Meet Jennie Turton Miculit

We recently connected with Jennie Turton Miculit and have shared our conversation below.

Jennie, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

My life has been a practice in developing resilience. From facing a serious immune condition since birth, to being the first in my family to graduate from college, to working in postwar Bosnia as a 27 year old, to moving to Santa Barbara and eventually buying a home there, to birthing my daughter at age 46 with only a 1% likelihood of success, I have spent my journey on this planet learning how to persevere against the odds.
I’ve discovered that when it hurts to exist in your body most days, it is critical to connect to DESIRE. Desire lifts my heart above the physical struggles I face and elevates me to a place that this illness cannot touch. My passionate desire to have the college experience gave me the strength to work 3 jobs to finance my eduation. My hunger to serve a postwar community gave me the gumption to fundraise the $60,000 a year I needed to raise in order to cover my own salary. My yearning to live by the ocean in a small town that could support my body through its fragility gave me and my husband the guts to move to Santa Barbara and work for nine years to be able to eventually purchase our home. My deep longing for a child enabled me to persevere through four rounds of IVF, two natural pregnancies and miscarriages and two failed adoptions to then go on and have my daughter last year. Desire keeps me from succumbing to victimhood. It keeps me connected to the most beautiful things in life and moving towards them. The alternative is to curl up and surrender to despondency. We’re all always moving towards either death or life. That choice is sometimes more overt and sometimes more subtle, but it is ALWAYS there. Leaning towards the one takes us quickly down a spiral of sadness, the other opens the realm of the impossible and with it, all the beauty the world holds. I, simply, keep trying to choose LIFE.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I made a career out of supporting tenacious individuals to do the life-infused, desire-driven things they yearn for. As an Executive Coach/Somatic Practitioner and Founder of Nuri.sh: A Sacred Space for Restoring the Feminine Soul, I have a daily opportunity to engage others at critical junctions of choice. When their soul is tired or their body is weary from the challenge they are facing, I come by their side to help them keep choosing life. Sometimes we cannot do that alone. As a Coach and Somatic Practitioner, I use coaching techniques combined with breath, play and movement to help those I serve to reconnect to the desires of their heart and move through the resistance to live those desires freely once again…or maybe for the first time.

I am currently making myself availalbe for a few one-on-one coaching/somatic sessions and I am building momentum for a fall Nuri.sh Coach Training program for individuals who wish to become certified to be trauma-informed coaches themselves. You can find out more here: http://nuri.sh. Contact me if you need support to live your deepest desires fully, or if you want to support others to do the same!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Being connected to something greater than myself has been key to me moving beyond my illness to go after my dreams. I used to be in an established relgious community, but I now find myself simply connecting to Creator through nature, breath, movement and organic connections. I find it profoundly helpful to look beyond myself, and even this planet, when things get hard. Elevating to the realm of the spiritual allows me to find fresh persepctive and to reorient myself beyond this life journey.
Understanding the mind/body connection has been life-altering for me! I am a very cognitive person. I can get lost in my rabbit brain easily. I spent the entire first half of my life learning to be present fully in my body and to be here in this very precious moment. Gently working with my body as I am moving towards the desires of my heart, helps to keep me from burnout and bitterness. I try now to move only as fast as I can go with my body flowing peacefully along. I use to simply barrel ahead, ignoring the warning signs my body was attempting to give me, and I paid the price through a life-alterning burnout in my twenties. Now, I find joy in nurturing my body all along the way, via yoga, time in nature. breathwork, meditation and practicing presence.
Recognizing that we do not all start at the same place in life has been key for me. Every human comes into this life journey facing a unique set of gifts, abilities and obstacles. Accepting those is essential for me to make the most of my life this time around the sun. From understanding my family generational story, to learning my Enneagram, to getting a clear diagnosis on my health condition, I have found that really knowing and accepting my unique starting point is huge when it comes to being able to then walk my life path with acceptance, dignity and courage.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

I chose this question, because, even today, I woke with intense exhaustion and pain haunting me after a fun-filled Father’s Day spent biking up north with my husband and daughter. I feel the tears filling my eyes even as I acknowledge how hard it is to function today. But crafting this interview is one of the very first things I am choosing to do to overcome my overwhelm today. Reconnecting at a heart level to my core values is already bouying me in a way that is filling me with gratitude. I am sitting her sipping my favorite jasmine pearl tea with my back door open, listnening to the birds sing. My barefeet are firmly on the ground and I’m consciously taking slower, deeper breaths. I am taking a moment to feel gratitude for our nanny who is outside playing with our nine month old daughter so that I am free to write this interview. I’m looking at all of the photos on our photo wall of my husband and I throughout the years. I am sitting up a little straighter, gently rolling out my neck and shoulders. And I am giving myself permission to go lie down, if I find I really need the rest. Every one of these simple things is helping me to move through the discomfort I am feeling in my body today and to courageously reach for the LIFE that I desire most. It’s the simple, the tactile, the accessible little choices that I find make or break me when I’m overwhelmed. And that is actually comforting to me. I don’t need to do anything huge, just the next tiny step right in front of me.

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Image Credits

Shannon Jayne Photography

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