Attorney wellness seems like a trend, but until recently, lawyers had few obvious resources to deal with stress and burnout from this challenging career. Law professor and wellness coach Janet Thompson Jackson is working to change that. A pivotal experience with a struggling law student opened her eyes to the urgent need for better wellness support. In this episode of The Legal Department, Janet explores the 5 domains of wellness, how to manage expectations, the importance of regular check-ins to balance your well-being, and why lawyer assistance programs go beyond substance abuse. She also introduces a powerful tool designed to provide essential legal wellness resources. Janet’s warmth and expertise make this conversation both insightful and encouraging—you won’t want to miss her inspiring journey toward improving legal wellness for lawyers like you.
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Listen to the podcast here
Wellness In The Legal Department: Janet Thompson Jackson, CEO Paraplu Wellness And Founder Of The Well-Law App
Introduction To Attorney Wellness
My name is Janet Thompson Jackson. I’m the CEO of Paraplu Wellness and Well-Law, as well as being a yoga teacher, wellness coach, and meditation guide. A fun fact about me is that our family was on House Hunters International.
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On this episode, I’m excited to welcome Janet Thompson Jackson. She is the CEO of Paraplu Wellness and Well-Law. She’s been a law professor for many years. She’s spent a lot of time focusing on the wellness space, including being a master yoga teacher, among other things. We’re going to talk about attorney wellness and strategies for coping with the immense stress we all carry with us as lawyers.
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Janet, how are you?
I am doing great, and it’s so good to be here. Thanks for asking me.
Thank you so much. I didn’t mention it, but you also hosted a show on PBS for many years, too. I appreciate your being gracious with an amateur host like myself.
You’re a pro.
I hope I can learn from you. This is not a career journey show, but we mentioned you’re a law professor. I know you ran a nonprofit for a while and have done a lot of things in the traditional legal world, and now you are into wellness as a core part of your career. I’m curious about how you got into wellness and dove in as that is the main focus of your life these days.
It is quite a story because it happened quite organically. It wasn’t a plan of mine. In a way, it surprised me as much as anyone else. What happened was I was always into fitness. I’ve been a runner all my life. Health and fitness have always been important to me, but the way that I got involved in wellness, in the legal field is to let me be honest and say that I was always an anxious person. My mother described me one time, years ago, as a serious-minded child. I remember being a little bit uptight. When I was younger, by the time I reached law school, I was a fully anxious person. I had the experience in law school of my father dying.
That increased my stress and my anxiety, and I did what a lot of law students do and a lot of people do. I compartmentalized all that and kept on going, and then I practiced and ran a nonprofit organization. I started teaching adjuncts at the time I was running the nonprofit. That was a really wonderful experience. It let me know that I wanted to teach full-time. I started teaching full-time as a tenure track professor at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. I was teaching property and race in the law and running a small business in the nonprofit clinic. I noticed, especially in property, that because these were first-year, first-semester students, students would come in to talk about the exam or something they didn’t understand in class.
Meditation And Coaching In Law Schools
I started to realize that I am looking back at a version of myself when I was in law school. I’m looking back at someone who is incredibly stressed and anxious about how it was interfering. I could tell it was interfering with their day-to-day life and absolutely interfering with their studies and perspective. I found opportunities to start talking to students, not about the exam, their paper or something like that, or even in the clinic, their case, but how’s it going? Tell me about your biggest challenge right now that has opened up this whole world. It opened up a lot, but what it led to was first my holding meditation sessions at Washburn.
Once a week, I, and sometimes another colleague of mine would be in a room and hold meditation sessions, and then students started coming to me more and more just to talk, to get perspective and to dump a little bit. One day, and this was shortly before COVID at this time, I was on the phone with one of my students who was having a little bit of a difficult time. I got off the phone and I said to my husband, “I should be a wellness coach,” then I thought, “Is that even a thing?” I googled it and I said, “A wellness coach is a thing,” then COVID hit for me. It was an opportunity. I was like everybody else, stuck in one space in my home. I took that opportunity to go through a program.
