We were lucky to catch up with Jennifer Peterkin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jennifer, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

A year and a half ago I launched my podcast, The Human Experience. It’s a project that is made up of pieces of my heart and soul and having the courage to finally press the “publish” button was its own accomplishment.
The Human Experience is years in the making as it was born out of two very different, but very important experiences in my own life.
Growing up, I was lucky enough to have nearly all my grandparents alive and well. It’s only been recently, in adulthood, that I’ve started to lose them. Two of my grandfathers were wonderful storytellers. They couldn’t have been more different from one another, one was a first-generation Italian-American growing up in South Philadelphia during a time when the mob was a very real and very visible entity in the city. The other was a Hungarian immigrant that made his way to America in the middle of the 1950’s after he escaped a communist prison that he had spent 4 years inhabiting. These men lived so much life, and the best part was that they were willing to share about it. Sometimes you’d roll your eyes when the same story got shared over and over again. But really, I knew how lucky I was to have their wealth of knowledge at my disposal, even while it was happening.
Still though, no matter how many times we had sat and talked and shared, when they passed I felt like it wasn’t enough. I didn’t ask enough questions, I didn’t have all of the answers. There were things I forgot, or little nuances I hadn’t clarified because in the moment it didn’t seem important. Now, they were all I could think about. All of the things I didn’t know.
But I was grateful for what I did have which was a head and heart full of memories (and in the case of my one grandfather, I did manage to get some of his stories on tape before he passed away).
What bothered me most about them being gone was the fact that their stories were going to die with them. These men who were larger than life in my eyes would be lost to time.
And that’s the case with so many of us, isn’t it? Unless you’re at the right place at the right time, your space in history is finite.
But we were created for stories, they’re in every civilization and every culture for all of human history. And I wanted to create a space for the stories of ordinary people and the extraordinary things that they live through. Because really, life itself is extraordinary.

During the period of time that I lost my grandfathers, I was also healing from trauma in my own life – being in, and then leaving, an abusive marriage.
I had gotten married when I was in my early twenties and I had all of the hope and optimism in the world that the person I married was someone that would cherish and protect me, and build a life with me.
It became apparent very quickly that this was not the case. Our honeymoon phase literally ended when our honeymoon did.
But that’s another story. The point is, I was fortunate enough to have the support and the ability to leave. And though, relative to others, I wasn’t married for very long, the damage had been done. My life was forever changed.
Abuse is unacceptable. And divorce is difficult. But the fallout after those things is just as bad.
I now had to reconcile my life and my perspective to my own lived experience. Things that I had thought or believed before suddenly didn’t make sense anymore. Everything changed – my relationships, my faith, my boundaries, my beliefs. They all shifted around this new information that I had acquired.
And though it was shocking and certainly wasn’t fun, I started to realize that everyone has these moments in their lives. They don’t have to be traumatic, but our experiences shape who we become. Our brains are constantly collecting and sorting data. And that data is molded and shaped and it becomes the very core of our being. Our experiences shape our perspectives, our principles, and our priorities.

It wasn’t one “aha” moment that brought me to the creative space I’m in now. It was years of healing and questioning, drawing and redrawing boundaries and frameworks. Even The Human Experience itself, as a project, shifted multiple times before it was launched. And it continues to shift as I grow and learn.

Change is a gift. It doesn’t come without challenges and it certainly doesn’t always feel good. But living long enough and well enough to learn from our own lived experiences is something not everyone gets to do.

Our stories are the building blocks of our lives, they are inherently valuable and worthy. When we sit down and seek to understand someone through the lens of their lived experience, it is my firm belief that compassion and empathy naturally follow.

To be understood is to be seen. To be seen is to be known. To be known is to be loved.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a social advocate with nearly 15 years of experience in justice work with my primary focus being on women’s rights. It was my personal fight against domestic violence that would cause me to take such an active role in helping victims and survivors overcome their shame by telling my story and encouraging others to tell theirs.

As a survivor of domestic violence, I understands the importance of the ability to use your voice and I believe that it is only through sharing raw, uncensored, and often uncomfortable stories that we will be free to be collectively liberated from the confines of the systems that perpetuate violence and injustice.

I am the host of The Human Experience, a podcast about the stories we live out every day, and the importance of championing the vulnerability and courage of the storyteller. I travel the world interviewing each of my guests for the podcast in person as an act of solidarity with those who have chosen to share their stories. I firmly believe that in a world full of noise, to listen with intention is an act of resistance.

As a domestic violence advocate, I have worked with both organizations and individuals to raise awareness about domestic violence and to provide support for survivors, victims, and their families.

