My First Title Was Jennifer

I've worked in Washington pretty much all my adult life. Most of my career experiences have been on the Hill. And if you've never worked in that world — the campaigns, the offices, the hallways that feel like they're vibrating with something you can't quite name — I'm not sure I can explain what it does to you. It doesn't feel like work. It feels like something you were made for.

The relationships I built there weren't networking. They weren't strategic. They were forged in proximity and purpose — people who became family because you were together for everything. Late nights and early mornings and the kind of laughter that only happens when you're running on four hours of sleep and the stakes are too high to be scared. That world didn't distinguish between work and life. It was all just... life.

Although that life was fun and rewarding, the stress of it was real. I loved the hustle. I lived for it. But even then, I was finding my own ways to cope — my own ways to recalibrate and reset before I even had language for what I was doing. Some of those habits were good for me. Some of them were not. All of them, in their own way, were a release valve. And some of them invited a little danger too.

It looked like training for a marathon in the middle of the DC Sniper crisis — lacing up my shoes while the city was on edge. It looked like twice-daily workouts, a few entanglements, late nights, and enjoying the DC scene like it belonged to me. And in many ways, it did. I was careful, planful, strategic. I was building my own empire and making decisions with intention, even the quiet ones — like freezing my eggs for optionality. I was curating a life that felt full, ambitious, and entirely mine.

And then life changed anyway.

Not because something was wrong. Not because I was finally ready. Just because it did. I had made room for a future version of myself. Motherhood—yes. Wife—maybe. But life had other plans—the kind that arrive on their own timetable and ask you to become someone new without giving you time to prepare.

What I know now is that who I was then — that woman who trained for a marathon in the middle of a city on high alert, who stayed at the hall party until there was nothing left to stay for, who knew exactly where she stood in every room she walked into — she didn't disappear when my daughters arrived.

She had to reset and recalibrate. I didn't have language for it then—but I do now.

I'm Jennifer M. Stewart. I'm a strategist. I'm a political professional. I am a founder.

I'm also a mother of two girls who, over the last decade, have required me to reset and recalibrate more than once—and I know life will ask it of me again.

I'm still learning—every day—what it means to be all of those things at once.

This is where that conversation starts.

#JenniferMStewart #Motherhood #Womanhood #Reset2Recalibrate