Jenna Hermans has dedicated herself to helping others pursue calm.
By her own admission, Jenna Hermans says humans fascinate her.
The thirtysomething wife and mother of four started her journey towards better mindfulness after she relocated to the Bay Area from Los Angeles. The move to a new locale where she knew no one was an opportunity for her to put her so-called “queen of calm” moniker to work. Hermans was diagnosed with ADHD as a child; she harnessed task management tools like Post-It notes and Palm Pilots to keep her afloat, especially during her collegiate years. The tools would be lifesavers as she embarked on a new life in her new city. With her husband frequently traveling for work, Hermans effectively is a single parent. “I had to figure my parenting s— out real fast or I wouldn’t survive,” she says with blunt force on her website.
In a nutshell, she wants to help people—particularly parents—be free from the clutches of overwhelmingness. Instead, she wants people to embrace calmness.
“I have spent the majority of my life just so fascinated in humans and human development and human interactions—in the developing mind and brain—and understanding the possibilities of this human existence that we find ourselves in,” Hermans said of her work in an interview earlier this week. “All my work and my education have all led by that source of curiosity. I was drawn to writing this book [Chaos to Calm: Five Ways Busy Parents Can Break Free From Overwhelm] about basically, the concept that everything is possible. That we can manifest our possibilities by creating an infrastructure and a system that allows for that—that we can create the system that allows for whomever to feel like what they want to accomplish, they can. This book is really five pillars that helps support that system, so that the parent or any busy person can feel calm and find groundedness and be able to show up as their best selves, everywhere that they want to.”
Hermans was inspired to write her book upon moving from SoCal to NorCal. As mentioned, she was in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people, and she was raising her affectionately-known “insta-family” solo while her husband is away on business. She would tell people about the circumstances she faced, and would get bombarded with incredulity in return. People were amazed at her resolve to do all she does by herself, and wanted to know her secrets to success. She started the process humbly, simply writing things down. Over time, those notes eventually collated into enough source material for a longform read. Regardless, Hermans didn’t pressure herself to write the book, instead working on it piece by piece. She also ended up outsourcing a lot of the grunt work when things became too overwhelming; she found a fellow busy mom who helped sift through her copious notes to identify themes and thus establish the main structure for the book.
As for tech, Hermans finds it indispensable, calling herself an “early adopter.”
“As soon as new technologies came into the world around organizing our time and organizing our information, I would hop on that kind of early adopter stuff with all of Google’s elements that they were putting out when they started back in the day,” she said of embracing technology in everyday life. “I have used technology to make my life easier and in my work to help with organizing my information, as well as making things run more efficiently for myself and for [the] people around me.”
Hermans told me she’s heavily reliant on Calendly for scheduling, saying “I shoot [people] my Calendly link and they can throw some time on my calendar that works for them,” adding that events all “sync up beautifully” across her cadre of devices. In terms of writing, Hermans is a huge fan of the ever-popular Grammarly service. And of course, she relies on technology to produce her videos and podcast. For social media, Hermans confessed she’s not “huge” on using it on a regular basis, but is nonetheless appreciative of the role in plays in helping her business grow and increase the number of people with whom she becomes connected. She cited the women founders and women’s groups she’s discovered through social media as the biggest boon. For those, Hermans is eternally grateful.
Feedback for Hermans’ work has been extremely positive. When she explains her work and her content to others, she’s often greeted with comments about how what she puts out is “so needed in the world,” Hermans said. As for the feedback she’s garnered, Hermans is herself thankful. “I’m grateful to get positive feedback on what we’re doing and what I’m actively seeking, which is to help people [be] more grounded so that they can show up as their best selves,” she said.
At a high level, what Hermans does—in essence, preaching calmness—is not only beneficial to parents (or anyone else, really) but can be especially helpful towards neurodiverse people. Having spent a decade working literally on the floor with moderate-to-severely disabled preschoolers, I can attest overwhelm is a common occurrence with young children, particularly atypically-developing ones. Young children aren’t going to be using organizational tools like online schedulers for their day-to-day living, but the concept of calm remains relevant. Especially for older neurodiverse children, who may struggle with keeping up with homework assignments and the like, the basic tenets Hermans lives by can be adapted to fit their lifestyle. The salient point is, no matter the age or the disability, achieving calm is a very basic human need. Hermans is a parent, but the skills she’s trying to teach people to acquire have relevance way beyond a person having children.
In the abstract, it’s also true Hermans’ work illustrates how, as always happens, accessibility pervades all aspects of human existence for the disabled community. At first blush, promoting mindfulness seemingly has no obvious association to disability and technology, but it truly does. It’s plausible that, for example, a neurodivergent person may discover Hermans on social media—perhaps read her blog posts and even her book—and find coping mechanisms for minimizing chaos while maximizing calm. To learn better mindfulness is to acquire eminently useful life skills; technology is the conduit to this. All told, that someone could find Hermans’ teachings inspiring can help make life more accessible—with technology’s help—by becoming more mindful of themselves and of other people.
What’s more, the fact of the matter is Hermans’ dependence on so many organizational tools is accessibility, although many conflate it with convenience.
When asked about her place amongst competitors offering similar solutions, Hermans turned the question upside-down by telling me she doesn’t see her space as competitive in the cutthroat sense. There are so many people on this planet that could use help, she said, and she’s glad to be one of many who can provide it. In fact, she communicates with her competitors regularly, telling me she feels “really fantastic” that she can meet people who have similar identities and ideologies. More than anything, she said her ostensible competition act as a support system.
As the mindfulness tide rises, it lifts all boats—including that of Hermans.
“I see it [her work] like I am a boat on an ocean [with] other people who also have boats, who are doing similar things,” she said of her place in the mindfulness world. “We can all rise together because our boats are all slightly different.”
She added: “There’s a lot of mindfulness out there, for sure. My approach is calm for the everyday person. You don’t have to be a monk or a person who meditates hours a day, every day, to to have your calm and to show up in a way that is proactive and responsive and mindful and thoughtful. You don’t need to go away for a weekend on a self-care retreat or do ‘Self-care Sunday’ in order to to take care of your mind and your body and show up in that grounded calm space.”
Hermans is making mindfulness accessible to, and inclusive of, everyone.
Her book is available on Amazon now.
