A Life Transformed....how it all began.

I woke up November 7, 2007 with a sense of dread and sheer panic in my heart. I do I recall this so clearly today? It is vividly explained in technicolor detail in my journal. Page after page of heart felt pain shining through in fear, failure, frustration and rage. The overwhelming question ringing out off the pages is "Why me?" On November 7, I found myself a divorced, single Mom of two amazing children- Kate Sky age 7 and Liam Paul age 5. Our house on our farm is in foreclosure. The bank calls two, sometimes three times a day. I turn the ringer off because it causes me to feel nauseous every time it rings and I see the familiar 888 phone exchange. This cannot be happening to us, I write.

The enormity of losing our home is causing my chest to feel explosive. It's like bricks are piled on top of my lungs as I lay in bed at night, watching the clock tick by the hours. Even at sleeping I am a failure. Nothing is right. The worse it gets, the worse it gets. Twice I end up at my doctor's office with severe chest pains thinking I am having a heart attack. My doctor informs me that I am experiencing "panic attacks" and innocently asks me if I am "under stress." She looks at me sympathetically while I sob and hiccup and try to compose myself while I stammer, "No, fine, fine...everything is fine." Meanwhile I have no insurance and write a check at the receptionist's desk that I know will bounce. I leave in a hurry. I hate my life.

This black lake of debt that I am swimming in seems to grow thick and murky. I cannot find the shore anywhere. I tread and I tread, as my panic rises. I snap at my kids, "Don't answer that phone!!" as it rings day and night with banks and creditors. I attempt to "do the right thing" and set up several automatic withdrawal payment plans with creditors from my checking account. This is all well and good until I realize that after I deposit my full-time paycheck and all the auto payments go out I am left with $23.74 to feed everyone and get by for the next week. Add to this equation that fact that our brood also consists of two dogs and two horses and a pony. Yes, horses. Let me explain before you judge. I am a horse woman. It's genetic. Obsessed with the equine world since the age of five, my dream has always been to live a family life on our horse farm. The country life is heaven to me. So, before my divorce, I had acquired my horse, Hilo, a horse named Dakota for my son, Liam, and a pony named Java for Katie. These boys are a part of our family and bring us more joy that I can possibly put into words. When my world began to unravel I had family and many friends sternly advise, " Sell those animals! You have no business keeping them. You are acting selfishly!" These words kept me up at night. They tormented my soul. Was I being selfish? Was it hurting my children? Understand this...horses are my passion. They inspire me and give me strength. I drew a line in the sand with the Universe- take my house, repossess my car, ruin my credit- BUT I AM NOT GETTING RID OF THE HORSES!!! I knew I could find a way. I made "deals" with some incredible people who knew me and knew that my word was good. My farrier, my hay man and my grain distributor all extended me credit. On just my word and who they knew me to be they fed and cared for my horses on the promise that "someday" I would pay them back. For two years these generous people made it possible for us to keep our equine family intact!

At the same time, we needed a place to stay. My boyfriend at that time, who is now my fiance, Joseph Decker, spoke to his boss and made it possible for the kids and I to come and live in his trailer on a gorgeous 300 acre horse farm. I would run the farm office and we'd both be caretakers and part of the staff for the multi-millionaire business man who used this estate as his weekend getaway. Katie & Liam were thrilled to live on such a wonderful farm with horses, goats, a donkey, cows and many dogs!! I was grateful to have a "safe" place where I could refocus, reorganize and reinvent our lives. Our finances at this point were stretched so thin- we had to get really creative! I can tell you 101 ways to cook Ramen Noodles!! I also perfected my coin rolling skills during this time and on any given day my purse weighed 20lbs from all of the coinage lying on the bottom. I traveled everywhere with my rolled wealth. I was grateful for those quarters- they paid for everything from well-child exams to groceries to fuel. I also became good friends with the lovely cafeteria women at Kate and Liam's school right about this time. The kids would say, "Mom, you need to pay for our lunches. The lunch ladies say to come and speak with them!" I would come in and they'd take one look at my face and they'd say, "Pay next week, Jenna. We'll let the kids go through." My eyes would well up as I squeaked out a "thank you" as I rushed out of the building hoping no Moms I knew had heard. I was on such an emotional roller coaster and I felt sick from the ride. Why is this happening? How long can I hide it from my friends and family? When will my facade crack? How can I change this mess? You see, we told very few people the truth about our situation. I was embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt like such a massive failure. I was out and about and very visible in our small community and spoke with lots of local people each and every day. Everyone asked, 'How are you?' I told everyone, "Fine." Anyone who inquired, family included, the elicited auto-response was a bright smile and the lie, "We're fine!"

