On Writing Wild Pivot: Notes from a Political Life Rewritten by Jen Thompson

In Wild Pivot: Notes from a Political Life Rewritten (She Writes Press; September 22, 2026), Jen Thompson shares her profound journey from being a celebrated Republican strategist in Washington, D.C., to abruptly abandoning her career in search of authenticity and deeper meaning.

Drawing on her years as a top congressional lawyer and campaign manager for a nationally watched US Senate race, Thompson explores the grueling demands of climbing the political ladder and the deep internal toll of living a fabricated life. Through powerful vignettes, she reveals how surviving a near-fatal car accident served as the ultimate catalyst, shattering her powerful political identity and pushing her to move across the world to Australia to reckon with her soul. 

When I was 30 years old, I was driving on a highway across Missouri to attend a large campaign event for my boss, the Senate candidate in the country’s most pivotal race that year.  I was just outside the town of Sullivan, a place where Jesse James and his band of outlaws hid in the underground caves, when a massive tractor trailer slammed into my Ford Explorer with such great force that my car catapulted into the air.

I flipped three times, and each time my SUV turned upside down, the roof hit the pavement so hard that I heard an earth-shattering BOOM!  I counted down to myself between each roll.  One – two – three – four — BOOM. 

I remember thinking: This is how I will die.

My car landed in the highway embankment before it caught on fire. Firefighters managed to pull me out thirty seconds before my SUV was engulfed in flames.  

“We thought we were going to pull a corpse from that car,” the EMT said to me.

I had survived. But after the accident, my mind entered a place I’ve come to describe as hell on Earth. For more than a week, I lay flat on my back in my corporate apartment, stretched out on the carpeted floor, looking up at the ceiling – the most comfortable position for my severely broken ribs. Mostly, I cried.

A piercing clarity took over me during those days, and slowly, it began to change my life. I was raised as a Christian Conservative Republican, and for many years, I worked as a lawyer in the U.S. Congress and in campaign politics promoting those values. I rose quickly, making lots of money and gaining power, and I craved more of both. I dedicated my life to achieving as much success as I could at any cost.

I worked around the clock, including weekends, holidays – even on Christmas. What I never did was listen. Looking back, I see how  I completely ignored what I call my own inner knowing for years and even decades. The careful curation of my life looked so enviable; aspirational even. I plowed through everything to promote that image. My soul, however, was screaming.  

I finally started to listen – after decades of shutting my inner voice down – to what my soul was trying to tell me. I discovered that everything I’d given myself to promoting (achieving power, money and fame at any cost to boost my own ego) was fundamentally misaligned with the person I am at my core.  

Ten months after my car accident, despite job offers to work in the White House and as Chief of Staff in the Senate, I moved to Australia to take an unpaid visiting professorship at the University of Melbourne. It was there that I started writing my memoir. That was twenty-four years ago.

I was inspired to begin writing as a way to work through my own demons. As I wrote and rewrote the book, though, over years and decades, I realized how many of us, and particularly women, have faced the same issues I have even though our stories may be different.

Too often, we get on the treadmills of our lives and never stop, and then we wonder why and how we got so wildly off course from where we wished we were or who we thought we would be.

I was driven to write as honestly as I could about the forces that caused this to happen to me.

We are all wired in certain ways by our upbringing and circumstances. I discovered that my wiring conflicted deeply with the person I am at my core. This process of discernment took me years. It was messy, painful, and confusing.  

As unique as my story is – the excitement of politics on the campaign and in Congress, my world travels, the people I’ve met — I’ve found that it really is not that unique at all.  Each of us has a story about how we ended up somewhere – a job, a marriage, a life – that does not fit with who we are.  As women, so many of us wake up one day and think, How on earth did I end up here?

I would like to be able to say that writing my memoir has been an ever-joyful, empowering process, but that was not entirely the case. Over the years, I’ve been threatened by powerful people who tried to silence me. I had to take a $200,000 pay cut when I left politics. I’ve spent weeks at a silent monastery trying to hear my inner voice. 

And for many years, despite the inner hum within me to tell my story, I could no longer find my voice on the page. I even lost my bearings about who I was while I was going through my transformation. Wild Pivot details all of this.  

I have been terrified to tell my story, and in fact, all these years later, I’m still scared. But I’ve found enough courage that I won’t let the fear rule me anymore.

Twenty-four years and eight total rewrites later, my book, Wild Pivot, released into the world on September 22. It is a much grittier, more powerful story than it was at the beginning given how much more life I have lived, and the lessons I have learned. 

The book travels back and forth in time through vignettes between my past and present with painful lessons described in raw, jarring detail.  But it is also funny, because I believe that laughing at myself is a very powerful medicine.  

In the end, Wild Pivot is a memoir of hope.  I’ve found that the rewards of courage and authenticity are not only possible, but immeasurable.  Through them, we learn to become whole.

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Wild Pivot: Notes from a Political Life Rewritten

Jen Thompson rose to the heights of politics in her early thirties as a celebrated Republican strategist—a rarity for a young woman. For years, success and power were her only ambitions, despite the drumbeat of her inner voice warning that her life was wildly off course.

It was only when a car accident nearly killed her on the campaign trail of a nationally watched Senate campaign that Jen finally decided to walk away. Her sudden alienation from the life she had always known set into motion cascading events that carried her across the world and deep into a reckoning with her own soul.

A memoir in vignettes, Wild Pivot explores how blind loyalty develops and shapes a woman with the craving to fit in and feel celebrated. With a piercing ability to explore just how jarring change and evolution can be, Thompson moves with unflinching honesty and razor-sharp wit between snapshots of her life as she grapples with the demons of her past and commits herself to doing what is required to live a life of truth and freedom—no matter the cost.

Jen Thompson is a former political campaign manager and counsel in the US House and Senate. She successfully made up for a massive campaign deficit by orchestrating events with the President of the United States and other key figures. She has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and others. Jen left politics after managing the most nationally watched Senate campaign in 2002 and moved to Australia. Born in Chicago, Jen has lived in twelve cities, seven states, and three countries, and has traveled to many more. She currently lives in Redlands, California.

Tags: feaured, women writers

Category: On Writing