Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Relationship Researcher | Retention Specialist
Creating space for repair, restoration, and renewal.
Because healing and preventing burnout begins (and ends) with reinforcing connection
Serving Those Who Serve Others
Sustainable Service Work Depends on Self-Healing, Not Self-Sacrifice.
Exhaustion is not effective; especially when it comes to human-service work.
Moving out of survival mode and self-sacrificing patterns into grounded, authentic thriving, our Presence models the well-being, resilience, and possibility we want those in our care to experience.
Hello! My name is Jen, and I am a public school teacher turned teacher educator, relationship researcher, burnout preventionist, and retention specialist.
I serve individuals called the relationship-centered professions of education, youth work, leadership, and public health to sustain and retain the wisdom of our caregivers through
PROMOTING
Mental Health
PREVENTING
Burnout
PROTECTING
Resonate Relationships
"We have healthier teachers working with our students."
District Curriculum Director
YOU Are the Intervention
Your energy, authenticity, and emotional state act as an external nervous system for those you lead, teach, and support. When your nervous system is regulated, grounded, and attuned, you create a safe, supportive environment where others feel seen, heard, and empowered.
In relationship-centered professions—education, leadership, youth work, and public health—connection is our most powerful tool for impact. Caregivers are the Mother Trees of these systems: the stabilizers, connectors, and quiet sources of nourishment that hold communities together. Yet when caregivers are forced into survival mode by constant stress, emotional labor, and compassion fatigue, their well-being erodes and the invisible relational networks they sustain begin to collapse.
Burnout isn’t just about workload,
it’s about disconnection and disempowerment.
When our Mother Trees burn out (or leave the profession entirely), sweeping disconnection ripples through the entire system. Trust thins, regulation weakens, and the spaces where caregivers serve in classrooms, programs, clinics, and communities lose the felt sense of safety and coherence that allows people to thrive. Supporting caregiver mental health, therefore, isn’t optional; it is how we protect the relational fabric that keeps youth and communities secure, regulated, and able to grow.
The Light You Cast™ is a science- and social-emotional-based curriculum designed to fortify the nervous system, emotional health, and behavioral well-being of the caregiver; the Mother Tree of every learning and care-centered environment.
The Light You Cast™ guides caregivers through research-backed, embodied practices that heal and protect the nervous system, build stress resilience, and strengthen one's Window of Tolerance through the development of core SEL competencies—including self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relational integrity.
Caregivers gain practical tools to restore balance and engage restorative rituals and daily routines they can mirror, model, and enact in their teaching, leadership, and youth-support roles to safeguard the relational health of the classroom, school, and organizational environment.
When caregivers are supported to work from a regulated, resourced state, burnout and compassion fatigue are not managed after the fact, they are prevented upstream, and care-centered systems become places of sustained energy, connection, and collective resilience for all.
"Our meetings were a place for me to not just do inner work, but also connect with my peers who could relate and affirm every single feeling
I had. I felt seen, heard, and validated every time I had the chance to engage in The Light You Cast coursework and with the group.”
Hight School Counselor
Care + Healing + Support
for SCHOOLS
Schools are where this work began. They are where the daily realities of teaching, learning, belonging, and burnout collide and where the need for authentic, attuned human connection is most urgent for students and school staff.
The Light You Cast™ strengthens personal, relational, and organizational well-being in schools by building trust, preventing burnout, and creating sustainable cultures of care and safety from the inside out. This work supports the educators and school staff who empower others and everyone within their circle of influence.
Check out one of our most in-demand PD session description.
TLYC | Research Informed Foundation
Trauma-Responsive
Approaches
CASEL Social Emotional Learning
Competencies
Nervous System Health
Practices
Stress Metabolization
Interventions
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Practices
Healing Centered Engagement
Principles
Restorative Practice
Approaches
Mindfulness
Interventions
Our Tiered System of Support
for ALL who serve
At the heart of our work is what matters most in all relationship-centered work:
human connection.
