Jhenna Conway currently resides in southern Indiana down a winding gravel lane tucked into the woods, but that’s not how her story started. She grew up in Monroe and entered the Air Force after graduating from high school. She served until suffering a stroke that caused her to leave that chapter of her life behind and return home. While back in Wisconsin, her husband ended up getting a job in Indiana so they left once more. She is writing her experiences in the place she now calls home into two memoirs to share.
Book No. 1 takes place over the first three months of the family living in their new home. At almost 30, Conway thought she knew what life had in store for her until the massive stroke ended her Air Force career. In spring of 2009 the family found a home in southern Indiana down a winding gravel lane with enough space for a garden, animals, and any dreams she had tucked away throughout her years of military housing. In the process of unpacking, planting a garden, welcoming animals, and finding out just how much maintenance this home required, she started to find pieces of herself she was afraid were gone for good.
The book Somewhere to Land is currently out and can be purchased on Amazon.
The book’s synopsis states: “Somewhere to Land is a warm, funny, candid memoir about family, starting over, and the questionable decisions that become your favorite stories. For readers who love animal antics, country-life adventures, and honest accounts of finding your feet after life changes your plans.”
The second book covers the remaining nine months of their first year living in their new home and is set to come out in November.
From Monroe to the Air Force
Conway was born and raised in Monroe, graduating from high school in 1997. Joining the Air Force wasn’t originally a plan of hers.
“Back then in high school, each semester you could meet with two colleges or recruiters during any two classes per semester and because I didn’t study for this math test, I looked to see what college was there to meet with. The Air Force recruiter was the only one there,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on joining the Air Force; I just needed to get out of the math test. I met up with the recruiter and he had me sign on the dotted line that same day. I had no plan for it, but he sold it to me.”
She thought she had a pretty good idea what her life would be like until she had a stroke at the age of 26, which upended a lot of things.
“When I had my stroke, I was on a birth control pill at the time and they think that’s what caused the clot,” she said. “At first, I was completely paralyzed on my left side. My left leg came back pretty quickly, but it took about six months for my left arm and hand to come back to being able to be used decently. Still to this day, if I’m carrying something in that left hand, it’ll just randomly open at the weirdest times.”
The fine dexterity in her left hand is not perfect, and she has permanent right frontal lobe brain damage and that will be forever.
“I have an MRI every year and it shows that part of my brain is still completely dead, but there are parts of my brain that are active where, in a normal brain, they’re usually dormant, so it’s compensating,” she said.
Back to work, and moving on
While she went back to work right away, recovery still took time, and she’ll never fully be the same as she once was.
“Recovery in the Air Force looked different because at the time of my stroke, I was actually a personal aide for a General and I worked in his home. I worked nuclear coding for ten years, and at the ten-year point, they make you take a break because the stress levels lead to high suicide rates,” she said. “Most people go to the gym and fold towels for a couple years, or something like that. I decided to apply through the Pentagon to be a General’s Aide.”
She worked in his home office and was there by herself day in and day out. She cooked all of his meals, did his grocery shopping and took care of his home office – everything from mowing his lawn to entertaining.
“I cooked and served for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nancy Reagan,” she said. “It was a very unique job, and the other unique part of it was that three days after my stroke, he expected me to be back to work.”
She went back to work before she could use her left arm or hand.
“I couldn’t speak clearly, but he said I didn’t need to because I was working in his home and he wanted people to see that I was okay. I didn’t think it was a bad thing though. I was 26 and it made sense to me why he wanted me back because his home could not run without me,” she said. “In the civilian world, in this day and age, I would’ve been off work for a while and may not have ever had to go back to work, but it was a different time back then in 2005.”
Her medical retirement from the Air Force wasn’t immediate, as she tried to fight to continue working.
“It took the Air Force about three years after my stroke to finally retire me. They couldn’t put me back into nuclear coding because of my ‘mental retardation’ and they wanted me out just because I couldn’t keep my security clearance. I had to keep that to be working for the General, and I couldn’t so they ended up medically retiring me against my wishes. I fought to stay in, but they fought to retire me, but it is beautiful that they did looking back,” she said.
From private journals to bookstore paperbacks
Writing a book had never been in her plans, and she wouldn’t have even considered it before this new chapter in her life.
“To me, it was too much sitting still. I’m not a fan of sitting still. I like constant movement, and I just pictured the old-fashioned sit in front of paper and write for six hours and that seemed like torture to me. I found this wonderful thing where you talk into a microphone and it writes it as you talk, so that’s how I wrote most of the book because when I type, I can only type with my right hand, so my typing is not super fast,” she said.
What made her truly consider writing down her experiences was those around her encouraging her to do it.
She had been posting daily “shenanigans” on Facebook; a typical day in her life. Things like how the goats got out of their pen, or the pigs got into the trash.
“People seemed to love it, and everyone was saying, ‘oh, you should write a book,’ and some people said they looked forward to my posts every morning to see what happened to me the day before,” she said. “So, I was thinking how I have years and years and years of material because I love to journal. I happened to find my journals from when we first moved here, and I was reading through them thinking it was gold, like you can’t make this stuff up.”
When it comes to writing the memoirs, her favorite part is the feelings that the memories brought up.
“I like how there’s a little bit of everything. Even as I was writing it and reading back through it for edits, there were sections I’d laugh at, sections that brought me to tears, sections that brought that warm fuzzy feeling, and that never stopped. No matter how many times I reread it. That was probably my favorite part: feeling those emotions every time I read a chapter,” she said.
Conway has also really enjoyed going back and reliving these memories from all those years ago, and reaching out to her sons to talk about it in the process.
“It was fun to write and fun to relive all those memories with my boys,” she said.
Her sons are now 27 and 22, and she would check with them to make sure she remembers things correctly.
“Checking in with the boys has just been a blast. Reliving that time 17 years ago has just been beautiful,” she said.
She plans to continue her memoir series year by year, hoping to write one for every year they’ve been living in their home.
“Right now, since we’ve been here for 17 years, there will be 18 books, because the first year was split into two books. I’m going to write them in order as well, so the third book will be about 2010, the fourth book will be about 2011, and so on,” she said.
A heart can belong to two homes, and she is proof of that. Southern Indiana is unquestionably considered home for her, but Monroe will always be the place that taught her what that word meant in the first place.
