Are You Living in Alignment with Your Feminine Energy? - with Sarah Jenks | EP 73

As women, we have been trained to always be judging ourselves off of the other people in the room, in the community, in our family. Historically, this is what has kept us safe, because if we did rock the boat, we didn't have rights to protect our livelihood.
It's very normal to be afraid of outshining someone or making somebody mad, because we just got the right to have our own

credit card in like, what was it, 1974? If we did rock the boat, we could be kicked out of our marriage and not have any rights to be able to support ourselves. The first question to ask is, am I walking my path or am I walking somebody else's path? Am I constantly trying to avoid upsetting my male partner? Am I constantly worried about outshining my friends? Anytime we are judging ourselves off of what other people are going to think of us in a negative way, it is almost always grounded in internalized patriarchy.
I know that trust is a big theme for people and we have a lot of healing work to do around trusting ourselves, trusting governments or trusting something outside of ourselves. What is some of the work that you have found to be helpful to rebuild that trust? We've been working on this a lot this year.
And the thing that we've been doing the most is welcome back to the healing and human potential podcast, where today we're going to dive into the power of the sacred feminine, how reconnecting with this part of ourselves can lead to deeper self-worth, stronger relationships, and a more authentic life. We're also going to uncover why the sacred feminine was erased from history and how intergenerational trauma impacts our ability to embrace it and what practical rituals we can use to reclaim our true power.
Our guest today, Sarah Jenks is a transformational leader and a priestess, and she's going to be sharing actionable steps to live more courageously and authentically. So if you're ready to challenge societal norms and step into your essence, this episode is for you.
Sarah, I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks for having me.
Oh my goodness. It's such a joy.
Yeah. And there's so much I want to dive into in your world.
I know a big part of your work is around the sacred feminine and that wasn't necessarily mainstream growing up or with role models. And so for people that are like, what is the sacred feminine? Why is this important? Talk to us a bit.
Let's start there. Yeah.
So most of us, if we grew up with any sort of organized religion, we know the sacred masculine really well. And some of us know the toxic masculine pretty well also.
And I was raised in the Christian faith. I come from a very traditional New England preppy family.
And what happened for me was I got really interested in spirituality, but it was like Eastern spirituality, transcendental meditation. It still didn't feel feminine, but I didn't even know to look for it really.
And what happened for me was I actually was going to therapy and I stumbled into my therapist's living room and she had forgotten to clean up from a ceremony the night before. And I had this full body remembrance.
I erupted in goosebumps all over my body. I started to cry.
And she just looked at me like, what is happening to her? Because I'm in a polo shirt and pearls and patent leather pumps. I'm in like full normie mode at this point in my life.
And I just looked at her and I said, what's happening here? And she said, well, I'll tell you when you're ready. And I was like, I want in on the secret club.
I'm ready now. And when I went to my first ceremony, we did it in the archetype of the great mother.
And I just remember having this experience of this energy of a mother figure that I couldn't see, but I could feel in the room. And I had this experience of, oh, this is what God is supposed to feel like.
This is what I want to feel when I connect with the sacred. This is what I've been looking for on my quest in personal development and in meditation and going to workshops.
I found it in this sacred feminine ceremony. And I wanted to really understand why wasn't everyone doing this? And why did I all of the sudden feel like I couldn't tell anybody what I was doing? So if we think about the sacred masculine, like from a traditional Christian perspective, we have been taught that he's a father God in the sky.
And we all have men in our lives. And if we just think about the most loving grandfather figure, we can sort of feel the sacred masculine feeling.
And if we also feel this unconditional love from a grandmother or a mother figure, we can all sort of feel that energy in our bodies, but we didn't grow up knowing that that energy is also divine. And it's something we can lean on.
And I really went down the rabbit hole of the sacred feminine because what happened for me was at the time I was feeling super anxious. I was feeling super lost.
I was a new mom and I was really trying so hard to understand why was it that I was going to therapy every week. I was in the personal development industry.
I was going to like Tony Robbins and all these personal development workshops. Why was it that I was going to therapy every week? I was in the personal development industry.

I was going to like Tony Robbins and all these personal development workshops.

