We were lucky to catch up with Jen Handoko recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jen, thanks for joining us today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

My parents have been married for nearly 40 years. I’m obsessed with studying how that works. They brought 3 kids to America in the 90’s with no solid plan, somehow succeeded, and built a wonderful life together. In my generation most of us have rejected the idea of traditionalism, but for me they’re evidence of how marriage and love can work. I’ve used their marriage as the blueprint of what I want in my own life: marriage and a family. I think the next book that I’ll write- personal essays or maybe a novel, who knows – I want to analyze what it means to want those things in this day and age.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a self-published author living in Atlanta, Georgia. My most recent work, a collection of personal essays and stories called ‘Girl Almighty’, chronicles my life into 3 parts: childhood, girlhood, and my early twenties. The subject matter and topics in the stories are mostly pretty heavy, but there really isn’t anything pretty and cute about being a young woman. I like to write in a way that makes it feel like I’m having a conversation with the reader and inject my own sense of humor into it.

Since then, I’ve had some readers, mainly young girls, message me and tell me how helpful the book has been for them. They read it and then they pass it a long to their younger sisters and I think that’s wonderful. I think it’s wonderful that my own stories can give other people a sense of understanding. Of themselves and for others. With my writing, I just want to implore people to look under the bed of their own minds and come face to face with whatever they find. Writing was a cathartic way of revisiting my traumas and putting them away. Whether it’s about doing hallucinogenics in a basement during a snow storm or loving someone who will never love you back.

I hope my readers and supporters will grow and I hope the ones I already do have will join me in this silly little journey of creating more books.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

It’s not really a lesson, but being angry all the time was something I had to unlearn how to be. Sometimes you -self-identify with being miserable, so you don’t know who else to be without that aspect in your personality. I was an angsty little girl and that might have stemmed from something more biological or maybe I was just a bored, insecure, emotional little girl living in quiet suburbia. It carried with me up until recently or like maybe 5 or 6 years ago.

It’’s always possible to change your worldview and it’s never too late to outgrow unhealthy belief systems. Doing the self-work and healing is hard. In exchange of doing so, I’ve found inner peace and it’s very clarifying. I’m seeing the world in new colors for the very first time.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I was hoping someone reading this could help me. I’m about to just take my clothes off and see if that does anything.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/jen.handoko