It took me almost a year to go through a wellness coaching certification program. Part of that program was, coming up with a project. My signature project was called Wellness and Law at the time, and it turned into Well-Law. My yoga, meditation, and all of these things that I saw as separate from what I did in the legal profession and law school became part and parcel of what I was doing. I started integrating this into my classes then I started holding workshops for other faculty and staff.
I bet there was a flood of people coming forward. I don’t want to say trendy, but in the last few years, there’s been more awareness and talk generally about wellness. I want to talk about that first student that you had that interaction with. Maybe this is generational, I’m a Gen X-er, but I’ve always felt, especially as a lawyer, that I’ve got to keep that persona up. “Everything’s okay. If I’m suffering, grin and bear it, get through it.” I wondered whether you felt like that was a generational thing that students came forward or even asking the question, “How are things going?” is it a different perspective? “How much are you studying? Did you did you get your outline done?”
It is different. I would say I now see that for some people, that may have felt really risky because I started doing this even before I was tenured. As people who go through that process, no, or any promotion process like trying not to do a lot to rock the boat and meet expectations. As a clinical professor, I felt a little bit more leeway to reach my students. I was willing to take the risk of being seen differently and maybe even being perceived as not as serious. That was absolutely the perception that some people had.
They had a perception you were serious or not as serious.
I’m not a serious scholar because I am out here doing meditation with students. I am doing workshops on wellness, even though I was bringing in data. This is what’s happening to law students. This is what’s happening in your first ten years of law practice. These are the statistics, and the people who gather them are highly regarded, but the people at that time who were putting it into practice were not so much.
It was a little risky, but I will tell you that I realized pretty quickly that reaching, helping people, and in the context of law school and law students at the time, helping law students, helping my colleagues to be well, to embrace wellness, and this is going to sound a little bit woo-woo but to love themselves. This is the reason that I’m actually here.
That’s amazing that you stuck with that calling.
It was a calling. That’s a really good way of putting it.
As you said, it’s risky at the time because it wasn’t as talked about as it is now. I want to zero in on when you say wellness, and I do think that, in law, there can be an overemphasis on the technical. You’ve got your CLEs, you’re up on all of the latest developments in your field, etc., and other than your classes, I think less of a focus on professional skills. I talked about this with Scott Westfall and Dina Denham Smith about how you conduct yourself in the workplace if you are not feeling well, if you can’t manage that anxiety, those emotions, you don’t feel good. It doesn’t matter how technically savvy you are, you’re not going to be successful.
I think that what happens is people, “Fake it until you make it or just fake it.” You may not even ever feel like you’re making it. Just fake it, “Can I continue to get through? Can I soldier on?” I know that because I did that, I experienced that. That was my lived experience. Particularly for the six years that I practiced before I became a nonprofit executive, but also when I started all over again when I started my tenure track, it was the same thing. It’s that proving yourself and pushing through. When I started my job at Washburn, I was pregnant. I gave birth to my daughter in December. I had been there for four months or something.
That wasn’t the plan, but I was very happy about it and then I experienced postpartum depression. What I didn’t realize is that I was experiencing some mental health challenges toward the end of my pregnancy, and I didn’t get help. I thought I could handle it on my own, and I also wanted to meet expectations. That almost had devastating effects for me. It’s not that I had this experience of what does it mean to be well, and I just did it. I was there and I arrived. No. I have come to this through my own struggles.
That makes a difference. You’ve been there and done that. In the episode I referenced with Dina Denham Smith, she talks about emotional labor that you do at work or as a leader. One of the things she talks about is holding it in. Trying to meet expectations, as you said earlier, when you were deciding whether you would push more into this wellness as your central focus where you’re trying to keep it together, “Don’t rock the boat. Look like everyone else. I’ve got it together.”
Defining Legal Wellness
There is labor in that. She talked about how we can only do that for so long, and we might lash out. We might exhibit behaviors that stymie our careers. They may be harmful to us, as you were you were talking about. To get ahead of that, can we talk about when we say wellness, when you say wellness and your wellness coach, what does that mean?
