About Me — Jennifer Leggio
“All my life, I wanted to be a gangster.”
You might recognize the quote in my subhead, but if you don’t, it represents the first line of the movie production of “Goodfellas.” It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, yet growing up without the presence of my Sicilian father, I always idolized mafia culture (despite the crime I’d never commit) and even went as far as to once start a LinkedIn bio with “My dream was the be a mafia princess, but I ended up in cybersecurity instead.”
My dream indeed was and still is to be a writer: poetry, memoirs, comedic tales of chaos, you name it. This is what brought me to Medium and my Spirit of Catharsis journey. A very unpopular girl in school, I remember my elation when I won a competition to write the “15-Years Hence” paper for my junior high graduation that prophesied where we would all end up. Little did I know I only won that competition because no one wanted to do it, but a win is a win, right? And, in that story, by 28 I was a world-famous author, traveling the globe on book tours and extolling what I’d learned in what then would’ve been a short life. At 50 years old, while I have traveled the world, it was more as a corporate slog, as I parlayed my writing skill, my chutzpah, and my tech geekiness into cybersecurity marketing and sales work, for which I was and am grateful, but ghost authoring papers on “how open source security tools can help you…” was not quite the same as writing about me and my journey through this life and reaching others.
In retrospect, that seems to have worked out for the best because I have a lot more to say now. I write about complex PTSD (C-PTSD) and surviving childhood trauma and the coping effects of that. I write about what I experienced with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and interfamily systems (IFS) mental health approaches to help me cope with that C-PTSD (and disorganized attachment, oy!). I write about my failed relationships because of said trauma and where it leads me to pick partners. I write about my Jungian spiritual awakening and the modalities I have learned to heal myself and heal others. I write about my now two years and change of sobriety and how ugly that journey was — and how hard it still is. I write poetry that simply helps me scream.
I firmly believe that the divine intended me to write later in life so that I could teach, relate, and have enough life experience to heal and help others do the same. My dream now is to open a healing writing retreat for women and other underrepresented groups who may not be able to afford traditional mental health care so they can at least express themselves and emote in writing (my best friend, an actual doctor of psychology, would now allow me to go off the rails). Yet still, that will be after I finish the corporate slog I do now, whenever that is, so in the meantime, I write.
But Spirit of Catharsis and my writing communities are my priority because I don’t want to be someone who teaches and doesn’t do — I want to be someone who lives loud and vulnerable so that I can lead by example and help others have the courage to do the same.
Do I still ever dream of being a gangster? No. I’m too far removed from my Sicilian roots and too afraid of prison to ever do any of that. But I dream of being a full-time writer, healer, supporter, and giver to others who may need to learn how curative writing can be. So here I am, and here I will be.
It’s an honor and pleasure to meet you, and I hope we can travel many written words together.