Why was it that I just spent, you know, 90 minutes in a ceremony and had the same level

of transformation that I had had in all the years before combined.

And I wanted to understand the impact of that. And I also wanted to understand why wasn't

everybody doing this. And I went deep into sacred feminine learning around the cycles.
So the sacred

feminine is also reflected in the seasons of the earth and in the cycles of the moon, which are

also reflected in our menstrual cycle. And we can use that cycle to track our transformation.
We also see the cycle in the tarot and in the elements and in the cycles of life. And it's actually this whole map and language.
And the same cycle is overlaid in the zodiac and everything we know from astrology. It's all actually the same and you can see it across cultures all over the world from a super ancient perspective and they weren't even talking to each other at the time.
So I went and dug into the history of the sacred feminine and realized that this was the primary way that humans worshipped for actually 97% of what we have documented as the history of humans communing with the divine. And it's only been in the past 1500 years, which is really just like 3% of the history of humans having a religion that we don't have the sacred feminine at the center of our spiritual practice.
And I was like, what the fuck? So the sacred feminine though, in your eyes is, is what, how do I define that? So I define it as really, I define it as range and cycles and creation. So if the sacred masculine is like a container, the sacred feminine is the creation or the energy that happens inside of that container.
If the sacred masculine is linear, point A to point B, directional, the sacred feminine is a spiral. And so the importance really is to hold it in balance.
In balance. I know for me on my spiritual journey, I had a lot of male teachers and there was a point where I knew it was important to also have spiritual teachers that were women.
And I know masculine and feminine is within all of us, but there was something that I needed embodied in both the heart and this embrace, but also the clear knowing of what I am mentally, emotionally, spiritually, just on all levels, absolutely head, heart and gut. Yeah.
And then that then we can really develop our full range to be able to respond to the moment how it's asking us to respond rather than what we're just typed, you know, leaning too hard. Yeah.
But you were talking about just I know you talk about that some of this was a race from history. Yeah, saying that the last 1500 years educate us.
Yeah. What happened? Why? So I think the thing that's super important to understand is that if you go back to like 30,000 BC, some of the first archaeological finds that people have found are actually pictures of a feminine God.
You see this in the Venus of

Willendorf, which is if anyone Googles it, you'll probably recognize it. And all of the temples were often shaped like women's bodies.
And you walked in through a yoni portal into the temple. So our bodies were a reflection of the divine from 30,000 BC.
And then in different regions all over the world, the sacred feminine started to be villainized and erased because when you're in a matriarchy, it's about balance. It's about care for all.
and there were people emerging on the planet that wanted to have power over instead of power for all. And one of the places when I was going through history to try to understand where did the sacred feminine go, the place that I focused a lot of my attention that seemed to really jump out at me glaringly was during the Crusades in the Dark Ages, you know, started around the year 1300, where the Catholic Church decided to take over all of Europe and also spread into Asia and then enslaved people in Africa.
And that was actually the same movement that colonized Turtle Island, which we now know as North America and the United States. So the thing that I realized was when the Crusaders came into a village, the first thing they did was burn the sacred feminine temple and kill the leaders, the spiritual leaders of the community that were mostly women.
And this also led to the burning times, which we know is the witch hunts and the witch burnings. And what they did was they used Christianity and Jesus's supposed word, which we most of us now know was not what he meant to take over large groups of people to get the masses really fearful for their lives, for their well being.
And to, we know, anytime we're scared, we look to the person in power.

And I just thought it was so interesting that the tool they used was to array sacred feminine spirituality in order to take the power away from the people. And so when I learned that, I really asked myself, well, what would happen if we put it back? how could we actually really change the way women saw themselves and saw their own power? If we just put in this practice, because they must have been onto something on some level, if that was the primary thing that they were after.
Yeah. And I think of this, even as you're talking about like, how do you take over anything or how do you brainwash people? You take away the power, you confuse them and you outsource it.
And I think one of the most important things you do is as, and part of what we'll talk about is how to really insource our own authority and our own truth. But before we get there, this happened and it definitely reflects in society.
I think there's a lot of women who are afraid to take space to own their voice.

