Jen Dary was a 35-year-old mother of a newborn and a toddler, running her own leadership coaching business called Plucky. Of course she had headaches. She figured they were hormonal. She was tired or dehydrated. There were so many common explanations. That’s why it took doctors months to figure out she had a brain tumor.
In 2015, the Penrose resident, who lived in Berkeley, California at the time, began seeking medical attention for the headaches. Then, for muscle pain in her upper arms and stiffness in her legs. Then, for temporarily blurry vision in her left eye.
Eventually, Dary’s primary care doctor referred her to a rheumatologist to rule out multiple sclerosis. That physician sent her to a neurologist. And that is when, in April 2016, she finally got the MRI that showed the 4- to 5-centimeter mass called a meningioma in the left side of her brain. Although the lemon-size brain tumor was not cancerous, it was life-threatening, pushing against the walls of her skull. It needed to come out. Like now.
So begins Dary’s story of survival and the riveting intro to her memoir, I Believe in Everything. For 246 pages, the Arlington author recounts how her life changed in a flash, and how otherworldly visions made her believe she would be OK. The book launches Jan. 13, and she will be at Arlington’s One More Page Books on Jan. 15, 7 p.m., to tell her tale in conversation with Arlington Poet Laureate Courtney LeBlanc.
The memoir’s release is one way that Dary, now 45, is celebrating 10 years of being tumor-free. Initially, she didn’t plan to write a book. She kept a journal about the experience for her sons—”in case something happened,” she says. “But as a [life] coach and as a person who moves through the world helping people through their own stuff, it was very clear from day one that this story was for other people, too—people who don’t have brain tumors or don’t even know anybody with brain tumors. We all have uncontrollable stuff that shows up. And I think the book is a friend to you in those times.”
Believing in The ‘Bigness’
In addition to sharing the details of her diagnosis, surgery and recovery, Dary recounts a surprising side effect during her ordeal—vibrant visions of her future self at work and of people telling her she would be OK. In one, a group of women cheerfully told her, “You are going home…. It is over for you.”
Those mystical episodes, she says, provided a glimpse at “something much bigger than we can understand.” She began referring to them as the “Bigness.”
A year after her surgery, Dary was diagnosed with partial focal seizures, likely caused by scar tissue from the brain surgery. Unlike grand mal seizures, which cause unconsciousness and shaking, her seizures have few physical signs. “It just feels like I’m a little bit distracted,” she says. “You wouldn’t even know” it’s happening.
The seizures could explain those “spiritual moments,” as Dary called them, but she prefers to believe a greater entity was watching over her.
“What do you do when something weird happens and you can’t explain it?” she says. “Everybody around you experiences [these moments]. I’ll be with a bunch of business leaders, two drinks in, and somebody’s seen a ghost, and somebody has had a near-death experience or an out-of-body something. It’s so strange that we don’t talk about that. Just because you experienced it and can’t [explain it with] the laws of physics doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
The medication she now takes to control the seizures stopped the visions, but their effects still linger. “I am so changed by it,” Dary says.
Holding Onto Hope
In September of 2020, wildfires near their home in California prompted Dary and her family to consider moving out of state. A text from her brother, who lives in Alexandria, set a plan in motion. The Darys headed to Arlington.
“I feel very much in the center of a lot of really cool things here,” she says. “This is the most civically engaged place I’ve ever been. I did the Arlington Neighborhood College, a civic leadership program a couple years ago. I really like the neighborhoodness of [places having distinct identities.] There’s some pride that comes with that.”
More importantly, “I am feeling good,” Dary says. “But there is a new little thing we found in an MRI in February [2025]. It looks like it’s probably just a little clump of blood vessels, but it does look like it’s grown. I just had another MRI in November. Everybody is feeling like this is probably nothing, but I would like this story to be over. I’m more interested in a different problem to solve in the world.”
For now, she’s focused on her book tour, which kicks off at One More Page and will take her to Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and cities in New Jersey and New York. “I’ll do the West Coast maybe later this year,” Dary says.
“It feels like a huge celebration all year, with all these people who knew me, or have come to know me, to just be like, ‘Jen is alive!'”
“Also let’s talk about weird stuff,” she says, referring to her visions. “I think it’s so nice to have something hopeful.”