st meeting in March as a “guest” , and immediately a soothing energy came through me. There were a lot of ‘grandmothers’ and I loved their sweet energy.

These sweet women were a glimmer of light in the darkest of corners I was experiencing, almost daily.

The Loudest Silent Feelings

The dark corners. I couldn’t pinpoint what was happening inside me, but I felt off. Was I already grieving the inevitable for what I knew would happen with my mom? Was I overwhelmed by all the renovations that were concurrently happening within my new home? Was it that I hadn’t made new friends, and didn’t know how?

I was feeling pushed by an invisible weight– and yet I resisted like I was the anchor in a tug of war during my 2nd grade field day.

I cried for most of March, while I couldn’t identify the feeling, I kept hearing my soul whisper:
“You need to leave your job. To have a family, you can’t continue living like this. Your job is not aligned with what’s best for you, any longer. Leave your job, leave your job. Let something better find you. Something better is coming”.

Sign #1

I pushed this down.

I ignored it.

My job was my entire identity. My safety.

That same week, I had another trip to the West Coast for work- I was in San Francisco for 4 days and cried the entire time, behind closed doors. I was so off. Something was most definitely wrong, and I sobbed the entire plane ride home.

In April I took my first-ever floral design workshop with Hometown Flowers, by myself. I don’t recall how I found the class, but I was drawn to it– we made a centerpiece for Easter with the most beautiful, delicate flowers I had ever seen– parrot tulips, ranunculus, sweet peas. Mine was wild and out of bounds. It didn’t follow any of the rules of the workshop. I loved it — it was the highlight of my month.

I was still very unregulated. My intuition was now louder. It continued to whisper to me:

“You need to leave your job”

I continued to hear “Break My Soul” by Beyoncé everywhere I went.

No.

Late April while I was organizing something in one of my guest rooms, a hornet flew up my dress and stung me, on my ass. I had to go to the ER for a severe allergic reaction and a shot.

Sign #2
A $1,500 wake-up call.

I cried for 2 days. I knew what this meant.

I was ignoring my intuition.

I was resisting change.

I was exhausted. The commitments at work. My home. I hadn’t made any friends (or attempted to make friends) I wasn’t dating anyone (and wasn’t attempting to date anyone).

I was trying to contain myself inside a container that wasn’t able to hold the past parts of myself anymore. The schedule, exercise, routines, pressure. I felt like I was going to implode.

“Jess the executive” would not be able to continue on if I truly wanted to step into the life I had been manifesting and was walking towards.

I slept for an entire weekend. I cried and took 2 salt baths. I wasn’t able to escape or soothe the scratchy feelings happening inside me.

Ego death.

I’d heard the phrase ‘ego death’ for years. I didn’t understand it until I was inside it.

My career had offered me “trophies, medals and acknowledgment” for performing well. Financial security. I had won the Olympics of career life (on paper). I was an executive at a top ad agency, self-made, grown from seed.

But I was miserable. Lonely. Angry. Isolated. Exhausted.

60-70 hour weeks
Frequent plane travel
Days/weeks away at a time
11pm evenings
9pm urgent phone calls
Force. Pressure
I always said yes
I was the biggest people pleaser you’ve ever seen
I had zero boundaries and didn’t know how to set them

I was harming myself, subconsciously over, and over.

I used to hack my body with supplements, adaptogens and exercise in an effort to survive and endure expectations, deadlines, and energetic conflicts that would have collapsed the Central Nervous System of any other person on the planet.

I was always on emotional cortisol overload, unable to regulate, which left me with very little reserves or interest in a social life, friendships, or a committed relationship with a man.

Inside, I yearned for safety, stability and “love”. All the things I had been searching for my entire life, and in the absence of that (or any self-love), I looked for it in my career. I needed to be promoted. I needed the title. I needed the accolades. I needed the recognition. I needed to be admired. I needed to be wanted. I needed to belong to something.

During my time in my career, I had an executive coach who helped me unpack my unhealthy beliefs, behaviors, and actions (in the workplace)- and reset my path to being a leader instead of a dominating doer.
My executive coach became the catalyst for a lot of inner change and growth that has sustained me to this day, and she knows how grateful I am for her role in my transformation.

But I didn’t have a coach to help me out of this feeling with my intuition.
Not this time.

After 2 years of resistance I finally surrendered to the truth, and in a very unregulated conference call with my boss

…I resigned.

From 20 years of what I had built, that wasn’t serving me, anymore.

I was embarrassed, uncollected and so emotional on that phone call.

I knew it was for my highest good.

I wanted to heal what felt “broken” in myself, at that time.

I wanted to be healthier in my mind, body and soul.

My body shook for an entire week.

90 days later, after multiple city farewell parties and genuinely beautiful dinners with my colleagues, at the beginning of August, I was free.

But it felt like a death.

I stopped chewing nicotine gum on this day, and I never got botox again.

The Post-Resignation Domino Effect

I posted a long diatribe on LinkedIn; I had to explain my departure. I had to share my choices to step back, take some time to recalibrate and explore self-development.

But looking back, it was such an emotional swan song and so embarrassing; I didn’t know how to regulate any part of what I felt inside me. I was burning like a hot fire, and nothing could sooth how I felt.

You can take the job out of the girl, but you can’t take the girl out of the vibration of the job.

I filled that open space immediately.

-I was inducted into the Centerport Garden Club and was so happy to be part of something so warm and inviting. Immediately, I accepted the VP, Program Development role and became part of the Executive Board.

-I enrolled in the College of Executive Coaching in Santa Barbara, CA, an executive coaching program called Positive Psychology and Wellbeing Coaching Certification - part of the ICF Coaching track.

-I met one of my 1st Centerport friends; I was introduced to her by another mutual friend. It was suggested that we would get along well, that we had similar personalities, and that she was leading the charge on a very large fundraiser for our community that I might like to be a part of.

Of course, I said yes because I hadn’t made any friends, and this felt like a good way to get involved in my community that I worked so hard to move into, and now felt like the perfect time. It was June, the beginning of summer.

-Additionally, I volunteered to do the gardening for the beach clubhouse in my community

-I volunteered with an elderly social group to help them learn technology on their mobile phones and how to use social media

-I started volunteering in the Harborfields School District as part of their career readiness network, mentoring students

These opportunities all found me. I wasn’t searching for them — but my vibration was.

The Executive Coaching Program started in September, and the exam was in November. I enrolled in this course because there was a young child part inside me crying and screaming for help. She knew she needed someone to show her how to love herself and others.

What well-being means, what all of the pieces of well-being are, and how I can apply well-being to my life?

No one had ever taught me any of this. Here I was in my forties, learning what well-being even meant, like a language I should have grown up speaking.

It felt like a very important self-study I was entering into.

I loved the course. I was actively involved. I made friends. I enjoyed the classes. I am a textbook Aquarian, a sponge, life-long student of the universe, always learning, always growing. When it came time to take the exam, we had preparation study groups, and I had told myself, “I’m so intuitively connected to all this. I think I’ll do fine”.

I had worked in healthcare. I knew a lot of the stats that would be on the test, and I actively participated in all the study groups. I scheduled my appointment for that exam.

On the day of I headed to the off-site testing facility. On the way there, I spilled my iced matcha all over me, onto my phone, and it shut off (and so did my GPS).

Sign #3 I ignored.

Today I would call that Divine Intervention.

Let’s just say I made it to the testing facility. I settled in. I sat in a cubicle in front of a computer screen. Question after question after question after question.

I fell asleep 3 times.

I forgot what a poor standardized test taker I was. I consider myself very intelligent but a very, very poor test taker- case in point, I never broke a thousand on the SATs we took in highschool for our college admission tests.

I finished the exam and was so drained.

The next week we were emailed our scores, and they cataloged the entire testing cohort. I scored the second-lowest score of my class and did not pass the test.

Busy as a Bandage

While I was supposed to be relaxing and recalibrating, my body went into automatic mode. I over-volunteered to fill the space, and avoid my feelings, and avoid changing. The most important change of my life.

This must have been a part of what Taylor Swift was thinking when she wrote Opalite, which eventually became my anthem for permanent behavioral change in 2026.

The inadequacy I felt was overwhelming. I felt worthless. What would I do now? Who would I be? I had no title, no expertise, no value (so I thought).

I was hard-wired to “work”. To “produce”. To be “busy”.

Eventually I learned this “busyness” was all just distraction. Workaholism. A protective part in me that never allowed the deep emotional turmoil inside myself to surface- impermissible feelings of unworthiness that I thought I held at that time.

Dancing through the Disconnection

From the outside, that year was technicolor. I grew a garden out of nowhere — I planted over 20 dahlias and trays of cut flowers grown from seed in my basement. I carved new beds into my backyard landscape for dahlias and vegetables, and built an entire landscape across the front of my home like I’d been a garden designer my whole life. I ate my way through Charleston, partied in Long Beach Island, NJ, danced at MSG to Pearl Jam, and again under a California night sky in Dana Point, to Eddie Vedder and Stevie Nicks. I wandered the vineyards and farms out east on Long Island, canned tomatoes, bought pumpkins, transformed myself into a Gatsby Girl for Halloween, carried home my first Christmas wreath, said yes to my first garden club sale. My parents visited two times. We celebrated my Uncle Tony’s 100th birthday on this earth! I visited every beautiful thing Long Island had to show me.

I was chasing a feeling, a spark, ephemeral beauty. But I couldn’t sustain the feelings in my body.

I was moving through a life overflowing with color — and somehow I was the only gray thing in it.

I hadn’t talked to my best friend in months. We had drifted since our trip to Charleston.

During the summer of 2022, I had met so many new friends in my community and was invited to multiple holiday parties, which I attended and enjoyed. Making new friends as an adult was so hard for me, I was so shy and didn’t know how to talk about myself, my life, or how my life had changed, and continued to change. I did my best and showed up. I always said yes, and showed up even when I didn’t want to.

One holiday party I attended was at the beautiful home of a new friend I had met in my neighborhood, and she worked for a publishing company— the same exact publishing company, and the very same print magazine that I worked for in my 1st year out of college in 1997.

I had brought a new friend and her husband with me to this party. It was extravagant, catered, passed hors d’oeuvres, festive decor, a DJ and stylish guests. I was enjoying a glass of wine, and looked to my right and recognized the Publisher of the magazine (and now publishing division). He looked exactly the same, perhaps a tad more distinguished in a cashmere turtleneck and tailored trousers. He was beaming as bright as I had remembered him. Was it really possible that he was at this party, with me, 2 ft away from me?

The man who represented everything I wanted at 22 yrs old — my whole dream, fully lit. And here I was, having just set this entire identity of mine to rest with no idea what I wanted now or who I even was.