What is some of the societal conditioning that you've seen for little girls or how that's how women have adopted this in current times now? So I love that you use the word brainwashing because I use that phrase and that context a lot to explain to women like what's happening in us. Because humans have evolved to learn through metaphor and story.
It is actually how our brains develop belief systems. And if you take away the metaphor of powerful, sovereign women in religious stories, in talking about folklore around the fire, and you replace it with only a virgin, pious mother and a whore, then we grow up, if we live in a predominantly Christian society, even if we aren't grown

up Christian, these archetypes, these metaphors are really baked in to our culture, then we only have two archetypes to see ourselves in. And what can happen is that naturally, I believe as women, we have the magic in us.
we were all super wild when we were little girls, but we've been taught to be afraid of that wildness of being ourselves of that authenticity because we've been living in a culture. And I do believe that it's changing where we were going to be made fun of for being different, where, you know, we would maybe be shamed for being different, where we wouldn't be able to like fit in to the culture, to fit into school, to fit into a traditional job.
And that's the best case scenario. And that comes with a lot of privilege.
And a lot of people in different societies around the world, and also in this country, if they are different, their lives are at stake and their thriving is at stake. And so there's really a range of internalized conditioning, externalized conditioning.
But I really see it all going back to this brainwashing and this culturalization about what it means to be a woman and what's considered appropriate. Yeah.
And I think the more we pay attention to history and how we got to where we are, the less unconscious we can go moving forward. Totally.
And so what would you hope to see as, as we, I just, as you know, women are starting and people are starting to really claim their own sacred feminine. What would you love to see in the world? Well, when I go back and I look at history before this happened, it's been really fun for me to study what they believe was happening inside of priestess temples, inside of matriarchal societies, where women were leaders.
I'm like, tell me all the things. I know, where they were leaders, where they were the healers, where they were, who were coming together in council and making really massive decisions for huge areas of land, both large and small communities.
And when we go and look at that in history, we can remember, oh, I'm capable of that. Because since so much of that history has been deliberately erased from what we know, and mostly rewritten to be in the narrative that men have been in charge the whole time, we don't know what's possible for us.
So that's why I think it's so important for women to learn about and understand about matriarchal communities and what it meant to be a magical woman and what it meant to be sovereign what it meant to be in our wildness and back on a time when everything was when we were celebrated for being authentic and of course it wasn't never it's never been perfect you know and i believe that we can borrow from a lot of these stories in order to think about you you know, how to give ourselves permission to rock the boat, to color outside the lines, to forge our own path and not just default to what our belief systems are telling us we can do. I forgot about this until you started talking.
So I was raised at 14 in a shamanic circle that my dad was a part of. And I remember learning around the time that I got my period for the first time, that that was a really, you're more intuitive and it's a sacred time.
And women back in these earth honoring communities would bleed together on rocks, come together to really tune into the intuition of what was best for the community at that time. Exactly.
So tell us if there are any stories like that,

that we can start to hear about and open our perspective

and come back to a more remembrance.

