What started 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 shaped from the very beginning of life. Through her work, she empowers mothers to cultivate deeper self-awareness, break inherited 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 has overcome, and her hopes and dreams for the future.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
Seven years ago, as I stepped into my forties, I found myself in a quiet but profound transition. My children were in their teens, on the edge of adulthood, dreaming up lives beyond home. It was the first time in a long time, I had space to turn inward and ask: What about me?
That question led me to learning more about herbalism. But what I didn’t expect was that this path would take me all the way back to the very beginning – my own birth.
As part of my herbalism studies, I entered the old traditional ways of Celtic (shamanic) herbalism and explored my birth story and the imprints it left on me. What I uncovered was deeply confronting and incredibly illuminating. Patterns I had carried my entire life; how I regulated myself, how I solved problems, how I created and maintained relationships, even my sense of disconnection from my father were all there. Not random. Not flawed. But imprinted. Written into my nervous system from the very beginning. It was like seeing myself clearly for the first time.
At the same time, I was working as a kindergarten teacher, navigating increasingly diverse and complex needs within the classroom. I was constantly searching for ways to better understand and support the children entrusted to me, not just academically, but emotionally and developmentally. With the insights I had gained from my own birth story, something clicked. I began gently inviting 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 behaviours, their sensitivities, their ways of learning and relating. And again, the correlations were undeniable.
More importantly, the impact was profound. Children felt seen and inspired to learn in a new way, their way. My teaching became more intuitive, more responsive, more effective using their birth stories. What I had discovered wasn’t just powerful, it felt like the missing piece, the lens I had been searching for.
I came to see 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 each other. From that knowing, my work was born.
Today, I advocate for the understanding of our birth stories and imprints, so 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 began, we can choose how we move forward.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
In the early days of my business, I began simply through word of mouth and honest conversation. I shared my own experiences with the families of the children I was teaching, which naturally opened deeper discussions 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 through pregnancy and matrescence, which helped me expand my reach and deepen my understanding of what women were in need of in preparation for Motherhood and beyond – that would bring in more conscious awareness to how we impart 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, centering it around the importance of knowing and understanding our birth stories. I became deeply passionate about how our birth gives deep insights into early imprints that shape the way we parent, teach, relate and create in the world.
A significant part of my journey was also personal. I continued deepening my relationship with the three birthing portal herbs and flowers that had guided me through my own birth story exploration. This connection became an integral thread in both self awareness and my work, and it remains woven through everything I offer today.
As my confidence grew, I began facilitating workshops and information sessions for local parenting and homeschool groups who were curious about birth imprints. These spaces allowed me to share what I had learned in a more structured way, while also creating meaningful, community-based conversations that supported others in exploring their own stories.
This combination of personal experience, community connection and a growing body of work is what truly ignited my business.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
I am in the midst of a real breakthrough right now. Birth is deeply personal and it hasn’t always been easy to speak about with the mothers of the children I’ve taught. Often, these conversations are quietly avoided, held in what I have come to know as their “vulnerability vault” because of the weight and complexity of their own experiences.
Because of this, the growth of my business has been very slow. Finding my voice, standing in my message and trusting its value has required me to unlock my own “vulnerability vault” and move through self-doubt and imposter syndrome more times than I can count.
But what I’m recognising now is that the very thing that felt like resistance is actually the work. Creating space for these stories to be seen, heard and understood isn’t easy, but it is necessary and a responsibility I no longer can ignore. And as I continue to anchor into this, my message is becoming clearer, stronger and more grounded in purpose.
I’m 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 conscious experience of motherhood.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
I was working full time as a primary school teacher, raising two teenagers navigating their own major life transitions, and not long after I birthed my business, COVID hit. Balancing it all felt less like balance and more like navigating an asteroid field while being pulled toward a black hole.
At that time, my understanding of balance was completely skewed. I wasn’t balancing; I was juggling, constantly. Beneath it was a deep belief that asking for help meant I was incapable, and an unconscious drive to prove I could handle everything on my own. So I pushed, overextended and inevitably burned out. In those early years, my business didn’t receive the care, nourishment or space it truly needed to grow. It was missing its own kind of postpartum support.
What has shifted since then is profound. As I began to understand how my nervous system was shaped through gestation and birth, I started to meet myself differently. I softened. I learned that I function best in cycles – short, focused bursts of energy followed by longer periods of rest and integration. This is my natural rhythm, and when I honour it, everything flows more sustainably.
I’ve also learned to ask for help and to lean into the expertise of others, rather than carrying it all alone. And in moments of overwhelm, I now turn to my breath, choosing presence over numbing, awareness over avoidance.
Motherhood continues to evolve too. Even with older children, there are still milestones, challenges and moments that call me back into deep presence. What’s changed is how I meet them. I share openly with my children – my frustrations, my growth, my wins – and together we’ve co-created a home environment that honours both the realities 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 be held – and building a life and business that can sustain all of it.
