BORROWED CLARITY
Why does someone else's strategy not work for me even though it works for other people?
The room was my own house. Available light. No camera lighting, no microphone. Just me, a screen, and whatever I was supposed to say that week. I'd finish recording right before I had to run out for a photo session. Kept myself busy enough between tasks that I never had to sit with how uncomfortable I was in my own content. It was forced. It was flat. A struggle every single time. And I was numb to it. Just focused on getting the next thing done on the list.
That list was not mine.
It belonged to a blueprint a brand consultant handed me. The step by step on how to build a creative business consulting firm. A solid plan. One that had worked for others. I never questioned it. And in all honesty, I never brought myself into the collaboration. I took their process and tried to make it work, and blamed myself when it didn't.
Years later, after I had walked away from all of it, still carrying the shame and guilt that burnout and defeat hand you, someone told me it felt like watching me try to imitate myself.
I didn't argue. I knew exactly what they meant.
I felt the sting of that truth, and underneath it, the quiet pull of something bigger. It was asking me to let go of who I thought I needed to be, so I could stop trying to imitate her, and to actually understand the woman underneath the imitation. That took me into a long, messy middle.
But let me back up.
The blueprint was not bad. The people who handed it to me were not wrong. There is evidence it worked for others, and that is exactly what made it so hard to see what was happening from inside it. If it had just been a bad plan, I could have pointed at the plan. Instead, when it didn't work, the only explanation available was me.
What does it mean to abandon yourself while trying to build something?
There was something deeper keeping that blueprint from ever working for me. Something I could not see yet.
So day after day, I kept talking to a screen with no one on the other side. Blog posts got harder to write. No new subscribers. No bookings. My contacts and my money ran out with absolutely no return to show for any of it. And still, no language for any of it. Just the unspoken agreement that if I executed the process precisely enough, something would shift. And if it didn't, something was wrong with me.
In October of 2019, I poured out the half glass of performed optimism I had been holding onto, and I walked away. Not with clarity. With shame and guilt, carrying the kind of defeat that tells you that you didn't have what it takes.
Whew. Hard words to swallow from someone known for a glass half full, standing on the greenest grass in the yard.
Walking away from the business was not even the worst part. I was walking away from the vision too. The mission. The purpose underneath all of it. The dream of helping people empower themselves and navigate uncertainty. I could not separate the blueprint from the vision. The drain and the strain of executing the blueprint carried the full weight of failure onto the vision, and that weight was too heavy to even talk about. So I just stopped. Stopped paying attention to the community. Stopped responding. Stopped producing and creating anything that looked like Thriv. It was too painful to even bow out gracefully.
Why did I succeed easily at one thing and completely burn out on another?
Fall of 2019 was heavy. I was just starting to pull myself out of it, putting my attention back on my photography, building stability, recouping the financial and emotional debt I had accumulated. Then four months later, in March of 2020, the F*CKING pandemic showed up.
Just when I was starting to regulate my nervous system, the thing I knew best, the thing I had built my entire stability on, my photography business, was being forced to stop by the fear of spreading a virus nobody understood yet. The anxiety was there. The uncertainty was something most of us had never lived through in our lifetime.
It was global. SHIT.
I was sitting in my bed the morning after our governor issued the stay at home order when I got a text from Aimee Supp.
"Jenn. You are the one to bring this to our community!"
With a link attached. It was a project another photographer was running up north called the Front Steps Project. A pay it forward mission for local businesses and charities. A photographer captures a portrait of a family from the curb back up to their porch.
If I said yes, I could stay safe. Six feet could become ten with a long lens. I already had the systems in place to support it. Online galleries. Online payments. An online inquiry form ready to go.
I called my team. We talked it over. Within twenty four hours of getting that text we had an inquiry form live, three posts on social media, and a newsletter out to my community asking them to join the mission with me.
I was literally made for this project. We renamed it The Front Porch Project, because here in South Louisiana, we have amazing porches, and we love our portraits.
The success of that project unfolded organically, and very quickly, without a blueprint. Without even a vision. Just a mission, to give the community a way to support local business and our economy while we navigated uncertainty together.
That project gave way to creativity for me and for every photographer who joined, relieving our anxiety and letting our truest nature show up. It was freedom to choose. If you felt safe, the answer was yes. If you didn't, no was very much accepted, with barely any room left for judgment either way. It cultivated joy and empowerment in how each of us showed up, and a real sense of having the power to help when so many people didn't know how. Acts of appreciation were everywhere, in every porch photo posted. The family thanking the photographer. The post tagging the business. The business thanking the project. The joy of seeing your friends healthy and smiling when you hadn't been able to see anyone in weeks. And somehow, in the middle of a pandemic, I found balance, because events were at an all time low and connection to the people I loved was at an all time high.
