Jen Merrill

Jen Merrill is an Illinois-based writer, musician, marketing project  manager, and gifted family advocate. The mom of two, she  homeschooled one twice-exceptional son through high school while  happily sending his younger brother off to school every morning. Those  days now in the past, she is settling into the somewhat quieter life of an  empty-nester. She is a music educator by trade, with degrees in music  education and flute performance. Long before she picked up a flute as a  child, however, Jen wanted to be a writer, something that didn’t happen  until she opened a Blogger account in 2006 and never looked back. Her  writing focused mostly on gifted families and advocacy until the  pandemic hit and instead of writing she took up staring into space. Her  book, “If This is a Gift, Can I Send It Back?”, struck a nerve with families  who suspected Jen was living in their closet. Her second book, on the  needs of gifted parents and self-care, is in progress; it is taking  significantly longer than anticipated because of the aforementioned  staring into space, complicated by living as the gooey center of the  sandwich generation. In addition to writing on her long-time blog,  Laughing at Chaos, she is the creative editor of the GHF Learners  Journey newsletter and has published articles in the Understanding Our  Gifted Journal, the 2e Newsletter, the Huffington Post.  

Jen has presented at the National Association for Gifted Children  conference (2013, 2022), the World Council for Gifted and Talented  Children conference (2013), the Supporting Emotional Needs of the  Gifted conference (2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022), and the Illinois  Association for Gifted Children Parents’ Day (2017, 2018). She was  also the keynote speaker for the Twice-Exceptional Children's Advocacy  conference (2016) and the SENG conference (2019).  

Jen brings both her acquired wisdom and her experience as a teacher  and mentor to her work in the service of parents, teaching them  techniques and mentoring them into their own versions of success. Her goal is to support parents of gifted and twice-exceptional kids, because  they are the ones doing the heavy lifting and are too often ignored,  patronized, and discredited. It is her hope that her sons never have to  deal with these issues when they raise their own likely gifted children.