Behind that facade, life was certainly not fine. Working a full-time job and taking on side jobs as a free-lance photographer still was not enough to relieve the financial stress that was triggering my migraines and making my stomach burn. There were Fridays where I would deposit my full-time paycheck and because of the "auto payments" for creditors, the teller would hand me back a receipt that stated -$36.00. That sinking felling is so vivid to me, even to this day. The panic of "now what?" I would drive home to the farm in tears and like a sign from the Universe saying, "trust"- there would be our friend, Geraldine, on her trailer porch, smiling and yelling, "Come over for dinner! We're having an Irish feast!" This was when I started paying attention to the fact that "our real needs are always met." Angels were appearing  as caring friends and a major shift was on the horizon.

I fell asleep most nights with the thought, "Please show me the way..." running through my head. I knew better days were coming, I just needed to find the vehicle to transport us there! I was ready. I was invited to a party at a friend, Cindy's, house. Little did I know that attending this casual women's party would forever change the course of my life. It was at this party that I met a woman named Judy. We immediately clicked as friends and chatted all night long- she was fun,, open and had a positive energy that I was drawn to. The next day Judy introduced me to her company called Ideal Health. I met the people who were involved locally with this company- Doug, Tina & Lou and many others and felt instantly "connected" to this group. These were incredible people- positive, happy, smart, pay-it-forward type people who's vibration called out to me in a really powerful way. I joined the "Ideal Health team" because of how I felt. Call it intuition, call it following my gut. I knew on a deeper level that I was joining something more than a company and bigger than a business. I was part of a movement. Looking back, I had signed on for a whole new life.  My paradigm was shifting.

During this entire time period of two years which I refer to as our "Ramen Noodle" years, I started a personal transformation of my own. I read constantly. My nightstand was piled high with books by Wayne Dyer, Tony Robins, Osho, Thomas Moore, Eckhart Tolle, Jack Canfield, Napoleon Hill and the like. I started a gratitude journal and every night wrote down what I was grateful for- my kids, love, my health, a wonderful photo, a ride through the woods on my horse, a great family night. The kids would tell me what they were grateful for and we wrote it down. We shifted our family focus from what we "didn't have" to what we were grateful for and what we "desired" in the future. We spent our nights talking about places we wanted to go, countries we wanted to visit, things we wanted to own. Our imagination ran wild and we had a blast mapping out our fantastic futures from the porch of our small single wide. Our laughter would ripple across the farm and I would think, "You can't keep a good family down in America!!" We made a HUGE family vision board that took up the entire end wall of the living room. This is not hard to do in a single wide! We wrote down our goals on it. We tore out magazine pictures and put them up on the board. It was a collage of our combined dreams and every time my glance fell on it, which was often, (there is no west wing in a trailer...) I would feel hope and joy swell in my heart.

Life on the farm fell into an easy flow and we worked and worked whenever and where ever we were needed on the farm. We were on call 24/7 because our millionaire boss was an intense, brilliant business man who wanted what he wanted, when he wanted it and we were the ones to get it done. He was a generous man who gave freely to us and the children. He made us feel very welcomed, to the degree that he could. It was, after all, his farm. We were the caretakers living in a trailer next to the shop. Facts are facts. I saw clearly what our circumstances were, but something inside me had shifted. I knew we could transcend our circumstances. I had learned a secret and now it burned in my soul. My soul was whispering to me, " We are not our circumstances." I had so entrenched myself into a world of positive vibrations through books, CD's and affirmations that the constant thought..."My thoughts create my life"...- was manifesting.