Two versions of myself stood in that room: the girl who knew exactly what she was chasing, and the woman who just walked away from all of it.

I introduced myself, and shared how I enjoyed my 1st real job at the magazine as a production assistant, and what a coincidence it was to have such a 360 moment to be back in the dining room with him, where my dreams had originally taken me at 22 years old.

As I stood there words flowing out of my mouth, the feelings inside me were completely opposite. In that moment I was someone who was in the process of reinventing herself, one holiday party at a time.

What I didn’t mention to him was that I wasn’t hired for the beauty editor position I applied for, after working there for 2 years. And I quit, because I felt angry and rejected.

I thought long and hard about that chance run-in, and destined moment at that party that evening.

Perhaps the universe had different plans for me, and I should should allow myself to receive them.

I looked around that party and thought to myself I got everything I asked for — the home, the community, the friends —I had never felt like more of a stranger to myself in the world. Here I was in my new life, meeting the new friends I had asked to meet, and I didn’t even know who I was.

I put the same lipgloss on. I used the same hair products. I wore the same clothes that I wore in New York City, but I was none of those things anymore.

The fuller my calendar looked from the outside, the more hollow I began to feel inside.

I did very little therapy or spiritual healing this year, and let distraction lead the way.

From Distraction to Depression

My parents came for Thanksgiving, and my cousin joined us the following day for homemade brunch at my home and a matinee performance at the John W. Engeman Theater in Northport. It was a delicious and glorious time. We took one of the best photos of my mom and dad that weekend in front of the Christmas Tree at the theater, which remains framed in multiple homes in my family.

The next day I drove to Planting Fields and walked and cried for hours. I sat and meditated in the bare grass and prayed for help and guidance from above.

During the holiday season, I joined my first wreath-making workshop with the Centerport Garden Club; over 50 were shared across historic locations in Centerport, Greenlawn, and the Harborfields Community. It felt good to make something with my hands and see it cherished throughout our community. I enjoyed this very much.

I went to Delaware to visit my parents for Christmas. My mom’s health wasn’t great and she didn’t want to do a lot for the holidays; she just wanted to chill. So I brought all the Italian delicacies from Long Island: a charcuterie board and lasagna– our family favorites.

I arrived back on Long Island before New Year’s, feeling empty and exhausted, like my solar plexus energy had been sucked out of me. Any of the spark I used to feel around the holidays was gone. It was dead. And I did not join the planning for my annual girls’ trip to Arizona with my high school friends in January 2023, which I had enjoyed for the previous 10 years straight.

I went into a very, very, very deep depression as the years changed from 2022 into 2023, and slept into January 2023, clinging to an empty past with no idea how to reach for the future.

Ego death had set in.

I’d just handed over $7,000 for a house, and I had no idea how I’d pay for the rest.

I spent most of February getting creative — sitting at my kitchen table with a notebook and my laptop running the numbers again and again, trying to find a version of them that added up. Mortgage rates were at an all-time low, below 2.6%, and I felt genuinely fortunate to be buying at that moment — but fortunate didn’t mean easy. I’d nearly emptied my emergency savings the year before, during my pandemic summer survival and my exodus from the city, and though I’d been quietly rebuilding it month by month, I needed a larger pool of cash, and I needed it soon.

The Math of Faith

There were nights the weight of it sat right on my chest. I’d lie awake doing math in the dark — the down payment, the driveway, the move-in projects — and the fear would whisper all its favorite questions. What if I couldn’t pull it together? What if I’d leapt too far this time? And then, slowly, something underneath the fear would answer back. A steadiness. A knowing. I really trusted that this would work out, because this was exactly what I’d come here to learn. This was what trust actually felt like: not the absence of fear, but choosing to move anyway.

My accountant became a small lifeline. He told me about a government benefit created during the pandemic that let me borrow against my 401(k) and pay it back within three years, penalty-free. Penalty-free! Whoooaaa. Jackpot. I’d need a small miracle to repay it in three years, especially since every one of my annual bonuses was already committed to a deferred compensation plan I’d set up back in 2018 and couldn’t touch until 2024. (I’d named it my ‘Beach House Fund’. How ironic).

My parents also generously gifted me $30,000 toward the estimated costs of renovating my leaning tower of Pisa driveway, which was a #1 priority. I was ever so grateful for that thoughtfulness and love- and as an Interior Designer and wonderful homemaker, my mom was just as committed to the beauty of my home as I was.

With my mortgage secured, I spent March navigating the C/O search for my home’s history — hiring expediters to address the outstanding COs the home didn’t have, and making sure the seller had kept his promises regarding the rider in our sales agreement. It was lengthy!

I spent weeks planning for purchases, orders, picking paint colors, and had a notebook filled with events and activities I wanted to experience and be part of across Long Island for my 1st summer after I moved into my new home in Centerport. It was a glorious time, I was so excited! I was energized and feeling so blessed. I bought my first “early spring flowering plant” called a hellebore. A beautiful blooming plant to take you out of winter blues and into spring rebirth. It eventually became the 1st plant I put in my landscape in Centerport, right next to my front steps, and is full of vitality and blesses me with massive blooms every February- one of my favorite core memories.

The months flew by, and everything fell into place, with ease. My closing day was here and, it was as smooth as butter.

The Day I Became a Homeowner

Friday, April 16, 2021. I stood in my empty kitchen, 5:30pm, holding a 36-inch canvas of a mermaid painting, taking numerous selfies. I had brought a lawn chair to sit in, because there was no furniture and I sat in peace, until my phone rang with a work call. Another big pitch was coming up, the most forward-thinking innovative company and quite possibly the biggest of my career. I received the RFP as I was sitting in a lawn chair in the new home I had just closed on.

This was the beginning of the end of my career, and I knew it.

I left myself four weeks to improve the health of the home before Zoe, Blaze and I moved in.

The house was a bare-bones flip. I spent the next month going back and forth from my rental in Long Beach to my new home in Centerport, almost daily, to meet with contractors and accept large deliveries.

I did an entire layout of paint colors— a powerpoint of paint colors. True story. My mother had been the President of an interior design decorating marketplace in East Brunswick, NJ where we grew up. The store had an extensive paint department that my brother worked in– Benjamin Moore paint was core to the Seilheimer lineage. I enjoyed this process so much. I had the entire interior house painted.

I installed wood blinds in all the windows. Dimmers for all the lights. A custom closet in my master bedroom. Bars and shelving in all the bedroom and storage closets. Bathroom hardware.


We moved in on May 16, 2021- almost 1 year to the day we had left New York City during the pandemic. Me, Blaze and Zoe.

It was easy to leave Long Beach. I was so grateful for my lay-over, I walked up to the beach, beach plum vines had started to sprout. I left a handwritten letter buried in the sand, thanking the space for holding me during such an uncertain time.

My cats were ready too. I had been having conversations with Blaze and Zoe for months, describing our new home, and how much space there was to breathe and play. I talked about the backyard and how we would learn to go outside and play together. That we would make friends with the squirrels, birds and other wild life , that animals were our friends. I let Blaze and Zoe know they would be the guardians of our home.

As they lay basking in the warmth of the gas fireplace in our rental home, I know they heard me, their ears twerked side to side, always the tell. The week we were packing, I put the carriers out for them to get used to them and they cuddled in them one night, I was teary eyed and so happy with how easy this felt. I had made plans to have them boarded for one evening at a local pet facility in Westbury, so they could avoid the chaos of the move into our new home. I’ve learned over time, moving with cats is a slow and gentle process— I need to warm them up to a new home, with familiar smells and small spaces so they feel safe.

The evening before, and on the morning of the move I administered the oral gabapentin capsule powder (mixed into their food) at 6am, and they were all zenned up by 8:30am.

At 9am I whispered “Ok it’s time to go, we’re heading to our new home now,” and they walked right in their carriers and laid down. My heart was so full.

Oz Moving showed up, and we packed up the rental house. We collected my things from the Westbury storage facility, dropped off the cats and I became a homeowner in the house on the hill on Taylor Street.

I felt more elated, excited, trusting, than I ever had in my life and I had no idea what was really waiting for me inside these walls.

My New Home Had a History I Didn’t Know About

Within the first year of restoring my home, I learned from neighbors that my home had held a lot of history within it.

3 abandonments, 2 foreclosures, illness, addiction, divorce, neglect and a flood!

I joked and responded “Well that didn’t come up on the CO search on Huntington’s website” and we all had a laugh.

But that year I was far from laughing.

Someone had lived in the basement. It was framed out, with black mold all over the ceiling and an exposed asbestos tile floor — all of it surfaced during the inspection. I remediated both immediately and hired an air quality expert to test the air in my home before and after. That felt like the safe thing to do. To me, I was clearing out residual disease.

The driveway had a retaining wall leaning into the drive space that needed to be widened by 8 feet and completely rebuilt — my leaning tower of Pisa. That one was about opening the flow of opportunities, and love, into my life.

My septic system was collapsing in the backyard and would need to be replaced with a larger one, big enough to hold the number of bedrooms in the home — safely releasing what doesn’t serve us. And here was the tricky part: eventually the driveway and the septic would have to be rebuilt at the very same time, a skilled feat of engineering so nothing fell while the other was being built. Parallel growth and expansion. (That one wouldn’t actually get solved until years later in 2024 — but I felt the lesson in it long before I fixed it.)

My side walkway was cracked and collapsing, with a wall of cinderblocks holding up my backyard slope and no real entryway into the backyard at all. Blocked flow. Blocked opportunity.

My garage foundation had a horizontal crack running across the back wall, and water seeped in through the outside walkway door every time it rained. That felt like a lack of stability at the very base of things — and an opportunity to repair it, to heal it, and to create a steady, safe foundation for myself.

My front and backyard were bare. Dirt. Not even soil. Abandoned infertile land. I immediately was drawn to rejuvenating my property–I felt magnetized and sometimes obsessed with helping restore the land, and bring green grass, gardens and flowers into my life. Natural growth and beauty. (I didn’t know it yet, but this one would change everything.)

Our Homes Are Always Talking To Us

Energy is the loudest silent indicator, showing us what we need to know, and see.

During this first year of homeownership and as I was “renovating” my home I noticed my own central nervous system activated, expanding and softening at different times, my meditations got deeper, my journaling more expansive, and my intuition sharper. My downloads were crystal clear.

I had a very clear download one day in my meditation and I started making a connection between what was happening in my home, the history. The echoes. The feelings. I felt them all. I had a soul contract with healing this home.

What I didn’t know at the time, and would come to realize closer to 2025 is that spaces mirror us, our homes mirror us. And what I didn’t realize at the time is that I was healing myself and my home simultaneously, from the ground up– but I was doing it all wrong.