I want to say wellness is very subjective. What wellness means to me can be completely different than what it means to you. In fact, there’s something in the Well-Law program called the Personal Wellness Plan. It’s a foundational tool that we use. The first question is, “How do I define wellness?” How does each person who’s doing this define wellness?
I believe wellness is a spectrum, and it is a state of being that’s moving toward thriving. I think that our bodies holistically want to thrive. Where are we on this spectrum? Thriving, for me, again, may look very different than thriving for you. As an example, I am feeling not 100% right now. I ask myself every morning, and I encourage people to ask themselves every morning, “What do I need to feel well today?”
Wellness is not a one-size-fits-all. Each of us must define what thriving looks like in our lives and seek out the resources that fit our needs. Share on XWhat well means today can be different than what it meant yesterday or tomorrow. What I might need today is a nap and tomorrow it could be something completely different. In this state of being, where am I in the spectrum toward thriving? Wellness is more than the absence of illness. It is how I define my state of being in, I like to say, the five domains of wellness, physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional, relational and material. Within those five domains, some people have 8 domains and some people have 6. We have five domains of wellness, “Where am I on the spectrum of wellness, going toward thriving?”
Do people have different needs in those five? Could I be somebody who really needs relationship relational wellness, but physical wellness is personal, what your mix is on those?
Absolutely. Not only is it personal, but your personal wellness quotient in each of those areas changes. I may be going through a phase in my life where my relational wellness is, “I’m thriving in that area.” Maybe in my emotional/spiritual area, I’m thriving. Maybe in my physical wellness, “I’m okay. I’m not great.” There are some things that I can do to move toward the end of the spectrum of thriving. Not only is it very personal and subjective within our own lives, it changes. There are circumstances in our lives all the time.
If you’re in practice, if you’re a litigator and you’re getting ready for a big case, you’re not going to be sleeping as much. You’re going to have stress levels that are different than when you’re on vacation. Your relational wellness may take a little bit of a hit during a time when you’re working 12 or 14 hours a day. I’d like to fold into that when we talk about work-life balance, which I don’t believe in.
Ask yourself daily: ‘What do I need to feel well today?’ Wellness is a daily journey, not a destination. Share on XI hate that. I also hate that in every panel that I’m on, people ask me, “You’re a working mom. Tell me about work-life balance.” It’s a trigger warning for me.
I don’t believe in it. What I talk about is harmony. What I mean by that is even thinking of a beautiful musical piece that has crescendos and loud music, even sounds chaotic. The other parts of the musical piece are quiet and soothing. Our lives are the same way. We’re going to have times when there’s chaos, when we’re not getting sleep. It doesn’t mean that our lives are out of balance. What it means is that we need to look ahead and plan for a time when it’s going to be a quieter time. We need to help to create harmony in our lives. I don’t know about you, but there is rarely a time in my life when there is a balance of all of these different areas of my life.
It's not about balance, it's about harmony. Life will have chaotic moments, but we can create spaces of calm to bring ourselves back. Share on XI like the idea of every day I’m asking myself, “What do I need to feel today?” It’s an in-the-moment thing. What else can folks do?
I think that self-awareness is a huge part of it because what I find working with people is that there is a lack of awareness, especially with lawyers, law students, and high-functioning people who use their brains in their work and what’s happening above the neck is really important. There is a disconnect a lot of times of what we’re feeling in our bodies.
When someone says to me, “I feel stressed. I feel overwhelmed,” I say, “What does that feel like in your body?” They look at me like I have two heads like, “What are you talking about? I just feel stressed.” I think it’s important to ask yourself what you need now to feel well, but also start to make connections between how you’re feeling and what is happening in your body related to that so that you can start to even anticipate.
