Introduction: Jenn's Healing Story

Hi, I'm your host Jenn Wynn.  In 2021, I gave a talk called "Healing Conversations" that focused on my journey to heal from domestic violence in my childhood home.  At the end, I shared my wish for others in the audience and beyond to lead healing conversations with people in their lives as a way to create the world we want to live in.  This intro episode is that 2021 talk (video linked here).

Now, in 2023, I'm answering my own call to action for more healing conversations through my new podcast, "The H.I. Note: Healing Inspirations from Life."  Join me as I have conversations with people from all walks of life about what they’re healing from, where they are finding their joy and inspiration, and how they’re paving a path forward.

Bio: Read more about Jenn here

Transcript

Jennifer

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this intro episode of The H.I. Note: Healing Inspirations from Life. I'm your host, Jenn Wynn. Come join me on a journey full of love, learning, and healing. The H.I. Note is an interview style podcast about stories of hope, healing, and breakthrough in people's lives, and what was made possible as a result. 

In today's episode, I explain why I started this podcast. This intro episode is both similar to and different from the rest of season one. It's similar in that it's hopeful, vulnerable, and contains a story of healing. In this case, my healing story. It's different in that season one consists of conversations, similar to long form interviews with me and guests from a wide range of backgrounds, about how they are healing in their lives. However, this intro episode is short. And it's just me. I wanted to introduce myself to you and introduce you to the journey that brought me to this place to my heart project. A project that over multiple episodes has me speaking to guests, about their own struggles, and triumphs, their stories of how they healed and their vulnerability in sharing are what I hope inspire you. As you'll see over the course of the season, I'm there to listen to them, and to help them reflect. And in this episode, I also want to match their openness and vulnerability with my own to explain how I got here, and why I wanted to have these kinds of conversations in the first place. And to tell you what I'm healing from and who I am, I am many things. 

I'm a professor, an entrepreneur, a mom, a wife, a sister, a black woman, a Latina, and I'm also a cycle breaker. I'm someone who experienced domestic violence in my childhood home. And I'm working hard to replace intergenerational cycles of abuse, with cycles of self worth, and unconditional love. Healing is an essential part of my journey. And it has been a lifelong journey. And it hasn't always been smooth. But in 2021, I took a big step in that journey. That year, I gave a talk called Healing Conversations, where I discussed with an audience for the first time, my experience as a survivor of childhood domestic violence. It was in the height of the pandemic, it was a virtual talk, and it was going to be made public. And I was so nervous to do it. Nervous to reveal things that I had been quiet about for most of my life, nervous about whether I was using the right words to describe this pain, that had been a part of my identity. And yet, I did it. At the end of the talk, I shared my wish for others in the audience and beyond to lead healing conversations with people in their lives as a way to create the world we want to live in. 

Fast forward two years later to today, and I'm answering my own call to action. That's why I created this podcast to have more healing conversations. It's why I'm here. And I hope that's why you're here too. So to understand me to really understand the why behind this podcast, I want you to hear that 2021 talk. And if you're on the train or in transit listening to this, know that it's not that your internet is weak, or that the rest of the show's audio sounds distant. [chuckle] It's just the actual talk I gave during the pandemic, before I invested in a good microphone. And if you want to see me deliver that talk in person with better sound, check out the YouTube link in the show notes. 

The bottom line is this. If I'm asking my guests to share their stories of healing, then I should be willing to share my story too. The other reason is love. And I mean love the way James Baldwin, my favorite author, defines it, "love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live with it". So this is my offering. In this podcast, my guest and I are taking off our masks together for the purpose of love. And as Baldwin puts it for quest and daring and growth. 

I'm going first, I hope you'll join me on this journey of learning together about healing, and about what's possible after pain. And please stick around afterwards for my love and learning outro, which is a short reflection from me about my key takeaways from this episode. 

Let's get started.

Jennifer from the 2021 talk

Three questions: 

• What in your lineage has held you back?
• Who do you want to forgive? 
• What is made possible for your legacy by forgiving this person? 

