Meet Jenna

Hi friends!

Welcome to our little corner of the internet. I’m so excited you are here and I cannot wait to begin this rewilding journey with you!

This will be a space of radical vulnerability so I will start with telling you how incredibly difficult that concept is for me. Vulnerability is hard, really fucking hard. (Sorry if cursing offends you, it will happen a lot.) I have never been an open and outgoing person. I am actively working to challenge my foundational beliefs that tend to keep me closed off and reserved. Writing this and starting a podcast are two ways I am leaning into being more vulnerable.

Let's start with a bit about me. I was raised in a middle/upper class, predominantly white, affluent, midwest, small town. If you asked me five years ago about my childhood I would have told you it was idyllic. And it was, but it was also difficult and filled with challenging moments. I am learning that two things can be true at the same time. I made it out of my teen years with strong people pleasing tendencies, a perfectionist mindset and a talent for dissociating in the ‘healthiest’ ways possible. These coping mechanisms served me well through my 20’s but simply did not land the same way in my 30’s. My rewilding began very slowly but the pace sped up drastically about three years ago.

I was living the picture perfect life, or so it appeared. I had a stable job that I loved, had a partner I married, we bought a house together, and lived in a beautiful small town in the mountains of Colorado. I checked all the boxes of a ‘normal’ life minus the 2.5 kids. Thankfully we stuck with just a dog. The destruction of all of the above was not rapid or intense, it was more of a slow burn. Life started to feel harder than it should and I had no idea why.

I’ve always been an observer. I would much rather be on the outside looking in most days. I always want to gather as much information as possible before making any sort of move. Some see this as logical and measured but sometimes it was uncertainty and fear that drove those behaviors. But this observer mindset developed a strong value of curiosity within me. This drove me to seek answers to my many questions, most often externally. I voraciously read all the books that were supposed to teach me how to live a better life. One after the next, I swallowed books without ever actually digesting the information they held. I have always been on a quest to find myself, but I was looking in all the wrong places. My preferred way to manage my anxiety became to read. In 2020 I read over 100 books thanks to Covid...

Speaking of Covid, it shook something loose in me. Its my personal belief that the trauma of Covid was a precipice for many people. This is not to discredit the horrific time that 2020 was, but it was the catalyst I needed to finally pause and look inward for the first time in my life. The collective grief of that time pulled out pockets of grief in my body that I didn't know still existed. Slowly, I unraveled in the most beautiful, terrifying and magical way. 2020 became the year of unlearning. Then 2021 came and was dubbed the year of doing hard things. To give credit where I should, it was Glennon Doyle who taught me that year that “we can do hard things”.

My rewilding began quietly and privately in 2020. Then 2021 was the year I debuted my rewilding to the world in dramatic fashion. I got divorced, sold our house, split up our life, moved twice in two months, started a consistent yoga practice, started therapy for the first time, and cried in public far more than I ever thought I would. I also danced, laughed, traveled, loved and found my soulmates that year.

As I have continued to move forward from all that happened in 2021, I have learned more than I ever thought possible. I have expanded into someone I have only dreamed of being. It has not always been easy but it has been beautiful to witness. In the summer of 2023 I heard the definition of rewilding. This was not a new word to my vocabulary but I had never considered it out of the context of nature. It blew me apart the moment I brought the idea of rewilding to my personal life. One word, one simple word, defined so much of the past few years for me. It was a moment I will not soon forget.

I see rewilding as a concept that pertains to so many areas of our lives;

To rewild-

To allow nature to take care of itself,

To remove the constraints and structures that contain,

To let things grow as they desire.

I want to rewild every part of my life. I clearly see how I can best take care of myself when I stop believing all the limits that have been taught to me by our society. I know myself better than anyone else ever will. Cultivating enough trust within myself to believe this concept has not been an easy path. But little by little, I’m walking towards a place where I am more aligned with my true self. Where I am taking down the fences that kept me tame and safe. Where I am breaking down the beliefs that no longer allow me to grow into my greatest potential. I have come so far yet I am light years away from where I hope to be. Life is messier than it has ever been but also exponentially more magical, and I will take that any day.

These words, this concept, terrifies and excites me equally. There has been a fire lit within me and I know it is my job to share it. It is my turn to spark the fire within someone else. A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle, and the world could use a little more light these days.

Where does your rewilding story begin?