For instance, if I’m feeling really overworked, when I get stressed, overworked, overwhelmed and I have too much on my plate, it used to be that I would get to that point and it’s like, “What am I going to do?” I would start freaking out. I have a history of an eating disorder. For me, what that led to was binging. It wasn’t until I was in the binge, literally trying to stuff everything back down in the binge that I realize, “I’m already there and now I have to walk myself off of the precipice.” I start to feel that feeling of overwhelm.
What I realize is that, “I feel a knot in my stomach before I ever have the conscious awareness that I’m overwhelmed.” I’m starting to pay attention to, “I’m feeling a knot in my stomach. What does that mean? I’m feeling my throat close up.” That’s a signal to me. There’s a message. I promise you, your body is always going to send you a message of what’s happening with you emotionally. A lot of times, that signal is going to come before you have a conscious awareness of your emotional state.
Setting Boundaries For Wellness
It’s great advice. You are very good at being very concrete about what people call mindfulness, being aware I had an experience of this a couple of years ago, maybe since I’ve been in Santa Barbara, where I would, on the weekends, get very irritated with the family. In thinking about it, and I don’t know which of the pillars this falls into, but what I realized was I wasn’t setting good boundaries with them. Work is obviously very demanding, and I’m someone I, which I realized that with some self-reflection, I need a little bit of time just for me.
I get up very early. I spend some time in the morning, and I found that setting those boundaries with the children that like, “This is mom’s time,” helped me. I would not be irritated with them later in the day because I had filled my tank. We talked about walking through what your feelings are, but I was like, “My chest got tight, and then I felt angry when they would interrupt something I was doing,” thinking about it, I realized that I wasn’t setting boundaries for me.
We can set boundaries in each of those five domains. I have an exercise. What’s funny is that I taught a class on boundary setting for upper-level students who are going to be mentors to incoming students. This is where I am in the faculty of law. It was really interesting because they really didn’t have a lot of experience in setting boundaries.
What I tell them is that, “You can look at what physical boundaries might I need in the area of my physical health,” and sometimes the boundaries or boundaries that we set with our ourselves. One of the things about boundaries is that our boundaries are there to protect us. It’s not to control anyone else’s behavior. We cannot control what someone else is going to do. We cannot control what someone else is going to say and how they’re going to behave, but we can set up boundaries to protect ourselves.
There was a quote that I mentioned that a mental health professional said, “Everything, even at a cellular level, every living thing has created boundaries to protect to protect itself or ourselves.” I thought, “That’s really profound.” For every living thing, whether it’s a plant or a cell in our bodies, boundaries are created.
Creating boundaries is a natural thing. It’s uncomfortable for us a lot of times. We went through all the reasons why people don’t set boundaries because we’re afraid of what other people are going to think. We don’t want to make a fuss. We don’t think people are going to honor them anyway. However, if we see boundaries as an act of self-care, and of self-responsibility and an act to protect ourselves so that we can show up for other people as our best selves, then maybe it’s something that we’ll take more seriously and engage in.
Recognizing The Need For Support
I saw it as something I was doing for wellness because, without those boundaries, I was running myself too thin. I wasn’t giving myself a chance to recharge. You mentioned earlier about high achievers and that drive. I wanted to delve into that. I think that is a common trait in lawyers and law students certainly. Achievement used to be one of my top goals, actually being an achiever, and then I realized that achieving for achievement purposes is dumb, but we can take it too far. As you’re saying, drive yourself over the edge. I love the idea of being self-aware and checking in with yourself on a regular basis, but how can folks recognize when they need support for wellness?
I want to talk about high achievers. I tell students and I tell faculty because they hear me talking about wellness, and they’re like, “We don’t want students to think they don’t have to work hard.” I’m like, “It’s our job to push people to their intellectual limits in law school. We can do that in a way that supports students at the same time and supports their wellness.” How do people know that is getting in touch with how am I feeling? People generally know when they are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or irritable. You talked about being irritable.
That’s a symptom for me.
