CURRENTLY:

Hi I'm Jesse. Here is my conundrum:

I am a mom and a wife, a Life Coach, a writer, a listener and a speaker.  I left Minerva Consulting, a marketing agency I co-owned with my sister, in 2015 and spent the next year soul searching and redesigning my life to more fully align with the person I long to be - at work, at home, in my community and in my own heart. I founded Trade Last and began coaching individuals, groups and organizations while pursuing my Masters in Organizational Psyc and Leadership. But this space, the one with the words, the stories, the awakenings, the deep deep is holding on for dear life. I just can't quit writing.

I am trying to both let my life unfold and also show up for it.  God is still speaking to me after all this time (apparently she has a high tolerance for things like doubt, confusion, brokenness, anger and such) so I'm still listening to her. 

My life is:

God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, books, coaching, writing, gardening, travel, fake eyelashes, cul-de-sac framily, podcasts, food, wine, children, new hair colors, a few Friends, learning, listening, my family, poetry, quiet, laundry, and dogs. Mostly. 

I have a love affair with all the things which can be read and traveling to all the places which can be seen. The only one you should try to be better than is yesterday's you. Choose progress; reject perfection. Love already won. Eat, drink and be merry and praise the One who made you.

USED TO:

Before I was a Life Coach, for over ten years I was a Partner at Minerva Consulting, an agency I co-owned with my sister. Minerva is a marketing firm in Richardson, Texas focused on telling the stories of great organizations through PR, social media, production and live events. I worked with a world-class team to design the brand and ethos of organizations and their leaders and ensuring the assets and messages consistently, artfully and strategically reflected their goals and essence.

..........

Below is the original "about me" I wrote when I began this blog in 2012. I just couldn't bare to delete it yet. It reminds me of how compartmentalized I'd made my life and whispers to my longing for integration and wholeness. Also these kinds of things just keep you humble.

I am a thirty-something work-from-home Mom married to my BFF with two super-fantastic kids.  We are loud, we are disorganized, we are fun, we are messy, we are emotional and we are authentic.  I value reading and writing in a big way and I needed a place where I could bring my whole self to bare. In my first post on this blog, I shared how this blogging venture is six years in the making.  I have over-thought, avoided and scrutinized myself and everything I've written and finally I am saying, F-it. I need a place to put all this.  So to my clients who know me dressed up and talking about your businesses, here is your surgeon general's warning: herein lies TOO MUCH INFORMATION.  Read at your own risk.

I run a marketing firm with my sister, Ashley, and I love our work and we do plenty of writing, but I needed a place for the whole sum of my brain to live.  The sticky parts.  The unfinished parts.  The controversial parts.  The spiritual parts.  The angry parts.  The confused parts.  The imaginary parts.

Enter blog.

These are my precious babes.  Stella starts kindergarten in the fall and Eli is on the verge of two.  Like other mothers who have gone before me, I cannot put into words how I feel about Stella or how I feel about Eli or how I feel about being their mother, them being my children, the reality of who they are and who they could possibly be, the constant pleasure and pain of this chapter of life when they are little, and how some days it is all just too beautiful and too full of love for me not to cry my eyes out over it.  I love loving them.  And I especially love their little butts.

And there's Josh.  I love him more than Cadbury eggs and long baths with candles.  I love him to a deep place that hurts.  He is my safe place.

My nuclear family...well, we like to say we put the fun in disfunction.  I come from the land of giants and grew up thinking perhaps I had a growing disorder of some kind.  I kept hearing you are just a late bloomer; and that's true, I was.  But the six inches and two cup-sizes I kept hearing about never came.  Mom and Dad; Ashley, Ava and Liam; Chad, Julie, Davis, Memphis, and Alexis.  These are my people.  Where they go, I go and where they stay, I stay and their people are my people and their God is my God.  (Ruth 1)  We ride together. We die together.  (Bad Boys)

And last but not least in any way is my husband's family.  Broken and hurting.  But holding onto each other.  Colleen, Derek and Brodrick; Denel, Shawn, Kaleb, Ryan and Ally.