Healthy environments make human connection possible. When workplaces are psychologically safe, individual mental health, relational well-being, and organizational health can flourish.
The Light You Cast™ strengthens personal, relational, and organizational well-being to build trust, prevent burnout, and create sustainable cultures of care and safety that support those who empower others and everyone within their circle of influence.
FOUNDATIONAL SUPPORT
For Everyone
FOCUSED SUPPORT
For Target Cohorts, Groups, or PLCs
ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT
Focused Interventions for Leaders and Organizational Health
Provide proactive support, inspiration, and encouragement that reinforces intrapersonal resilience and interpersonal connection through our universal The Light You Cast™ ON-DEMAND training, one-time, event-specific keynotes or professional development sessions, or one-on-one burnout healing and prevention coaching with Jen
Provide ongoing, in-person support that drives lasting, systemic change through guided community support groups and targeted multi-session trainings tailored for specific roles, teams, and cohorts where all The Light You Cast™ curriculum materials are tailored to the specific needs of the group.
Provide targeted organizational wellness consultation, personalized coaching for leaders, and strategic leadership team professional development to cultivate positive, resilient workplace cultures grounded in care, connection, and collaboration powered by the signature The Light We Cast™ practices.
The Light You Cast™ | ON-DEMAND
Transform the Way You Care for Yourself and Others
Heal, restore, and reinforce relational resilience at your own pace while earning 4.5 Continuing Education Clock Hours of professional development in mental health, relationship science, and social and emotional (SEL) competencies.
6,000 +
human-service professionals
served
26,000 +
views of modules
19,000 +
hours of engagement
The Light You Cast™ ON-DEMAND is an ongoing, sustained mental health training designed to support educators and human-service professionals day after day, not just during a single workshop. This eight-module mini–master class series provides instant access to research-backed principles, practical strategies, and mind–body practices you can use anytime, anywhere to keep stress at bay and strengthen your inner steadiness.
Each 35-minute module distills the latest science on mental health, stress metabolization, and nervous system regulation into quick, effective tools created for busy professionals who need relief and renewal in real time.
Participants also earn 4.5 clock hours of CEUs, making this daily-wellness resource both impactful and professionally meaningful.
"This training saved my teaching career."
Elementary Educator
The Story Behind the Science
For me, healing from and preventing burnout and compassion fatigue is both professional and deeply personal.
As a former elementary and middle school teacher, I believed exhaustion was proof that I was doing the job “right.” My genuine capacity to care pulled me into perfectionism, hyper-productivity, and self-abandonment long before we understood how chronic stress erodes connection with students and with ourselves.
Motherhood brought this into sharper relief. Having three babies in 17 months pushed my nervous system beyond what I could sustain. The overwhelm of meeting everyone's needs, shame in not coming close to meeting them, and isolation due to the chronic mothering demands made it nearly impossible to care for my children or myself.
One morning, exhausted and sleep-deprived, I realized: No one is coming to save you.
Terrifying and liberating at once, that moment became the turning point. It sent me back to graduate school to research and understand how we protect caregivers -- teachers and leaders in particular; how we prevent burnout and compassion fatigue in a profession too essential to lose its people.
Throughout my doctoral work at the University of Minnesota, I designed, researched, and "teacher-tested" an integrated curriculum that drew on the neuroscience of relational health, mental health, mind-body & nervous system restoration practices, aligned these with what we know about the stressors that drive burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress. As a seasoned teacher, I created an adaptable handbook of practices and strategies designed to ground teachers; keeping them in alignment, in the classroom, and in healthy relationship with students where both were energized by the relationship.
This awakening is where The Light You Cast™ began: a commitment to building sustainable, relational practices that allow educators to meet the needs of those in their care while renewing their own mental and emotional well-springs.
Let's Connect!
Book a Free (and enjoyable) Consultation
I would love to chat.
We can schedule a 15 - 45 minute discovery conversation where I learn more about your needs and offer ways I am potentially able to support you or your staff's development. This is a no obligation, no risk discovery conversation.