Yeah, so one story I love talking about

is back when we were hunter-gatherers,

we know this from archaeologists looking at cave drawings

where the female shamans of the community

would go into deep meditation and the goddess would tell them where the animals were. And they would talk to the animals.
They would attune to the animals. They do a ceremony for the animals and they would send out the hunters and the hunters would know exactly where the herds were.
And then of course they would only take what they needed. They would, you know, kill the animals in ceremony.
And I just love this team of like divine direction with embodied action out in the world in order to create, you know, thriving for communities. I mean, this is one of my intentions personally, and then to have that reflected in my team.
But I feel like hearing stories like this and how other cultures and other times we've already lived in harmony with nature and utilizing the wisdom of the collective. It does help put that front and center.
So it's like, oh, that's possible. And this is some ways that it could look.
I think we're so relational that we need examples and stories like that. Totally.
And the other thing that I really love talking about is, you know, when priestesses would run a temple. So in some societies, mostly in Europe, like if you look at the Temple of Avalon, which is current day Glastonbury, England, a lot of what is said and remembered about this time is that there was a circle of priestesses that held the temple and they sat in a circle as equals and they would come into deep meditation, deep relationship with the goddess to really understand what was best for the community.
And so we actually orient our team this way in my company, because the way it used to be was like, I was, you know, normal team is like a triangle, a hierarchical where the CEO is at the top and everybody else supports the CEO. But now how we orient is the mission is at the center of the circle.
And we all sit on our pillars around the mission. And we each have a different responsibility in order to support the mission.
And I trust the members on my team to really hold their pillar of expertise and know better than me about what's needed, you know, for our mission. I used to think that's how governments were when I was a kid.
I was like, we would just elect the best teacher, the best doctor, like the best of that be great. And then, you know, there's a lot of upgrades that we are going to make that I'm holding that.
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So I know we all have internalized patriarchy, whether we're aware of it or not. What are some ways that you see that play out so that people can start becoming more aware? So this was such an interesting process for me because I was really a diehard feminist for so long and super independent, very much in equality with my husband.
And then I had a baby and all of a sudden I was like cleaning the house all day and wanting to put dinner on the table at night and feeling all of this pressure to be the perfect mother and to not have the baby crying when Jonathan came home from work. And also I was the primary breadwinner also during this time.
So I knew that it wasn't some sort of like I was taking more responsibility for the home and he was being the primary breadwinner. I was in a situation where I could take that out of the mix.
And I just remember looking at myself thinking, what am I doing? Why do I feel this way? I have spent my whole adult life being pretty outspoken and pretty independent. Why am I all of a sudden acting like a 1950s housewife? It was wild.
And then I started really getting into the study of internalized patriarchy. And I think something, it happens for people at all different phases.
When I look back, I can definitely see how, when I was a teenager and growing up, that I felt a ton of pressure to fit in, that I felt a ton of pressure to make my parents proud, that I felt a ton of pressure to really follow the traditional path of success, to follow the path that was laid out for me by my family, to fall in line with the people that I went to college with. And this is a really clear way to know if you have internalized patriarchy is, I mean, we all do.
I know it comes up in like so many different ways. But I think the first question to ask is, am I walking my path? Or am I walking somebody else's path? Am I primarily concerned with how people see me? Am I always thinking about or worried about making someone mad?

Am I constantly trying to avoid upsetting my male partner?

Am I constantly worried about outshining my friends?

Am I worried about being too big or being too loud or being too visible? Am I worried that people are going to think that I'm weird for being spiritual? So anytime we are judging ourselves off of what other people are going to think of us in a negative way, it is almost always grounded in internalized patriarchy. And I think one of the core narratives of the human psyche is unworthiness.
This is like a core wound and it shows up in two ways. One is I'm not good enough and the other is I'm too much.
And it's the same wound showing up in a different pendulum. And so how do you then begin to support people? Yes, first seeing some of these things.
How do you support people after they start waking up to it? Yeah, to integrate so that they do have a voice, they can be true to themselves and pave a new way. Yeah.
And and take, yeah, take space, especially as a woman. Yes.
So as women, we have been trained to always be judging ourselves off of the other people in the room, in the community, in our family. And historically, this is what has kept us safe.
Because if we did rock the boat, we didn't have rights to protect our livelihood. And so it's very normal to be afraid of outshining someone or making somebody mad because we just got the right to have our own credit card in like, was was it? 1974.
And so if we did rock the boat, we could be kicked out of our marriage and not have any rights to be able to support ourselves. So it's important to understand that if we have this feeling like we're going to die, that is epigenetics and can be stored in our genes.
And when we do sacred work, which is so cool, it actually reprograms our genetic makeup to see ourselves differently. Are you saying that there's like muscle memory? So if we go back to those truths, it's already alive and awake within us that it's easier to reclaim.
Yes, exactly. Beautiful.
And there are things that we can do somatically with our body that we have evolved to use as humans, like drumming, like singing, like sitting in circle, like being in certain energetic frequencies that help us to remember the truth of our safety, as opposed to being always attuned to like our remembered fear of being unsafe. Compassionately, of course, we didn't have a voice.
We couldn't take space because we'd be ostracized and not live. So survivally speaking, it was great that we did that.
Now we're evolving beyond that. And I think a lot of the time women have learned from the seventies where it's like, be more like a man and we've evolved.
But now we're starting to see what's our truth and having certain

