Jordana Chana Mayim

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Hi! I’m Jordana Chana Mayim! Welcome to my website!

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If you have any questions or comments, please send me a message via email or the CONTACT page.

Thank you! :)

I'll tell you a little about me, the lovely curly-haired woman on the button you just clicked.

This is me in a purple dress. (Purple's my favorite color.)

And this is me at my friends' house in Italy with a SUPER yummy bowl of pasta:

And THIS is one of the coolest fish I have ever met:

He lives in Baltimore. He doesn’t swim like any of the other fish. He has trouble moving one of his fins, but he keeps on swimming.

I grew up in a suburb just outside of Philadelphia, longing to leave it and see the world. I also grew up with a pencil forever in my hand and the knowledge that I would one day be a writer. Here are the first two books I ever wrote when I was six:

As you can see from the sides of the books, I loved staples almost as much as I loved writing.

I once read this sentence on an exquisite card with a photograph of a woman gazing at mountains in the distance: Dream, but do.

Until I was 27, I pretty much just dreamed. I worked different jobs, including an extremely soulless one: proofreading phonebooks (even loading a big fat armchair from the lobby onto the elevator and lugging it up to my cubicle didn’t get me fired), hung around the travel section in bookstores, and wrote about 100,000 pages in journals that ultimately provided a very satisfying meal for a paper shredder. I also did my best to deal with a depression that had plagued me since childhood.

When I was 27, something happened that changed my life and my writing forever. I volunteered to teach ESOL, English to Speakers of Other Languages, to immigrants and refugees in Philadelphia. I had the honor and privilege of meeting the most amazing people from all over the world. I taught them English, and they taught me a better way to see and a better way to be. Their bravery helped me find my own. Their generosity opened my heart. Their kindness lit up my darkness. And teaching ESOL became my job, as well as one of the greatest blessings in my life.

Teaching later took me to Spain.

I arrived with no papers and no plans beyond taking a month-long teaching course. But I hoped that I'd stick around much longer than that.

I did. Four years, a few more countries, and many adventures later, I returned to the U.S. and worked and studied in Boston, a city I fell in love with as a kid.

(This picture of a sand castle is NOT from Boston. But as it's from a beach REALLY close to Boston, and as it's a REALLY COOL sand castle, I decided to include it here.)

From Boston it was back to Philly to spend a few years living like a recluse to finish writing my first two books, The Life of Zerah and Nikolas and the Misfit Shapes Find Their Place.

And THEN... I decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of backpacking around the world... but with a suitcase instead of a backpack.

I shared Zerah and Nikolas cards.

Sometimes I left my books in parks and gardens.

And I found MAGIC everywhere I went by following a few simple travel rules that I set for myself:

1) If you hear music, you MUST follow it.

2) Speak to as many people as you possibly can. Be sure to ask them A LOT of questions.

3) ALWAYS follow your gut.

4) Accept every invitation to an event, tour, cup of coffee, etc. that you receive, no matter how tired you are. (Only exception: if your gut says "no." See rule 3.)

5) If you can't find magic, create it.

Aside from meeting up with old friends and making new ones, two of my favorite experiences during my travels were:

visiting a luthier's workshop in Cremona, Italy and hearing about how she makes violins

and visiting the temples in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

An experience that is in a category of its own, for the injustice, heartbreak, and resilience I witnessed, was the time I spent at a refugee camp in Greece.

My life as a digital nomad came to a halt during the pandemic, of course. The pandemic, along with some other changes that came with it, were in part the genesis for two more books: If You Ever Lose Hope... / Si alguna vez pierdes la esperanza... and The Fate of the Dragon / El destino del dragón.

At present, I'm working on new books, giving book readings + art classes online, teaching English online (under my given name, Jennifer Helfand; Jordana Chana Mayim is my super cool pen name), studying about alternative approaches to what is commonly called "mental illness", and traveling once again.

Thank you for stopping by my website!