As a teenager, I’d sit on my bed flipping through glossy magazines, fascinated and completely absorbed by the empowering stories about women. The news felt dominated by men, but magazines seemed to offer a different world — one where women’s lives, bodies, careers, and opinions were worthy of entire pages. I knew from an early age I wanted to help bring more of those stories to life.
In 2012, after studying journalism at Northeastern University, I moved to New York City as quickly as I could, interning at Ladies’ Home Journal and Self, then gravitating toward parenting publications including What To Expect, American Baby, and Fit Pregnancy.
Motherhood fascinated me long before I became a mother. It was the same intrigue and interest that drew me to magazines — the power of women, what their bodies could do, and the enormity of the identity shift involved in raising a child. Writing about pregnancy and parenting somehow felt very natural to me, even when I understood both mostly in theory.
Courtesy of Jenn Sinrich
I loved editing, but I wanted to write
Working at magazines wasn’t quite how I’d imagined it from my childhood bedroom. I loved editing: finding the heart of a story, moving pieces around, and helping a writer say what they were trying to say. My boss, Mindy, was one of the first people to make me believe that my creativity and instincts were worth trusting. She taught me nearly everything I knew about shaping a narrative.
But I also began to feel restless. I was putting so much of myself into stories that ultimately ran under somebody else’s name. I longed for that authorship and craved the terrifying privilege of starting with a blank page, figuring out what I had to say, and hoping it might matter to even one reader.
Mindy warned me that freelancing would be hard. I believed her and quit anyway. I had just gotten engaged, was planning a wedding, and was already thinking about having children. I also knew that if I kept waiting to feel established enough to become a writer, I might spend my entire career editing other people’s work.
Courtesy of Jenn Sinrich
I was scared to give up a steady paycheck, especially while planning a wedding and thinking about starting a family. Dan, my now-husband, understood the risk but supported me taking the chance. Neither of us knew whether I could make a sustainable living on my own; I only knew I would regret it if I didn’t try.
The transition happened faster than I expected. Within the first few months, I had more assignments than I knew what to do with, partly because leaving my 9-to-5 meant I could attend daytime events, meet editors, and build relationships that led to more work. My income still varied from month to month, but it was far steadier than I had feared. By my second year of freelancing, I was writing at an almost ridiculous pace for around 20 magazines and websites and earning nearly four times the roughly $30,000 salary I’d once made as an editorial assistant.
My career became so much bigger after I left my staff job, but it looked so different from what I could have imagined.
Moving home changed the picture completely
Life started looking even more different in 2018, about a year after I began freelancing, when my husband lost his job. Because I didn’t have employer-sponsored health insurance of my own, I had been covered through his job, so we lost coverage along with his paycheck. Our lease was also ending, and we wanted to start a family. Leaving New York suddenly felt less like giving something up and more like the only decision that made sense.
We moved to my hometown north of Boston, where my parents and oldest friends still lived. I became a mom the following spring, April 2019. Less than a year later, COVID turned the world upside down, and there wasn’t a single person whose life looked the way they had imagined it.
My working life went from events, meetings, and crowded New York sidewalks to writing alone in the corner of a small, old house, albeit with an ocean view. There were no coworkers nearby, no glossy proofs circulating, and no one across the desk to bounce an idea off. There was just me, my laptop, my cat, and, during several stretches, a pregnant belly.
Courtesy of Jenn Sinrich
My hardest experiences became part of my work
Motherhood was so different from what I’d imagined, and so was my path through it. While trying to grow my family, I suffered two miscarriages, which drastically changed the way I understood pregnancy, loss, and the motherhood journey in its entirety. I was so fortunate to have two healthy pregnancies afterward, but I couldn’t shake everything the process had shown me.
I was inspired more than ever to create — to bring to life the kinds of platforms and communities I’d needed myself. I co-founded Miscarriage Movement, to make pregnancy loss feel less isolating, as well as The Mother Chapter to talk honestly about motherhood, identity, mental health, and ambition. Neither platform was part of a careful business plan. Both grew from experiences and questions I couldn’t leave alone.
My career today looks nothing like the one I imagined as a teenager. I miss parts of New York and the collective energy of a magazine office. Freelancing can still be unpredictable, and running my own platforms means the work is never exactly finished. But I get to write, edit, create, and build something that belongs to me. I’m also close to my parents and present for the small, ordinary parts of my children’s lives.
The magazines on my childhood bed made me want to tell women’s stories. All these years later, that’s still very much what I’m doing. I just couldn’t have imagined where I’d be doing it — or how much of my own life would eventually find its way onto the page.