My home improvement funds were quickly diminished and I felt myself at a standstill in my renovation plans. I had made an error in judgment on a contractor I hired for my retaining wall project, and learned a $10,000 lesson from that.

My driveway was still falling down and so was my septic.

I was so focused on rushing through the home improvements, and juggling my job that I wasn’t present or available for much else. I didn’t make many friends in my first year in Centerport, I hadn’t really put an effort into trying to, either. I was frustrated and just kept pushing.

Something needed to change. I needed to change. I needed to move myself forward but felt handcuffed by so many things, emotionally and financially.

And then, not long after, I received a very large unexpected bonus from work. Just like that, I was able to pay back my 401(k) loan and buy out my Jeep lease. Another piece fell into place. I finally settled the apt lease I’d walked away from in the city — the $33,000 that had been hanging over me since I surrendered those keys. I was able to negotiate it down to $7,000. The very same $7,000 I’d just put down on my home.

I sat in awe of the timing — the way things seemed to catch up with me the moment I fully committed, the moment I stopped white-knuckling and started trusting. I’d borrowed against my own future on nothing but faith, and here was the proof that the faith had been well placed.

Back then, I called it luck. Lucky the bonus came. Lucky the numbers bent my way. I said it like a little prayer, the way you do when you’re almost afraid to look too closely, in case it all disappears.

But luck is something that happens to you, and it can leave as quickly as it comes. What I understand now — in my 2026 vernacular — is that it was never luck at all. It was support. The universe wasn’t tossing me coincidences; it was meeting me. The moment I stopped white-knuckling and started trusting, it rushed in to hold everything I’d finally set down. Luck keeps you bracing. Support lets you breathe.

I was finally learning to feel supported instead of lucky. And life was about to test that lesson in the deepest way it knew how in the one place I was most afraid to look. The universe was about to ask me to trust it with my mom.

Releasing Control to Receive Support

In July of 2021 I was in San Diego. My first trip on a plane since the pandemic. During my trip my mother experienced a bleed in her lung and was rushed to the hospital in Philadelphia by ambulance, her treatment had failed her and it had stopped working.

Concurrently I was in San Diego working with a client who focused on molecular biomarker testing for rare types of cancer. My mother received the test manufactured by them, and miraculously was matched with a phase 2b clinical trial called Chrysalis II- and would need to apply. They treated her bleed, stabilized her and she and my Dad returned home to Delaware.

When I arrived back in NY, she and my Dad came up to Long Island and visited in mid-August. I spent time with my mom, showed her Main Street Nursery where I had visited when I first explored Long Island in Oct of 2020. We witnessed the caterpillars destroying my milkweed on their way to becoming butterflies. She was so uncomfortable during the Clinical Trial application and with bated breath we filled in the application, and had phone calls with her oncologist at UPenn.

We waited. There was so much uncertainty.

A few weeks later, I found myself pitching the same San Diego client again, this time from home, remotely. Before every big client presentation I used to find myself either praying in a public bathroom in the hotel we were in, or listening to some music to pep me up– it truly varied across every experience.

This time, 7 minutes before our big client presentation I was reviewing my slides telling myself I would not cry during the meeting — we had featured my Mom as a lighthouse moment in our presentation. I had “Time For Me To Fly” by REO Speedwagon blasting through my speakers in the background – and at that moment I received a text from my Mom “I was approved for the Clinical Trial!” followed with 6 butterfly emojis.

The light in my house became brighter. My soul lit up, like I had never felt before, and I believe this is the first time I experienced an angel‘s presence with me.

We lost that client pitch, but what I gained that day was immeasurable by comparison.

The synchronicities of my first year homeownership left me in awe.

My mom’s health bounced back after she got on the clinical trial. I discovered Heritage Farm & Garden Nursery in Muttontown. I visited Planting Fields for the 1st time. I enjoyed my 1st Jack-o’-lantern walk during Halloween and carved pumpkins with my neighbors.

I decorated my front porch with festive Fall decor and celebrated a wonderful Thanksgiving with my parents in Centerport - an entirely new menu, farm-fresh turkey from Makinajian farm, pies from Kerber’s Farm, Hometown Bakery and a new lease on life, for us all.

The next year, 2022 would turn out to be the most transformative year of my adult life.

The universe always prepares you for what you think you cannot do.

It was Labor Day Weekend 2020 on Long Beach Island. The air felt different. There was a stillness, and a slight echo of laughter. Golden warmth surrounded me during my evening walk, and I collected my last handful of shells and feathers– overflowing in the pocket of my denim shorts.

I had just made some big decisions within the last 4 days. I was leaving NYC permanently and relocating to Long Island, NY.

I sat and cried. I was overwhelmed with emotion.

I started thinking back to where I was in March on that flight home from Barcelona. The past 6 months had cracked me open and sutured me back up. I felt a little like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz…leaving Kansas in search of answers. Would I come home to myself?

I’ve always had a connection to Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. I played Dorothy in second grade and sang a solo, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I had the cutest braids, rosy cheeks and ruby glitter slippers. My childhood friend played Toto. That movie always stayed with me throughout my entire life.

This would be my 3rd rental location in 6 months since leaving NYC in May during the height of the pandemic. I promised myself I would find a home to buy, and allow my life to change in however and whatever way it revealed itself to me.

My body expressed emotions I had never felt before at the same time. Hope collided with bracing for impending danger. My shoulders and neck tightened under the daunting list of to-dos and unknown challenges.

I started making lists, like a robot. If Tony Stark had a female counterpart — not Pepper, someone more robotic and wired for success — in 2020 her name was Jess.


Action #1
Prepare to find a home for my cats Blaze and Zoe while I rent my NYC apartment

Action #2
Prepare to rent my NYC apartment for the remainder of the lease agreement (6 months).

Action #3
Hire movers, plan my move to Long Beach, Long Island (move-in date Oct 13, 2020)

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I started to pack to leave LBI– September 7th was my final day.

My heart broke as I researched a solution for my cats. They wouldn’t come back with me to NYC to say goodbye.

I was so uncomfortable. I had never been without them for more than 9 days, a hellacious experience for all of us. We all had terrible separation anxiety, Zoe peed in my suitcase when I returned and she didn’t look at me for a week. Didn’t eat. The guilt ate me alive for the rest of that summer. And here I was having to board my cats for the next 6 weeks while I prepared to rent my apartment, and then pack it up to leave permanently. It was all unbearable.

Zoe and Blaze knew something was wrong; my energy was palpable. They sat next to me cuddled up.

I inquired into boarding facilities and veterinarians in Manahawkin, New Jersey right over the bridge from Long Beach Island. Serendipitously, I found Lucky’s, one of the most well-known pet boarding facilities in the state, and I called them, panicked.

“I need a home for my cats for 6 weeks. I am in a very precarious situation where I’m relocating homes, listing an apartment in NYC and I’m not allowed to have them with me while we show the apartment. Do you have any openings for them? Their names are Blaze and Zoe, they are siblings I rescued. They are five years old.”

The woman responded:
“Are they up-to-date on their shots?”

I paused. I exhaled, I pouted.
“No.”

“They have to be updated on their shots. Here is a number of a vet you can call in Stafford. Once they are updated on their vaccines, shots and exams, yes we can board them. There are many options; they can be in a crate and have play time to socialize with other cats in a shared social room, or they can have their own private “Cat Condo”, a private room where everything is open.”

I inquired about the differences in availability of space, light, toys, windows, blankets, and pillows, food, and litter boxes. I was not subjecting Blaze and Zoe to a metal crate. Hard no. The Cat Condo won.

Confidently, I responded.
“Thank you for the info and transparency. Can you let me know the rates for the cat condo? Is it daily or weekly?”

“Sure, we understand; comfort matters. It’ll be $3,700 for 6 weeks. Would you like to leave a deposit?”

I gasped
“Oh boy, um ok. That’s like a vacation to South America”

“Yes, well, your cats will be well taken care of; they will feel like they are on vacation. As long as you have their updated paperwork from the vet we can take them on September 7th. Would you like to put the deposit on a credit card now?”

Quietly, I responded
“Yes. and thank you”

I wanted the best for them. I wanted them to be comfortable. I wanted them to have their food and litter boxes. I wanted them to have sunlight and a view of the outdoors. I wanted them to have room to play, space to hug each other, and the confidence that I would come back for them.


But $3,700. Offffph. I had spent a large chunk of my savings on the beach house rentals this summer, saved some of it back, but I still needed to plan a move, hire movers, and somehow figure out how to get a mortgage.


I called the vet in Stafford next.

“Hello, we understand your need, but we are booked. We only have virtual appointments in the parking lot right now, it’s one at a time, so our appointment availability was cut in half this year”

I started to cry. I pleaded with them– shared my predicament and emergency and that I had all their past records ready to send from my Dropbox. I was inconsolable, desperate and so scared.

There was a pause and quick response
“Oh goodness, those poor little things — bring them in. We’ll find the time, we’ll take care of them.”

I was crying so hard as I packed the car. It was all in. This was it. It was time to go. It was hard to get the cats into the carriers; they were resistant because I was resistant. I was crying, and they were hiding. The sedatives I had were still liquid gabapentin at the time, and it was so difficult to administer to them. Oral liquid, it made their mouth foam. It was awful and looked like a horror movie, each and every time. And the cats knew it, and hated it– and it took over an hour to kick in.

Something that was supposed to relieve stress caused so much!

I didn’t plan this right.

I was able to wrap Blaze in a towel and was able to scoot him into the carrier. He howled. Deep howls.

Zoe was petrified. Large pupils. Hissing. Screaming.
She was always the more sensitive one.

I dropped to the ground and just cried harder. In one of my spiritual groups that summer, the Shaman had told us to ask our angels for help. Speak aloud that you need their help. Ask for their support.

I gently started speaking out loud, sobbing.

“Angels, if you are with me, please help me, I need your help. I can’t do this alone. Please help me and my cats. I have to get them to the vet. Please help me.”

I sat there for 15 minutes.

Zoe walked over to me.

She just looked at me. I picked her up and held her close to my chest. I let her feel me. I was apologizing and telling her how much I loved her and that she was safe. That we had to go, and that I was sorry I scared her. I told her she was safe. And I kept saying it over and over and over again, until she was sleeping on my chest 40 minutes later.

Blaze had fallen asleep by then too.
I slipped Zoe in the carrier and put them both in the car.

I locked up and gave my verbal thanks to the rental house on Washington Ave in Holgate and to LBI.

What a summer, what an experience.

We made our way to the vet.
I was so calm, but exhausted; I was so relieved we were here.

