What began as a personal exploration into herbalism and self-discovery led Stephanie Jane to uncover the profound influence of birth stories and the imprints they leave on our lives. Drawing on her experience as both an educator and mother, Stephanie founded Isha Soul Seed Education to help women understand the patterns, beliefs and nervous system responses formed early in life. Through her work, she empowers mothers to cultivate deeper self-awareness, break hereditary cycles, and parent with greater intention, compassion, and connection. Here, she talks to The Natural Parent magazine about the inspiration behind her work, how she balances work and family life, the challenges she’s overcome, and her hopes and dreams for the future.
The passion: What inspired you to create your business?
Seven years ago, as I turned forty, I found myself in a quiet but profound transition. My children were in their teens, on the edge of adulthood, dreaming of lives beyond the home. It was the first time in a long time I had space to turn inward and ask: What about me?
This question led me to learn more about botany. But what I didn’t expect was that this road would take me all the way to the beginning – my own birth.
As part of my herbal studies, I entered the old traditional ways of Celtic (shamanic) herbalism and explored birth story and the fingerprints ran out on me. What I uncovered was deeply confronting and incredibly enlightening. Patterns I had carried all my life. how I regulated myself, how I solved problems, how I formed and maintained relationships, even my sense of disconnection from my father was all there. Not by chance. Not defective. But imprinted. It was written into my nervous system from the start. It was like seeing myself clearly for the first time.
At the same time, I was working as a kindergarten teacher, meeting increasingly diverse and complex needs in the classroom. I was constantly looking for ways to better understand and support the children entrusted to me, not only academically, but emotionally and developmentally. With the knowledge I had gained from my own birth story, something clicked. I began to gently invite families to share their children’s birth stories with me. Over the next three years, I used these stories as a lens to better understand each child, their behaviors, their sensitivities, their ways of learning and relating. Again, the correlations were unmistakable.
More importantly, the impact was profound. The children felt seen and inspired to learn in a new way, their own way. My teaching became more intuitive, more responsive, more effective using their birth stories. What I had discovered wasn’t just powerful, it was like the missing piece, the lens I was looking for.
I realized that our birth stories are not just memories…they are maps. Maps that help us understand ourselves. Maps that guide us in supporting our children. Maps that deepen connection within families and with each other. From this knowledge, my work was born.
Today, I advocate for understanding our own birth stories and fingerprintsso that we as mothers and teachers can move into deeper awareness, compassion and connection with ourselves and our children.
Because when we understand where we started, we can choose how to move forward.
The launch: How did you get started in the first place?
In the early days of my business, I started simply by word of mouth and honest conversation. I shared my own experiences with the families of the children I taught, which naturally opened up deeper conversations about birth, motherhood, and the imprints we carry. These conversations became the foundation of my work.
I also connected with a local business that supported women during pregnancy and motherhood, which helped me expand my reach and deepen my understanding of what women needed in preparation for motherhood and beyond – which would bring more awareness to how we pass our own unresolved issues on to our children from the womb and beyond.
At the same time, I created a website and began refining my message, focusing it on the importance of knowing and understanding our birth stories. I became deeply passionate about how birth gives us deep insights into early imprints that shape how we parent, teach, relate, and create in the world.
An important part of my journey was also personal. I continued to deepen my relationship with the three birth gate herbs and flowers that had guided me in exploring my own birth story. This connection became an integral thread in both my self-awareness and my work, and remains woven through everything I offer today.
As my confidence grew, I began facilitating workshops and information sessions for local parenting and homeschooling groups who were curious about birthmarks. These spaces allowed me to share what I had learned in a more structured way, while creating meaningful community-based conversations that supported others in exploring their own stories.
This combination of personal experience, community connection, and increasing workload is what really sparked my business.
Innovation: What has been the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
I’m in the middle of a real breakthrough right now. Birth is deeply personal and it has not always been easy to talk to the mothers of the children I have taught. Often, these conversations are quietly avoided, in what I have come to know as a “vault of vulnerability” because of the weight and complexity of their own experiences.
Because of this, the growth of my business was very slow. Finding my voice, standing in my message and trusting its value has required me to unlock my own “vault of vulnerability” and go through self-doubt and impostor syndrome more times than I can count.
But what I now recognize is that the very thing that felt like resistance is actually the work. Creating space for these stories to be seen, heard and understood is not easy, but it is necessary and a responsibility I can no longer ignore. And as I continue to anchor in it, my message becomes clearer, stronger and more grounded in purpose.
I am no longer trying to force the conversation. I’m learning to hold it. And in doing so, I’m building a business that invites women into deeper self-awareness, understanding, and a more mindful experience of motherhood.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
I was working full-time as an elementary school teacher, raising two teenagers navigating their own major life transitions, and shortly after starting my business, COVID hit. Balancing it all felt less like balance and more like navigating an asteroid field while being pulled towards a black hole.
At the time, my understanding of balance was completely skewed. I wasn’t balanced. I juggled, all the time. Underneath was a deep belief that asking for help meant I was incompetent and an unconscious desire to prove that I could handle everything on my own. So I pushed, overextended, and inevitably burned out. In those early years, my business wasn’t getting the care, nourishment, or space it really needed to grow. He lacked his own kind of postpartum support.
What has changed since then is profound. As I began to understand how my nervous system was shaped during pregnancy and birth, I began to see myself differently. I softened. I learned that I function best in cycles – short, focused bursts of energy followed by longer periods of rest and completion. This is my natural rhythm and when I honor it, everything flows more sustainably.
I’ve also learned to ask for help and lean on the expertise of others, rather than taking it on myself. And in moments of overwhelm, I now turn to my breath, choosing presence over numbness, awareness over avoidance.
Motherhood continues to evolve as well. Even with older kids, there are still milestones, challenges, and moments that call me back into deep presence. What has changed is how I meet them. I share openly with my children – my frustrations, my growth, my victories – and together we have created an environment at home that honors both the reality of life and the importance of connection, support and balance.
Now, balance doesn’t mean doing it all. It means knowing when to hold, when to rest and when to hold – and building a life and a business that can sustain them all.
