Aging with Purpose and Passion

Healing Through Creativity: Transforming Trauma and Finding Purpose

• Beverley Glazer • Episode 127

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In this inspiring episode of ''Aging With Purpose and Passion", Jenny Leigh Hodgins takes us on a transformative journey of healing and self-discovery through creativity. Growing up in a dysfunctional family, Jenny found refuge in music at a young age, using the piano as her emotional sanctuary. What began as a source of comfort became her life’s passion and career, leading her to become a composer, teacher, and creative empowerment coach.

After discovering Buddhism in her twenties, Jenny grounded her life in its principles, helping her navigate life's challenges with a fresh perspective. This spiritual foundation guided her through years of personal growth, including her time in Japan, where she recorded music and immersed herself in a different culture.

Returning to America, Jenny faced one of her toughest challenges yet—becoming a full-time caregiver for her mother. This chapter in her life led her to redefine her boundaries, shedding lifelong patterns of overextension. It also sparked her transition from teaching music to launching an online creative coaching business. Now, Jenny helps others overcome creative blocks, rediscover their authentic voice, and find purpose through self-expression.

Jenny’s message is clear: 'Creativity is not just a hobby—it’s a path to healing, purpose, and fulfillment'. Tune in to hear how embracing your creative potential can transform your life, no matter where you are in your journey.

Ready to tap into your own creative power to help you break through blocks and rediscover your purpose? You've arrived at the right place.

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For similar episodes on healing through creativity, check out episodes 107 and 120 of 'Aging with Purpose and Passion'. And Catherine Marienau and Gail Zelitzky co-host their weekly podcast, 'Women Over 70-Aging Reimagined', where vital women ages 70-110 change the narrative about aging . Listen here: www.womenover70.com


Resources: 

Jenny Leigh Hodgins 

Jenny@yourcreativechord.com

YourCreativeChord.com

https://www.facebook.com/YourCreativeChord

https://www.instagram.com/yourcreativechord/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyleighhodgins/

Beverley Glazer

Website: https://reinventimpossible.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverleyglazer/

https://www.facebook.com/beverley.glazer

Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenover50rock

https://www.instagram.com/beverleyglazer_reinvention

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert, beverly Glazer.

Beverley Glazer:

Are you ready to tap into your creative spirit and find purpose in every stage of your life? Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverley Glazer, a transformational coach and catalyst dedicated to empower women to take bold steps and create the life they truly deserve, and you can find me on reinventimpossiblecom. Jenny Leigh Hodgins is a seasoned music educator, a creative empowerment coach and an author with over 30 years of teaching and performance experience. For 38 years, she's been grounded in Buddhist practices, and Jenny Leigh offers a unique perspective and shares how her personal journey transformed into a mission to help others break through burnout by overcoming blocks. Keep listening. Welcome, jenny.

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Thank you so much for having me, Beverley.

Beverley Glazer:

Jenny, you came from a really dysfunctional family. Tell us how that shaped you. Coming from all that dysfunction, how did it shape you back then as a kid?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Well, two points. It led me to use music as a coping mechanism and therapy, and it also led me to a long life, long, lifelong pattern of enabling and overextending myself to keep the peace, which I'm now changing dramatically in this chapter of my life, which I'm now changing dramatically in this chapter of my life.

Beverley Glazer:

Yes, yes, because that's so common. You know, when you're going in chaos, all you want to do is find some calm, and you're so used to the chaos that it sometimes follows you. But were you always a creative person, a creative little girl, even back then?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Did you know that? Exactly when I was young. As I said, I started piano when I was seven, so I got very involved right away in music and, yes, I wrote, you know, lyrics or poetry or little stories and things. It was again a little oasis, away from the anger and the confusion that was going on in my family throughout all of my life, basically since I was a child through some of it still happening now, but we have boundaries.

Beverley Glazer:

Sure, sure and. But as a child you don't know, you really don't. But all those challenges led you into degrees in music. And yet how did music play a role in your life?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

thinker, and so it protected me of my sensitivities, from everything going on. And I felt like it was a wonderful therapeutic tool because I could express myself fearlessly, because I knew there were no words there. I wasn't singing yet, so no one really knew the angst I was expressing, but it still helped me cope with that. And then, as I grew, I just love music. It's beautiful, I love all things beauty. I take nature, you know, photos and use it in my designs, for my business now, and I do a lot of nature immersion, so any opportunity to seek beauty, which is what music's all about. And then, of course, I got into studying music, ended up switching from performance to composition, because I liked creating it more than repeating it from somebody else's voice. So, and that's still a part of me, you know, it's just a wonderful thing.

