How May I Serve?: A Conversation with Jen Pastiloff
On daily rituals, death, learning to say no, and how to see yourself clearly.
Jen Pastiloff has a big heart and a long bio. That’s because she doesn’t just think about love, she puts it into action. Nearly every week, Jen is raising money for someone in need. When the pandemic began, she raised well over $100,000 to buy groceries for folks who lost their jobs. And more recently she raised several thousand to help Ukrainians. In between these global crises, she does her best to help anyone who needs it.
She also writes the most wonderful, honest, tender, funny, vulnerable posts on social media lovingly laying herself bare in the name of shame loss in ways that allow the rest of us to lovingly lay ourselves bare, too, even if we just do it in the privacy of our living room. Self-kindness is so primal to Jen, she’s started a Shame Loss movement which works in beautiful alignment with her Don’t Be An Asshole slogan.
Jen leads workshops around the world which involve writing, yoga, dance, and, usually, lots of tears (she had me crying and that’s not an easy task)—and scholarships are available for women who have lost a child. She’s the author of the staggeringly beautiful, bestselling memoir On Being Human, has a podcast, is a public speaker, and the founder of the literary website The Manifest-Station. Jen’s work has appeared in The Guardian, Goop, and Variety. She’s been on the cover of Yoga Journal with Elizabeth Gilbert, Cheryl Strayed calls Jen a “conduit of awakenings” (so true!), and Pink, Paulina Porizkova, Maria Bello, Katie Couric and other celebrities have thrown their weight behind her myriad projects. She’s also a private coach, an advocate for those with hearing challenges (Jen has severe hearing loss), a promotor of top-notch vibrators (pleasure is one of Jen’s favorite things), a Beauty Hunter, a vinegar-and-salt potato chip lover, and the mother to the irrepressible Charlie. And this list doesn’t begin to cover the half of it.
I met Jen several years ago when she published my first essay on The Manifest-Station. Until then, I’d been strictly a fiction writer. But the aftermath of a head and brain injury had sent my life in an unexpected direction and left me scared and reeling, and Jen was there to receive my fragile words with kindness, and to usher them into the world with grace and fierceness. She changed my life. So, of course, I wanted her to be my first interview on Beyond and was over the moon when she said yes.
Jen’s favorite question is: Have I done love? The answer is a resounding, Yes!
You have such a strong impulse to help people. Where do you think that comes from? And what does that feel like inside of you?
I've always been a nurturer. But about fourteen years ago I heard Wayne Dyer speak. He talked so much about: How may I serve? It profoundly affected me because although I'd always been a very generous person, I was operating from a place of lack most of the time—which is understandable, losing a parent so young. I was waiting tables and wanted to be an actor, but not doing anything about it. Looking back, I don’t think I really wanted it. But I would get envious with my friends. When I looked around at other people's lives who seemed to have what I wanted, or what I thought I wanted, I thought what's wrong with me? Or, why not me?
When I heard him say that, I thought, hmm, what if I shifted my point of focus to being of service. And from feeling jealous or that there isn't enough to there is enough. And it was so easy.