ceremonies or communities that remind us of that, then we'll help keep that awake within us. But the core is the safety.
The core is the safety. And the thing that I always try to tell women is to remember that you aren't dying, you're just uncomfortable.
And because we can really feel like we're going to die if we tell our group of friends that we're going to go to a ceremony or that we're quitting our job, or we tell our parents that actually I'm not going to walk this path that I thought I was going to, that you also walked. I'm going to take my own path and we can feel like we're going to die, but we're actually just uncomfortable.
So the piece that I think is important in what I teach women to do is that instead of judging ourselves based on the people around us, we actually come into ceremony. We learn who our soul is and we get information around the fullest expression of our soul.
And we begin to judge ourselves based off of our potential, based off of what it feels like to be in our fullest expression. And we can then see, oh, like I am a very specific puzzle piece on this planet right now.
And so how can I be the most me, the most unique puzzle piece? And when we do that, when we're trying to come, when we come into our center, into our soul, we then realize that everybody has a role and that there isn't competition. And then we can create situations where, and groups of friends and communities and family systems where our differences are celebrated instead of having safety be grounded in sameness.
Yeah. And the safety, I think is the most important part because when there's safety at the foundation, then it's easier to be ourselves, be authentic, to collaborate.
And when we are hyper-vigilantly looking at other people to try to find our own safety, that's when we are going to feel anxious because we can't control anything outside of us. But to have that awareness and to in source that safety so that that part of us feels safe within us.
And as we do that, then we can start expressing more authentically in community. Exactly.
Yeah. I, I love that.
And I'm just thinking about the courage it takes to speak our truth. And so learning the tools to really integrate somatically that fear.
I love you. You're not dying.
You're just uncomfortable. Like knowing that and then to breathe into it.
Because oftentimes what I find is people are trying to avoid feeling something by staying in their mind, thinking about it, by controlling or thinking about how other people are navigating something. And I'm curious about a matriarchical society.
I'm curious about that. And whether it's matriarchical or patriarchal, I think the ideal is to have our own internal authority, to have our own spiritual authority, to really tune into ourselves.
And any good teacher or guide is going to bring us back into ourselves. And that is better than any hierarchical.
I do think we need some leadership positions, but it doesn't mean that we are better than, or that our worth is anywhere tied up in that. So just out of curiosity for a matriarchical society, is there an example of? Well, we don't have a ton of examples on the planet right now.

But the thing that I always like to look to nature to really understand how we can set up society and culture and the indigenous cultures that are alive and well, like if you go deep into the Amazon, there are matriarchal societies. And I think it really touches on what you just said, which is when we all tap in to our own authentic power, it is clear what our role is in the community.
And just like if you go to a forest, the trees have a role, the mushrooms have a role, the bees have a role, the flowers have a role, the pollen has a role, the bugs have a role. And everyone works together in order to create an ecosystem.
If you take- The flower's not better than the tree. The flower's not better than the tree.
That's not better than the mushrooms. That's not better than the bugs.
It's an ecosystem. And so I think if we can just start with our families, start with your partner, start with your friends.
Start in your workplace and really try to get to know people. What makes people different? What makes people interesting? What's their special blueprint, special talent? It's usually the thing that people are hiding.
It's usually the thing that they don't want people to know. And so when you get in there and you find that special sauce and you celebrate it and you amplify it, I really believe that you can create systems of care that are much more sustainable and in service to all thriving.
Yeah. Which feels more living in harmony and balance.
Yeah. And having some of the matriarchy support the page.
Like it's got to be both. It's got to be in total.
And when I say matriarchy, what I really am talking about is not women being in charge, but not this system of an ecosystem of non-hierarchical community building. It's a circle.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think that the circle in the line, I am hearing the spiral. So that's beautiful.
That's where it's really in harmony. I know that trust is a big theme for people.
And we have a lot of healing work to do around trusting ourselves, trusting governments or trusting something outside of ourselves. What is some of the work that you have found to be helpful to rebuild that trust? Yeah.
So we've been working on this a lot this year. And the thing that we've been doing the most is really working on women's inner masculine.
And because I think that we can exercise sort of toxic masculine traits as women, where we're just like, we're pushing really hard and we're hustling, but that's different than connecting with your inner protector. And so I've been really asking women to in ceremony to close their eyes and to find the part in them that is their protector that will stand up for themselves, for their inner warrior? And then who is the part of them that feels clear about the direction that they're going in, and isn't afraid to tell people, I'm busy, because I have something that I'm working on, you know, that isn't afraid

