Notes From Jen

Honest reflections through a nervous system lens.

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When Everything Starts to Feel Like Effort

Jen Glover
Jan 7
3 min read

Updated: Jan 8

This is the opening piece in a six-part connected series, There’s Another Way.

The starting point for this whole space: how life can get heavier, what that feels like from the inside, and what can begin to shift when you stop forcing your way through.

It begins where many people begin: still doing what needs doing, getting through the day — but quietly noticing that everything is taking more out of them than it used to.

This piece is shared as lived experience — not guidance, instruction, or advice.

At the airport, carrying everything we had, before we knew what would come next.

For a long time, we weren’t trying to do things differently.

We were keeping up — in the way many people do —

following what was expected

and moving at a pace that looked normal from the outside.

We could have kept going.

But the speed, the workload, and the constant pressure weren’t adding up to a life that actually supported us.

One question kept returning:

Does life really have to feel this heavy?

At the time, I didn’t have language for what wasn’t working.

I just knew I was getting through the days, telling myself to get on with it, assuming this was simply how life felt.

Only later could I see that something deeper had been asking for attention.

When coping became the goal

We began noticing the loops.

The just keep going.

The doing.

The exhaustion.

The sense of running on empty even when things looked “ok.”

What had once helped us function was now keeping us from feeling present in our own lives.

Coping had quietly become the goal —

we didn’t know how to do things any other way.

The changes we made didn’t come from a plan.

They came from noticing.

We took time to reassess what hadn’t been supportive for a long time and slowly began responding differently.

Over time, that changed how we worked, learned, and structured our days as a family.

We kept coming back to one simple truth:

There had to be another way to live that actually supported us all.

One of the first places this showed up was in how we supported our daughter’s learning — based on what we were noticing day to day.

We weren’t looking for what was easiest, or what looked right from the outside.

We were looking for what helped —

and responding carefully to what was in front of us.

Over time, a different set of values began to guide us.

Presence over pressure.

Honesty over performance.

Awareness over avoidance.

Not as ideals — but as choices we kept returning to.

Why we’re sharing this

We’re not sharing because we think we have it all figured out.

We share because it can be isolating in two different ways.

Sometimes life feels like too much — and you can’t seem to make it better, even though you’re trying.

And sometimes you start choosing differently — more carefully, more honestly — and other people don’t understand why.

This isn’t about convincing anyone.

Different paths work for different people.

We’re simply sharing what we’ve lived, in case it helps you notice what fits for you — and what doesn’t.

Take what’s useful.

Leave the rest.

with presence and care

with love jen - Hand-drawn style illustration with the text ‘Love Jen’ in script, underlined by a line that continues into a sketch of a hand holding a pen.

🧭 In the next piece, I share what it can feel like when life still looks “fine” — but inside, everything is taking more effort than it used to.

Next: Part 2 — 🔗 When Life Starts to Feel Harder This piece sits within Emotional Wellbeing — where emotions are treated as information, not problems to solve.