The excitement and new world of possibility that our Ideal Health business offered was invigorating! I was open and ready to be a student of this new adventure called network marketing. I threw myself into our business, wanting to know where, when, why and how??? My situation had not changed-creditors still knew me on a first name basis, my account still had a negative balance regularly and I barely was scraping by week to week, yet, oddly, everything was different. I felt on purpose. I was driven. I woke up each day inspired and excited to see what that day held...so much to do, to learn and to share....a new era had begun.


I came home from my first corporate meeting on fire! I was jazzed, excited, the world was my oyster and everyone would want to join me, right?? What was there not to get? Better health, more income- who wouldn't want that? My high was quickly squashed as person, after trusted person, shot me down, ridiculed my new endeavor, mocked my enthusiasm and basically laughed in my face while politely saying, "You've been scammed." I was floored. Crushed really. Was I really so naive? I knew I had to trust myself and not be taken down by the dream stealers. But man, oh man, they were lurking everywhere! People disguised as my friends were now putting much energy into dismantling my dreams. I found myself staying away from people and diving into my books, journals and vision boards. The real test came when I presented Ideal Health to our boss on the farm. Being a successful business man, I thought for sure he would see the brilliance of leveraging time and diversifying income! I was so sure he would love to join our team that I practically skipped to his stone house!! My confidence soared! Wait until my nimrod friends and family heard that my boss had joined, boy, wouldn't they have to eat crow then?! I shared the information, my boss did his research and a few days letter he got back to us. I remember the excitement of seeing his name come across my email! Here we go, I thought, our team is going to soar. I opened the email and as I first scanned down the page I caught glimpses of words like, "scam" and "mink oil days" and "get out if you still can" and " preying on innocent decent people like you and Joe. " It was like a nightmare. I read and re -read the intense letter which basically said that we were innocent, decent people caught up in a scam that preys on the weak. We should get our money out if we could and consider ourselves lucky that we got out. I remember feeling sick, sad, angry, scared, embarrassed, silly and confused. Now what? I cried in my office. I wept out of fear and frustration. No, no, NO!! This was not going down like this. I called up Doug and read him the letter. He was calm and clear and asked me if I thought the letter held any truth. I said, "No." He asked if I thought my boss was smarter that I was in regards to this business. Again, I stated "No." "Then there is nothing wrong here, " Doug said, "Just one more person who doesn't get it. End of story. Give it no power." Ironically, a year later our boss would lose a large portion of his wealth in the Madoff scandal. I always wonder if he remembers back to that long letter he wrote to us and how ironic the whole situation turned out. I learned such a valuable lesson from this. Our dreams are ours. We have to create them, believe in them and never, ever give up on them. My dear friend, Russ Desormeaux, said to me when I started with Ideal Health, "Jenna, you've got to want it so badly you'd chew the door off of a car!" I laugh when I think of that, but I get it. Which leads me to the Madoff chapter...