We sat in the parking lot. I put on the Kirtan Kriya Sa Ta Na Ma Mantra that gently hummed through my speakers. I talked to my cats, heavily sedated in the back seat, their carriers covered with towels. I let them know that this was going to be a very challenging couple of weeks, I was not abandoning them. They would be in a place where they were loved and cared for, and that we first had to have our shots, to be healthy, and I would come back for them in six weeks.

Faint meows floated from the back seat.

The vet in Stafford, New Jersey was one of the most professional that I had ever encountered; they were wonderful with Blaze and Zoe. They were efficient and so caring, especially during the pandemic lockdown. They gave me oral Gabapentin capsules to take home. No more liquid, ever. I was so grateful.

By the time I got to Lucky’s, it was 6:55pm, five minutes before they closed.

Full of tears, I said my goodbyes to Blaze and Zoe. I looked at their faces through the carriers:

“Mama will be back. I will be back. Mama needs to take care of some things. We are going to move to a beautiful home. There’s going to be sunlight and grass and love, and it’s gonna be so much better than an apartment. You have to trust me. I love you.”

I gave the facility manager their food, toys, extra blankets, pillows, their new oral meds, and hugged them and thanked them.

I heard a little yelp from Blaze, and I knew it would be ok.

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I got in the car, and I started driving to New York City.

By the time I had arrived, it was almost 10pm. NYC was so eerie. There were police barricades all over Houston and Varick. Pop-up partitions were installed on the streets outside restaurants. It felt like a war had occurred. The energy was dark and dense.

My apartment smelled awful. Musty. Old. The stench of dust and an emptiness. The feeling of death. None of my herbaceous plug-in scents had lasted the summer. My plants were 1/2 dead. The basil was draped over the windowsill, so thirsty and dry.

I spent the next week putting things in motion. I had my apartment cleaned. The broker came over and helped me “redecorate” in advance of the photo session.

He was really relaxed, professional, and also very clear with his directions.
“Put all the personal photos into a closet. Move the plants in a room where no one can see them.”

I was so offended:
“Excuse me? Why”

“Because the photos have to be pristine, like a West Elm catalog”

I huffed
“My entire apartment is from West Elm, and they have plants!”

He looked at me and rolled his eyes.

I did what he said.

The broker had photographs taken of my apartment- they really did look like a West Elm catalog! Wow! The listing was written; we shared it with my management company. They approved it, and it went live.

1 week went by, and we only received 2 offers, both for $3,000 under the $5,500 we were asking for the lease takeover (my actual rent).

Hard no. I was not going to subsidize that gap.

My emails were filled with pressure, endings and sadness. Work meetings, pitch planning and deadlines. Canceling utilities, changing addresses. Pictures of Blaze and Zoe from Lucky’s. They looked desolate and so depressed.

I shifted my focus, and I hired movers for October 13th. Oz Moving was back! This would be my 3rd move with them, and they helped me organize everything. Just like my last move from Murray St. to Duane St., we had boxes dropped to my apartment, which allowed me to pack a lot of my sentimental things myself– and I also planned for them to come and pack up my apartment on the day of. I was so thankful for this level of service.

I was so stressed and was experiencing extreme separation anxiety from my cats. I felt restless and hot all day long. Pangs in my lower left abdomen pulsated when I tried to sleep. I would take walks up the West Side Highway on the Hudson, lie on the grass at the park, and say my goodbyes to the Hudson River.

I was managing my anxiety with yoga, vaping, and the occasional cocktail. For the record book, I had been a stress/social smoker for a long time. I quit smoking Parliament Lights in 2016, and bought a “vape pen” the week they were released. I thought it would be helpful NRT at the time, but as we know now, it was definitely not.

I called the realtors on Long Island in the second week of September. I let them know about my plans and that I was still interested in visiting.

On September 19th, I drove out to Long Island for my own little exploration. Textbook Jess research, observe, think.

First stop, Delaware Ave in Long Beach. The house was stunning. The street was clean, and the beach was enormous! 10x larger than Long Beach Island, NJ. I instantly felt calm.

Next Stop: Huntington. Main Street Nursery was the 1st one that popped up on Google. I had to see the pumpkins. I bought 3 white ones.

I headed back to NYC, excited about my new home for 7 months in Long Beach, NY.

I was 10 days away from my move and hadn’t rented my NYC apartment yet.

On October 3rd, I had an appointment with the realtor in Huntington. We met in the courtyard patio of Sweetie Pies on Main in Cold Spring Harbor. We sat outside in our masks 6 ft apart. He asked me if I was comfortable taking a ride with him throughout Huntington into Centerport and Northport– he wanted to show me the beauty of the coastal communities.

We hopped in the car and he told me about growing up here — how he and his girlfriend had found a small coastal bungalow in a community called the HBCA, inside Centerport.

He drove me through Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington, and Centerport. The roads were windy. The trees were massive. The scent was familiar. We went to a beach called Fleets Cove.

I got out of the car. The sand was different. There were so many rocks. I didn’t understand it.

“Where is the soft sand that I know from New Jersey?” I shrieked

“That’s not what the North Shore is like - it’s a little rockier. This is a coastal tidewater that comes off the Long Island Sound; it’s brackish”, he said

“Brackish. What is brackish?”

He paused and looked confused that I didn’t know
“It’s half salt, half fresh”

I responded
“Oh, is it safe?”

I don’t know where that question came from.

“Yes, of course it is.“

We got back in the car, and he drove up a street called Washington Drive. A surge of energy traveled through my body, recalling I had just spent 2 months in the rental on Washington Ave on Long Beach Island.

We drove along this winding, hilly street; most of the homes were built into the cliffs. We rounded a corner and passed a house numbered 1111 and my soul lit up like warm embers crackling inside me. Fond memories and familiarity of the airy West Coast arrived– Laguna Niguel, Dana Point and La Jolla, flowed through me. The West Coast holds a very, very, very deep connection in my heart, and I started crying.

The realtor looked at me
“Are you crying? I can’t tell with the mask?”

“I’m really sorry; it’s just all so beautiful. Sometimes I feel things, and my emotions take over, it’s who I am”, I softly shared

Those feelings of familiarity, the flashbacks, the inner knowing, the messages started to come through

I kept hearing

“your home”
“your home”
“your home”
“your home”

“I think this is it. I think this is home”, I whispered

“Let me show you Northport”, he said

Eventually my tears stopped, and we made our way down through the HBCA and into Northport.

I had never seen such a Hallmark Movie town— the downtown shops, the vintage style, the harbor, the playground, the bakery, the vibration, the joy. All the people that were outside enjoying this most sunny day with masks on like there was not a global pandemic happening at the moment. Rather a feeling that we were all connected, that we were all one, like nothing in the world was wrong or had changed or was at risk or was an imminent threat to us.

People were just living.
I loved it. I wanted this. I wanted to feel like them.

I said
“Listen, here’s the situation. I need to say goodbye to NYC, relocate, and get my bearings. I am going to be in a rental house for the next seven months and I have given myself time to get acquainted with Long Island. Then after I’m in the rental home, we’re gonna go find my home in Centerport. OK?”

He just looked at me blankly
“You rented a house? Wait, what? Did you really rent a house already?”

I changed my body language to look at him softly as we sat overlooking the Northport Harbor
“I did. I rented a what they call winter rental. It’s in Long Beach”

He got a little huffy and responded:
“Well, that’s on the South Shore”

“Yes, It’s on a beach, and it’s going to be good for me— I’ll be near the water. I can walk to the beach, touch the sand and there’s going to be air, and it feels safe to me. This is a lot of change at once; I have a demanding job, and buying and owning a home is something I’ve never done before. I need time, and I need to be by the water. I’ll spend Christmas there. It’s going to be OK, and my cats are going to love it.”

He just looked at me with disappointment.

I paused
“Please believe me, I keep my word. Give me a couple of weeks to move and get settled.”

“OK, you should get pre-approved for a mortgage and we’ll go from there”, he responded.

I smiled
“I’m on it.”

I never rented my New York City apartment.

On October 10th, I wrote a letter to the management company saying that I was surrendering the keys on 10/13/2020. I stated that I understood that there was an outstanding lease of $33,000. I highlighted my near-death experience with COVID, my summer respite to regain my health, the protocol I followed to list and sublet my apartment, and my decision to relocate to a rental home on Long Island for 7 months and plans to buy a home. The movers were scheduled for October 13th.

A response came back within the hour
“You can’t do that. You have a lease term outstanding that you are responsible for, and it’s not our responsibility to rent your apartment. We will not take it over.”

I responded with grace and clarity that I would be leaving on October 13th. And we would figure out the particulars; I would not disappear from them. I was grateful for the years I had spent in the building and loved my time there. I told them I would drop the keys off at the office the morning of the 13th, and that I wanted to request the service elevator for the move at 8-11 am on October 13th.

I did not receive a response.

October 13th arrived, and so did Oz Moving.

My new rental home was half furnished.

To soothe my separation anxiety, feel at home and aid in familiarity for the cats, I made plans to bring 20% of my belongings and store 80% of the rest in a storage facility in Westbury, for the term of the lease. The storage facility had an excellent rate for new customers. Westbury was central to Long Island, a logistical stopover.

Controlled, safe.

I had never kept any of my things in storage before.

We used a color-coded system to mark the boxes.

Blue: Long Beach
Red: Westbury storage

The foreman and his crew packed up my plants with the utmost care and worked efficiently to pack up my things that morning of the move, but my mind was elsewhere. A few days before, I had the biggest new business pitch our company had seen since I joined, and I was the lead on the pitch. My entire world revolved around that pitch in the last couple of weeks while I was architecting the departure from NYC. I don’t know how I survived that timeframe. It’s a very blurry memory. I think I blacked it out, a familiar thing I used to do when I was overstressed in survival mode.

I played Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds’ 2007 Radio City Music Hall album the entire drive. I pulled into the storage facility parking lot, and my heart was pounding. My things went into storage. The rest came with me to Delaware Avenue.

We pulled into the driveway of Delaware Ave. I had never been inside. I rented the home, sight unseen. It was a 3-story beach house, entrance at the bottom level, with stairs to upside-down living. I entered to find a very modern Miami-style white kitchen and wide bright living space with sliding doors to the front deck, and an outdoor grill off the kitchen on the back deck. I continued upstairs, 3 bedrooms on the top floor. The most beautiful sliding barn door you’ve ever seen hid a washer and dryer...and right next to it was the 3rd bedroom and sliding glass doors to the 3rd-story deck with 2 chaise lounges. Ahhhhhh room to breathe! I turned around and noticed a landing at the top of the stairs, and I looked up– a skylight.

A HUGE skylight.

This is where I will put my plants, the desk and work. I eyed this spot before I even walked into the master bedroom.


My phone rang. It was one of my work colleagues from the agency calling from Kansas City.