Me too. I’m overeating or I’m undereating. We have to pay attention to what our body is telling us. “I’m drinking more than I normally would. I’m self-medicating it in some other way. I am binge-watching TV because that’s maybe a way of escape, gaming or engaging in other activities that I normally wouldn’t, or I normally wouldn’t at this extreme, at this level. I’m crying for no reason.” Instead of accepting that, “This is what I’m doing right now,” part of that self-care, self-responsibility is checking in and saying, “Does this feel normal to me? Does this feel okay to me? Does this feel like something that I want to continue on this path?”
Being conscious is what you’re saying. It’s funny you say binge-watching TV because that is of the spectrum of all the pyramid of things you could do. It feels pretty innocuous until you realize after you stare at a screen for four-plus hours, there’s not much there anymore.
The realization is I’m doing it to avoid doing something else, or it’s the same thing as looking at your Instagram, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I do it, too. If you realize, “I’ve spent the last six hours pretty much on social media, is how I want to use my time? Am I using my time that way because I’m avoiding something else?”
“Do I feel good after doing it?” What I’ve been trying to do is, “What makes me feel good?” I get teased a lot because I love sleep. I’m like an asleep evangelist. I go to bed early. People will always tease me about that, but I feel great when I get my sleep. I feel untouchable when I get my sleep.
It’s knowing what you need. The other thing that I would say is, how do we recognize that? Sometimes we can’t. That is where our community comes in. Sometimes, we are not even in a space. When I was experiencing postpartum depression, I was not in a space where I could even really recognize I was trying to put one foot in front of the other and survive and take care of my newborn baby. I needed someone else to hold up a mirror and to say, “You’re not okay. What do you need? How can I help you?”
We need our community to hold up a mirror when we can't. Sometimes, it's others who help us see when we're not okay. Share on XThank goodness my mother lived with us for that first year. I don’t know what would’ve happened if she hadn’t been there, but we need our community. Community is one of the most important elements in our well-being. Sometimes, we need someone to hold us accountable. A lot of times, we need someone. I talked about that with boundaries in the boundaries class, “Who is going to help support you in maintaining your boundary?” My daughter will say, “How’s your meditation going? You seem a little irritable. Are you meditating?”
I hope that’s not with an eye roll. I want to talk a little bit about resources because these are great tips. I hope people come away with this thinking or being aware, “I need to be focused on checking in with myself all the time.” As I was preparing for this conversation, I did some cursory Google researching on wellness and legal.
There are some resources out there. I will tell you that what I found was mostly focused on lawyer assistance programs with substance abuse, which is, I think, more of extreme or certainly, it’s an issue in our field, but there are other problems that folks or other not good coping strategies people do. What kind of resources, and we can talk about the Well-Law app that you’ve developed. I want to hear about that. Accountability and having a community. What should lawyers be looking for in wellness resources?
The first thing I’ll say is that one size absolutely does not fit all. I think that it’s important for there to be a wide variety of resources. Sometimes, we don’t have enough of vari of a variety. I think that a person needs to have an understanding of what is going to help me to get to a place where I feel well and where I can actually feel like I’m thriving.
For some people, that means it is a program that is in community because they need that relational aspect in order to be well. For someone who is struggling with some addiction, that may mean a twelve-step program or something like that, there may be other people who are surrounded by people and noise all day. For them, meditation and some silence might be exactly what they need.
It’s a good idea to see where you are in these different domains of wellness because you may be focused on physical wellness, whereas your material wellness may not be great. In other words, your material wellness could be technology, your finances, your physical space around you, and your environment. There are resources out there that are not always that easy to find. In doing the work of building my app, I’ve been able to locate people who actually work with lawyers and legal professionals in creating physical space that is healthy and better for them, people who help with time management.
The problem is that we have to look too hard for resources, and people then give up, saying, “I haven’t found what works for me.” I think it’s our job as wellness professionals to make those resources more available to people. I think that lawyers’ assistance programs are a good place to start. I’m on the board of the Kansas Lawyers’ Assistance Program or KLAP. It’s just not really just addiction. It absolutely started as mostly alcohol addiction and substance abuse, but LAPs are now dealing with other kinds of addiction, but just support. It’s a good place to start if someone doesn’t know where else to go because the LAPs may have other resources, but there are also lots of different counseling services that are available.
