Jennifer is an experienced psychotherapist in the Atlanta area who has dedicated the past decade res
12/30/2025
The word ENDURE came into a text thread with dear friends this morning. We were discussing hard things. And now I am using it to look back over my year. I’m sure it applies to nearly all of us.
I often teach the concept of MEANINGFUL ENDURANCE, articulated by a hero of mine, David Schnarch and grounded in Murray Bowen’s systems theory. To me, it points to the capacity to stay present in the midst of psychological discomfort long enough for genuine growth to occur.
I don’t see this as stoicism, suppression, or grit. I see it more like a disciplined willingness to tolerate tension—within oneself and between people.
Can we “stay with the pain and suffering” without going anywhere? And without argument?
This is the developmental crucible where our integrity strengthens, and deeper intimacy becomes possible. This is what it takes to be a mature adult. We have to withstand tension, and the more we can build capacity for this, the greater our territory on this earth becomes.
To apply Meaningful Endurance in mindfulness terms, it is deceptively simple:
Stay with the breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. With this simple instruction we can get through anything.
12/29/2025
An end-of-year reflection….of sorts.
Do I get a new ledger in 2026?
I suppose we just pick up where we left off.
But at the very least, get a fresh start even if the ledger won’t balance out exactly.
Ready to take your meditation practice deeper than watching thoughts or emotions float by?
Realization Process is meditation through the body. In this 4-day immersive experience, we will be exploring subtle embodiment and differentiation as pathways to genuine confidence, inner coherence, and a spiritually anchored sense of self.
You can come to this retreat in many places:
• already meditating and wanting “the next level” of depth and embodiment
• feeling spiritually curious and wanting something pragmatic and not lofty (or guru-driven)
• never having meditated before and wanting guidance that includes the body, not just the mind
You’re welcome in all of those places.
Trauma-Informed vs. Trauma Conscious
A lot of programs now call themselves “trauma-informed” by adding a few nervous system skills and a sprinkle of polyvagal language. That’s fine, but the Realization Process, created by nonduality expert Dr. Judith Blackstone, is something deeper. I’d call it trauma-conscious—because we’re not just managing stress or symptoms of emotional or trauma dysregulation; we’re learning to inhabit consciousness in the body in a way that gently unwinds fragmentation and supports wholeness.
So, we’ll proceed with care for the nervous system, and at the same time, we won’t pretend that embodiment is simply another strategy for symptom management. It is much deeper work than that, which goes way beyond a nervous system response.
We are healing at the level of being itself.
If that sounds like the work you’re hungry for, there’s a place for you here.
As we come to a close in 2025 and begin to step into a New Year, I am reminded of Murray Bowen’s words. He remains one of my greatest mentors and I have studied his work for over two decades. It is remarkable how much i feel he got right and his message still holds today. Real change comes only from steadying ourselves and from there, tolerating otherness.
All of my work embraces this fiercely compassionate stance and is held in helping people differentiate. Differentiation is loving maturity. It’s learning to regulate our own anxious reactions, to take responsibility for our emotions, our moods, our thoughts and our choices. To speak up or choose to disengage or walk away when we are being squashed. But to allow others the dignity of being who they are without needing them to become who we’re more comfortable with. Having a choice in the matter is adulthood.
My hope for the year ahead is: more grounded hearts, more self-ownership, more compassion without emotional fusion, or expectations of others to cater to our demands, and deeper courage to become people who can stay present, unflappable and awake in an uncertain world.
Bowen got so much right. And I’m endlessly grateful for what I continue to still learn from his work. He offered us a path about what it really means to grow up. Not only emotionally, and psychologically, but spiritually.
Here’s to doing our own work this year.
12/17/2025
Final week to save with Holiday Discount—Applies to All Classes and Retreats
Happy Holidays everyone,
I’m sharing the holiday discount code for my upcoming 2026 programs—good through Dec. 24th
Healing Ground course (9 CE credits)
Realization Process In-Person Immersive Retreat
Healing Through Kintsugi: Certified Teacher Training (6 CE credits).