And together, we put an estimated $1.28 million back into the local economy, in literally four months. The same four months between my 2019 walk away and the start of the global pandemic.
What is the grief of almost succeeding?
In the summer of 2022, I rented an apartment in Florida where I was shooting beach portraits, and instead of going back and forth from my home state of Louisiana, I stayed. I took the days to reflect on both eras, side by side, honestly, for the first time. Really, all the times I felt truly successful, and all the times I felt the weight of failure.
The wounds were deep and still weren't healed, even after the success of The Front Porch Project and the release of the book. I had tried stepping back into the vision in 2021 and felt the struggle instantly. Not because the vision was wrong. Because I believed the only way to pursue it was the way that had broken me, and I did not want to do it that way again.
The grief showed up in the mornings. In journaling. In spiritual time. In yoga poses. The confusion about what I was even supposed to be doing would turn into anger, and the anger would turn into tears. I needed a lot of sleep. Short amounts of time doing anything at all. I was learning that rest is a leadership strategy for me. And instead of rushing past it, I stayed in the question.
This is where it finally unfolded. Not all at once. In pieces, across the time I spent with myself, between the anger and the tears. Between forgiving and nurturing. Between accepting and letting go. Through all the pain that was still there. This was the summer I came to fully understand the difference between the felt failure of my burnout era and the undeniable success that was all the layers of The Front Porch Project. It didn't come as a eureka, all-at-once moment. It came through the slow burn of grieving, the nurturing and recovery of releasing guilt and shame, the peace and recognition that came as I was choosing to return to myself that summer, for the clarity and the information from both those times in my life. Really, all the times I felt the failure and celebrated the success. Understanding what it was that I needed to take with me, moving forward.
How do core values affect whether a business strategy will work for me?
I value cultivating creativity, and I could finally see how the content machine had drained mine until I was pouring from an empty cup, while The Front Porch Project handed it back to me in my own rhythm, on my own instinct, no script required.
I value acts of appreciation, and I could see how I had spent years giving and giving to a community with nothing coming back, certain I hadn't earned it yet, wasn't established enough, while every single porch photo came back wrapped in someone else's gratitude.
I value living a balanced harmonious life, and I could see how the blueprint left no room for mine, while The Front Porch Project somehow gave me more of it than I'd had in years, even shooting six and eight hour days, because those days had shape, and the shape was mine.
I value freedom to choose, and I could see how I had handed every choice to a process and a team and just done what I was told, while The Front Porch Project let yes be yes and no be no, with almost no room left for anyone to judge me either way.
I value the zeal to empower and self lead, and I could see how I had been running on autopilot for two years, believing I was leading, while I had actually stopped leading myself completely, while The Front Porch Project asked me to lead an entire community of photographers and somehow never once cost me my own ground.
Five values. Negated in one era. Fully present in the other. Same woman. Same vision. Two different containers.
What questions should I ask before committing to someone else's process?
That summer I started to understand my core values as something more than words on a list. They became a question I return to before I say yes to anything now. Do the conditions of what I am being asked to build let me be who I actually am? Or am I being handed a blueprint and asked to trust it more than I trust myself?
The grief of almost is not the grief of failure. Failure has a name. You know what went wrong. Almost is harder, because the vision was real, the desire was genuine, and the only thing standing between you and it was a container that was never built for you.
How do I navigate uncertainty without abandoning myself?
What I know now is that my Creative Adaptive Intelligence was operating the whole time. Back in 2017 through 2019 while navigating a new business it was sending me signals I did not have language for yet. The cringe after recording. The numbness. The depletion. The cup running dry. All of it was information. The capacity to meet uncertainty with my own clarity, my own discernment, my own values based choice, was never missing. I just did not know how to hear it yet.
The blueprint was borrowed. The clarity was someone else's. I paid for it in the currency of my own self trust.
Florida was not where I found the answer. It was where I finally decided I was willing to look.
And I brought home that summer
was that my core values are not just words on a list. They are the compass I navigate uncertainty with now. The compass I bring to every decision I make.
ClarityLAB Sessions are now open!
What I've come to understand is that clarity isn't a personality trait. It's a capacity. One you already carry.
A ClarityLAB session is where we make room for it.