Well-Law App: A Resource For Lawyers
Since you mentioned the app, that’s one of the reasons that I developed the Well-Law app. Knowing that people have different needs, there are educational talks, skills, and resources in all different areas of the five domains of wellness. We can talk more about that. It’s important that people keep on searching and looking for what is going to be a good fit for them.
There can be a steep climb. I appreciate that lawyer assistance programs may have are broader, but personally, I would feel a little bit of a stigma getting part of that if I was not struggling with alcoholism or substance abuse. Even as you’re saying that, I’m like, “Are people going to think that I have a problem if I don’t?”
I get that. That perception is one of the reasons that people do not seek help. It’s a stigma and people are afraid. That’s one of the reasons that law students don’t get help. They think that it’s going to prevent them from getting a job. Someone’s going to find out, and they end up hiding. We do the same thing as legal professionals. That’s why I think that something like having an app or having a resource that’s right on your phone that is personal to you and you can use it in the way that you want is a good answer.
I want to delve into that, but before that, I want to commend you for developing the wellness curriculum within law schools because that helps set the expectation for folks who are getting into the profession that like, “This is not a stigma. This is something you should be doing. Just as you’re working on your property outline, you should also be making sure you’re getting enough sleep and checking in with yourself,” and all those things. Thank you for that.
Thank you for saying that.
I hope people see that that’s one of the reasons that I’ve talked to some of the executive coaches and other folks I’ve had on this show. It is to show that the profession is not about the technical and being right with yourself, feeling well, and managing those things is a core part of the profession, but it will also make you happier overall.
What I’m trying to do is to normalize integrating little micro-moments of wellness into the day of a lawyer, legal professional or of a law student. If we can integrate these little micro-moments and say, “Let’s take a deep moment to stand up and stretch and take a deep breath.” I hope that can become something that happens in a class and it’s not weird. If it is a thing where you can ask a student or even in a meeting, take a moment to jot down the things that are the top stressors for you right now. It’s not like you have to sit there and talk to the person about it. Getting it from your head to a piece of paper is a practice of wellness right there.
Wellness means integrating small, mindful moments into your day. It’s in the little things that we build resilience. Share on XUnburdening. Let’s talk about the app a little bit.
The app is made for law schools, law students, faculty and staff, and for lawyers and legal professionals. That’s anyone who’s working in the legal field. It’s currently available only to a company through Paraplu Wellness and Well-Law. It will be available in the App Store. Frankly, at that point, we’re going to make sure that law students get a discount if they’re not getting it through their school and they want to get it individually. In other words, if their school is not providing it for them and they want to get it individually, they’ll be able to do that at a discounted price and then anyone, even if they’re not in the legal field, will be able to to get it. Right now, it is available through the company.
Let’s talk about the app itself. What’s the user experience? What are the resources that are available through the app?
The user experience is as soon as you create your profile, the next thing you do is click a button that says, “Go to the wellness inventory.” The Wealth Wellness Inventory is a self-assessment. It takes about 15 minutes and it assesses your wellness in those 5 domains of wellness that we talked about. It gives you a wellness quotient.
I talk about thriving. It’s either it’s going to rate you or you’re going to rate yourself either as thriving, “I’m good. I’m okay. I’m struggling, I’m challenged or I’m struggling,”so in those five categories. It helps you to see even subcategories if it’s physical, “Is it my sleep? Is it my alcohol and substance use? Is it my exercise?” It helps you to drill down on where am I having issues and where are I doing well?
It’s a structure for that self-awareness.
It’s all about that self-awareness in these areas. Once you submit your wellness inventory, there’s a button that says, “Take me back to the app.” You go back to the app and you’re on the dashboard. This is the first time that you’re able to access content because we want to make sure that you have a baseline of your wellness quotient through this inventory.
