Walking Through the Portal of Possibility with Jennifer Swann, Lawyer and Public Speaker
What does it mean to truly claim your life, even in the face of unimaginable challenges?
In this deeply inspiring episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca Powers sits down with Jennifer Swann, constitutional lawyer turned coach for parents and children with special needs. Jennifer shares the transformative journey that led her from isolation and fear to joy, empowerment, and a life full of possibility—for herself and her daughter.
After facing her daughter’s life-threatening neuromuscular condition, Jennifer made a radical choice: she would not let circumstance define her family’s life. Through Disney and Caribbean cruises, musical theater, and daily moments of joy, she discovered the power of mindset, courage, and leaning fully into life even when it seems impossible.
Limits Are an Illusion
How Jennifer’s daughter teaches us that our circumstances do not define what we can experience or achieve.
Mindset as a Superpower
Learn why shifting your perspective is the first step to breaking free from self-imposed limits.
Calling in Your Village
The importance of community, support, and saying yes to help so that you can thrive.
Flourish Method
Eight-step approach to help caregivers and parents reclaim joy, prioritize themselves, and live fully.
Radical Permission
How to stop living in fear of judgment and start living in alignment with what truly matters.
Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:
Jennifer recounts the life-changing moment aboard a Disney cruise that redefined how she viewed her daughter’s—and her own—life.
The story of her daughter’s journey into musical theater and how she claims her life despite physical limitations.
Becca and Jennifer explore mindset shifts, joy, and empowerment in the midst of caregiving and adversity.
A powerful takeaway: “The quality of your life is directly impacted by how much life you’re willing to claim.”
Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:
“The quality of your life is directly impacted by how much life you're willing to claim.” – Jennifer Swann
“We get to decide for ourselves how we will experience any circumstance.” – Jennifer Swann
“If you view it as a portal and you're willing to walk through it with an open mind, ever expanding, opportunities and possibilities will be revealed to you.” – Jennifer Swann
“If all of that is possible for her with the limitation, the physical limitations that she truly has, what is truly possible for us who purposely hold ourselves back because of fear?” – Becca Powers
“It's made you live more fully too.” – Becca Powers
About Jennifer
Jennifer Swann is a constitutional lawyer turned public speaker who has found her purpose and passion in sharing her journey as the mother of a child living with a life-threatening neuromuscular disease. She shares her insights, 15 years in the making, on her daughter’s superpower of living into her fullest potential, despite the fact that she cannot move, and requires seven machines every day just to stay alive. Jennifer leverages her many years on stage as a musical theater performer and her passion for personal development to deliver inspirational, heartfelt, and relatable content. She is widely regarded as a naturally gifted speaker who connects with her audiences by sharing honestly and vulnerably about her own path to empowered living. Jennifer and her daughter have been featured on multiple prominent local media outlets, including KCAL News and the Voice of OC.
Connect with Jennifer Swann
Discover more about creating joy, possibility, and transformation with Jennifer Swann’s coaching. Explore her work and resources at jenniferswanncoaching.com
Power Links
Join Becca in her Facebook Community - The Dragonfly Effect, Where High-Performing Professionals Chase Big Dreams: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1C4z83krsn/
Purchase Becca’s Book - A Return to Radiance, The POWER Method to Ignite Your Soul and Unleash Your Potential: https://www.beccapowers.com/a-return-to-radiance
Invite Becca to Speak: https://www.beccapowers.com/keynotes
Grab Becca’s Free EBook, The High Performer’s Path, The 8 Forces of Potential for Mindset Mastery: https://www.beccapowers.com/
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Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of the Empowered Half Hour. I’m so excited to bring you today’s guest, Jennifer Swann. She is a constitutional lawyer turned coach for parents and children of special needs, and her story’s incredible. I just got to spend the last five to ten minutes getting to know her. So Jennifer, welcome to the show.
Jennifer Swann: Oh, thank you for having me.
Becca Powers: I’m so excited to have you here too. During our pre-talk, we talked about how you started making this decision to coach parents and children of special needs, and there’s a story to it that’s near and dear to your life and your heart. I’d like to open up there. How did you get to a point of wanting to make this career change and why?
Jennifer Swann: Well, you know, there’s sort of a backstory to the backstory, so I think I’ll start there, because I think that’s really where it all started. About 12 years ago I found myself in a pediatric intensive care unit with my daughter. She was three years old at the time. It was her third admission in the ICU that year alone.