“Jess, we won the pitch!!”

I started crying. I started crying because I knew what it meant: I had made the right choice to move to Long Island. I was so pleased that we won the pitch, but the message that I received in my body was:

“You won. You made the right choice. You did the right thing.”

1 month later, I received a $5,000 travel credit gift from my company; so did the entire pitch team, as a congratulations.

“Something to look forward to after the pandemic,” they said

Thank you, universe. Thank you.

“But I don’t ever want to work on a pitch like that again,” my soul whispered to me.
My soul would repeatedly whisper this for 2 more years, until I finally surrendered.

I moved into the rental home. I discarded the boxes. I exhaled.

The next day I hopped in my Jeep, drove down to Long Beach Island, blasting the Allman Brothers, “Jessica” over and over again, and I screamed out loud:

“I’m coming to get you, Blaze and Zoe!”

I knew in my heart that they could hear me. They were sedated when I arrived, in their carriers ready to go. I cried, and I cried, “Mama’s back.” They both meowed, and I put them in the car.

I said:
“We have a home. It is beautiful. You’re going to love it. It’s so wonderful.“

For months, my cats lay like spatchcock chickens on the heated floors, and basked in front of the gas fireplace. They were most certainly home, the happiest I had ever seen them.

Seven months went by in a blink– and I experienced life through more movie montage moments

I enjoyed a Fall I had never experienced before: colors, nurseries, pumpkins, festivals, flavors, skies, lush greenery, parks, bike rides, and the crisp autumn air.

Freedom.

Every Wednesday and Saturday I would drive up to the North Shore to explore different towns, neighborhoods, and communities. The neighborhoods, beaches, Shoprites, pizza places, and wine shops, I had my priorities then. I would always enjoy a slice of pizza on the ride home, my reward for stepping out of my comfort zone and really going after my dreams.

My mom’s treatment was under control at home, and she was still living her best life as if she had never been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer –I felt blessed and so empowered to keep going!

I joined a yoga studio in Long Beach (that was open IRL!) and signed up for an eight-week group where we manifested our futures, meditated and did yoga together, and it was so wonderful to be around people and very grounding.

I continued to work with a shaman in 1:1 sessions and in group settings. We did more cord cutting.

Work was so hard, I was so grateful for the fireplace to wind down after a long day.

My SIL, her sister, niece and nephew visited for a weekend in November.

I navigated the home-buying process.

I visited Huntington during the Christmas season and participated in the festivities on Wall Street (I would go on to learn this was the 1st holiday they had a NYC-size tree right in the middle of the street!) It was a magical Hallmark movie moment, and I knew 100% for sure this is where I would find a home.

I started researching school districts in The Huntington area and found Harborfields. I found their virtual BOE meetings on YouTube. I watched them.

I spent Christmas Eve dinner with a friend, and I made lobster & linguine, just like my grandmother used to.

I spent Christmas on Zoom with my family in Delaware and Chicago.

I leapt & started my home search with my 2 realtors in January 2021.

I was pre-approved for a mortgage! I was enamored by how this process went– and I was still figuring out how and where I would create a down payment.

I promised myself I would honor the Suburban Jungle recommendations. I made appointments to meet with the 2 realtors they had connected me to in Huntington and Sea Cliff.

I quickly narrowed my search within the Huntington area to focus on Centerport. The market had radically shifted at this time during the pandemic, and there wasn’t a lot of inventory. I had faith my home was waiting for me.

On January 17th, I met my Huntington realtor for a private showing of our 1st home together– a home in Centerport.

It had been on the market for a while. It was a large home, and there was so much space- the exact space I had asked for in my meditations. I was a little overwhelmed; the driveway was super scary, and I was pretty sure the wooden retaining wall was leaning in? But I wasn’t sure because I parked in the street. There was snow on the ground. There were very large trees on the front lawn that looked like they were bending, leaning towards the home? Why was everything leaning?

The inside was EMPTY. It was a flip, and it felt EMPTY. But wow, I loved the kitchen! Hale Navy vibes, super Coastal feel and white quartz counters. It was brand new, and there was a fireplace in the kitchen! Herringbone backsplash! And there was a coffee corner and a pot filler over the stove! I learned what a pot filler was during my stay in Long Beach- what a luxury– and my Italian heritage screamed: “YES to the kitchen!”

I entered the family room, and I looked up. Right there in the family room was a b/w photo of The Wicked Witch of the West yelling at Dorothy.

The Wizard of Oz! There she was! DOROTHY!

FEAR! OVERCOME THE FEAR!

There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home.

This was it. Was this it?

The basement was dark, but it was huge. The garage was huge but also dark. The backyard was huge and covered in snow.

I have always had trouble visualizing interior spaces from floor plans; no matter how much I watched Joanna Gaines create everything from nothing, I still struggled to see what could be. I didn’t inherit that gene from my mom, who was an interior designer. But I could always pick a great pillow or paint color!

I was having trouble visualizing what “could be” inside this very large, empty home.

We left.

On January 18th, I connected with my Sea Cliff realtor and visited three homes. The downtown was quaint, the houses older — Victorian mostly, like Spring Lake in NJ. But they all carried a crowded energy. Low ceilings, narrow stairs, little yard.

I felt claustrophobic. It didn’t feel like home to me.

I sighed.
“Patience, grasshopper. Patience,” I said to myself.
That was the quote on the cover of my wooden meditation journal.

2 weeks later, on January 31, 2021, the first house I saw in Centerport had posted an open house, and this time it was staged with furniture. I wanted to go back. My realtor didn’t think this was a good house for me; it needed A LOT of work, but I insisted we go back. I liked the photos I saw with the staging– I could “see” the rooms take shape.

And, I could not stop thinking about Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West.

I arrived, and waited in line with 10 other people and toured the home again. I loved the round dining table in the kitchen; it was so welcoming and lovely. I could envision breakfasts and conversations.

I entered the family room and immediately felt what it would be like lounging on the couch watching TV, and the decor was all California Coastal– exactly my style.

I looked out at the backyard. Decrepit. Broken pieces of wood. A wooden bird feeder lying on the ground. I didn’t understand where the septic was. I didn’t understand anything.

But I had the feeling.

There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.

This was it.

This was my chance– a canvas of possibilities had been laid out for me; there was no missing the signs; my yellow brick road had led me here.

I drove down to the HBCA private beach afterwards, and I walked on the sand. I stood next to the lifeguard stand and heard the word “EXPANSION”.

I knew I was home.

My realtor rolled with my enthusiasm. I put in an offer $1 above asking, and it was accepted the next day.

I gave a good faith deposit of $7,000.

The seller’s LLC was named “2nd Chance Real Estate, LLC”.

I googled the meaning of my house number, because 2021 and 2026 Jess still do that (of course!) and I found the meaning for 235: “being given another chance to make things right.”

A second chance.

I quit vaping nicotine on the day I gave my deposit.

I threw out the pens when I arrived back in Long Beach.

And I started chewing nicotine gum instead.

4 days until the scheduled inspection.

Now I had to figure out how to get a mortgage.

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When I pulled onto West Rhode Island Ave in Beach Haven, I felt that familiar ache disappear. The deep ache for freedom that I carried with me for so many years was immediately replaced with calm.

A combination of the energy shift from New York City to the beach with Coldplay’s Paradise humming through my speakers- I knew this was the beginning of a very pivotal and purposeful journey.

I felt my nervous system regulate in the moment, and before I even entered my sweet little airbnb beach house, I turned right and walked up to the beach. Removed my shoes. I let my toes feel the sand. I grounded myself. I walked to the water. It was still cold, but I thanked the universe for bringing me where I knew I would be safe.

The need for safety has always been an underlying current that flowed within me. An emotion on autopilot that often directed and rerouted my adult behaviors, desires, and how my life progressed after college. The jobs I sought, the not so good relationships that found me, the good ones that followed, the lessons that were formed inside and outside those relationships, the rationale for why I avoided commitment, marriage, birth or becoming a mother. Nightmare on Elm Street vibes are the best way I can explain how commitment used to feel for me. Too scary! How would I survive if something went wrong, how could I escape?

But here I was. Finally, so sick of myself and my limitations, I wanted to change. Safe and sound on the beach that had held me for the past 6 summers as well. What a culmination.

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2020 was INTENSE. It was energetically exhausting. There was so much to sit with in 1 summer— navigating a pandemic, my mother’s illness, working remotely inside a very demanding job, working with others who became responsible for homeschooling their children. Routines, expectations and energy changed, and personal values became illuminated for everyone.

I think about the summer of 2020 — and how grateful I was to be in a place that felt safe and allowed me to breathe. And have fun.

It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Sweetest Thing, imagine the movie montage moment where Christina Applegate & Cameron Diaz are in the dressing room having their own private runway show in different outfits?

That’s how my memory cataloged that summer for me.
A movie montage.

My best friend was there with her family.

I had my 1st outdoor grill and made a lot of new recipes.

We had Sunday happy hours at the Shell and Sandbar.

I worked remotely, and we thrived- we had an incredible summer/year!

I did vinyasa yoga at 7am outdoors on the bay with Yoga Bohemia.

DIY highlights!

I refreshed my soul with the salt water, daily.

I listened to many audiobooks on personal growth, podcasts by Jay Shetty, Gabby Bernstein, and Gwyneth Paltrow and spent time alone, walking.

I took walks to the beach everyday to meditate, picked up shells and feathers, and cast my worries and dreams out to the universe.

I stared at the stars in the sky that were never visible in NYC, prayed to Jupiter, Venus, and the moon on multiple occasions.

I witnessed double rainbows.

I moved again. I wasn’t able to find a full-summer rental so, on July 4 I switched Airbnb rentals to a beautiful three-bedroom newly designed home right at the edge of the island in Holgate on Washington Ave.

I thoroughly enjoyed this home as part of my summer movie!

I dated — terrified, resistant, unsuccessful — but I tried! And there were dinners. There was Cacio Pepe. Steamed mussels. Pineapple shrimp tacos. Crisp white wine. Dirty Martinis. Fumbled conversations and reactions. Fear.

There were beach walks in between my work meetings.

My parents visited, there was steamed king crab legs, linguine and clams and more crumb cake from the bakery up the street than we knew how to ingest in a 72 hour period. We visited the LBI Lighthouse.

My brother, SIL & kids visited, and we collected shells and enjoyed the beach (and more crumb cake and clams).

I collected bottles and bottles of shells.

I grew wild morning glories on the porch in containers.

I was filled with fear, and completely unregulated, and the beach was the grounding I needed.

There was also a lot of self-discovery and energy healing.
Triggers.
Awareness.

I was working with a shaman I trusted; there was past-life recall, there was cord cutting. There was emotional identification of triggers. I learned more about the puzzle pieces of myself than I ever did before.

