Uncategorized Archives - Renee Jenais

Being Present in Another Loss

It was my birthday and my father’s name popped up on my phone. I was on a zoom call with friends at the time we were all booking flights for a trip this summer to Tonga. I thought I would call him right back since we were almost done but when he called again a…

The Retreat

As the end of 2023 approached, I knew I needed a reset. I knew I needed to step back and re-evaluate my life, re-evaluate me. I felt like 2023 had beat me to a pulp and I wanted to do some self-care and prepare to go into 2024 differently. I wanted to leave behind some…

Choosing Love

It’s February, the month that we commercially celebrate romantic love. While personally I believe that love should be celebrated every day in all its wonderful aspects, love is also something that is very much in my awareness these days. I have found myself in deep contemplation about the loving relationships that I have had in…

How do you speak to yourself?

The things you say to yourself daily matter – in many ways. And I’m not referring to when you walk down the street and talk out loud to yourself – we all do that at times. I’m referring to your inner dialogue with yourself in the privacy of your own mind. As you quietly address…

A Lesson from the Feminine in France

After a full day on the TGV from Biarritz to Paris and Paris to Nice followed by a local train to Menton. I find myself at the easternmost end of the French Riviera, just east of Monaco and just on the border with Italy. My Airbnb was a 6 block walk from the train station…

Lessons from Mom – Choices

Ever since that morning over oatmeal when my mother told me that she was leaving, that she could no longer handle the burden of motherhood, that she needed to build her own life in her own way, my mother reflected to me the power of owning your own choices. While I rarely agreed with the choices that my mother made after that, she did at least make her own choices.

A mother’s lesson in integrity

By the time I was 25 I had graduated university, gotten married and began my career in Accounting. In those first two years after university, I and my then husband had moved to New York where I worked in New York City in a public accounting firm.

A mother’s lesson in belonging

When I was 12, I was living with my father and my three little sisters, my father had met a woman who looked exactly like my mother albeit much younger. She and her 4-year-old son had moved in with us and that was when the trouble started. It was clear from the start that she wanted me, and my sisters gone as fast as possible. It was clear from the start that she wanted me gone first.

Black Lives Matter

Today as I sit down to write this blog, I am finding difficulty in the words. I want to write about racism and how it is wrong and yet I feel wholly ill-equipped. I want to write about how we need to remember our connection to each other and just love and take care of each other but that feels insensitive and while my intentions would be in the right place, being insensitive to long standing suffering is not how I want to be.