Welcome to The Jennifer Chronicles

Hello, I’m Jennifer, an American wife, mother, and nana. I am the Principal Practitioner of Tambourine PR. I created The Jennifer Chronicles: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Generation X. (jenx67.com) in 2008. Since that time, it has been featured in the National Associated Press, Good Housekeeping, Washington Post, CNN, Tulsa World, Daily Oklahoman, and numerous other publications and websites. It is a Gen X blog about childhood, faith, family, and motherhood and serves as an archive for the 13th generation of Americans often referred to by historians as a lost generation.

It features:

• 📰 Gen X News, Stories and Commentaries
• 🎙️ Jennifer Chronicles podcast
• ✏️ Gen X Memoirs & the Daily Photo
• ☎️ Nostalgia
• 📷 Carefully-curated Vintage Photos: 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s 📼 😎
• 🤟 Amazing Facebook community! 😆 Fun, Interesting, Politics-free!
• 🤣 Funny Memes
• 💙 Field Notes from my life in the 🇺🇸 Heartland
• 📷 Original, Award-Winning Photography
• 📚 Book Reviews
• 😊 Post about Generation Z
• ✝️ Posts on Faith, Religion, and 📿 Liturgical Living

I have invested thousands of hours over a 12-year period to grow and maintain this site. Today, I hold a respectable place in the Gen X conversation, not as a celebrated sociologist, demographer, historian, marketer, or HR professional, but simply as someone who lived through it. (I would like to mention that I do have degrees in history and journalism, and still have the monthly student loan payments to prove it. 🤣)

Most Comprehensive Gen X Site

Moreover, for more than a decade this site has appeared in top Search Engine Results Pages for queries about Gen-Xers. My words have touched millions of people, with and without attribution. (Attribution is always nice.) This work has been a labor love, which I performed so Generation X would not be lost and forgotten anymore. At times, I have been ridiculously zealous about it, believing that I could literally trudge across the Internet and will my generation out of oblivion.

No Longer A Nameless Generation

Will you stand above me?
Look my way, never love me
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down
Don’t You Forget About Me, Simple Minds, 1985

Generation X was born during the most shameless, anti-child phase in American history. According to historians and sociologists, we were the least nurtured and the least parented generation our country has ever produced. Born between 1961 and 1981, over time, we devolved to a nameless generation. X for unknown factors. X for crossed-out and scoured. The beautiful thing is we became the hardest working employees and the most devoted moms and dads, aunts and uncles, the world has ever seen. The best things are always born out of suffering.

Finally, have fun looking around! There is so much here to read and see. I hope you stay awhile, but if you never make it back here again remember this one thing: God, our Father, knows your name. He will restore to you the years the locust has eaten.

FAREWELL, MOMMA.
“We don’t ‘lose’ our mothers – the reality is more violent than that… a pain that reaches all the way down to your…bones…”

FUNNY, ORIGINAL MEMES
I created the following Gen X memes to make you smile. 😊 I hope you like them. I hope they make you laugh and smile.

SAMPLE MEMOIR
This post, Wintertide, is a section from a memoir I’ve been working on. It’s about my teen years in the recession-ravaged Heartland.

POSTS on MOTHERHOOD
“If pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it’s this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.”

DAILY GEN X PHOTO
The Daily Photo features images of Gen-Xers from my extensive collection of vernacular photography. Enjoy!

POSTS on FAITH
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

I LIKE THIS PICTURE of JESUS.
The Head of Christ by Warner Sallman. This is the picture of Jesus that hung in the vestibule of all the poor country churches I attended as a young girl. I loved this Jesus so much and it never occurred to me to blame Him for all the bad stuff that was happening around me. I was just so glad He was there with me through it all.