About Jen
Hi, I’m Jen - a gardener, a prairie chaplain, and someone who has spent most of her life at the edges. The thresholds where things are ending and something else hasn't quite begun yet.
My relationship with the natural world began with longing. As a small child, severe asthma kept me inside while the world bloomed without me. I watched from windows. I waited.
Better doctors and better medicines changed that. Antihistamines, it turns out, are a genuine gift from God. Suddenly there were lawns thick with purple and white clover. Butterflies finally within reach. My dad walking me through the woods, naming every tree like an old friend. A semester abroad in England and Wales, pressing wildflowers and drawing leaves, learning the flora of Britain by hand. Prairie hikes where the landscape opened into something vast and unhurried. And eventually, my own native garden — tended season by season, failure by failure, slow wonder by slow wonder.
There is an intimacy in that kind of knowing, accumulated over a lifetime. You don’t just observe a plant. You come to recognize it the way you recognize the face of a loved one.
In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer
That has always felt true to me. The native garden is not where I go to find metaphors. It is where I am held. Where I return when the ground gives way. Where, somehow, I am known.
a few things about me
I hold an MDiv and have spent my career creating spaces where people feel welcome to be fully themselves — joys, griefs, awkward pauses, and all.
I’ve led retreats, workshops, and community rituals, mostly at the edges of things: illness, grief, transition, becoming.
My garden keeps me humble. The rabbits win more often than I’d like.
My dad gave me many things. I’m most grateful for his humor.
why i’m here
The despair of the world is real. So is the beauty. I’m not interested in choosing between them.
Kimmerer writes that she taught her daughters to garden “so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.” That is what the earth is to me — not a metaphor, but a relationship. A place that holds me, and that I hope, in some small way, holds you too.
I’m glad you found your way here.