I had no idea the second half of the summer 2020 would lead me down the path of understanding the most gaping wound that I had inside me, which was fear of abandonment and people pleasing.

For years I ended up abandoning myself over and over again unconsciously, subconsciously and consciously.

Is this why I said no to good things and good people? Is this why I always said yes to unavailable relationships? Is this why I always found myself in situations where I was competing, striving for perfection, where there was only room to “win”?

But, what if I just wanted to participate? What if I just wanted to play.

No, Jess, there is only winning. You win or lose. Didn’t you see Talladega Nights?

This, I now know, is the illusion the universe was trying to show me, most painfully. If I always “won” I could never be abandoned. I would be loved. Accepted. Wanted. Needed. Cherished. Valued.

But that was not true- AT ALL. It was a false net. An empty hug. There was no cashmere; there was a cement floor.

Abandonment showed up as many things for me- it showed up as unavailability, distance, non-committal co-workers (the mirror), and it also showed up as love (the lesson). It triggered so many things in me and in how I did (or didn’t) allow things into my life. Things would feel good until they felt too close and I pushed it away. Abandonment was triggered by people leaving or being disappointed in me (or the fear of them leaving or not loving me) therefore igniting a hard-wired chain reaction in my body of hypervigilance, anxious avoidant behavior, perfection, control, and survival.

Over the past 6 years, I would go on to further understand and learn that my present and past lives played a role in me developing this fear, this deep-seated phobia of actually being held, being loved- because I never felt worthy of it.

It’s not important for me to share what it was across my past which resulted in my feeling this way– I’ve done enough repatterning therapy and energy healing to unpack, gain awareness, understanding, and ways to accept, release and heal what I experienced. My intent for sharing is not to relive traumas through sharing my past experiences– but it is important to name them, claim them and release them– and share how empowering it is to be FREE of carrying the burden of those traumas.


And I learned we repeat things… until we don’t.

Once I understood, gained clarity and knowledge of my fear—- the pattern, why, how and what— I ended the pattern, disrupted the cycle and ended it. For good.

Over these past 6 years I would learn my biggest lesson — is that I am enough, creative, bright, beautiful just as I am. …without performing, without people pleasing, without being perfect, without competing, and without hiding behind 15 masks keeping me safe. This opportunity and lessons came multiple times–if you can imagine a balloon inflating and deflating... that was a cycle of mine, until I stayed inflated, full, whole…without ever letting myself dim my light or get small again.

Over these past 6 years I would learn—bravery. Belief. Compassion. Self love. Self worth. Allow the universe to support me and how to share my life with aligned friends, a partner and best friend and enjoy the life that was truly waiting for me to say YES to. I realized that it ends with me and it starts with me. Thank you Colleen Hoover for that mirror.

2020 was the precipice that catapulted me into the beginning of my 6-year deep self-reflection on who I was, and what was really controlling my life, until it wasn’t.

What we don’t change, we choose.

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In the beginning of August 2020, I found a new and unfamiliar power within myself.

I made the *BIG* wish list

I started soul-searching for what it was in my heart that I really wanted. What kind of life did I want to live? Who was part of my life, who did I share it with? Where did we live? How did we live? How did I FEEL?

I made the wish list that did not include my current friends, family, lifestyle or limitations– and I put these big dreams out to the stars one evening overlooking the howling ocean and light of the moon.

The next week I repeatedly received an advertisement on Instagram from a company called Suburban Jungle. They were a relocation company that helped people relocate who don’t know where to go!?

I was so intrigued. They talked about a questionnaire that would help pinpoint different locations and communities. Their promise was: “tell us what your values are, and we will match you with your ideal destination”

They were based in New York/CT– formed by a very elegant woman named Alison. I did a little deep dive on them, and I immediately felt the connection to her personality in their writing and social media presence.

The wheels in my head were turning and I felt a warm feeling in my body.

The next day when I returned to their website for the second time, I noticed a large splash advertisement right on the homepage and I recognized the man in the photo of my friend (who, at the time was the president of a very prominent PR agency in NYC), and he was featured with his wife, small children on the lawn in front of a home in Connecticut!

I had known him for years. I had known him to live in Manhattan and I said to myself “wow well if he did it, I need to ask him how he did it”.

so I reached out to him.

I texted a brief hello and led with my intrigue “Is it real? Is this legit? What was your experience? Did you feel you could trust them? Are you happy with where you landed? How does your family feel?”

He wrote back almost immediately with a glowing review of how his life and his family life have transformed amidst the beginning of the pandemic. He told me about the survey. He told me about the white-glove connection with the owner. He told me they don’t take a dollar in the beginning and the way that their business is modeled is that they will identify towns for you and if you like them, they will make introductions to real estate agents (looking for a qualified hot lead) and if you buy a home from that agent they split the commission with Suburban Jungle!

I immediately connected with Suburban Jungle. I shared where I was, and I asked them to meet me where I was emotionally and physically. I had left Manhattan. I had rented a home in Long Beach Island. I wanted to purchase a home, create roots, build stability for myself. I wanted a smallish upscale community, social, welcoming, a little bohemian, unique, beachy and lots of nature.

They could tell that I was genuine, and they could tell that I was ready, so they sent me the survey of 100 questions.

I read through these and was enamoured. I answered lots of questions like

“What’s more important to you: taxes or a good school district”

“What is more important to you: proximity to big box stores and highways or proximity to the beach?”

“What’s more important to you: art and culture or country clubs?”

“What do you value more: a quick trip to Target or a bike ride to a farmers market”

“Do you need to be close to a NYC train station?”

“Do you want to make friends in the community where you live?”

The answers came easily.

These questions went on and on and on and on, and I answered them with the utmost heart-centered way, even answers that made me uncomfortable, or out of reach. I was real about what mattered to me, or what I knew my future self wanted.

We had another meeting, and they shared the results of my survey with me. I was on the edge of my seat!

Our meeting was high energy and the woman explained to me that she was so excited to help me find a home.

“You’re not gonna believe this. We never see things like this. We have matched you with eight locations that we feel meet your value systems and what you truly desire in a life and community”

I shrieked, “Oh my God really? I know I’m multi-faceted, but wow! Where are they?”


“Well, let us log you onto this new dashboard we created this week and show you “

The dashboard of towns and information was compiled just for me; it felt digestible. It felt personal. It was in that moment that I think I had my first epiphany that my intuition was very strong, and the feeling in my body felt like a friendly, safe “alert” . It was unfamiliar, but I trusted it.

They continued on “We have matched you with one town in New Jersey, one town in Connecticut, and 6 towns on Long Island. Have you ever heard of Red Bank in NJ?

“Yes”, I responded. “I grew up in New Jersey. Red Bank is very familiar to me. The home of Bruce Springsteen well that’s really Rumson, but yes a town that rings familiar”


“We have matched you with Westport, Connecticut”

“I don’t know anything about Connecticut”, I responded “ that feels like a place where people wear Lilly Pulitzer dresses”

We all laughed.

‘Tell me more about Westport”, I requested.

They continued, “It’s coastal. It is very upper-class, affluent community. The school system is wonderful. The communities are built-in. There are yacht clubs. There are community sailing associations. There’s no shortage of opportunities to meet new people. There are beaches, there are boutiques, and a really beautiful downtown”

They went on and on about how much they loved Westport. In my body, it felt like a reach. I’ve always thought of Connecticut as a very bougie Martha Stewart-like location. I didn’t know if I would fit in. (Fear. Low self-worth making an appearance, hey guys!)


Their voice rose a notch “We also matched you with Long Island across a clustered area. You really showed connections with Lloyd Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington, Northport, Centerport, and they are all in Suffolk County, a little further from NYC. We also matched you with one town in Nassau called Sea Cliff. Have you ever heard of any of those towns?

I responded. “No I haven’t. But wow! I know very little about Long Island. What’s the next step? Tell me more”.


Enthusiastically, they continued: “Well we want you to read through all of these documents, we have prepared a summary of each town, travel articles or pieces that the New York Times has written. They are all in your dashboard.

I grabbed a cocktail (tequila and grapefruit, naturally my choice in 2020), and dove in! The summaries were extensive– the real estate market, history, community vibe, the comps, and what they called the barometer temperature of the town. What does it feel like? What kind of people live there? What’s the median income? What’s the median age? What does the school district look like? Is it a blue ribbon school etc.

It was a lot to take in! I was excited but also overwhelmed and a little scared. Can I get a mortgage? Do I have enough saved?

For the next week, I went about my day, meetings after meetings, eagerly awaiting 5 o’clock. I had actually started to create some healthy boundaries where I would not accept meetings after 5 o’clock. I would walk to the beach, sit, meditate and talk to the ocean. I let the ocean talk back to me about the recommended communities I was matched with, and I thought that there was something really special about the cluster of towns that were in this what they called “Gold Coast/North Shore” area, terms that I was not familiar with as a non-native Long Islander.

I read more about the towns; it was easy for me to recognize which ones felt better matches with me at the time for reasons: vibe, location, community, cost of entry, available inventory, median income. We had our 2nd meeting, and I shared my responses.

I mentioned I was most curious to explore Huntington, Centerport, Northport and Sea Cliff, in that order. Suburban Jungle took my feedback and let me know they would be sourcing a real estate agent they thought I would be a great match with, personality-wise. A couple days later, Suburban Jungle called me back.

“We know you gave us ‘an order or preference,’ but we really want to connect you with this real estate agent in Sea Cliff. She’s excited to meet you.”

Trust the universe.

“Ok sounds great, looking forward to it!”

The real estate agency and I connected; we had a conversation. She told me about Sea Cliff, how she was a resident, and how she loved the small but quaint, charming properties. Community beaches, overlooking Long Island Sound at sunset, and it sounded so beautiful- and we scheduled a visit for a week from that day.

The next day, Suburban Jungle introduced me to a realtor in Huntington. He was a lifelong resident of the Huntington area and lived in this quaint little neighborhood of Centerport called ‘The HBCA” He and I had a very spirited conversation. He was high energy. He was directive. He was a sales guy and at the time that resonated with me! I made an appointment to meet with him the next week as well.

I was going to visit Long Island!

This was all happening so quickly.

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It was closing in on the end of the summer.
I heard a voice inside my head

“You need to give up your apartment. You will find your home; let go of NYC, let go of your apartment.”

I had never in my life received such a direct audible message.

I had heard my intuition whisper sometimes, but this was very direct. My entire body was shaking, but then I became very calm and felt ok.

So I’m sitting on the beach, and I started talking to the ocean, naturally. (Yes, I still talk to the ocean, even today in 2026).