I am proud to be a co-host on the international radio show, Suffering in Silence, a program dedicated to raising awareness around Domestic Violence and Abuse, on LuvBay Afrobeats Music & Talk Radio out of Toronto, as well as humbled to serve on the board of Rise Out of the Ashes as Vice President.

In addition, I also serve on the board of Neema Project, a skills trade program for vulnerable young women in rural Kenya; and I am a long-time volunteer with Firm Foundations Romania, an organization that runs educational programs for the disenfranchised Roma community outside of Brasov, Romania.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Compassion.

Something I ask all of my guests at the end of each interview is – “through the lens of your experience, what does compassion mean to you?”.

We all have a different lens with which we view life. And those lenses change as our lives change and as we grow. Though we inherit beliefs from our families, friends, and communities, we are also, knowingly or not, creating our own lenses as we have our own experiences. And there will never be two people with the exact same point of view. Because no one has lived your exact set of circumstances.

I would say that this questions sums up the purpose of my show, The Human Experience. I firmly believe that so many issues in our world could be solved if we sat down and, with intention, listened. Not listening with an argument already in our arsenal, not listening with judgement, and not listening with our minds already made up about the person sitting before us.

There is so much noise. But when we get down to the human element I’ve found that it’s rare for people to be unable to find common ground. Most of us are doing our best. And I think there’s a part of us that moves through the world like an angsty teenager, always feeling misunderstood.

But there is light and beauty and wonder in storytelling. There is wisdom to be gained and empathy to be experienced. Stories are what make us human; they’ve existed for the entirety of our history in some form or another. We cannot escape them, and most of us don’t want to. But we can choose to be conscience consumers of stories. We can choose to see the humanity in stories.

The question, “what does compassion mean to you?” has been incredibly enlightening. I’m reminded constantly that while our similarities bring us together it is our differences that allow us to pursue our purpose. Both are important. But the things that make us see the world differently, that is where we access our super powers. That is where we are able to tap into a vein of empathy that doesn’t inherently exist in everyone.

Your story matters, it’s what makes you you. And truly, there is no one like you.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Growing up in evangelical Christian community, doubt was a four-letter word. To doubt was to show a lack of faith and a lack of faith meant that your very soul was on the line. So we had answers to everything. Every existential question came with an explanation wrapped in a neat little bow.

But then I got married and my husband, the man that had promised to love, cherish, and protect me, became my abuser. So I left, and I pursued a divorce, something that was a huge no-no in my community. And through that process I lost people; because apparently abuse was forgivable, but divorce wasn’t.

I was in my early to mid-twenties when all of this happened, a time already rife with self-discovery and uncertainty. But this flipped my world upside down in a way that I couldn’t have anticipated.

All of the sudden, so many things that I had believed, so much of the rhetoric that I had repeated, didn’t make sense to me anymore. It didn’t fit in with my lived experience. And yet, to ask questions felt akin to throwing in the towel and abandoning my faith all together.

I wrestled, for years, with the idea of doubt. Not the doubt itself, the idea of it. And there is still a part of me that feels the lingering phantom of fear when I’m asking questions that truly, I don’t have answers to.

But through this process, I have found incredible liberation. It is so freeing to be able to, with confidence, say “I don’t know.”

I still believe in God. But my faith looks a lot different now than it did in my twenties. And I imagine I’ll look back and say the same thing about my thirties when they have come and gone. And that is a beautiful thing.

When my faith became living and breathing, it became real to me. When I realized that it wasn’t fragile and could withstand poking, prodding, and all manner of disturbance I began to have a depth to my faith that didn’t exist before.

My faith in God is important to me. It’s important to my creative process, the decisions I make, and how I live my life. But where there used to be rules and little boxes that everything had to fit into, now there is space. Space to learn, to ask questions, and yes, to doubt.

My journey has taken me all over the world. And though there is, of course, so much I don’t know and so much I haven’t seen, what I have experienced is an expansive, encompassing, and beautiful picture of who God is. Traveling has made my world exponentially bigger, and I’m grateful to have had experiences that have allowed me to shed the stigma of doubt and given me the space to sit with questions.

The biggest irony of all is that the gift of uncertainty has created a deep confidence and faith that I’m proud of. Not knowing all of the answers doesn’t scare me. Doubt can, in my opinion, be the catalyst for curiosity; and curiosity is the key to opening doors that will lead to your greatest adventures.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thehxpod.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehxpod/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-peterkin-04b92b1b/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thehxpod/featured
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@thehxpod

  https://jenniferpeterkin.substack.com/

  https://ko-fi.com/jenniferpeterkin

Image Credits

Jennifer Peterkin