Now you’re on the dashboard. There’s a very short, under five-minute video that changes weekly and is topical. The one that’s on there now is, “Are you hopeful enough?” It has to do with hope in a time of global crisis. It gives you an opportunity to access content according to those five domains of wellness. There’s a tab for each of those five domains. You can go in, get more information about sleep, play, exercise, stress management, boundaries, etc.
There’s also a button that says, “How’s your mood today?” If you click on it, it takes you to a mood page that has, “I’m thriving. I’m good. I’m okay. I’m challenged. I’m struggling.” If you click on any of those, it takes you to content that meets you at that mood. If you say, “I’m struggling,” there’s a video on there that talks about three quick tips to help with overwhelm. There is a meditation on self-compassion. There’s an affirmation on the dashboard, and there’s a daily affirmation that meets you. You can get to content according to your mood.
There are so many resources in one place. You are very thoughtful. Congratulations on developing that. Thank you for developing that. People can get it at the Paraplu website. Can you give that?
Final Thoughts And Wellness Resources
The information is at the Well-Law website. That’s Well-Law.com. There’s a page that’s all about the app and it tells you all of the features of the app. There are skills, meditations, breathing exercises, physical movements, journaling and daily affirmations. All of that is on the app. We’re trying to meet people where they are. You can contact Team@ParapluWellness.com or Janet@ParapluWellness.com.
If I remember from our prior conversation, there’s also a way to get CLE credit through the app.
The Well-Law app comes in three subscriptions. The basic, which is everything that you see on the app, and then the premium, which adds live online group coaching for either students or people in a legal working environment. The ultra has your coaching like group coaching or one-on-one coaching for people, and also twelve hours of CLE credits.
The ultra also gives you access to the Well-Law platform, which has twelve modules of wellness themes. One month may be time management. One month may have to do with nutrition. One month may be all about, “How do I cultivate wellness habits?” You can take that and work with it together as a team at work and maybe discuss somebody, likened it to a book club.
Everybody’s watching and reading the same things. You get together and talk about it. Maybe do these wellness practices together. In a law school setting, it’s a curriculum. You can create your own wellness curriculum from the Well-Law platform. The last thing I want to mention is for people who want to put their own logo on it, you choose your subscription plan and then for an extra fee, you can put your own logo on the app and have content that is tailored to your community.
That’s a great resource. I encourage folks to check that out. I’ve got two last questions that are fun. I know you were on House Hunters International. I don’t want to say super fan because I’m not a super fan, but I have enjoyed the show, let’s say that. Can you give me a couple of minutes on what was that experience like?
It was so much fun. That was when we first moved to the Netherlands. Our family wanted a year of adventure away. We chose to be in the Netherlands and we’re in a city called Groningen in the North of the country. It really was a blast. You may not know this because you’re watching it and it looks like it all happens very quickly. It’s a whole week of filming. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. It’s not superscripted, but it is. Reality show isn’t just in the moment necessarily, but it was a lot of fun. It was a fun way of discovering more about the city. International.”
You are an HGTV Celeb. We could have a whole episode talking about House Hunters because I enjoy that so much. One last question and, framing it in this conversation, I have used music as a tool to help my wellness. Certainly through some dark times, both at work and at home, I have relied on music. You talked about that earlier. I ask all guests, what is your pump-up song?
My pump-up song is Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered. It doesn’t matter where I am. Sometimes it’s very embarrassing to my family. I can be in an airport, in a restaurant or in the middle of a store. If that song comes over the speakers, I am up dancing. I cannot help it. It is the song that, to my core, gives me joy.
I’ll come to the Netherlands and put that on and see if I can see you dancing in a supermarket.
You’ll see me moving if that song is on. It’s almost a joke of my family.
Thank you for being on the show.
Thank you, Stacy. It has been a joy to be here. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.
Important Links
About Janet Thompson Jackson
Janet is a wellbeing, diversity, inclusion & belonging leader
Janet currently works as a Wellbeing, Diversity & Inclusion officer for the Faculty of Law at University of Groningen in the Netherlands. In that capacity she advises the Faculty Board on WDI issues, supports the wellbeing of students and staff, assists in the stimulation of a diverse culture of inclusion and belonging in the faculty, and facilitates trainings on social safety and wellbeing. Janet also guest lectures in a number of courses across the university.