It's day four of a leadership development retreat. And everyone I know who has been to this retreat says you will have a breakthrough and the settings right for it. It's spring 2015. I'm in the idyllic countryside of France, wild French gardens are popping up all around us. Yoga sessions each morning. At the breakfast table, there's this juicy, fresh fruit spread each morning. It's fancy. [laughs] But I am determined to hold it together and prove that I belong here. You see, I'm the youngest of a group of business leaders and management consultants from around the globe. I am the only black person. And I am one of two Latinas, and I'm 10 weeks pregnant–and no one knows it. So when it's day four, and I've only cried once. I'm feeling great about myself. 

Then Amy. Amy is the lead facilitator of this entire retreat. She's about 5 '2", maybe late 40s, and she's a mystic. So this evening, Amy leads us into a dark room. And when I say dark, I mean dark. All the lights are off, the curtains are all down. Amy's got a few candles on the ground to lead us to our spot where we're going to sit across from our partners. And my partner, we'll call him George. George is this tall, German man, senior leader, business leader. And there's something tender about him. And I trust him. 

So Amy says three questions. That's what we're going to discuss tonight. One, what in your lineage has held you back? Two, who do you want to forgive? Three, what is made possible for your legacy by forgiving this person?

I know exactly who I'm going to talk about. I look at George. And I say, for the first time to someone who is not my therapist, or not one of my three sisters. There were times in my childhood, where I thought my dad would kill my mom. 

And I proceed to tell him some stories. Stories from my childhood, which was like a roller coaster, joy and terror side by side. And I tell them a story from when I was eight years old. [I] Say It was a sunny summer day in Jackson Heights, Queens, one of my favorite neighborhoods. And my mom comes to me in our tiny, cramped little apartments. And she says Let's go. Yes. I asked her "Mommy, are we going to leave him?" "No, mija. But we're going to go to the police station. And we're going to file a domestic violence report. And it will be there for us for whenever we need it." I swallowed the disappointment. And I sprang into action. So for my three younger sisters, I grab tank tops and shorts and jelly sandals. And we get them dressed. And we quickly walk to the police station, all five of us moving as fast as we can. We make the domestic violence report and we get back. And we are moving quickly because we need to be there before my father gets home from work and without a shred of evidence that we even left there. 

We did it. And I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that this year things will get better. And they don't. The next year a little better. And the rest of my childhood proceeds in this unpredictable way. And I am living in fear. So tonight on day four of the retreat, it is taking my entire being to get ready to forgive my dad and I really mean my whole body. 

There's a tightness in my chest, a ring of fire around my heart, a lump in my throat and then Amy asks, "Two, Who do you want to forgive?" Mommy. What? No, no, no, no, no, that was not what I was supposed to say. I look at George and say, "uh". Their shame and shock plastered all across my face. And he looks at me and says, I get it. No, no, but you don't understand. My mom is my everything. She's the reason I got out of that house, a nice kind person. 

You see my mom is the third generation of firstborn daughters to be named Maria Lantigua–Maria the Ancient. And I am supposed to be the fourth generation. But I'm not Maria Lantigua. My father wouldn't let her name me that. And then Amy asks, "Three, what is made possible for your legacy by forgiving this person?" And I say to George, "my mom tried so hard to break the cycle of abuse. And I want to start a cycle of self worth, through healing." 

Now, don't get me wrong, I had tried before to heal, in fits and starts. But in the past, it had always come from a place of fear, or erasure, trying to pretend like the past never happened or make it go away. But this time, I clutched my belly, full of new life and new possibility. And I imagine what's possible. This time, I'm operating from a place of love. And what I imagine is more healing conversations. And this time, I have the blueprint. 

Part one of the blueprint: understand the truth. 

It's summer 2015. I'm back from the retreat in France. And I'm sitting in my therapist's office, and I'm on the couch, and I'm staring at that floor to ceiling wall of books, getting lost in title after title. I looked down at my belly, which is huge at this point. And I say, "I need to understand my past so that I don't repeat it." 

