“You don't have to have all the answers. All you have to have is a willingness to meet someone where they are, and connect with them.” (Interview)

Jessica Ciencin Henriquez on How Our Stories Serve as Medicine, Continuing to Create in the Face of Judgment, and Why Everybody Needs a Writing Practice

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I was first introduced to Jessica Ciencin Henriquez’s work through a Craigslist ad. Unfortunately, the ad isn’t live anymore, but in short, Jess was moving out of the country, selling everything she owned, and wrote a post advertising all of it that encompassed familiar nostalgia and the universality of love, loss, and moving on in the most beautiful way.

I started following her work immediately and eventually took a writing class with Jess too. You can hear more about my experience as her student in my 2020 podcast interview with her on Brave Enough to Be — but, perhaps more importantly, you can listen in on on Jess’ immense wisdom as a human and how she, like me, connects writing and storytelling on the page with the healing work of changing the inner narratives we tell ourselves.

Jess is a writer, an editor, and a teacher whose work focuses on personal essays and narrative journalism. Her work has been featured in The New York Times’ Modern Love column, SELF Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Time, Parents, amongst many others. Her essays have also been featured in multiple anthologies, including Oprah's Little Guide to the Big Questions, and she's the author of a memoir that's coming out soon.

Jess recently returned to Instagram, and she’s still teaching writing to anyone who’s lucky enough to learn from her. I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to take her class and to have this conversation with her a few years ago.

In the episode, we talked about how every experience of your life is usable — in writing and in healing, how our stories can serve as medicine for other people, how Jess continues to create in the face of other people’s judgment, and why she believes everybody needs a writing practice (and, of course, a whole lot more!).

I’ve shared more from Jess below, but you can hear more from her in our full conversation on Brave Enough to Be. And if you want to learn more about what she’s up to lately, you can follow her wisdom and her work on her website, on Instagram, and on Facebook.

And now, on to Jess . . .

On Every Experience Of Your Life Serving a Purpose

You use everything — every experience in your life is usable, nothing is wasted. No heartbreak, no loss, no love, no tragedy; none of that is wasted when it comes to creativity and when it comes to writing . . .

With a lot of the things that I write, it's like, I am pulling back the curtain and I'm showing you what has hurt, and I'm showing you what I thought was insurmountable, and I'm showing you the outcome. And that has never been a decision that I've regretted . . .

We just get so caught up in that noise, right? Like that fear of what will they say? What will they? What will they think of me? What will they do? It's just like, what will they do? Who cares? Nothing horrible is gonna happen, you know?

Writing Your Story as Medicine for Someone Else

I think the older that I have gotten and the more work that I have done on myself — on my heart on my healing — the more that I am learning about what purpose ego serves . . . So one thing that's really been useful and beneficial for me is continually keeping the reader in mind: Who am I writing this for?

So when I sit down and I write about having a miscarriage, and when I sit down and I write about divorce or the hardships of co-parenting, or when I write about just feeling like, you know, depressed or feeling . . . anything that's difficult — when I write about those things, I think about who will be reading this that needs to read this, because then that voice that I'm writing from, it becomes kind of a source of comfort, right? How can I connect with them? How can I hold space for them?

And for me, there's no fear in that; I feel like I'm doing a kindness. Like I'm taking the things that have happened, and I'm creating a really beautiful, necessary dose of medicine for somebody else to take . . . You don't have to have all the answers. All you have to have is a willingness to meet someone where they are, and connect with them. That's it.

So that part of my job is actually really easy. And it's the part that I love the most.

A Reframe to Combat Other People’s Judgment

. . . one of the things that has been such a remarkable tool in my life, and has allowed me to create with so much more freedom and openness and confidence is that, when I think about judgment, [I know] it's the comments that some part of you believes to be true that hurt you.

So rather than trying to combat every single comment in the world that's going to bring in negativity and bring in criticism, why don't you just combat the belief, right? Because the only reason it hurts is because you believe that it's true.

. . . I had to stop and say, “Why does this hurt me so much when they say that?” Because some part of me believes that that's true . . . some part of me still hasn't healed that wound. And so I believe that what they're saying is true. And it must be true. Because look, they said it. And so I hold on to it as evidence that I am not good enough. Not smart enough. Not whatever enough, you know.

So as soon as I stopped doing that — and really just focused on what is my belief system . . . because if you're solid in that, what anyone else says about you is insignificant.

On Being the One to Break Down the Walls

I think that it's so exhausting to keep up a wall around yourself . . .