I was really feeling the heaviness of my life at that time. It was very isolating. Our life was so small. My daughter had been diagnosed at nine months old with a terminal neuromuscular condition. She had never achieved the ability to sit up, crawl, or walk. At nine months old, we were told she would lose the ability to swallow, to cough, and to breathe on her own. Eventually she would lose all movement and require 24-hour medical care.
Statistically, she wasn’t expected to live past the age of two, so our life got really, really small. We saw children in our disease community dying from common colds because they couldn’t fight it off. They couldn’t cough, they couldn’t breathe on their own. It was a really difficult time for us. I became super selective about who I let into our little circle. We didn’t go out much, and if we did, it was only in open spaces where the risk of exposure was very small.
I remember sitting in the hospital room daydreaming about what it would be like to experience something different. My daughter was a huge Disney fan, and I started thinking about what it would be like to take her on a Disney cruise. I floated the idea with her doctors, and they were all adamant: absolutely not. They said it was way too risky, the doctors on the ship wouldn’t know what to do, her disease wasn’t well known, and they wouldn’t know how to manage it. It was a hard no from everyone.
But something in me knew we couldn’t keep living like this. We had to claim more life for ourselves. So we did the cruise anyway. And I met a version of my daughter on that cruise that I had never met before. She was alive and enjoying everything—meeting princesses, petting husky puppies that would later train for the Iditarod. I was terrified the entire time, especially as we got farther up the Alaskan coast and away from pediatric hospitals. But she was alive in a way I had never seen before.
She required 24-hour care and respiratory treatments throughout the day, and I started asking myself: why was I working this hard to keep her alive if I wasn’t actually going to let her live?
Becca Powers: Oh my God. That almost makes me cry. That is beautiful.
Jennifer Swann: It was. It was really a powerful moment because I saw in that moment that the point isn’t just to be here and suffer and struggle. The point is to live. I realized I needed to give her a life, and if it was going to be a shortened life, I needed to let that life be something she loved. So we booked another cruise while we were on that one. Two months later we went on a Caribbean cruise, and we started traveling all over with her.
Once I loosened the reins, she started making very clear what she wanted in her life. She’s 15 and a half today, a freshman in high school, and she lives an extraordinarily fulfilling life. More life than anyone I know. She does it without being able to move or even scratch her own itch. It’s extraordinary the way she chooses to view her circumstance and live through it. And that’s kind of where it all started.
Becca Powers: Wow. There’s so much there. First, I want to say as a mom, I almost went into full tears a couple times hearing your story. I really appreciate it. As a mom, you want to protect your children, but to have that epiphany to let them live—it’s such a better experience.
I have about five questions I want to ask, but first, how does she view life now?
Choosing Life: Jennifer Swann on Breaking Free from Limitations
Jennifer Swann: Here’s the thing about my daughter: somewhere along the way, she simply decided she could do whatever she wanted, even if she was disabled. She never made agreement with the idea that her disability meant she couldn’t have a life she loves. She is always led by joy. She seeks joy in her life, and she doesn’t care that she doesn’t look the same as everybody else doing it. She is totally willing to be seen exactly as she is and take up space.
And let me tell you—she takes up space. She can’t sit upright, so she’s at an incline in her five-foot-long wheelchair stroller. She does musical theater with a caregiver on stage with her. She’s been in her high school show choir this year and her color guard this year. She lives a completely normal teenage life: sleepovers, FaceTiming, texting. She’s incredibly social. She literally meets people in the community and says, “Hi, you look really nice. Do you want to FaceTime me?”
She speaks, but it’s not intelligible to people who aren’t around her, so we translate. At school she uses an eye gaze device that lets her select icons or letters with her eyes, and it speaks for her so everyone can understand her. She just claims her life. She chooses not to see her circumstance as defining what she can and can’t do. It’s a really empowering way to live.
Becca Powers: And I commend the work you’re doing, because you’re going to help parents and children rise above limitation. What a powerful message even for people without disabilities. We were talking in the pre-recording about how it’s made you live more fully too. How has it changed the way you perceive life?
Jennifer Swann: It’s funny, because she’s 15 and a half now, and I didn’t recognize for myself until last year that I wasn’t claiming the life I wanted. I had milestone moments where I let myself do a little bit more. When she was diagnosed, I immediately quit my job to be her primary caregiver. At that time, we didn’t expect her life to be very long, so I thought of it as just a short phase.
As years went by, I realized maybe this was going to be longer. Maybe I should do something I would love too. So I went back to work part-time. Later I started doing karate with my son and earned a black belt in my mid-forties. I was doing little things, but I had resigned myself to the idea that as long as I was in this circumstance, I couldn’t have more than that. There was no way to create space for more.
