A big part of being a good therapist or counselor is showing empathy, that is, understanding and sharing the feelings of another. Jen Haugland says she has gone through a lot of pain in her life, and believes those experiences serve as marching orders for her unique personal mission.

She’s done that as a mental and behavioral health specialist for more than 20 years, and, most recently, as a singer-songwriter. In what she calls her “second life,” Haugland has all but stepped away from the behavioral health field, instead channeling her therapy into music. Her 11-track debut, Where I Am, came out this spring, and six months later, a Christmas single, “A Still and Quiet Night” has emerged.

I talked with Jen about her double life and unique calling.

Tell us about you, where you live, what your family life is like, what your secret identity is, all that kind of stuff.

I was born and raised in Indiana, and we moved to Washington state my senior year of high school. I got married here in Washington in '87. My husband and I have been married for 27 years. We had been married and divorced after 13 years, and then we remarried each other again, so we have a really neat story of reconciliation in our marriage relationship that we like to tell.

While I was in school studying music, we had our first daughter. I took some time off, then went back to school in the behavioral health side of things. I went on and got my Master's degree in counseling psychology. I have three kids. Our oldest is 26, our next youngest is 23, and then we have a 17 year old.

So I put music aside for a good 13 years of my life. I've played piano since I was 7, and was really involved with music and drama and modeling and things like that growing up. But I walked away from it all and told God I'd never really do those things again unless He was involved with it.

My husband is in the U.S. public health service, and we've moved all around with his career. We moved back to Washington from Minnesota after we got remarried, and doors were opening for me to be on church worship teams.

So are you still practicing as a counselor?

I've been in mental health for 19 years, over 20 in the field of behavioral health, but I've totally put that aside now. I'm kind of living out my second life. After playing keys again at a church plant, doors continued to open for me. I started songwriting again. I hired a coach to coach me more in keyboards and arranging and songwriting and worship leading. I hired another guy to teach me some guitar, because I wanted to pick up some of that.

I built a really nice relationship with the Christian Musician Summit. I've gone and supported that every year when they've been in Nashville and the CMS northwest here in the Seattle area and continue to network where I met Cindy Colville. Cindy lived in Nashville, and she was very well known in the industry. She was a songwriting coach. She developed stage four lung cancer a year ago, and she died over the summer. She was instrumental though in coaching me for about four or five months while I was developing my songwriting and lyric writing skills.
 

You just released your Christmas single this fall, “A Still and Quiet Night.”

I did. We just released it November 11th.

With the song, you're looking at a marriage that has gone through all these years of raising their children, and then they grow up and they leave. What happens in most marriages at this point of life, entering into the empty nest, is that they gradually just unintentionally grow apart. If marriages aren't intentional, the couples aren't intentional to find things in common with each other or to honor things about the other person and maybe different goals and dreams that they have after the kids leave, a lot of those marriages end up in divorce.

They call it "gray divorce." I thought that was really interesting, and being that I was going through similar transition periods, it's like how do we guard that in our marriages? For me, I kind of perceive myself as having opportunities down the road to share those kinds of stories and be able to promote what it looks like to really love one another well and to allow God to reconcile us to each other.

Where do we find you today, Jen, as far as your mission, your calling, what you're looking to do? If you had to sum up why this, like you said, "second life" has come about, how would you describe that?

It's interesting because I grew up in a pretty tough situation as a kid. My parents divorced when I was really little, so that was really rough for me. I think that's probably why I gravitated toward the mental health side, because I wanted to understand more about me, understand more about how families worked. I had a lot of compassion for people like me or that were in similar situations, and I was always a very good listener.

Music was also my mainstay and would keep me centered and grounded. I know so much about pain and suffering that I've been intentional to write songs that speak to those kinds of things. I feel like it's really important to also share my testimony personally in my own life and my battle with depression, and then to bring in the story of our marriage as well and support marriage.

All of my writing reflects those things in my life, and so I feel like I'm in a unique situation because I have this rich background history of being a mental health therapist and already have gone through so much in life. Now I can take all of those stories and weave them into songs of what I feel are hope and healing for people that are out there. The church suffers a lot, and I just feel like I can reach out and fit that niche for the church and for people that suffer with mental health issues, to help bring that message of Christ.

One of the biggest messages I think I have in my ministry is reconciliation, because I've seen this reconciliation happen left and right in my life. So it's just been amazing to watch God work. We may not all have opportunities to be completely reconciled, and reconciliation will look different for everybody. Nobody is exempt from getting God's grace.
 

Musically, what are you going for to accompany these themes? For someone who has never heard you before, what can they expect from Jen Haugland's music?

I would say inspirational and easy listening, kind of bringing a calmness and peacefulness to life. I don't rock out with my songs so much. I like a little jazzier feel. I like the inspirational feel of song. I like to challenge myself in songwriting to do a little bit of everything, but I think because in my life I've worked so hard to get to a point of living it rather calmly and even keeled, I've tried to bring that out in my songs as well. Just kind of shrugging off the hard things in life and trying to keep the main focus on where Christ is and the big picture of what it means to let love cover a multitude of sins.

Who are some of your musical influences?

My very first one a long time ago when I was in high school was Amy Grant. I really gravitated towards her, of course, and a lot of people will say that I sound like her. Then Michael W. Smith, of course. I really liked Keith Green a lot, and then when Rich Mullins came out, I loved his stuff too. I think I love honest and real lyrics that are sometimes very raw. And Rick Elias, I really have enjoyed his new album, Job. That's out there because people are willing to sing about the real things in life.

Are you still leading worship at your home church?

I'm not currently leading, but I can certainly lead worship for events. I do have concerts. I just did a fundraising event for the National Alliance on Mental Illness for my county. That's called NAMI, and that's a big national organization. I love it. It was great. It felt like that was my niche. I would love to be more involved with supporting things like maybe celebrate recovery groups or any type of ministries out there that support marriage or mental health.

It would be the best of all worlds with you.

It's really a nice niche. Not everybody has a Master's degree in psychology. I just feel like God's going to take it all, weave it together, and provide opportunities for me to share that. I hope someday that will include speaking events so I can get that message out there more.

Then I'm also working on a book, kind of behind the scenes, on my husband's and my testimony from our marriage.

What would you say is next for you? What's on the horizon?

That's a good question. I'm trying really hard to leave that open.

How can people be praying for you as we enter into this new year?

One thing for sure is just praying over the ministry itself, because of what I tried to speak about things like marriage or reconciliation and divorce. There are reasons why some people are divorced, but that wasn't God's intention or original plan for mankind. So anytime you go out there and you're bringing a message of hope to marriages that are struggling and suffering, you're going to get beat up pretty good.

I think there have been times where I've had that happening, and we could just use prayer to be covered in our own marriage here and protected while we transition into these stages of me going out there more and finding more opportunities and places where I can share this kind of message.