I spoke aloud: “What I’m hearing is I give up my New York apartment and the house will find me, but what happens in the in-between phase? I don’t know what happens if I give up my apartment; where do I live until I find a home to purchase that is my own?”

and then I heard

“seven months”
“seven months”
“seven months”
“seven months”
“safe haven”
“seven months safe haven”
“Long Beach Island”
“Long Beach”
“Long Island“

There was something that clicked inside me, and I went on intuition autopilot….
Long Beach is a community on Long Island.

The next day, after a long night of twists and turns and not much sleep, I reached out and emailed my apartment management company, and I said I would not be returning to my apartment on Duane Street. I wanted to know what my choices were. I still had 6 months left on the lease, and I had a lot of questions about giving up my apartment versus what it would look like if I rented it out, which would mean I keep the lease and find someone to take it over for the remaining terms.

The management company was very kind to me and laid out all my options.

Option 1: I could surrender the apartment as is and still be financially responsible for the remainder of the lease

Option 2: I was allowed a sublet to take over my lease agreement– the pandemic allowed for special circumstances to do so. But it was on me to find the sub–tenant– the management company would not promote or list my apartment for rent. Ooophh.

I was filled with fear. The looming $33k for the remainder of the year’s rental lease was in my mind. I had only paid March, April and May before I left on May 22nd – and I had paid June, July and August while I was on LBI.

Fear.
Urghhhh.
There it was again.

I contacted a broker at Core to professionally list my apartment for rent.
I wanted to try.

The broker was very nice and very direct with me:
“Ma’am I don’t think that’s a good idea but we can try”

The broker couldn’t have been more than 27, and I had the ick already at “ma’am”. I gathered my graceful response.

“Ok, well what would you recommend? What have you seen? What is the market prepared for?”

The broker responded:
“The market is not prepared for new rentals in New York City, no one is coming here, not even corporate clients. Everyone has left, as you have experienced.”

“OK’, I responded. “Well, I’m in a precarious situation, and I’m gonna take my chances. Tell me what I need to do and how we can best work together if you would agree to this collaboration?”

He responded, “Do you have any pets?”

I gulped.
“Yes, I have two cats”

He breathed heavily “we can’t have pets in the apartment when we show it because potential renters will be turned away. You have to board them”

My heart exploded and tears started to fly down my face. I composed myself, and I said
“All right why don’t you email me the steps that we would go through. Do we need photos? Is there a contract? Is there a fee that I am required to pay you?”

He responded: “Yes, we’ll need to take photos. We will promote the listing and it will be cross-listed. There is a 1-month broker’s fee that you will pay when we find a new tenant for your lease agreement. I do not think you will receive the lease term rate for your current rent, so we will have to negotiate that, and your preferences. I’ll send you all the particulars in an email, and we can get started.”

We ended the call. I felt flat and sad. And stiff. Very stiff.

Was this really happening? Was I really leaving the city?

I started thinking about where I would live if I wasn’t in my NYC apartment that I had worked pretty much my entire adult life to achieve. Living and working in NYC was my 1st big dream. I recall when I moved into my 1st apartment on 14th and 8th in 2009, then Murray Street in Tribeca in 2015, before the one I was presently living in on Duane St., and my mom said to me, “Jess, you have arrived”.

That never sat well with me. It didn’t resonate. I didn’t feel “at home”. I felt like a passenger. Floating. And now I know why. It wasn’t meant to be my permanent home. It was just part of my journey.

I kept hearing a voice in my head
“Long Beach”
”Long Beach Island”
”Long Beach is an island”
”Long Island”

Autopilot.

I started searching on Realtor.com for rental homes on Long Island, in the Long Beach area. I had never been there. I had only been to Rockaway 2x when I took the dreaded ferry there from the East River boat landing for beach day trips. So not a fun experience.

A rental popped up right away in Long Beach. It was called a ‘winter rental’ and it was from October 13, 2020 to May 16, 2021. Gorgeous kitchen! 3 bedrooms! 3 bath! Brand new! Heated floors! Gas Fireplace! Gas grill outside! 10-minute walk to the beach!
$3,200/month… for a 7-month lease.

I screamed!

I spoke to the realtor who was handling the application and it was approved the next day. This home was exquisite. I could spend Christmas there. I could have a tree.

The home was in East Atlantic Beach/The West End of Long Beach and on Delaware Avenue. If it wasn’t already mentioned, my entire family relocated and permanently resides in Delaware.

So, I said ok.

On August 28, 2020 I signed the winter rental contract for Delaware Ave, Long Beach, Long Island.


I had less than a week left in this summer rental on LBI, and I had next steps to plan.

I prepped for four weeks. I made lists. I packed. I ordered a proper beach bag, microfiber beach towels, a Bose speaker. I had ordered two new litter boxes, calming collars and various supplies for Blaze and Zoe (my then 5-year-old cats). Sunscreen. I ordered packing supplies for my 40-inch computer monitor, laptop, and all my work/home office gear– I used up over 60K AMEX points to prepare for my summer, my imminent departure from NYC.

I arranged for my plants to be watered and cared for by one of the doormen in my building, who I trusted completely; I always connected with him. Also, a lucky gift I received during the early days of the pandemic during the subsequent mayhem, riots and violence that broke out across NYC– miraculously, de Blasio suspended alternate side of the street parking! Within 30 minutes, I ran up to 50th & 8th parking garage where my Jeep was and took it back to my apt– another blessing; my car remained right in front of my building for five days prior to my departure.

I was able to plan and pack with a clear sense of knowing, with ease.

I felt strong and capable.

The day to leave arrived. I looked around; I looked at my bright bedroom with a view of the Freedom Tower, and Duane Street FDNY Fire Station- otherwise known as the ‘Miracle House’ (central to the rescue mission during 9/11, the firefighters of Ladder 1 and Engine 7 rushed directly to the site, and miraculously, all 55 firefighters based out of the Duane Street Firehouse survived the attacks that day). I always loved knowing I lived on such a special and protected street.

I looked at Trinity Boxing Club. Would I ever see Ray Donovan (aka Liev Schreiber) again? I looked at my dining room table where my flower vase was empty, clean, sitting right in the middle of the table. I had spent a month planning my departure… I had left places, people, and apartments before, but this felt different. I wasn’t running; I felt like I was planning to arrive somewhere.

I was sad, but felt relief on the horizon. I felt clean air circulating through my lungs before I had even arrived at the NJ shore. I felt like I would live.

I took my beach chairs out of my locker in the building’s basement. I packed up a very sedated, yet still nervous Zoe and Blaze in their carriers, and we were on our way.

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I always loved the drive to Long Beach Island. There is something nostalgic about driving through New Jersey, where I grew up and spent the majority of my childhood, adolescence, and early adult years during and after college.

It’s like clockwork.
NJ Turnpike exit 14C Holland Tunnel. Fond memories always come back- Wayne! Prospect Park! River Edge! Hoboken! Sea Girt! Spring Lake! The memories and locations flood through me like a wave, with Pearl Jam’s Oceans playing in the background. A familiar yet somehow eerie spiritual ballad to memories and places past. A song I can’t even listen to today.

Exit 11- Garden State Parkway South. The road to all things blue and coastal! Dave Matthews blasting through my speakers.

Exit 116- PNC Arts Center, John Mayer! Counting Crows!

Exit 98- Pt. Pleasant. My mom and Dad used to take us to Pt. Pleasant Boardwalk almost every summer Sunday in the 80s for a day of sun, sand and salt water. Taffy, greasy cheeseburgers, fries, and games, amusement rides. What a labor of love for them. Courtney Love screaming in my backseat.

Exit 82- Seaside Heights. My Mom and Dad owned a newly constructed 3bdrm condo in Seaside, a destination my mom turned into a surfside showpiece of cozy coastal bliss. It was her pride and joy. They enjoyed their beach condo for 10 years with friends and family. I now understand why they loved it so much.

Still cruising down the GSP, I started to think about my mom. And the couple of months prior, when she was first diagnosed at the end of January.

I was sitting on my bed. What I was sitting in was knowledge. I sat in the knowledge of what I had gained over the past 20 or so years working in pharma and biotech, the last five years in particular, in oncology. I disliked working on oncology. I disliked working on anything that had fatality or anything terminal associated with it. I preferred working on women’s health or rare disease or mental health where I knew that there was hope and I knew that there were options.

I think sometimes when you know too much, it can paralyze you. And my knowledge of oncology, my knowledge of diagnoses, my knowledge of tumor types, my knowledge of different types of cancer at the most molecular, biological level, completely paralyzed me.

I knew too much about my mom’s diagnosis, and I didn’t know how to talk about it.

I knew how to talk about it as a strategist. I knew how to talk about it to a doctor. I knew how to position it on a sales piece for a pharma sales rep.

But when it came to talking to my mother, I didn’t know how to be a daughter talking to her about what type of cancer she had, because I knew too much.

It was too technical. And I prayed to find the words, and I prayed to find the grace, the compassion and how to do it, because I knew that Jessica, who had been shaped through her “professional” background, was not the Jessica that my mom needed.

I also thought hard about myself. I thought hard about my life– my emotional
un-foundation and how everything was connected with string, tape or cement. I identified as a wellness-obsessed, high-functioning, anxious/avoidant female executive who survived on control as a way to suppress having to move through her traumas that were screaming to be held and healed. A truth I surrendered to in 2022.

But at the time, I didn’t know how to chip away at the cement around my heart because the floodgates always felt overwhelming to open.

Then I returned to a moment when i was still sitting on my bed. Thinking about what I truly wanted in my own life.

I had never felt so alone, with both my cats Zoe and Blaze, my rose quartz heart and clear quartz in my left hand, solfeggio frequencies playing in the background as an attempt to calm me.

I prayed out loud for the first time, praying to anyone that would listen.
Before I knew the concept of spirit guides, before I knew the concept of angels, before I truly believed in the presence of God, and that he has a plan for all of us.

And I cried out in my room

“Please don’t take my mom before she sees me become something of myself. Please don’t take my mom before I become a mother. Please give me the time to fix myself. Please give me the space to understand and learn”

“I want my life force energy back!”

My cats stayed with me. They didn’t move.

I felt this all deeply in my solar plexus.

I was thinking deeply about the shame, the sadness, the grief and all the regrets that I had been carrying in my body for so long. I recently watched the movie Inside Out, and it had brought words to feelings that I had never established as a child, as a teenager, or as an adolescent. After that movie, I fully understood what I felt.

What it meant to feel shame, what it meant to feel grief, what it meant to feel jealousy, what it meant to feel sadness, what it meant to feel despair, and what it meant to feel fear. And all of those different emotions trigger actions in us that do not serve our highest good, or the good of anyone we try to care for.