I’m also hosting my FREE First Friday as we hope to have a gentle start to the New Year on January 2, 2026. There’s no cost to attend, but registration is required in order to receive the Zoom link.
If you’d like to join us, or if any of the upcoming trainings speak to you, you can find more details and register here: www.beherenowmindfulness.com then go to
➡️EVENTS page
Holiday Code is good through December 24: HOLIDAY75
12/13/2025
🎄 12 days until Christmas 🎄
Twelve days to slow the pace and unplug.
Our house is already fuller with my kids home from college—and yes, louder and messier. Our son, the sax musician, providing a daily jazz soundtrack I didn’t know I needed. And missed so much!
I’m taking these days to remember that rest isn’t laziness. It’s restoration.
Today there will be baking—cookies, lemon squares, and what we lovingly call Christmas crack. There will be blankets, nowhere to be, and a very intentional Stranger Things binge with my beloved people.
This stretch before the New Year always feels like a time for contemplation. For slowness, examination, reflection and steadiness. And a tender goal planning vision board for what might excite me in 2026. I’m feeling dance classes, or maybe finally learning how to play “She Talks to Angels on the guitar??
And if this season is hard for you, if momentum is still required, or grief, loneliness, illness, or exhaustion are sitting right beside the tree, please know that you are allowed to go gently.
You’re allowed to rest in exactly the shape you’re in. And if ease isn’t available, kindness and connection still is.
May these next twelve days offer even a small pocket of deep rest.
Happy Holidays! From all of us here at Be Here Now! ❤️
12/08/2025
Neuroscience is confirming that our beliefs color, shape, and construct our reality. Our brain is a gigantic prediction machine, trying to keep us safe. This is wonderful. Except when it predicted wrong, or shaped a narrative that wasn’t entirely true. When we remember our past, it is not 100% reliable. Our memory changes, distorts, and shifts through signals we interpreted as safe or unsafe. If we are determined in our drawn conclusions, right or wrong, we adhere to a story that constantly revises who we believe ourselves to be. What fires together, wires together. This is why the psychological self can feel unstable under stress, loss, rejection, failures, or trauma. It’s built on a prediction based on a past event we recall through memory and then interpret, which all shifts over time. The constructed self is fluid. The good news in this is that we are not held prisoners of our past events; we can heal from them and walk forward in our lives with wholeness. But only if we get under this constructed self.
The fundamental self is not fluid. Beneath our thoughts and emotions lies a deeper stratum of self—the I AM. It is a sensation and somatic experience of self that can feel deeply spiritual. It is constant and not changing because it is not a story of self. It is not a role we played. It is a direct, raw experience of self, a pure perception of your existence itself.
If this piques your interest, and you would like to experience this reliable, stable, resilient and confident self, join me:
✨ Healing Ground: 6-week online course (9 Cont. Ed credits) Starts January 14th
✨ The Realization Process Retreat: An Immersive 4-day in-person somatic experience Jan. 29-Feb. 1, 2025
Both teach you how to inhabit the unchanging Self while moving through a changing world. And when people experience it, often they report feeling relief. They are no longer living through the brain’s simulation. And perhaps for a very, very long time, they are contacting the part of themselves that they believed they had lost, or was broken. It isn’t.
12/04/2025
Join us tomorrow for our last First Friday of the year! Friday, December 5, 2025
The cost is free but registration is required to get Zoom link.
Class starts promptly at 8:00 am Eastern
Please arrive a few minutes early to settle.
meditation realizationprocess
12/04/2025
Check out my new creative fiction short story! This story started as a joke about being “old and in the way,” and then, true to form, it turned into something more poignant. A life lesson for me to learn patience once and for all. If you are experiencing the sandwich part of the “sandwich generation,” this story might resonate. Family dynamics strangely carry loss, frustration, and responsibility all in the same pocket. And if you act like you’ve got it together, you will soon trip over the blatant evidence that you don’t.
I’m sharing the flyer below for my upcoming 2026 programs. These offerings support clinicians, helpers, teachers, coaches, and clients who want to deepen their work through somatic embodiment and trauma-conscious practice.