All of us on the farm were called into a meeting early one Monday morning in December of 2008. We knew something was up because we don't "call meetings." Ever. So, we're all gathered in the tackroom and in walks the farm manager who is our friend and he is white as a ghost and looks sick. He eyes are darting around and his hands are jammed into his jean pockets in a way that reeks of nervous energy. "There's no easy way to say this, so I just have to say it. Don has lost the majority of his wealth in the Madoff deal and the farm is going under. We all are on notice and I'll let you know more as I know it. I'm sorry." With that he walks out and there is dead, heavy silence. One of the younger riders breaks out into tears and that releases all of us to start talking, crying, nervous laughter ripples out....I recall thinking that this is made for TV type of fodder. You can't make up this type of drama. We are all floored. I go home and start cleaning- it's all I can do when I feel out of control. Control my dust bunnies in the trailer and I'm controlling my world. That night Joe and I are lying in our bed in the east wing of our single wide. We are both on our backs facing the ceiling. Eyes are wide open in the dark. "Joe?" I ask. "Yea, I'm awake, " he replies. "Do you realize we might be getting kicked out of a TRAILER?" I say with a snort. Silence. "Where does our life go from here?" I ask. Silence. Then we both burst out half laughing and half crying. Life is so absurd. We have just had the rug ripped out from under us again, yet somehow, together, we stay focused, we keep laughing and we know that we are not our circumstances. Over the next few weeks we lay an entire staff off, sell the race horses, equipment and shave it down to just four of us. I go from running the office to being the housekeeper and mucking stalls. I am doing my Ideal Health business calls while I stack hay, scrub toilets and clean tack. I am more determined than ever that this company is rising and soon to soar- I can feel it. I have been to three corporate events by this point- my first one in Atlanta I went to as the founding member of my team (read: I had enrolled no one!) , then one in St. Louis where I went with my team which I had doubled (I had enrolled Joe) and then Orlando where I had a blooming team of thirty! I may not have been a mover and a shaker yet- but I was a Mom with big dreams and I was chewing the door off the car a little more each day!! I really struck gold when I reached out to my longtime friend of 23 years, Dr. Kim Friedman, and asked her to take a look at Ideal Health. I had put off contacting Kim because my life had taken such a nose-dive and she lives an incredibly charmed life- being an ER doc. married to an Orthopedic surgeon, two gorgeous kids, a few homes...she had it all. But I knew the type of person Kim was and if she could wrap her head around this business model, I knew she would run with it. Kim and her husband Bob were totally open to checking out what I was involved with and after a time, they joined our team and launched a group that is now consisting of hundreds of people and many lives transformed. From this team emerged a brilliant man named Kevin who became another mentor to me and has furthered my insights and ways of being in the world. The people attracted to this company and our mission are just soulful, good-hearted people who will touch, move and inspire you in ways you never dreamed of! This is just one team that has blossomed from our involvement with Ideal Health...many more were coming.

I read my goals out loud every morning and every night. I was now fully aware that I was not only responsible for everything that showed up in my life- good, bad and the ugly, but that I could also create anything I wanted!! I am the creator of my own life's experience!! Powerful.

On March 3rd, 2009 Doug  called me and said, "Are you game for another adventure?" I am always game. He said, "We're sending you somewhere tomorrow to take photographs and it will be an experience to change your life!" He wasn't kidding. I signed a nondisclosure form and off I trotted to a famous building in  NYC to photograph the signing of the paperwork to seal the deal with the Ideal Health and our new business partner. 
I left that building that day as a new woman. After announcing  our new business partner, well, let's just say that things have "changed." We've signed onto our team- attorneys, bankers, teachers, CPA's, principals, Moms, coaches, architects, doctors, vets, Realtors, brokers, plumbers, painters, nurses, horse trainers and even better....FAMILY MEMBERS!! Since March, we have gone on to replace our two daytime incomes, so we gave 2 months notice, retired from the farm and bought our own house right down the road from a piece of property where we are building our dream house!! We drive a fun, shiny, new, red BMW & a white Coupe BMW which are both paid for through our CAR REWARDS program. I am now a stay-at-home Mom who is building a legacy business from the comfort of my own home. I create my days. I am living the life of my dreams. We have decided to travel and love meeting new people in new places to share this incredible opportunity. We have met thousands of people who are searching for a way to create another stream of income. People are running scared. There is a lot of fear and financial hardship out in the world today and we have a solution. We love sharing it! We get thank you letters, calls and emails- thanking us for sharing our story. By simply & honestly sharing our fears, defeats and in the end successes...we have been able to inspire many and now that is our mission!! Joe and myself intend on inspiring millions of people to lead their best life!!

I believe in synchronicty. There are no accidents. We attract, through our thoughts and our vibrations, the people and situations, that are needed to forward our life experience to the next level. All of this, of course, is of our own choosing.

These days it's no longer, "Why me?' Today, it's all about, "Why not?"

So, that is the beginning of my adventure.  Tomorrow is a new day.

What I know to be true is this:  THE PROMISE OF THE FUTURE IS AN AWESOME FORCE.

Namaste,
Jenna