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About Jen Johnson
Jen Johnson explores loss, transformation, and beauty at the intersection of the inner life and the living world.
For more than four decades she has worked as a mindfulness teacher, counselor, writer, and fine art photographer — helping people find steadiness, creativity, and meaning in the midst of grief, uncertainty, and change. Her work moves fluidly between the contemplative and the clinical, the personal and the universal, the page and the living world outside the window.
Her Ghost Trees photography series — a 15-year exploration of dying bald cypress trees in coastal North Carolina, documented through exhibition, awards, and grant funding — investigates what it means to witness beauty and loss simultaneously. Her Writing as Refuge™ practice offers writers, creatives, and seekers a contemplative path to their own stories.
Jen teaches mindfulness at UNC’s Program onn Integrative Medicine and serves as North Carolina State Coordinator for the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America. Her writing has appeared in Psychology Today, PainPathways Magazine, and two Routledge anthologies. Her poem “This is Your Place” appears in Bearing Witness: Poems for Troubled Times (Sligo Creek Publishing, 2026).
Jen lives in coastal North Carolina, where she walks the same creeks and marshes she photographs, teaches, and writes about. She has spent her career working at the edges of where psychology, creativity, nature, and human suffering meet — from neurotoxicology research at the EPA in the early 1980s, to brain injury rehabilitation at Shepherd Center, to mindfulness-based writing and photography work with veterans through the Invisible Wounds of War project, to her current work with writers, creatives, and organizations navigating collective stress and climate anxiety.
Jen honors the teachers who have shaped her work: Stephen Levine, Robert A. Johnson, Francis Weller, Marion Woodman, Rita Charon, Carol Maso, Minor White, Lobsong Tenzin Negi, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Rick Hanson, Ronald Siegel, Deb Dana, James Pennebaker, and Piety Eloise.
EDUCATION AND CERTIFICATION
B. A. Psychology, Meredith College
M.S. Counseling, Georgia State University
M.S. Rehabilitation Counseling (Illness & Injury), Georgia State University
M.F.A. Interdisciplinary Arts (Creative Writing & Photography)
Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in NC (LCMHC) #6478
Licensed Professional Counselor in GA (LPC) #2891
Board Certified Coach (BCC) #3925
Certified Rehabilitation Counselor (CRC) #14905
Board Certified Counselor (NBCC) #26687
Board Certified-TeleMental Health Provider (BC-TMH) #893
Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT-200)
Certified Master Birder. Atlanta Audubon
Certified NC Environmental Educator
View full credentials, publications, & exhibition history →
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens.
Carl Jung