You might say that Jennifer “Jen” Pastiloff has built a thriving brand by just being herself.
I’ve known her for years and I can’t neatly wrap up her multi-hyphenated self. A few things she is: A hearing-impaired woman and deaf advocate; a yoga teacher; a TED Talk giver; a leader of writing workshops around the world; a life coach; a social media phenomenon on Instagram with more than 90,000 followers; a painter; mom to son Charlie Mel; partner of actor Henry Czerny (known for his role in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise and many others).
Still, none of this quite tells it all about who or what Jen is.
Well into her 30s she was an aspiring actor stuck in a dead-end waitressing job in Hollywood, and yet today she’s the kind of person who has been featured on “Good Morning America” and Katie Couric’s show, and in New York magazine, People, Shape, Health and Yoga Journal, among other media outlets. She’s also an author: Her first book, “On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking up, Living Real, and Listening Hard,” became a national bestseller, and this July her next book is set to be released. It’s titled “Proof of Life” after her popular Substack newsletter.
I caught up with Jen at her home in Ojai to see what life wisdom she was sharing that day:
One of your missions is to help people change the stories they tell themselves about who they are. What exactly does that mean? When did you realize this was possible for yourself?
JP: I call them our BS stories. I’ll leave out the curse words for this interview, but you get the gist.
I’ll give you an example. My father, the light of my life and my everything, dropped dead when he was 38. This was directly after he told me I was being bad and “making him not feel good,” followed by me saying the words, “I hate you.” My last words to him. I was 8.
I decided then that I had to be strong and an adult — despite being a small child — and that I couldn’t grieve. Also, that it was my fault he died and that I was a bad person.
I walked around for decades with the belief that I was a bad person. It became my baseline. My story, if you will. Except, it didn’t feel like a story, it just felt true.
A lot of us have these types of stories we hold true about ourselves, when they aren’t. Whether it’s that we are unlovable, we’ll always be broke, nothing will ever work out for us, we’ll always be disappointed, and on and on. Then, we’ll look for evidence to support those stories. It’s an insidious cycle.
I began to see it was possible to change my story after I left my long-time Hollywood waitressing job and began teaching yoga. Teaching yoga paved the way into the indescribable career I have now, which combines writing and speaking and teaching, and sometimes even yoga still.
It’s a career based on connection and creativity and living life on your own terms. I began to see the evidence around me — meaning people expressing profound gratitude that I shared my vulnerabilities, my story, my truths about depression and grief and deafness and antidepressants and shame. All the things, really. I realized that maybe I wasn’t a bad person after all. I then actively began to work to change my mindset, on the daily — and I do, I believe it is a daily, or daily-ish, practice. For me it is.
I’ll use all different methods. I call it the “school of whatever works,” and as long as you’re not intentionally hurting yourself or anyone else, you get to do what works for you.
We can always change our minds and our stories because we are not dead.
I certainly felt like a walking dead person for a long time, but I wasn’t dead. And, neither are you if you are reading this. Fact is, as long as we can take a breath, we get to begin again. And, so I did. And do.
You talk a lot about “Shame Loss.” Why is it important?
JP: I spent most of my life until recently cloaked in shame. Like I said earlier, I believed it was my fault that my father died, that I, in fact, skilled him.
This isn’t rational, but I was 8, and also, shame is not rational. Shame will tell us that it belongs in our body. It doesn’t. We get to put it down. As someone who nearly died from an eating disorder, I find shame loss, rather than weight loss, empowering. We have to remember that we can put it down. We get to, despite what anyone has told us or what we’ve believed thus far.
Letting shame go may be a daily practice, rather than one-and-done (as human beings, we are forever works in progress anyway). It is not our birthright to carry shame. When we find community and what I call our “I got you people” (look for them, they ARE out there waiting for you), it becomes much easier to put the load of shame down.
Part of what has made you such a popular influencer of personal wellness is that you are always so able to be vulnerable about your fears, hardships and desires with your thousands of followers on social media. Talk to me about how you found strength and connection through vulnerability.
JP: I joke that I’m terrible at most things but what I’m good at I’m really, really good at, and although it sounds self-deprecating, it’s mostly true. I can’t iron or make a bed very well or balance a checkbook or get my son to school on time, but I’m fantastic at not taking myself too seriously (most days) and connecting and cultivating community. People generally feel really comfortable in my presence. I don’t question it. Instead, I embrace it. It’s disarming when someone doesn’t hide. I show up utterly as myself. That makes people feel at home and that they too can show up utterly as themselves. To me, that is vulnerability.
When I began to tell the truth about my life (and I don’t mean over-sharing or telling everyone everything, but rather the truth about depression and eating disorders and shame, etc.) and when I stopped hiding in shame, I found community like never before. I decided that while I didn’t have to share everything with everyone — that’s not vulnerability anyway — I would no longer hide in shame.
I realized that all the things I’d been hiding were actually my superpowers, so to speak. We all have superpowers. And yes, vulnerability is a superpower.
“I got you” is something you often say, and you encourage people to show up for each other. Why is this so important?
JP: I have a tattoo on the inside of my left wrist that says, “I got you.” It’s written in a way that can be read by me or by the person looking at it. That feels important because I have been an “I got you” for everyone else, except myself, for a long time. For me, being of service is the ultimate way to be and how I want to live my life. Being an “I got you” is what I call “doing love.” Love as a verb.
It can look like anything. However, it’s imperative to remember to be an “I got you” for ourselves, too; and that is the hardest part for most.
There’s no downside to embodying “I got you.” There can be momentous effects from our intentions and gestures that spread and then light up the world. The “I got you effect” is like the butterfly effect, without butterflies.
What’s the one thing you wish people would do today to start changing their lives?
JP: The one thing I wish people would do today to start changing their lives is have a sense of humor about themselves and “beauty hunt.” Beauty hunting is my spiritual practice, aka “get my head out of my tush” practice. You just stop and identify five beautiful things, right in the moment, wherever you are. Having a sense of humor and beauty hunting are truly one and the same thing. When we have a sense of humor about ourselves, we are lighter and softer. In that space, we can more easily see the beauty everywhere, including within, which is the beauty that is most overlooked. Besides, life’s hard enough. We don’t need to make it harder. Find the beauty and find the funny.