Beverley Glazer:

It's a wonderful escape. You can just disappear and, you know, evolve into it.

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

But to me it's not just an escape. It's also a way to connect with people, to communicate messages, you know, to spread joy, to spread the awe of life. You know it became less of an escape as I got older.

Beverley Glazer:

Sure, but you also discovered Buddhism. How did you discover Buddhism?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

When I moved to Florida in my 20s, my roommate's new girlfriend discovered it. She was practicing it and she told me about it. And it impressed me so much because she gave the example that when you practice you know SGI Buddhism you can raise your life state so that, even though we all have obstacles in our lives, just like any other person does, by raising your life state through the practice of Buddhism you're not crushed by the obstacles, but rather you have a perspective over them and you're able to handle them and navigate them. That intrigued me so I joined. After a couple of meetings I loved the feeling of chanting. It relieved my anxiety and brought me incredible calm and hope for the first time, even though my circumstances hadn't changed you know, I was still living in a dingy little apartment, you know, with a bachelor, roommate, dude of chanting and the philosophy itself really is like the anchor of my life, because it's all about bringing out your own best self and empowering yourself and others through that action.

Beverley Glazer:

So yeah, and you went to Japan. You continued to go farther. And how long were you in Japan? And tell us about that.

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Well, I had just graduated from the University of South Florida and I really wanted to. Just, it was an act of deepening my faith. I wanted to see the roots of this practice. So I moved there and while I was there I joined with a Japanese American and Japanese American and Italian man, I think for a second, and we put together a band and recorded my songs. It's a CD called Butterfly Believe, which is a 14 song album of musical theater style songs that I wrote. So we did that and I gigged a lot of cultural shock there as well, and it's a very hierarchical I mean hierarchy, you know oppressive system. And I'm a white, you know female, even though I'm American. I'm a little more at the top as an American. But I wanted to go home, you know, to America. I missed it. So that's why I left after almost five years.

Beverley Glazer:

And did you go back to teaching in America. What did you do?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Yeah, I continued gigging as a vocalist and pianist. I'm spreading my songs and doing classical music and lots of Joan Baez, carole King, celine Dion, mariah Carey type stuff because I was a soprano but I do other ranges as well and a lot of classical gigs. And then I was teaching private piano and group piano and eventually I moved back to Florida to take a public school teaching job down there.

Beverley Glazer:

And you were teaching there for quite some time.

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

About 11 years down there and that was a rigorous thing. You know. 600 kids a week, multiple class sizes in our daily schedule was exhausting and I just felt like I'd outgrown that system, Like I wanted to do more and it didn't give me the energy or time to do that for the students. So, also, my dad was ill, so I decided after he passed away in 2014,. After a bout with cancer in 2017, I decided to leave teaching and move to the next chapter. So I sold my Florida home and moved back to be my mother's caregiver and run an online business you know from home.

Beverley Glazer:

Let's talk about that, because many women end up being caregivers for their parents and here you went back to the house to be her caregiver, but you also decided to run an online business. How were you able to set all those boundaries and do your own work and care for her as well?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

The hard way. For sure, I did everything the hard way. I didn't recognize how deeply rooted my patterns of overextending and enabling were until the last eight years and because of my family upbringing, those dysfunctional patterns are still happening in my adult extended family members. So it was a constant lesson in wow, I have to set a boundary here. And the backlash of setting that boundary from different people and having to set sometimes the same boundary to the same person a dozen times and they're still testing to get through. And so that has been my basic.

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

You know, growing pain for the past eight years, learning how to respectfully set boundaries with my family as well as set boundaries with the community, because I ended up being the board president and turning the situation around here. So I resigned from that position last year, again to set a boundary because I realized I was overextending myself and even still, you know, in my workflow I'm recognizing this theme coming from the roots of that dysfunction in my role as the enabler, you know, in the family, learning how to. I'm getting much better at setting boundaries with people and with workflow, but I have to set it for myself as well, constantly like edit yourself and do you, do your?

Beverley Glazer:

are you creative throughout your whole life because you help people with creativity. And so how do you, how do you wake up in the morning and put on your creative hat daily?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Well, first of all I think that's maybe part of the challenge of the family dysfunction is that all of my family members have incredible creative energy. There's poets, there's singers, there's seamstresses, there's musicians, there's designers. So you know the thing that there's an artist temperament. You know that we're sensitive and I think maybe having too many cooks in the kitchen with the same artistic temperament might be that, but for me it's just a natural thing. I have just always had prolific drive and energy to create poetry, lyrics, music, designs, words, blogging, books. Just I just create a lot. It's just a natural thing.