to put ourselves first and to hold a boundary for who we are. Because I think that we outsource that

really often to the men in our lives. And then we bring in the sacred feminine.
What is the part of

you that wants to create something? What's the part of you that's connected to the divine? And how can we bring your inner protector and your inner creator into a partnership with each other right in here? And this has been such an important thing for me because I realized that there were so many things that I just wanted Jonathan to do for me and that I was outsourcing the creation of a lot of my dreams. And I had to really sit with myself and say, if these are my dreams, I have to know how to bring them into fruition by myself.
I have to be willing to do that. And when I did, you know, of course he joined me with his own medicine and magic and I couldn't just be the one to have the vision and then say, go for it, dude.
You know what I mean? And when I did that, I realized that there were so many, I'm the one who knows myself at the end of the day. There are so many more boundaries I had to have with my time inside of work and with my friends and with my family and with my husband that I am the one who had to protect my time and what I knew was important.
And I find that if, and then follow through with the things that I said I was going to do for myself. And that's how we really build trust with other people is first learning how to build trust with ourselves.
And I find that doing that inner masculine, inner feminine partnership work within us is the place to start. That's right.
It's always a mirror. Life is a mirror.
So doing that within us, it's interesting because as you're talking, I'm on the opposite spectrum. I call myself a completionist because I will complete something and will really show up for it.
But sometimes inside it's not true anymore. And so I need to build my own trust with being able to change my mind or knowing how to have built something now pass it off so that it's being held with the care that I would offer to free me up to honor a new calling and a different line of service in the world.
Wow. That's beautiful.
And so the trust, it's something that you just, there's so many layers that it can go deeper. But you're right.
It always comes back to trusting ourselves and honoring each part of us and knowing how to say yes to it, but also like when to allow it to happen versus when to make it happen.

Totally.

And so like this, the masculine and feminine, we all have a different template for what's our authentic truth and where we lean on that spectrum.

And just being able to hear a podcast like this to reflect on, am I living in alignment

with my truth?

Yeah.

Whether it's on one side or the other more, or is it really in balance? Some periods of time in our lives is going to be different as well. Yeah.
I love that. And I think the thing that I really use, I think we all have a physical tell when we are meant to be an allowing, or we are in this invitation to be a sacred warrior.
I am always in this dance of like, am I meant to really go for it right now? Or am I meant to have it just arrive? And for me, I'm touching my throat because when I'm pushing too hard and I'm not supposed to, I get anxiety in my throat and I start to have fantasies of being liked by other people. I know it's because like, that's my core wound.
Like we all have a core wound. Mine is I want to be liked in order to be safe.
So whatever our thing is, is like, I want people to see me as smart. I want people to love me.
I want people to think that I'm funny. I want people to think that I care about them.
Like my whole thing is like, I want to be liked. And so when I'm like unconsciously fantasizing that the thing that I'm going after means I'm going to be more liked by other people, I know I'm on the wrong path.
That is such great tracking. Yeah.
I'm just wondering if thyroid, like having a hypothyroid or thyroid condition is that. And I've been on a journey with my thyroid.
Me too. Yeah.
And I noticed when I push too hard, it acts up. Interesting.
And so there's similarities. And I'm just wondering, you know, I'd love to hear from people in the comments, just like, yeah, it does this resonate if you have a thyroid condition? Is it because you're pushing too hard? Do you notice it gets activated? And is it's, is it around also wanting to be liked versus what's my authentic truth? Right.
And I do find for me growing up more in the shamanic circle from 14 to 20, a lot of that time was just spent in silence. And that space of just looking at an altar, a mesa, and just listening deeply supported more of an authority within myself.
I was 14, so I wanted some mental understanding and I went and did a spiritual psychology program. But I do find taking that space, having those no's, I think when you get older, to claim that space, to really develop the muscle and the trust within our own authority is important.
Yeah. And I think the important piece around that is that to me, the divine is super real.
The goddess is my best friend. She is my lover.
She is my mother. Like she is like really number one in my life.
And she talks to me because I take a lot of space to listen and to ask her questions. And it's something that we can all develop a relationship with and have a direct experience of.
Like I was just walking down the street an hour ago and I was just thinking about this like next chapter in this next year and how I want to show up differently. And it hasn't been super clear to me.
Like I have some blank spaces and I was feeling sort of frustrated with myself. And all of a sudden I looked up and I realized I was walking on Rose Avenue, which I didn't think much of.
And then I just turned back towards the sidewalk and there was a woman wearing a sweatshirt that just said Avalon, which is where I got ordained, which is where one of the last standing priestess temples were. And the lineage that I'm a part of, they believe was originated in Avalon.
And then like one block

