The Political Life She Had to Rewrite: Jen Thompson on Waking Up, Walking Away, and Writing Wild Pivot
Jen Thompson spent her early career doing everything right, at least by the standards she'd been raised on. Working as a congressional lawyer and campaign strategist, she rose fast, worked constantly, and built a life that looked enviable from the outside. What it wasn't, she says, was hers. It took a near-fatal car accident on the campaign trail to force the reckoning she'd been outrunning for years.
That reckoning became Wild Pivot: Notes from a Political Life Rewritten, published by She Writes Press, a memoir nearly two decades in the making and, as she puts it, both a brave exploration of the cost of telling the truth and a raw personal reflection from a woman who walked away from a powerful political identity to discover her authentic self. The book moves between past and present, mixing painful, jarring detail with the kind of self-deprecating humor she says got her through the hardest parts of unwiring old loyalties.
Now Chief of Staff at the University of Redlands and writing weekly on Substack to a fast-growing readership, Jen talks here about why she finally told this story, what she hopes readers recognize in it, and what she's already thinking about writing next.
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Q: What inspired you to write Wild Pivot?
Like so many of us, I am a woman who was taught by both example and conditioning to become someone totally contrary to the woman I actually am – on a soul level, I mean. I was raised as a Christian Conservative Republican, and for many years, I worked as a lawyer in the U.S. Congress and campaign politics promoting those values. I rose quickly, making lots of money and gaining power, and I craved more of both. I dedicated my early life to achieving as much success as I could at any cost – literally.
In those days, I worked around the clock, including weekends, holidays – even on Christmas. What I never did was listen. Looking back, I see how deeply I ignored what I call my own inner knowing for years and even decades. The careful curation of my life looked so enviable; aspirational even. I plowed through to promote that image. My soul, however, was screaming. It took a car accident that nearly killed me on the campaign trail to finally get me to wake up.
Wild Pivot is about what it meant for me to wake up – and what happened after. The thread of the book is the very pivotal U.S. Senate campaign that I ran, but the themes explore the messy process of personal and political transformation.
I've been writing Wild Pivot for the better part of twenty years. I was inspired to begin writing as a way to work through my own demons. As I wrote the book, though, I realized how many of us, and particularly women, have faced the same issues I have even though our stories are different. Too often, we get on the treadmills of our lives and never stop, and then we wonder why and how we got so wildly off course from where we wished we were or where we thought we would be.
I was driven to write as honestly as I could about the forces that caused this to happen to me, and to show that there is a way back home to our true selves – as disruptive and difficult as that can be.
Q: What problem are you hoping to help readers work through?
We are all wired in certain ways by our upbringing and circumstances. The saying goes that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and if that is true, I think I am the posterchild! Through a series of very difficult events that forced me into a reckoning with my own self, I discovered that my wiring conflicted deeply with the person I am at my core.
As unique as my story is – the excitement of politics on the campaign and in Congress, my world travels, the people I've met -- I've found that it really is not that unique at all. Each of us has a story about how we ended up somewhere – a job, a marriage, a life – that does not fit with who we are. As women, so many of us wake up one day and think, How on earth did I end up here?
Wild Pivot is about how blind loyalty develops and shapes a woman over time, how glorious it feels to be a celebrated member of a powerful group, and what happens when we finally find the courage to rediscover who we are. It is also a story about grappling with my past and trying to reconcile who I was with who I am now.
The central issues of Wild Pivot are relevant to almost every woman I know. Who am I? What do I stand for? Is it enough that my life looks good on the outside, even if I'm falling apart on the inside?
Unwiring myself from my political, religious and personal values was a harrowing process that took decades. I made a lot of mistakes. Wild Pivot travels back and forth in time through vignettes between my past and present with painful lessons described in raw, jarring detail. But it is also funny, because I believe that laughing at myself is a very powerful medicine. And believe me, there is a lot to laugh about.
In the end, Wild Pivot is meant to be a memoir of hope. Although there are huge risks in stepping away from the image we've created for ourselves and daring to forge a path authentic to our own lives, the rewards in so doing are immeasurable. We become free to live as ourselves and lift others up at the same time.
Q: What's next for you?
For the next few months, I will be out promoting my book and that's really exciting for me. I used to be a TV political commentator, and it will be fun to flex those muscles again. About a year ago, I started a Substack. I publish essays every Saturday to get my writing out there, and wow, that's been a lot of work, but rewarding! I started last August with 16 followers, and over 1400 people follow me now, so I'm excited to keep going with that. On Substack, I write about all this stuff I talk about here – rewiring, courage, and being true to ourselves.
I have worked as a Chief of Staff since my political days, and I'm now Chief of Staff at the University of Redlands in Southern California. I love my job! I have two teenage sons, the oldest of whom will be starting college this fall. My plate is very full, and I'm juggling all the things and hoping to keep the balls at least somewhat in the air!
I'm also starting to think about writing my next book. I have a lot of ideas and I'm seeing where they lead me.
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