Hi everyone!

Regular readers and subscribers who’ve been with me for a while (and pre-Substack!) know that I'm always one to change things up a bit. I’m the girl who swapped out our Christmas wreath maybe four times last year. This might have been excessive.

So, consider this a spring clean of sorts—a shift of Substack furniture, maybe?

The newsletter stays the same, but the content will now fall into sections.

At the website, I hope this will make it easier for you to find content you’re looking for more quickly.

Going forward, too, when you get a new post (by email or in the app), it’ll be clear, at a glance, what section it falls under.

All in one place

When it comes to writing, I know the platform pros say it’s all about the niche, with good reason, but this has always been a tricky one for me. My background is as a lifestyle journalist and freelance features writer, which has covered a lot of different areas.

I started out doing movie reviews for a UK teen weekly. Film is, hands-down, my first love. It’s why, even when I was a features writer on a health and fitness title, I found a way to interview actors and actresses by asking them how they worked out for specific roles (but always went off-topic …).

I then fell into writing on health, beauty and wellbeing when a magazine needed someone to interview a hair care guru at Harrods (cue more of the same for others, with lots of interviews with actresses about their wellbeing habits. Are you seeing a theme here?).

When my children were little, I wrote a lot about motherhood and family for a range of glossies and online.

Home is a topic I love reading and writing about—not on design, but from the perspective of what it means to be home and to feel that we belong.

This is especially close to my heart, having came home to my family through the gift of adoption, as a baby. I first wrote about my story for British Vogue, years ago, and I’ve shared more here, too.

I still write about all these things.

Increasingly, I’ve written more about the intersection of family and faith, and, over the last year, I’ve covered the challenges of caring for my beloved parents and our family’s journey with my mother’s memory loss. I’ve been so touched and humbled by the response in the comments, direct messages and on Instagram (I’ve taken a break there for a while, but I’ll let you know here as and when I hop back in).

If you’ve ever told me that something I’ve written here has resonated, or shared a story of your own (I’m humbled), thank you. Thank you SO much.

But woven through all these non-niched categories is a common thread: the stories that connect us.

“Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.”

―Saint Augustine

I love this quote on connection by St Augustine.

As I start to devote more of my writing (and reading!) time here, it felt right to split posts into sections. I value your time and inbox space and only want to send you posts that are of interest to you. I love that Substack offers this kind of flexibility for writers and readers.

Here’s how I’ve split things (for now!), but I’ll tweak and add to sections as we go:

* Motherhood

* On Home

* My Adoption Story

* Faith Notes

* Life + Style

* Family

* Podcast

As ever, THANK YOU, so much for reading and being here. I hope you like the new look and format, and—a small favour!—if you like what I’m doing in this little corner of Substack, would you help me to get the word out even more and share this newsletter? Thank you so much!

If I could, I’d split a Danish with you.

Thanks for reading Jen's Place! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Housekeeping/tech stuff:

When you subscribe to the newsletter, you’ll automatically receive all posts (as it’s always been). However, email subscribers can now tick or untick specific sections. You just need to be logged in to Substack, then go to your Account Settings, find Jen’s Place and curate your feed in Email Notifications.

I really hope that works, anyway! I 100% rely on Substack’s under-the-bonnet genius to make it all happen. (If something doesn’t, just shout! I’ll ask Will to help and he’ll tell me to stop pressing buttons. No, seriously, do let me know and I’ll get onto it.)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jennibadenhoward.substack.com