Welcome, Wild Soul.
I’m Stephanie Jenkins. Through 1:1 Soul Tending, online group courses and local community gatherings, I hold space for women+ to deepen into their own inner wisdom, to connect to body and soul, and to participate more deeply in the dance of the sacred earth and divine mystery.
I am a creative contemplative, soul companion, storyteller, educator, writer, and ritual weaver. And I am passionate about cultivating our wild belonging to the sacred dance of life within and beyond.
I believe that your soul is your best compass, and that each soul is an expression of the soul of the world. Not only is it your birthright to inhabit the true shape of your soul, but the world needs the fullest expression of who you most deeply are.
I’m here to help your wild river run free.
“Stephanie is a metamorphosis doula. She walks with us as we bridge what was, what is and what can come to be. Working with Stephanie is a pivotal step in an embodied experience of my belovedness and the goodness of the universe.”
–Eleanor H.
Give it a listen
I am happy to be able to share these delightful interviews with two talented and beautiful women, both of whom I am grateful to call friends.
Watch my talk with therapist Lauren Furutani.
Or listen to a conversation with transformational life-coach Emma Whittard on her podcast Becoming Wild.
My Story
To be wild means to be soul-led and self-willed. But for a long time, I listened to seemingly everyone except myself.
Dedicated student, pastor’s daughter, community leader, teacher of the year… I faithfully marched to the beat of the social norms. I got really good at being “good.”
What I didn’t realize was that I had given my power away.
I learned to believe that my worth was tied to how much I could give to others. That my wisdom lay in knowing the right answers. That my own longings and needs didn’t matter. That it was best to stay small, play it safe, and avoid rocking the boat.
Sound familiar?
I thought my spiritual journey was about my head (what I believed) and my heart (which needed to be devoted to everyone else besides myself). My embodied experience was not only left out, but vilified. And my femaleness was deemed less-than.
Hungry for belonging, I tried to fit the dictates of school, church, and culture, and in the process ended up denying the parts of me that held my feminine magic. I learned to:
judge my body harshly and ignore her wisdom
dismiss my creativity
resist my emotionality
distrust my longings
repress my sexuality
In essence, I learned to mute the voice of my soul.
After the sudden death of my brother, followed by years of unexplained infertility, I experienced a great unraveling of faith and identity.
Any notions of certainty I had were stripped away. I was initiated through loss into the great mystery.
Through a series of loving steps I began to court my own soul and remember my deep belonging to this sacred earth.
I began to listen to the voice of the divine within and discover the power of the feminine.
The truth is, we are meant to be free.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes defines wild as, “to live a natural life…one with innate integrity and healthy boundaries.”
To be wild is to be free.
Freed from the dictates of external authorities, we are each called to boldly step into the truth of who we are. To honor the shape of our soul, and to offer that back into the community as gift. Our personal healing and the healing of our planet require us to live into the truth of who we most deeply are.
Freedom is a process. One I am committed to personally and collectively. Freedom is a forever journey with no destination, only greater levels of expansion.
If you are longing…
to listen to your own inner wisdom
to make choices aligned with your soul
to remember the sacredness of your body
to attune to the voice of the divine within you
to free yourself from harmful cultural conditioning
to participate fully in your wild belonging to this good earth
I would be honored to journey alongside you in your own becoming.
I am on the journey, in my own process of wild becoming.
It’s a paradox: we are already whole and we are forever on our way. Like anyone else, I’m not done yet. I’m still growing, learning, and unlearning. The soul journey is my greatest adventure.
While I’ll take lived experience and embodied wisdom over credentials any day, here are a few qualifications that inform what I offer:
an eco-ministry certificate from Seminary of the Wild
co-founder and content creator of Field Guides for the Way, spiritual practice kits
certified Feminine Wholeness Facilitator through Alive and Well Women
board member of Alive and Well Women
Master of Arts from the School of Psychology, Fuller Seminary, including training in Internal Family Systems; Grief, Loss, Death and Dying; Spiritual Direction and Formation; Family Systems; Gender and Sexuality; Human Development; Pastoral Counseling; and Guilt and Shame.
various trainings in somatic awareness, intuitive movement, and trauma-informed care
over a decade of experience as a spiritual teacher, retreat-leader, and group-facilitator
20 years teaching 8th grade English in the public school
“Thank you. I'm seriously -CONTINUALLY- blown away that our passed crossed… I feel more wild and more measured from our journey together. I greatly appreciate your willingness to step into the bold calling of Priestess. You're a mother of many, many womens' souls, Stephanie.”
—Corinne B.
A bit more about me…
I grew up in sunny southern California, the eldest daughter of an evangelical Christian pastor. In my church tradition, I found both nourishment for my soul and profound wounding from harmful fundamentalist and patriarchal paradigms.
Following the thread of my soul led me to slowly shed the religious constructs of my original faith container, and yet my spiritual journey continues to be my greatest adventure.
The past decade of my life has been a reclamation of the divine feminine, the goodness of the body, and the sacredness of the earth.
As I apprentice myself to the sacred wild, perhaps the only thing that feels clear is that Divine Mystery cannot be limited to any one name or expression nor contained by any tidy doctrine.
Deepening into the earth-wisdom of my Celtic ancestry and gleaning inspiration from the mystics, I am rooting myself into a larger story. I am also nourished by many other wisdom streams, most especially yoga, Buddhism, depth psychology, and mythology.
As a white woman, I am daily learning to recognize my privilege as well as my limitations. I am LGBTQ+ affirming and am actively seeking to decolonize my life from white supremacy, patriarchy and other systems that oppress.
I live in Los Angeles, in the Hahamongna watershed, on the ancestral lands of the Tongva people, whose legacy of love for this place I seek to honor.
When I am not banging on my drum or making big creative messes, you can find me exploring the wild edges of LA, in the mountains or at the sea.