I was guilty of this for a long time, I just, I didn't want to be hurt, right? I didn't want to be hurt. I didn't want to have pain inflicted on me by words or actions or absence of other people. And so I just created this little, you know, hardened shell for myself. And that's not a place to create from; that's not a place to connect from.

. . . [There] are examples of this everywhere you look — if you are, you know, in a family where things are not spoken about, where you kind of just try to brush away all of the anger or the resentment, the pain, and keep moving forward, and everything's fine.

Whether this is your family dynamic or your relationship dynamic or your friendship dynamic, you'll find that the second somebody cracks that — the second somebody says, “Well, actually, I want to tell you about something that was painful, and that I want to talk about it”, you will find that there's somebody on the receiving end of that conversation. And my experience is that their response and their reaction will shock you.

Because it's like, why did we wait so long to open? Why [did] we both stay closed for all of these years? And if we had only just slightly opened up and started to talk about these things instead of around these things . . . we could have made this growth and this progress. And we could have really expanded on our love and our acceptance of each other as humans, as partners, as parents, whatever.

You could have done this a long time ago. So start that now.

Writing to Connect Within the Core of Our Emotions

There's nothing that exists in you that does not exist in me. If it's ugly, if it's broken, if it's healed, if it's shining, it doesn't matter. Whatever exists in you exists in me; we’re made from the same thing.

So even if our experiences have shifted and gone in totally different directions, and my experience might not match yours — we come from the same things, our emotions, the core of our emotions are the same.

So the sooner you can access that and tap into that and write from that place . . . it's connection, right? You're writing to connect. It really just removes all of the fear of judgment and of being too vulnerable and saying too much . . .

Why Everyone Needs a Writing Practice

Even if you're not a writer, I always, always suggest having a writing practice, a journal, a way to document your life, a way to . . . I mean, writing has always been in my history, and throughout history, it has just been a way for me to solidify what I feel. Otherwise, it feels very chaotic for me in my brain. So sometimes I just have to write it out.

On Letting Go of Anger

I spent a lot of years of my life being so angry because I felt like, if I let go of that anger that I would have nothing, you know? . . . But when I realized that if I started to really feel that anger and process it and face it, you know, and really just unpack it and understand its purpose and understand where it came from and why I was carrying it with me through life — if I could really just kind of shed that, over the years, it allowed for me to have this empathy and this understanding of people.

And Brené Brown . . . she says, you know, if you really think about it, ask yourself if the people who hurt you or injured you, who disappointed you, who rejected you, whatever, ask yourself, do you believe that those people were doing the best that they could do?

And for the first half of my life, I would have said, “Absolutely not. If that was their best, that is disappointing, right?” And now if I look at it — it just softens the whole world, when you look at somebody and you say, “Okay, they're not behaving or giving me what I need or what I want or what I'm asking for. They're not showing up in the way that I expect them to. But this is the best that they can do right now with what they have going on in their life and where they are in their healing. This is the best that they can do.”

And when you start to see the world through that lens, you know, it just, it opens up so much room for forgiveness, and so much room for understanding — because it's like, listen, we have all disappointed other people. We have all done regrettable things. We've all been dishonest. We've all done things that we're ashamed of. But that was the best that we could do then.

Nobody sets out to be the worst version of themselves. It's that they don't know how to be better.

How to Own What You Want Your Life to Look Like

I found that there's a lot more joy in identifying what you want your life to look like, what you want your love to look like, what you want your career to look like — to really know it and feel it. Just really put that out into the world, write it down, own it. And then slowly watch as all of the work that you're doing brings those words to life, it brings them off the page.

Takeaways from My Interview with Jess

1. Every experience in your life is usable — in your creativity, in your personal growth, in the lessons you bring to new relationships and situations, nothing is wasted.

2. You don't have to have a perfect life. You don't have to have a perfect relationship. You don't have to have all the answers. All you have to have is a willingness to meet someone where they are and connect with them.

3. We all have a fear of being judged. But when you take a step back, you'll notice that it's the judgmental comments that you believe that hurt you the most. Instead of focusing on the judgment, focus on that belief in you and do the work to shift it and begin believing something new. If you're solid in your belief system, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about you.

4. Even if you're not a writer, have a writing practice as a way to document your life and solidify what you feel.

5. Look back at the people who've hurt you, who didn't show up for you and ask yourself, “Were they doing the best they could, given who they were at the time?” When we know better, we do better. That goes for ourselves and everyone else around us. And when we can remember that, we can soften a little to the world around us and everyone in it.

6. We get to design our lives. You get to wake up every single day and design the life you want to lead, so be intentional about it and choose actions that align with that vision. It starts with you.

Listen to the full interview with Jess on Brave Enough to Be HERE.