Within five minutes of meeting Jen Levinson, she was my best friend. If you are one of the 15,000-plus people who receives Jen’s List — a daily e-mail crammed with everything from Jen’s recommendations on handymen and painters to fun activities to do with your kids — you might want to fight me for the BFF title. But who else besides your best friend would be open enough to talk to you about her history of depression, her numerous miscarriages, a cancer scare, her tummy tuck and her relationship with her husband?
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before Jen Levinson became my best friend, she was just this person who e-mailed me what she describes as “the mom’s guide to what’s hot, new and undiscovered — from baby products to nannies to fun family stuff to do.” I began to count on her list to find summer day camps for my kids, score great deals and discover local events I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. When my computer crashed, I called the fix-it guy — who happened to be on that day’s list — and he was sitting in my desk chair giving CPR to my computer within 30 minutes. Once I started receiving Jen’s List, I began to wonder how I ever lived without it.
As if compiling Jen’s List every single day (weekends, too) wasn’t enough, Jen’s got plenty more on her plate, as I started learning through the mom-to-mom grapevine. She is the mother of five boys — a single (7) and two sets of twins (5 and 2) — and she is a Temple Aliyah sisterhood board member, and she chaired Round Meadow Elementary’s silent auction and was the classroom mom for her first set of twins. So I made the same assumption that everyone who knows pretty, blond-haired Jen Levinson from afar makes: She must be rich, have a minimum of three nannies and two housekeepers, and have led a charmed life. It would make perfect sense, except that none of it is true.
Jen Levinson’s parents divorced when she was 5 years old. She worked two jobs to put herself through San Diego State University and “went to school in my spare time.” Plans to go to law school didn’t materialize; instead, she worked in the fraud unit of an insurance company.
At age 29 she saw her doctor for a routine exam and discovered she had thyroid cancer. Her thyroid was removed; she had radiation and is now considered cancer-free.
A bad breakup when she was 30 sent her into clinical depression. “I always wanted to get married and have kids, and I didn’t think it was going to happen. It didn’t matter how many people I had around me who loved me. I remember being curled up on my bed in a ball and I didn’t want to wake up. My sister-in-law told me there was a light at the end of the tunnel, but I absolutely couldn’t see it.
“I checked into UCLA as an outpatient for five months and went every single day. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. All of your experiences make you who you are. That experience made me very strong. I went in codependent and came out independent. It taught me a lot about myself that I never knew. I don’t regret anything that happened, but it was a very scary time for my family.
“Depression is a very difficult thing to understand for people who have never been there. My husband has never been through it so he doesn’t really get it. I’m very sensitive to the issue of depression because I know a lot of people just don’t understand it,” Levinson says.
Taking antidepressants helped, and now she says she is a big advocate for doing whatever it takes to get better. She laughs and says, “If more people were on medication, this world would be a better place.”
Shortly after she saw the proverbial light, she met her husband on JDate. (Recognizing a good thing when they saw it, JDate plastered the photogenic blonde and her tall, well-built husband on their promotional materials, including a giant billboard in Times Square.)
“My husband didn’t fit the image of the typical Jewish boy I was going to marry. He is from Texas. Really, are there Jews in Texas? He is very muscular and into working out; he is a registered dietitian. On the other hand, he did have all of the qualities of the person I was looking for. His most important goal was having a family and being the best dad possible. And he is the absolute best dad. Over the years, he has changed half, if not more, of the diapers, and he can take care of all five of them by himself and not flinch. I’m very lucky in that respect.
“My husband is very much my opposite. He doesn’t understand why I have to do so much.”
Jen does not live among multiple nannies and assistants in Hidden Hills, like many people believe, but in a modest, kid-centric house in West Hills. When I stopped by for our interview, she was alone with her 5-year-old twins, a mellow dog and an aloof cat. Her oldest son was at camp, and the 2-year-old twins — “they are the terrible 2s times a million” — were at the park with a babysitter who helps out part time.
I didn’t spot the computer where she receives 300 to 400 e-mails each day. The List, which started out as a hobby to pass the time after her obstetrician relegated her to bed rest when she was pregnant with her first set of twins, now takes approximately three to five hours each day to compile.
So, as a woman with half of the responsibilities, who walks around with chipped fingernail polish for a week because I can’t find a spare hour for a manicure, I wanted to know: How does Jen do it all?
“How do I do it? This is my life. I don’t have a choice. I just do it. People have always told me I have to slow down, but this is just who I am.
“My hope is that I don’t look back in 20 years and regret anything, regardless of what it is … especially if [all of this] affects my health. If only I would have gotten more sleep. If only I hadn’t run around so much. I do think about that a lot, but you can’t predict what will happen in life.
“I’ve always been an open book, maybe to a fault, but I am who I am and I can’t apologize for that. If my past can help someone, then it was worth sharing.”
To sign up for a free subscription to Jen’s List, visit jenslist.com.
Wendy Jaffe welcomes comments at {encode=”wjaffewrite@aol.com” title=”wjaffewrite@aol.com”}.
