I chased a version of success I never stopped to question. Today, I’m centered in a life I never could have imagined.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been ambitious. By my second year of university, at 19, I was hiring my classmates to work on television shows I was coordinating in Toronto. I loved the pace, the feeling of making things happen. I believed, as many of us do, that if I worked hard enough, and became successful enough, happiness would follow.
I moved to London, was sponsored by a major global media network, and eventually landed in New York to open an office for an ad-tech startup. I had the dream apartment, an incredible professional community, a career on a great track.
And then my body started breaking down.
Years of late nights and client entertaining caught up. At 30, I was diagnosed with fatty liver disease and Hashimoto’s, a lifelong autoimmune thyroid condition. Somewhere between the blood tests and the burnout, I stopped recognizing myself.
Therapy came first. Then yoga. Then sobriety. Ceramics, gardening, cycling. And, unexpectedly, volunteering with local charities.
With all the extra time from no longer spending my weekends hungover on the couch, I started delivering meals to people in their homes and spending time at food banks. A couple of hours a week, nothing grand. But something shifted. The more I gave my time to other people, the more something inside me seemed to flicker, like an old lightbulb turning back on.
I began to see my career differently, too. It wasn’t my coworkers. It was the work itself that started to feel less important. I had spent years climbing toward a version of success I’d never really stopped to question.
Then came Peru.
Between career chapters, I found myself with two months free. I booked a flight, headed to the Sacred Valley, and met people living in the mountains. Peruvians, global travelers, people who seemed dialed into something I knew was there but had yet to see. I was introduced to plant medicine, new ways of seeing, and a world that felt much more alive than the one I’d been moving through.
One night a couple traveling the world told me about a little surf town called Lobitos, on Peru’s northern coast. Remote and difficult to reach, it was a place where artists, surfers, and local fishing families lived alongside one another. It was as alluring as that job offer in New York ten years earlier.
I went.
I stood on the shore of this perfect little cape. I don’t know how to explain what happened next without sounding a little mad. The waves looked so gentle from the shore, so perfectly formed, long and fluffy like clouds. I had to be with them. I had to feel them. They were calling me.
This was my first real introduction to Mother Ocean. She saw me in her shallow waters, but didn’t stop for me. You can’t force a wave to break. You can’t control it. As these long perfect mushy waves crashed into me with remarkable force, I quickly learned, if you want to be here, you have to learn to read, to flow, to surrender, and only then will she carry you.
This was my sign to surf.
Just as with yoga, ceramics, and cycling, I could feel the sensation of doing the thing before I’d ever been on the mat, the wheel, the bike. I watched the surfers in the distance, and I could feel what they were feeling. I think I fell in love with surfing even before my first lesson. For the first time in a long time, I felt clear, curious and energized.
When my job in New York called me back to the office, a month later, I turned it down. There was more here to explore. Whether that meant exploring more of myself or the community around me, I had no idea. But my intuition was beating louder and louder, more stubbornly than ever before.
STAY.
It was such clear, focused alignment, almost like I was possessed. I looked around and saw a community I would happily contribute to. Easy. But how?
I wanted to create something meaningful, something for me and for others, and find a way to bring all the different parts of myself into one place. Without all the reasons or rationale, it manifested. After meeting with local leaders, meeting friends, finding the gaps the concept of a cafe kept surfacing. For one, there was no espresso machine in town and that seemed like a huge miss, in a country with the world's best coffee. But on top of that, cafes play such a huge role in my life. They're beacons in every city I've ever lived in. They're refuges, places to converse, points of stimulation. At the foundation of the cafe, we could go in so many amazing directions. We opened 6 weeks after the idea crystalized.
La Onza means The Ounce in Spanish. It was a nod to the measurement used in a cup of coffee, but also to something small: like the spark that had been ignited in me at this early stage in my journey. The cafe would be a place for ideas, food, creativity, and connection. A thatched-roof hub, with free Wifi, where the wider world met a fiercely local community of artists, explorers, and artisanal fishing families. It was a way for me to express the parts of myself that had never quite fit into a job description.
The act of creating the space, in northern Peru, took real, old-school, human connection. Conversations with suppliers, not just clicks on Amazon. No formal delivery services, no reliable websites, no tracking, not even street addresses. Just guys with trucks bombing through the desert to the coast with your stuff.
Under the sink in our cafe, a bucket caught drainage water, which we dumped into the plants and dusty street every couple of hours. From the buckets to the kilos of coffee beans, everything was physically demanding, a stark contrast from the 8+ hours per day I had previously spent at my desk.
I was drinking from a fire hose of life, only this time it was full of nourishment (and coffee). Between surfing and cafe shifts over a year, I was changing. Then came the next wave of clarity: you have to share this with people back home.
I always thought about my ex-colleagues, freezing in the air conditioning on hot summer days in Manhattan, eating $20 soggy salads with plastic forks, looking out over a bluebird day they would entirely miss inside.
I knew other people, who were seeing the cracks in the illusion of success might imagine out in the distance, a lighthouse above the skyscrapers. A beacon in some far-off, seemingly untouched land, promising a gathering of good people, doing good things in nature, leaving a positive impact.
La Onza Experiences was born.
This was the final piece of the universe I wanted to live in, and share with others. It was just too good to keep to myself. Experiences centered around physical wellness, nature, and meaningful contribution, reminding us that we find so much of ourselves through our connection to others. Physical, nature-based activities, fully immersed in the ocean and mountains. Movement through yoga, nourishment through some of the best food in the world. Nothing new-agey, no fluffy promises, just genuine human connection in very rad environments.
A year into Experiences, two years into the Cafe. I had met hundreds of extraordinary people. I had even fallen in love. I had the joy of hosting my family from Canada, and my partner’s from Lima in Lobitos. I seemed to be living in a warm glowing ball of sunshine, my new metric for success, when perhaps fittingly, we got pregnant.
Overcome with emotion, and barely having processed this new light bubbling inside of me, Mother Ocean started speaking again. The forecasts were showing signs of a Super El Niño, threatening the very place that had changed my life with flooding, disrupted roads and water access, plagues of insects and disease, followed later, possibly by epic waves. She would wipe it out, re-set it all.
What had once been a resounding STAY was now an undeniable GO.
This sacred space, temporarily, would no longer be safe, at least not in the very early days of our family. I considered keeping it open, and looked at how to make it all work, but then I thought about our thatched roof, our small community that would narrow even further without road access. And just how enduring the whole set up was. The safety for me to give birth nearby, the safety of the child.
We closed the cafe, for now.
Our physical portal between worlds, softly shut. But perhaps this is what life keeps teaching me: loving something deeply doesn’t always mean it stays in the same form. La Onza lives on through Experiences and our deep values to leave a positive impact on the communities of these deserving remote places.
Three years ago, I was measuring my life by the things I was told would make me happy. Today, what makes me happy is miles away from what I had. I’m a wife, soon-to-be mother, business owner, sister, auntie, daughter, surfer, yogi, and perpetual student of life, and I've never felt more successful.
Next year, for the first time, we’ll explore beyond Lobitos, taking our retreats first to Nicaragua in Central America. From there, back to Peru to Chicama, the world’s longest left-hand wave, and the Andes to Machu Picchu. Our team will be a bit bigger, and our eyes will always be on Lobitos, biding our time until we can safely return.
For now, I’m basking in this light, and the realization that my greatest fulfillment comes from deciding what a successful life looks like. We travel to find ourselves, but sometimes we find ourselves by becoming part of something beyond the self. When that clarity hits and doors start opening, I hope you have the courage to walk through them too.
Jenna