Then last fall, I had an awakening around that. It shook me to the core, because how she was living her life was obvious to me, but I couldn’t see that I wasn’t living that same way. I was all in for supporting her, but I wasn’t all in for supporting myself. That’s when I decided I’m meant to do more. I found my calling in that moment.
It’s shocking how you can see somebody else doing something and recognize it, but not apply it to your own life.
Becca Powers: Whoa.
So yeah. What would you say is an aha or a lesson learned for you right now through all of this awareness?
Jennifer Swann: You know, I think that the biggest lesson that I've learned through all of this is that we get to decide for ourselves how we will experience any circumstance.
Choosing Power, Joy, and Possibility
Becca Powers: I love that so much. Like air fire, full stop. And you know, I say that too, like this is so on time for me because, you know, my audience has probably heard me talk about it maybe more times than they wanna hear, but it's just true. And what's going on for me—you know, my brother passed away March last year, and I'm now the sole survivor of my family.
And so, you know, I'm 46, I have a husband, I have four kids, so I've got this whole thing. And it's really easy, kind of like how you're alluding to, to get stuck in the narrative of like, well, this is now my circumstances. And so like, you know, I can take the identity of being orphaned or I could take the identity of being sole survivor of my family, but I am like, no. I choose to live. I choose to embody them as I go forward.
I choose—and it's like just that choice to live—I feel it in my bones and in my veins, you know. I'm like, no, I don’t care if it looks weird on the outside, if people think I should be crying when I am out. I just went on a cruise two weeks ago, so it's funny that at this time I’m like, I’m gonna go do something that I wanna do.
But it's so refreshing to take—it is taking your power back—but it’s like taking your joy back, your freedom. And it's just really powerful. So I appreciate you sharing everything that you're sharing. And I don't know if you wanna add anything to what I just said. If not, we can move on to another question.
Jennifer Swann: Yeah, I would just say that I think that as long as we are being breathed by some power, then there's more for us here. There's more for us, and we have to claim it. We have to claim it. And that’s one thing my daughter does—she leans in fully to what she would love. She doesn’t look at what she can’t do. She looks at what she can do.
And even if it doesn’t look the same as everybody else—you know, you're talking about your grief journey not looking the same—
Becca Powers: Yeah.
Jennifer Swann: Who cares? Who cares what other people think? There has to be a point at which we say, no, I get to decide for myself how I’m gonna do this.
Becca Powers: Yes. And that's why I wanted to talk about that more because I wanna encourage the audience: regardless of what you're going through, you get to choose, you know? And I think that's such a powerful message. And I was reading your bio and there was something in it that really stood out for me. Oh—the “limits are an illusion.” Like, that is incredible and goes with the theme of everything you're talking about. But tell me more about why did you come down to that phrase?
Jennifer Swann: Yeah, so that's the name of my coaching curriculum.It's called I Living Proof: Limits Are an Illusion. For me, it embodies how my daughter has chosen to view her life. Because when you find yourself in a situation that maybe you don’t prefer, you didn’t lose all your power just because you’re in the situation.
In fact, that is the opportunity to really, really lean into your power and decide for yourself how you’re gonna navigate it. And the idea that limits are an illusion—for her, it was about five years ago, shortly before COVID, she told me she wanted to do musical theater.
And I was like, okay, okay. If it can be arranged, we’re gonna facilitate that for her, right? Like, I’m not gonna be carrying her onto roller coasters with her ventilator—that’s not gonna happen. But musical theater, we could figure that out. So I started calling around and found a children’s theater group that had an accessible stage, and they were okay with a caregiver being on stage with her. And they were okay with the fact that she can sing to the best of her ability. She can’t move.
But here’s the thing: we would go to rehearsals, and we’d be up there, and the choreographer would be moving everybody around on stage. And literally, at one point she was like, “This choreography is so confusing.” And I’m like, wow. Like, she’s not moving—she’s literally not moving. But in her head, she is participating just like everyone else. She is just as important as everyone else on that stage. And she’s willing to be seen.
Becca Powers: That is incredible.
Jennifer Swann: And so that’s what I mean. Like, it’s all in our head. All of it’s in our head. Because we literally can just decide we’re gonna make this what we want it to be and what it can be for us. At the level of fact, she cannot be up there moving herself on the stage and doing the dance moves. But she’s decided—yes. I may not be up there by myself, but I can be up there with someone else, and I can still—
Becca Powers: And I can do them in my head and feel like I’m doing them.