later, there was a fence with a triple goddess, you know, with like the crescent moon and the full moon, the other crescent moon, which is the sign of the goddess and then a solar cross, which is the sign of the priestess. And I was like, hi, thank you for just saying I'm here.
You know, magic is really real.

And I know for me, as someone who always looked outside of myself for validation to instead of trusting my inner knowing, for me connecting with the divine and then having the divine speak to me in symbols, in signs, in knowings, in my head, in visions, has been important for me, cultivating trust. And you have to be present to be able to see or hear the feedback and like in your body.
Yeah. And just with your eyes up, not on your phone, you know, just like, you know, you just have to be waiting for it.
Yeah. It's like, it's never not here.
It's just, are we awake to it? Exactly. And having, I imagine practices or rituals support keeping the aperture open, staying more present.
I know for me, it's meditation and questioning everything. Yeah.
That's always been my path. That's so good.
I'm curious, are there practices or rituals that you love and recommend so that people can really cultivate a connection within themselves? Yeah. So I have like a tiered system in my life.
So I do a sacred start every morning and that is just a simple like drop in, pulling cards, imagining my perfect day. And I will, and then I also talk to trees.
So I will sit with my trees almost every day. Outside.
Outside. Feed in the grass.
Yep. Even when it's freezing, because I live outside of Boston, so it's like a lot.
And so I talk to the land and I also have a practice of emptying out. So like really feeling other people's energy that is maybe stuck in my body, the things that I'm worried about, the things I've just like picked up throughout my life, just really feeling it all empty out, being an empty vessel, and then asking the goddess, is there anything you want to tell me? And so I'm really doing those sort of touch points all day.
You know, I'm a professional priestess. So that's maybe like more than most people need to do.
But this is my job. Just like a lawyer is going over paperwork all day.
It is my job to talk to the trees. And so, so that's my daily practice.
And then I do a new moon ceremony, every new moon, with my community. So that's like a 90 minute ceremony that we do.
And then I believe in having larger, you know, three day, week long ceremonial touch points, once or twice a year, because that way we can have like the deepest experience. And then when we're in our sacred start in the morning, we can draw on that we can remember we have a somatic remembrance of what it feels like to be our soul instead of just our normal human self because it feels different.
It's a different vibration when we're leading with our soul self than when we're leading with our human self. Yeah.
And we all resonate with something different. Well, that's the thing.
And that's that's the, that's part of it. That's so cool.
And people have to like find their medicine. You gotta try different things.
You gotta try different things. And what was so cool for me is like, when I discovered my lineage was the 13 moon lineage, when we do ceremonies, you know, we are like all dressed up in the same color.
The altars are really beautiful. There's like crystals and flowers everywhere.
It's deeply cathartic and really magical. And you see shit, you know, and you feel like you're on a spaceship to another realm.
And it's very active and very beautiful and it's done in community. And so for me, I was like, yes, this is exactly what I need.
It's just like so juicy and parts are fun and parts are really hard. And I just, I love the medicine.
Yeah. And I think it's good for people to try things on to find out what their truth is and not try to force something.
Oh my gosh, no. I loved growing up in this shamanic circle.
And at the end of the day, it wasn't my work. And I have so much deep reverence and gratitude for that.
And yet I started finding spiritual teachers that would later, somebody was like, oh, that's non-dual. So I was like, great, there's a term for this.
I like certain teachers. I was like, oh, this is my thing.
And so we all just, whatever that is, that tuning fork that wakes us back up to prioritize that. Yeah.
And there's not one way because we're all different. Yeah.
When you say priestess, goddess, shaman, like how do you define some of these terms? Yeah. So the way that, the way I define the goddess is all that is.
It is the, the great unknown, what many of us grew up calling God. I just see her as a woman.
I also commune with God as like a sacred masculine divine presence. I have learned in my teachings that shamans are really connected to the earth element.
Yes, earth honoring. And as a priestess in my lineage, what we are doing is we are channeling archetypal frequency.