Janet is a legal educator
Janet is a proud graduate of Howard University School of Law in Washington, DC. She practiced law in Pittsburgh, PA and Washington, DC before directing a nonprofit organization that provided transitional housing, case management, and job training and placement services to homeless and at-risk families. Janet started her teaching career as an adjunct professor at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and then completed a clinical fellowship at the University of Baltimore School of Law before joining Washburn.
Janet has taught law for over 20 years. She served on the law faculty at Washburn Law from 2004 until spring 2022, when she was awarded the title of Professor Emerita. At Washburn Law Janet directed the Small Business and Nonprofit Law Clinic, taught Nonprofit Law, Race & the Law, Entrepreneurial Law, Property Law, and helped to lead the law school’s Third Year Anywhere externship program.
Janet is the founder of Well-Law
Janet believes that a focus on wellness should be an integral part of the legal profession. As a leader in law school and lawyer wellness and a certified yoga instructor and wellness coach, Janet has developed Well-Law as a signature program to help law students and lawyers develop tools to manage the stresses inherent in law school and law practice and to thrive.
Janet believes in grounding diversity, inclusion, and belonging in wellness principles.
Janet believes that wellness and justice are intertwined and, as a voice for wellness as justice, she held daily Meditations for the Racial Justice Journey on Facebook Live from June 1 – 30, 2020. She started the mediations after the killing of George Floyd in order to create a time of refuge and renewal for people working for racial justice.
Janet works, teaches and speaks internationally.
During the 2018-2019 and 2021-2022 academic years, Janet was a visiting professor with the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, where she taught leadership courses at the Honours College; gave numerous presentations on well-being for PhD students and supervisors; and gave presentations on the intersection of well-being, diversity, and belonging. During their first year in the Netherlands, Janet and her family had the fun experience of being featured on House Hunters International.
In addition to her time in Groningen, Janet has taught law courses and given presentations in Tbilisi, Georgia and Budapest, Hungary and she taught in Washburn Law’s summer law program in Utrecht, Netherlands.
Janet counsels nonprofits on best practices for board governance.
Janet has been in the nonprofit sector for 25+ years as a nonprofit executive, educator, lawyer, and consultant. Through the Washburn Law Clinic, she supervised students in forming and representing nonprofit organizations. She is a frequent speaker and consultant in the area of nonprofit governance.
Janet is a wellness & leadership coach.
As a wellness & leadership coach Janet guides clients in elevating their personal and professional lives. She works with people on a wide range of issues to help them gain self-awareness, clarify their goals, and to lead diverse environments with compassion, intention, and wellness. Common coaching themes are, achieving work-life harmony, managing chronic stress and burnout, effective communication, purpose-driven leadership, career transitions, grief and loss, and developing a personal wellness plan. Janet is certified in wellness coaching and is currently pursuing her ACC credential.
Janet is a yoga teacher and energy practitioner.
After years of casual yoga practice Janet began to study yoga seriously as a way to manage her chronic pain. Through her yoga practice, Janet has experienced a healing journey that continues today. On the mat Janet is both student and teacher. Her practice provides an ongoing landscape of learning about patience, strength, surrender, fear, compassion, and ultimately, self-love. She incorporates breathing practices, Intuitive Reiki, EFT (Tapping), and other energy modalities into her teaching and practice. Janet has a passion for making yoga accessible to people regardless of age, lack of income, race, gender, or ability. She is a certified yoga teacher (RYT 200-hour) and is currently completing her 800-hour certification in yoga therapy and the Science of Mindful Awareness (SOMA) under the direction of Deborah Norris, PhD, C-IAYT and James Folks, C-IAYT.
Janet is a media professional.
For its first eight seasons, Janet was the host of the PBS series, I’ve Got Issues, on KTWU-TV in Kansas. The community affairs show covers a wealth of topics such as politics, health, education, and more.