You’ll find the full flyer attached below with dates and details for the Healing Ground course (9 CE credits), the Realization Process In Person Immersive Retreat, and Healing Through Kintsugi: Certified Teacher Training (6 CE credits).
I’m also hosting my FREE First Friday this week on December 5th. It’s an hour practice session offered each month. There’s no cost to attend, but registration is required in order to receive the Zoom link.
If you’d like to join us, or if any of the upcoming trainings speak to you, you can find more details and register here: www.beherenowmindfulness.com , then head to the EVENTS page.
Holiday Code is good through December 25: HOLIDAY75
Warmly, Jen
P.S. Be in touch with your questions.
12/01/2025
I taught my teenage nieces Kintsugi over thanksgiving. I watched them lean in, steady their hands, and paint where the gold goes over the fractures. And it cracked something open in me.
I wanted them to feel, without me saying a word, that repair is the whole of it. That life inevitably breaks something in all of us but it isn’t evidence of failure. It doesn’t mean we did anything wrong. Life is suffering. But there is a path to end the suffering as well.
I told them it was a lesson I wish I’d had at their age: nothing about being human requires pretending you’re unbreakable or perfect. Things fall apart. Hearts get dinged. Confidence chips. But the repair within ourselves is where the strength actually lives. The gold isn’t a cover-up; it’s proof you didn’t stay shattered.
The moment spoke for itself. You can come apart and still be whole.
If even one of them remembers that the next time life hits sideways, every fleck of gold paint stuck to my craft room floor is of course worth it and exactly what it’s there for.
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Be Here Now With Jen posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
When your mind is with your body, you are in the here and now. And if you meet this moment of awareness with curiosity, kindness and non-judgment, You are fully alive.
Be Here Now Mindfulness is dedicated to inspiring, guiding and connecting anyone who wants to explore mindfulness through both science and experience to enjoy better health, happiness, more caring relationships, and a compassionate society.
Be Here Now Mindfulness is based in Metro Atlanta and Marietta, GA founded by Jennifer Chase Finch, M.A., LPC, NBCC, Certified Mindfulness Instructor. I see mindfulness as a unique, practical and profound approach to social change, and my dedication to teach others in the community as a social innovation initiative. My classes and workshops promote individual wellness, healthy relationships, and a more mindful and compassionate community. Mindfulness is entering the mainstream and this presents an historic opportunity to transform ourselves, our children, our communities, our world.
MY MISSION
Be Here Now seeks to help connect the mindfulness community, taking research from the heroic efforts of the leaders in the field to all those new to mindfulness who seek to learn more. This site offers personal stories, news you can use, links to cutting edge research, practical advice, and insights that speak to anyone from novice meditators looking for guidance to corporate managers exploring new ways to cultivate workplace engagement and fulfillment. My classes and workshops teach effective techniques for mindful living, and are based in current neuroscience and psychology that points to their benefits.
Be Here Now Mindfulness offers innovative programs for children, adults, families, schools and businesses in the Marietta, and Metro Atlanta areas. My mindfulness programs help students cultivate attentional training and emotional regulation that can lead to a successful and happy life. My professional development offerings help reduce burnout and promote more effective, creative and insightful resolutions to conflicts and struggles within the work environment. I teach parents how to parent from a calm and compassionate place even amidst the chaos of raising children and balancing all of life.
With mindfulness, we have the capacity to change how we relate to the present moment. We have the power to choose how we respond. We can embrace our reality. We can live mindfully and consciously, instead of reacting from an ego run on auto-pilot that is making decisions from a fear-based, scarcity mentality. In this powerful ability to pause, we become more aware of ourselves, more aware of others and we develop greater compassion. From this cultivated mindfulness, we bring a more loving, healthy, peaceful, joyful and kinder way to living our day-to-day lives.
“Jennifer is an excellent and knowledgable instructor. She taught me how to be kind and loving to myself first and now I can parent my kids from a calm and compassionate place, even when they are pushing all of my buttons."