It encourages me to turn hope into action. And so later that year, I invite my three amazing sisters to monthly sister brunches. And at these brunches, I want us to create new patterns, healthier relationships, new ways of operating with each other. And that takes some convincing. But, luckily, no one can say no to mimosas in Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon. And they say yes. 

And at our first sister brunch, mimosa in hand. I asked, "What roles from your childhood are no longer serving you?" 

And that brings me to part two of the blueprint: let go of what no longer serves me. 

It's 2017. And I am letting go of shame and fear. Now when I tell my story, I say, "I am a survivor of domestic violence." And this is huge for me. This change is so big that in 2019, I find myself on the phone with my father. And I'm talking to him about things that happened in our childhood, the impact that his actions had on me. And he says something like, "Well, you're not a liar. So I guess that happened. But I don't remember any of it." 

Cue Beyonce: “you're only lying to yourself.” And I play the whole damn Lemonade album on repeat for the rest of that year. Until finally, I let go of the bitterness and the disappointments and the resentment. And that brings me to part three of the blueprint, make a new way. 

It's 2020 the pandemic is raging. And every morning, I sit cross legged on the ground. And I connect with myself. And for the first time since I was 17 years old, I write poetry again. And that year, I leave my job, and I start a new consultancy focused on organizational transformation, change leadership, and healing. You see, I used to think that forgiveness meant saying what happened to me in the past was okay. I no longer think that. 

Last year, I heard Oprah say, "Forgiveness is when you give up the hope that the past could have been any different." So now, I no longer think of forgiveness as saying that was okay–I let you off the hook. Now, I think of forgiveness as moving my energy away from trying to change the past, or rewrite the past or make it go away. And instead putting my energy into understanding the paths for all of the complexity, letting go of what no longer serves me from the past, and making a new way forward to be more whole, and more healthy. 

So that is what I hope.  My hope for you is that we can find a way to be more whole, and in the process, have a positive impact not just on ourselves, but on those around us. Because even if you haven't been through domestic violence, what pain have you experienced? We are all hurting. As a nation, we have been through centuries of trauma. And in the last few years, really acute trauma, visible, in our faces. 

So my hope is that what I am learning from healing from domestic violence in my family can serve as a hint as our nation learns to heal from the domestic violence that we have been through. My wish for you is more healing conversations. My wish for schools and families and teams is more hard but worth it healing conversations. And my wish for us as a nation is that we talk more about the process of healing. 

I'm Jenn Wynn. I'm a professor of difficult conversations. I'm the first college graduate in my mom's family. I'm a survivor of domestic violence. I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a Black woman, and a Latina. And I am determined to find my way to liberation. Healing is an essential part of that journey. Come join me, let's see what's possible through healing.

Whew. So that was my 2021 talk. I remember how nervous I was to give that talk. It took so much for me to say those words out loud to an audience. I was afraid to put my message and what I thought of at the time as my mess out there. Since then, though, my courage and commitment around healing conversations have only grown. 

Now in 2023, I'm answering my own call to action for more healing conversations through my new podcast, The H.I. Note. In the rest of season one, I have vulnerable conversations with real people. And guests dive deep into not just what they healed from, ranging from loss to trauma to burnout and more, but how they heal. 

And I'll say this, it may not be the way you're used to taking in content. The conversations are long form, and they build over the course of an hour. We don't put the juicy parts first. Because in my experience, that's not how real conversations about healing happen. It takes what I call “with-ness,” connecting with people on all parts of life, seeing them as whole people before they sense they can share about the hardest parts of life. And what comes out by the end of our conversations are inspiring stories about moments of hope and healing in their lives. 

My wish is that you gain inspiration about how to navigate healing in your own life, and how to talk about healing with others. And that you feel the connection and awareness that when it comes to healing, we're not alone. My hope is also that you'll walk away with an idea or tool for the next step in your healing journey. 

Come join me as I have conversations with people from all walks of life, about what they're healing from, where they are finding their joy and inspiration, and how they're paving a path forward. Follow The H.I. Note: Healing Inspirations from Life wherever you find podcasts. Thank you for listening. Much love, everyone!