Jennifer Swann: And she really does feel like she’s doing them.
Becca Powers: So who are we to sit there and say, why is she on stage? No girl—like, you go on stage, you get your experiences. That’s awesome.
Jennifer Swann: Yeah.
Becca Powers: And honestly—
Jennifer Swann: I had to kind of get over it too. Like, being in the audience, I did the first show with her, so I was on stage. The next show, a nurse did with her. She’s done five or six now. And I would be in the audience, and there was this part of me that was like, what are people gonna say? Am I gonna sit by somebody who doesn’t know that’s my daughter, and I’m gonna hear them gossiping about, “What is she up there for?”
And I had to overcome that myself. I had to be willing to let her be seen too.
Becca Powers: Wow. And I could see that as mom too. Like, we have our own limitations, right? Like, she’s actually a little bit more advanced on what she can do. She totally hits. You’re like, yes. Alright, I’ll come with you on this journey.
Jennifer Swann: Yeah. And you know, I just learn from her all the time. I took her to a dance studio that was doing a summer camp, and she didn’t wanna do the camp with the kids with disabilities. She wanted to do the regular camp because they were doing Wicked.
And we went down there to see if they could accommodate her and get her stroller on the stage. And they said, we always ask everybody what their goal is when they enroll in a camp with us. And she looked them straight in the eye and said, “I want the lead.”
And in her mind, there is no reason why she can’t have the lead, because she’s doing it. She’s just doing it.
Becca Powers: That is awesome.
Jennifer Swann: Yeah, it’s a pretty powerful way to live.
Becca Powers: Yeah.
Jennifer Swann: Because it really makes me stop and take stock. Because if here’s a child who has lived without being able to move essentially her entire life, and this is how she’s choosing to navigate life—what possible excuse do I have for not showing up authentically in the world and pursuing what I would love when I am fully able-bodied?
Becca Powers: Right. And what is true, if all of that is possible for her with the physical limitations that she truly has—what is truly possible for us who purposely hold ourselves back because of fear, fear of judgment, and all the different aspects that go in? What is truly possible for humans? That is absolutely where my mind’s going from this conversation.
So I wanna ask you another question: if someone was to embrace this concept, how would it change their life? How would it empower their life?
Jennifer Swann: One of the downloads that came to me when I was developing my curriculum is around the idea that whatever circumstance you’re facing in your life that is maybe a circumstance you don’t prefer—maybe it’s a job loss, maybe it’s a diagnosis, maybe it’s someone else’s diagnosis, maybe you’re a caregiver—whatever it is, it’s a portal.
If you view it as a portal and you’re willing to walk through it with an open mind, ever-expanding opportunities and possibilities will be revealed to you, and your greatest gifts will be unveiled. These circumstances that we find ourselves in—they are meant to grow us. They are meant to evolve us. But we have to allow them to do that.
So it takes a little bit of a leap of faith to walk through it with that mindset because you gotta take off your victim hat. You can’t play the victim anymore. You can’t pretend that you’re stuck there. You gotta actually be willing to move.
Becca Powers: So much of what you’re saying—and that’s also kind of where I was going with my mindset of how I’m handling, you know. My debrief is like, you could have taken—and I’m using the word identity, just so it’s easy to understand—the identity of a mom who has a child with severe limitations and lived her life and your life that way. And it would look completely different than the life you’re living today.
Flourish Through Mindset, Joy, and Support
Becca Powers: I would have assumed that the victim side of that, you know what I mean? Like what you’re just saying. Wow. In this conversation, you’re giving people permission to remove that layer and truly see what is possible. When you stop doing that—I just get so excited for conversations like this—so you can continue. I was thinking about what you were putting down.
Jennifer Swann: Well, when I think about what our life looked like then and what it looks like now—she was in and out of the hospital all the time in her toddler years, for two or three weeks at a time. And that was when we were living small. That was when we were not leaving the house and being very careful about who we let into the house. We were hardly living any kind of life at all.
And we did have her trached when she was four. Before then, she was on a BiPAP for support—sort of like a CPAP—and she just had a mask, which helped stabilize her medically. But she has not been hospitalized since she was three and a half years old. That hospitalization before we took the cruise was her last hospitalization for illness.
Becca Powers: I am blown away.
Jennifer Swann: And so you look at where we were—I can just see my foldable chair. I was lying in the hospital room daydreaming about a Disney cruise. And then this January, we flew to Hawaii with her, and I have a video of her parked in front of Kīlauea Volcano while it’s erupting.
