By her early twenties Jen was living the dream. A successful Police Officer earning a near six-figure salary, a nice home and a solid five year relationship living with her partner. Yet a gnawing feeling deep within, left her empty and sometimes as dark at the nightly patrols she’d go out on into society’s underbelly.

Driven by a passion for challenge and a desire to help others, Jen joined the force when she was 21. She worked a hundred miles a minute, physically and emotionally, training until she threw up, eventually making a name for herself and getting promoted.

But she couldn’t shake her love of nature, yoga and meditation, all the things that did answer her deep within. Something didn’t quite feel right, the way she’d thought it would. Jen had a forever dream since she was a child to be in nature with dolphins. And in 2013, after she graduated from the Police Academy and enduring months on patrol, she treated herself to two weeks at WildQuest. She craved time away from the adrenaline, to gain some clarity & make peace with her unsettled feelings.

On Bimini, she found her power place, “It’s so special energetically. I get so emotional even thinking back on that time”, she explains, fighting back tears. “The first time in the water, swimming with the dolphins, I sensed their unconditional love. For the first time ever in my life I felt like a human being, not a human doing”.

Jen sighs with relief recalling the bliss of coming back to her inner self, immersed in nature. “I relaxed into who I really am,” and all the old structures came tumbling down. “It was weird, we were doing a throat chakra meditation in the beach house and I just started coughing uncontrollably.  Then I just cried for two hours, bawling all the pent up emotions I’d been carrying, and the stress I didn’t even know I had”. Swimming with the dolphins catapulted Jen into her own ocean of inner calm.  She’d never been so clear in her life. She knew what she had to do.

Back in Edmonton, the medium sized city that is the provincial capital of Alberta, Canada, everything began to change. The first step to transformation came with making the difficult decision to leave her relationship of five years, move into her own place and focus on soul-searching.

A year later came she took on a meditation certification program that confirmed she was moving in the right direction, followed by a synchronistic match with the new love of her life, her former police partner on patrol, who “completely supports my ambition to do meaningful work in this world”.

She’d found her real deep inner passion. And the police force no longer fit. “It took me about two years after my awakening in Bimini to build up the courage to finally leave. It was terrifying because I handed in my badge, my gun and waved goodbye to everything I’d worked so hard for, for years. Leaving the police was like leaving my tribe”.

Determined to build a new life around what she loved, Jen began working part time at the local zoo, taking care of the seals and sea lions, red pandas, lemurs and owls. She was in her element.

Jen took herself off to Bali for a month and a half to study with yoga teacher Eoin Finn whose yoga videos she’d been practicing to since she was sixteen. Finn’s Blissology philosophy is a gentle yoga combined with a connection to nature, healthy food and inner exploration. “I took the yoga teacher training for myself, I had no plans to teach,” she laughs.

Then came the chance to start Zen at the Zoo, teaching yoga in a room where you could see the otters swimming at the same time. She soon built a loyal following, twenty five people coming every week to stretch, do intuitive card readings and energy work. Jen’s yoga practice was soon doing well, teaching classes one on one, coaching, workshops and retreats.

Since that defining moment of leaving the police force in 2015, Jen set off on her own path. Her company The Intuitive Mermaid was born, where Jen shows others how to reconnect to their inner self, a way to make choices from the heart, to take care of mind and body and trust their intuition.

Her goal is to help others through meditation, yoga and intuitive guidance to find their inner calling and dig into fear that holds them back. “It’s so liberating walking the talk and trusting your own intuition,” she smiles. 

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