Shame puts us in a very small box that is very dark and tells us that we are not worthy of the life that we truly desire.

Sadness puts us in a small box of a familiar painful feeling that our body holds as the baseline vibration. And hopping out of that baseline vibration of sadness puts us into a place that we’ve never felt before. It feels uncertain. And it’s much easier to jump back into that box of sadness– a pain, a vibration we understand.

Grief puts us in a small box of loss, emptiness and anger, sometimes void of closure- a loop that reverberates deep within our heart. And what I have since learned (that I did not know on that drive) is that grief can keep you in a place of the past until you find a way to feel it, move through it, and grow beyond it to a point where it may always be there, but is not the primary feeling that runs your life or makes the decisions for you.

And I think the most powerful emotion that I have felt for my whole life was fear.
Fear.
Fear.
Fear.
Fear puts you in a box that is wholly dim and dark. Fear puts you in a box that is limiting. Fear puts you in a box that has hard edges. Fear puts you in a box that has no cashmere throw blanket to comfort you. No, actually, fear puts you in a box, but only provides you with a cashmere blanket to comfort you. A full body mask.

Six years later, what I have learned: when we were playing sports or making new friends or joining a new organization or trying something new, it probably never occurred to me that courage and bravery are what catapult us into new chapters of life. Into new ways of being, into new uncertain territories where we can allow wonder, awe, alignment, miracles and beauty to flow and unfold in front of us– bigger than we ever thought imaginable. Courage and bravery help us to understand that when we ask for a ‘miracle’ in our minds what we might be asking for is just a very ‘standard life’ based on what we think we are worthy of…”a miracle”.

Self-love and self-worth make space for what has always been waiting for us– a big, bold, beautiful, requited, shining, colorful, warm, welcoming, regulated, relaxed life– if we allow it.

On that drive to LBI, I was 46 years old, and it was time to face my fear and let go of the very small, scared, silenced woman, the Jess who felt she wasn’t worthy of anything else beyond her resume– and courage appeared.

Exit 63- Manahawkin/Long Beach Island. Everything always seems to change for me once I take the exit. The skies become bluer. The air becomes more crisp, the trees more green, the music more positive, the vibrations more calming. And driving over the causeway onto Long Beach Island feels like a rite of passage. A stretch of only a few minutes, but a completely palpable shift in vibration in my mind, body and soul. A feeling of home. A feeling of belonging. A feeling of comfort. A feeling of safety. I have always felt it since my first visit.

Now I had arrived for the entire summer, and I had no idea what was waiting for me.
The right turn off the causeway always generates such anticipation for me, slowly taking in Ferrara’s Bakery, Ron Jons, Faria’s and Shipbottom Shell Fish.

And my soul exhales.

Oh hello Beach Haven, it’s nice to see you again.

This matters more than it might seem, because what I was doing in that moment — what I had been doing for years, really- was getting ready to perform.

I was on my way to a prominent biotech company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was asked, by name, to share my thinking on how to build a positioning for their emerging oncology franchise. I was there in my Helmut Lang dress and my Prada heels and my perfect hair and what I can only describe as the prettiest raspberry lip gloss you have ever seen. I felt powerful. I felt wanted. I felt exceptional. I felt needed. I felt chosen.

And sitting at that table, I genuinely believed I was living my purpose.

The CMO and I began to talk, and our conversation unfolded the way these things do when two people are actually curious about each other — his home on the Cape, his primary residence in Cambridge, his upbringing, his college career, his rugby team, his children and their accomplishments, his favorite restaurants. And then he turned to me.

“Tell me more about you,” he said. “What’s your family like?”

I froze.

Not because the question was hard. Because there was no real answer — or rather, no real Jess answer to give one. He didn’t want to know Strategist Jess. He wanted to know the woman underneath the Prada and the positioning and the perfectly curated raspberry lip. I was so deeply suppressed, so thoroughly buried beneath the mirage of everything I had built my life around being, that I couldn’t find her anymore.

I tried. I talked about weekends at art openings and museums. About summering in Long Beach Island with my best friend and her family, and why it brought me such joy — the beach, the ocean, the grounding, morning yoga and bike rides, fresh seafood, the zest of a fresh margarita, the waves, the way nature made me feel like myself again. He just looked at me and nodded his head gently. Not with judgment. With something I recognized, even then, as genuine compassion. The kind that only comes from recognition.

I excused myself. I went to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror — really looked — at my 46-year-old self, and I said out loud to the woman staring back at me:

“You are wasting your life. You are worthy of so much more. What are you doing?”

And then I went back to the table.

Because that’s what we do, right? We hear the truth, and we go back to what’s familiar. Back to what tells us we matter. Back to the version of our life that at least looks like we’ve arrived somewhere (and that we are someone) worth being, what made me feel “accepted and exceptional, perfect on paper”.

That was me.

Six days later, I signed my lease on my Tribeca, NYC apartment for one more year. I said it out loud while I was signing — I actually said it out loud: “I don’t want to sign this. I don’t want to live here. This will be my last year here.”

And then I signed it anyway.

Twelve days after that, my mother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

I accompanied her to her oncologist. We quickly found her a targeted treatment — one she was lucky to be a candidate for, with no devastating side effects. I held her hand and helped her navigate this new reality, came home to my New York City apartment and kept going, because what else do you do?

Forty-five days later, I boarded a plane to Barcelona.

It was March 7, 2020. My best friend and I had planned this trip long before any of this — before the cancer, before the mirror, before the lease I didn’t want to sign. We arrived and for a few days, we were in another world entirely. And then the world exploded.

When the news broke about COVID, the date was March 12th. And when the news hit, both of our phones rang at the exact same time (2am Barcelona time)

Her husband called her.

My CEO called me.

We packed up her daughter, who was studying abroad, and luckily got emergency tickets home – My CEO and head of HR purchased mine.

What’s wrong with that picture?

Where are my priorities? Where have I built my life? Who do I commit myself to? Do I have anyone who would be the one to call, care for, and protect me?

Forty-eight hours later, I was back in my Manhattan apartment burning with a fever.

Twenty-four hours after that, I was hallucinating in my bed, having lucid dreams, unable to breathe properly and something cracked open within me.

I screamed out loud:

“I will not die. I want to live!!!”

Not I don’t want to die.

I will not.

I want to live.

That distinction still matters to me.

Twenty days later, after I had collected myself back to 50% of my otherwise stellar health status, I made a decision.

I knew there was a reason I leased a Jeep the previous summer of 2019.

Airbnb became my savior, and I rented 2 homes on Long Beach Island, NJ, for the summer — to survive. To collect my thoughts, to let myself breathe, and ask my soul to speak to me about what I should do next— because I knew my time in Manhattan had come to an end.

May 22, 2020 was the last day I lived in Manhattan.

I’m not telling you this is a tidy story because it was quite chaotic in the beginning. I’m not telling you the pivot was clean or that I heard the mirror’s message the first time, or the second. I heard it, and I went back to the table. I heard it again, and I signed the lease. It took the universe almost removing my health — before I could finally hear the call.

If you’re reading this and you’ve had your own version of that moment — the quiet one in a bathroom, or the loud one in the dark, or the one where you realize no one important was on the other end of the call — I want you to know something.

The fact that you heard it means you’re ready.

The life you deserve has been waiting for you the whole time.

It takes courage to claim it, and make the leap.

Energy is the loudest silent indicator — the invisible weight of space that lives all around us, either moving us forward or holding us back. Our homes and bodies hold stories — the energetic imprints of everything that happened within our walls. Sometimes that belongs to us, and sometimes it may belong to the people who lived there before — our home is always talking to us.

When left unaddressed, it quietly affects how we feel, rest, and move forward.

This is not Feng Shui. This is not about decluttering (although I appreciate both, and have utilized both — including interior design, decorating, painting, buying new pillows, comforters, and art for the walls.)

But this was different... a feeling that my intuition whispered to me needed a different approach — my home was definitely talking to me.

When I moved into my own home in 2021, I sensed it was meant for me — yet it carried a heaviness I couldn’t explain. Over time, I uncovered layers of my home’s history — abandonment, illness, grief, and neglect — and recognized how deeply those echoes were affecting my own nervous system and mirroring my own past.

My house had stories that needed clearing — and so did my heart.

Through my personal journey of self-discovery, inner healing, and letting go of a life that no longer served me, I started to connect with the frequency of flowers and explored combining them with Reiki to clear the energy that didn’t feel good, and floral rituals to invite new feelings of lightness, courage, rebirth, joy, new connections and love. Flowers have power, meaning, and the ability to renew the frequency and energy of our lives.

These are things I inherently felt for an entire year, before I went down a small rabbit hole seeing if anyone else had felt it too.

Here’s the thing about spending 20+ years in advertising — it taught me the importance of data to support feelings, claims, and concepts — and I’m grateful I can use it to help make sense of what I felt... and ultimately help others feel confident about it too.

Research from Rutgers and Harvard confirms what our bodies already know: flowers instantly calm our central nervous system, elevate mood, reduce stress, and increase our sense of connection and well-being. Neuroscience research shows time spent with flowers and soil supports our vagus nerve — our body’s built-in pathway to feeling relaxed and regulated.

And over time, I shifted into a softer, more grounded, and more receptive woman.

I was living with more intention — and my life truly changed.

In reclaiming my home as a sanctuary, I also reclaimed myself — and I feel deeply called to share what I’ve lived within, survived within, and finally thrived within — so you can sense how your body feels, discover the words to describe it, and be empowered to create spaces that feel lighter and more supportive of what’s next — and to change the way you feel.

We all deserve to feel "at home."

After two decades in brand strategy in New York City, I moved to a small beach town on the north shore of Long Island into a house I knew, the moment I walked through the door, was meant for me. What I didn’t know then was that it carried something I couldn’t quite name — a heaviness that lived in the walls, a sadness in the air, a vibration in certain rooms that made my whole nervous system activate in ways that didn’t feel like peace — and it took me years to understand why.


Over time, I uncovered the layers of my home’s history — abandonment, illness, grief, loss — and began to recognize how deeply those echoes were mirroring my past and living inside me too. Through Reiki and the medicine of flowers, I learned to gently clear energetic residue that my home had been holding. And somewhere in that process, without quite realizing it, I healed my heart at the same time.

I shifted into something softer, more grounded, and more receptive. I was living with more intention — and my life truly changed.

This is the place where I tell that story — in essays and honest letters that I write to myself. Somehow, over the past 5 years and even now, my story always seems to reach the person who needs to hear it.

If you’ve ever walked into a room and felt something you couldn’t name, you’re not imagining it. I believe there’s a reason for that. And I believe you can do something about it.

But first, we have to reclaim it — in our hearts, and in our homes.

There is no place like home.