Beverley Glazer:

What would you tell a woman because obviously it's helped you? But what would you tell a woman who says I'm not creative?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

I've heard that many times over my teaching career and I would say, first of all, that's the inner critic and there are ways to navigate that inner critic. That's the inner critic and there are ways to navigate that inner critic. And for now, let's just put it on shelf. And I would, I would say to anybody you are creative, because human beings are creative, it is part of who we are, it's an inherent thing. You just need to find, learn ways to tap into it naturally and respect it and honor it. But but the first thing you have to do is let go of that inner critic, let go of that doubt, let go of that ego, and that is a part of the process in my creative empowerment coaching program that I talk about. You know how do you let go of that inner critic, how do you overcome a block? And so I have like different ways that I do that myself and I share it with others in that way.

Beverley Glazer:

And how does creativity help someone manage their stress?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Oh gosh, I'm sure you know that, I'm sure you know the answer to that. But basically it's a, it's a release, it's an expression of who you really are and it acknowledges and recognizes, with just innocent respect, that you're going through something and you have the right to express it and by doing so you know it's research proven that it impacts and boosts your mental, your physical, your emotional wellness and well-being and lifts your mood. I could go on and on about the science behind that, but creativity is good for you, your emotional wellness and well-being and lift your mood. I could go on and on about the science behind that, but creativity is good for you in every direction.

Beverley Glazer:

And what did you tell a woman who's looking for more purpose in her life by using creativity?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

What would I tell someone who's looking for more purpose? Yes, by using creativity. Got it. Okay, I had to think for a second. Well, I love that question because it ties perfectly into in my opinion, the creative process is about listening to your authentic voice, really tuning out the external and honing in on what you feel and who you are and what you want really what you want. So that's my thing. It just it goes hand in hand there.

Beverley Glazer:

So, in other words, you have to dig deep. Dig deep in your heart, just relax and it will come. And it's true, we're all intuitive and all you have to do is just allow those feelings to come up and, before you know it, you can create. I want to thank you, jenny Leigh. Jenny Leigh Hodgins is an experienced music educator, a creative empowerment coach and an author with over 30 years of teaching and performance experience, and an author with over 30 years of teaching and performance experience. For 38 years, she's been grounded in Buddhist practices and her personal journey transformed into a mission to help others break through burnout to overcome their personal blocks.

Beverley Glazer:

Here are some takeaways from this episode.

Beverley Glazer:

Caregiving can shape your purpose, but make sure you set boundaries to prevent burnout. Mindfulness is a powerful tool for personal growth and it's never too late to rediscover your creative spark.

Beverley Glazer:

If you've been relating to this episode, think how your creativity can empower you to overcome your own challenges. Perhaps it's by rediscovering a craft that you loved, or practicing meditation, or creating a vision board to help you see possibilities .

Beverley Glazer:

For similar episodes on healing through creativity and spiritual growth. Please check out episode 107 and 120 of Aging with Purpose and Passion, and if you've enjoyed this story. Catherine Mariano and Gail Zalitsky co-host Women Over 70 Aging Reimagined, and that's where women from 70 to 110 rewrite the narrative on aging. That's womenover70.com. That link, by the way, will be in my show notes, and so where can people learn more about you, Jenny Lee

Beverley Glazer:

?

Jenny Leigh Hodgins:

Oh, thank you for asking and, again, thank you for having me. Well, we have a really special creativity panel event on the connection between creativity and wellness coming up next week. So if you're ready to explore ways you know to get into creativity or work through creative challenges and build some sustainable momentum, I really recommend that you go register for that at yourcreativecordcom forward slash events and for more tools and guidance and resources and to learn more about how you can work Beverly me as your creative empowerment coaching coach in my program that is going to launch next week. For early access, you can go, just go to my hub. You can check out all the things there books, podcasts, my program and that's your creative core dot com. That's my central hub. Thank you so much.

Beverley Glazer:

OK, and all those links that she just mentioned. They will be in reinventimpossible. com show notes and they'll also be on my site too, that's reinventimpossiblecom. And now, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you really passionate about your life? Download my free checklist from stuck to unstoppable to unlock the possibilities in your life. And that link, where do you think it will be? In the show notes. You can connect with me, beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook, women Over 50 Rock. And if you're looking for guidance in your own life, I invite you to explore reinventedpossiblecom. Thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please drop a review, share it with a friend and always remember that you have only one life, so keep aging with purpose and passion with purpose, and passion.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossiblecom and, while you're there, join our newsletter subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.