I'm New Here.

Let's fumble forth together, shall we?

Jan 23, 2026

Behold, the new, modern blogspot/Xanga/livejournal! I’m happy we’re back here.

In middle school, my widely beloved band director, Mr. Otto, gave me the nickname “Jenna Sais Quoi.” I’m sure I didn’t fully get the joke back then. But what a gift he had - to see students in such a tender, formative time, and value us with individually chosen nicknames. He didn’t have to do that. But he did, and we felt seen.

Here we are, almost thirty years later, and I still remember and feel honored when I think of it. I’ve had the privilege of living and working in Paris for several stints over the past few years, along with my husband and oldest son. It’s sweet to me that a little nod to the French language was tucked into my life long before I ever dreamed of visiting the country, let alone immersing myself in the culture.

Wouldn’t you know it, both ‘jennasaisquoi’ and ‘jennasayquoi’ were already taken by inactive Substackers. So, let’s together embrace the further play on words and slight awkwardness of “Do you say it ‘Jenna Says Kwah?’ Or Jenna Say Kwah?’” and just say, “Sure?” and move on.

What will I write here?

Hopefully, many things. Let it not be a January “this is my thing now!” that tumbleweeds into March and falls apart into nothing.

These past few years have held a lot of change for me (not to mention the world as we know it). My husband and I moved to Nashville in early 2020 for our music career (we write and play together in a band). A month or so later, Covid hit, and like all independent artists, our already unpredictable life came to a screeching halt. We hunkered down, built a short-term rental space in our lower level, and wondered what on earth to do with ourselves.

Life has kept morphing over the past six years. We became parents, and then parents of two, and it’s just been in the past few months that I’ve felt some of the toddler-newborn-breastfeeding-sleep-deprived fog begin to lift. An unexpected confidence has surfaced from beneath it, more than I ever felt before motherhood - maybe not even since college? There’s this deep knowing that I am a writer. Not that there’s any glory in it; it’s just part of my fabric. I process the world this way, and I always have, writing poetry and fiction and essays long before I wrote songs.

The last twenty years of my life have been full of many things. One that I’m rather over is self-abandonment. Writing is how I process the world, but it’s what I have run away from the most in my adult life. This has led to a whole lot of stuck feelings, a self-rewarding cycle of self-sabotage and self-criticism, and buried dreams that I couldn’t even acknowledge as dreams.

Who has time for that anymore??

WHY will I write here?

It’s time to be who we were created to be. All of us. The world desperately needs it. There’s too much at stake for us to walk around numb.

So I will write from my little corner of the world to try to make sense of it all. Parenthood. France. Faith in an ever-changing landscape. Creativity. Literature. Theater. Current events (gulp). Getting to know myself again. Perhaps helping all of us tiptoe toward that (dare I hope).

Je ne sais quoi is a French expression that means having a certain quality, often desirable, that cannot quite be described. Mystery is good. But, so is knowing what you can. This is me headed into the thicket, yanking at the vines, pushing back the branches, to rediscover the path, the garden, the secrets beneath the overgrowth.

Thanks for heading into it with me. And thank you, Mr. Otto.