Becca Powers: No, that is so cool. How many people without disabilities get to see a volcano erupt? That’s pretty amazing.
Jennifer Swann: To think about going from that tiny, contained, isolated life—it was a sad period for us—to now, as my comfort zone grows, we get to do more and more expansive things. And it’s worth saying, I have a lot of support. The amount of medical equipment we carry to travel with her requires three adults.
That’s actually part of my curriculum: calling in your village. If you don’t think you have a village, you’re wrong—people always want to help. You should let them be of service. It’s about calling in your village and building an even bigger one for whatever you’re trying to bring in next.
Becca Powers: Well—
Jennifer Swann: There’s more life out there.
Becca Powers: Talk about that, because I know we have maybe eight minutes left. Now that you’ve created curriculum to help other people, what does that look like, and how are you serving people now?
Jennifer Swann: It’s called the Flourish Method, and each letter stands for a step in the process—it’s an eight-step process. I’m coaching special needs parents and caregivers on that curriculum now, and I’m also developing a course for it, which will be out in late summer. I’m super excited about it because, particularly if you’re early in diagnosis and still trying to stabilize the new normal, it can feel overwhelming.
The first step is about building the foundation. Many times, when we’re in a caregiver role—or even in just a parenting role—we don’t prioritize ourselves. Over time, that wears down mental, emotional, and physical health. If you stay on that path long enough, crash and burn is the only possible outcome.
So the first pillar is about stabilizing the systems: prioritizing ourselves, getting the support we need, and accepting help. In the caregiving community, people start saying, “Wow, I can’t believe everything you do,” or “How do you handle all of that?”
Becca Powers: Oh yeah.
Jennifer Swann: I actually have two special needs kids. The other one doesn’t have a medical condition, but you still get a lot of accolades like, “Wow, how do you manage all that?” And yet, in reality, you’re not really taking care of yourself. That’s how you’re managing it—you’ve sacrificed a part of yourself.
We claim what is available to us in our circumstances—and claim it today. Every circumstance we navigate from today forward, we claim the opportunity and possibility, not the limitation.
One step in my curriculum is about reclaiming joy in your life. I have a matrix called the Joyability Matrix, which teaches you to stay in the quadrant where you experience joy, whether or not you’re good at it. Because if we’re not here to enjoy life, what is the purpose?
Becca Powers: Yes! That’s exactly it. Running toward passion, running toward joy, leaning into life. There’s this big, beautiful life out there—touch it, feel it, taste it, experience it. Even as a kid, I’ve always been a little risk-taking, a little daring, a little exploring, because life is great and big and out there.
Jennifer Swann: Yeah.
Becca Powers: If I stay safe in my little bubble, regardless of disability, there are people who have the choice to live freely but live caged in their world. So much of it is in our minds and how we view possibility.
Jennifer Swann: Yeah, exactly. The rest of the curriculum is about building steps to get there. Especially in the special needs journey, there are unique things—like FAA exemptions for flying, extra support, and other special steps. But the critical part is mindset. If you can’t shift your mindset, the rest won’t work.
Becca Powers: So it really just oozes out of you. But why are you passionate about this work?
Jennifer Swann: I have no doubt my daughter and I made an agreement to live this life together. Same with my son. They are here to teach me, and what I’m being taught is so powerful. I want to share it because it can completely transform how you approach your life, particularly tough circumstances.
Becca Powers: Yes.
Jennifer Swann: We all face challenges at some point, and we get to decide how we navigate and experience them. That is really empowering.
Becca Powers: It is so empowering. I think of it as our radiance. We are uniquely given gifts, even as disabilities, and we can shine and help others shine. What if we leaned into those things more than societal molds? How different could life be? Your passion makes my heart race—me too.
Jennifer Swann: Me too. A lot of it is about societal conditioning. I remember questioning what quality of life my daughter would have if she couldn’t move, if she required a ventilator. But if I get out of her way, she’ll have a great life—and she is.
Becca Powers: That’s incredible. As we wind down, let’s share how the audience can stay in touch with you.
Jennifer Swann: We’re on TikTok and Instagram at @DiagnosisMagical. I share my daughter’s journey and how she claims life. I also have a website coming up—JenniferSwannCoaching.com.
Becca Powers: That’s awesome. One last question before we wrap: what’s an empowering statement you’d leave for the audience?
Jennifer Swann: The quality of your life is directly impacted by how much life you’re willing to claim.
Becca Powers: Love it. Goosebumps. Thank you so much for being on the show—I absolutely adored our interview.
Jennifer Swann: Thank you.