So what I'm actually doing is vibrational frequency work.

It's basically like astrophysics.

And so what I'm learning how to do is hold a certain frequency in my body and in the

temple space.

So it's like I become the tuning fork. You are the medicine.
I am the medicine. Not me, Sarah, but the archetype that I'm trained to hold in my body as a vibration that you actually, if you brought in the right tools, you could measure in the room.
You know, just like we're all vibrating all the time. We're all electromagnetic field.
Sound has a certain vibration. Color has a certain vibration, which is why when I lead temple, I've been trained to have one color saturation because burgundy has the same frequency as the feeling of the great mother.
Blue has the same frequency as the archetype of the priestess. Green has the same frequency as sovereignty.
And you can feel it in your body when you walk into a room and it's all bathed in one color and everyone's wearing the same color. And then there are certain sacred geometry that we can use that holds that frequency, certain tools, certain metaphors, certain ways of doing things, certain music.
And so if you create this immersive experience in a certain vibration, we take in that vibration in ourselves, and then we can learn how to harmonize with it, which I think is why like a coherence, it's a coherence. Yes.
And that's the tool that I've been trained in how to create in a room with a group of people. And so when you can feel when people come in, they're nervous, they're in their human selves, they're in some sort of vibration that they picked up at the grocery store.
And then my job is to get everyone into this coherent field in this one frequency. And then the work that we can do in it is like really impactful.
I mean, that is also more of the feminine that makes sense because it's communal. It's like getting in coherence with the whole group and adding a different frequency together.
Whereas shamanism and how I understand it, yes, earth honoring, but also one person is accessing clarity to help remove some of the hucha, some of the shadow work. So it's helpful to hear different perspectives and get some nuances about that.
Cause I've always heard these terms and I'm like, I wonder how people differentiate. Yeah.
I do think it's helpful. And it's great because I can set the vibrational frequency in a space and we can have, you know, 10 people in there.
We can have 150 people in there. And then you, it's those two experiences are really different.
When we have 150 people in one temple, it's off the fucking hook. It's so cool.
What happens? Yeah. Things definitely get magnetized in community when we're really intentional.
Right. Yeah.
And like super present. It's all about presence.
That's right. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm wondering, you know, I know part of your work you talk, this is like deeper than our own personal childhoods.
This is much more collective. Yeah.
What do you say with people that are interested in

healing intergenerational trauma? Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, I think the work of epigenetics is a really valuable thing to understand and study.
And I think the thing that's really helpful for people, we so often will just like blame our parents, but they're swimming in the same soup that we are. They are also victims of this culture and they had it way worse than we did way, way worse.
And so I say, look for the places that they healed and really honor them for their specific assignment. And then really dive into what's yours, what's yours to heal? How can you take the baton and say, thank you so much for doing your part.
I've got it now. Beautiful.
Yeah. I love that because yes, it's okay to have your anger, but don't live there, you know, let it be expressed.
And how did they evolve your lineage? And then what's yours? That's beautiful. Yeah.
Because I think you just have to go, you have to go back, you know, like go back as far as you can so that you can really see and understand the oppression that has been just systematized into our family systems. Yeah.
And I think also for me, it's so beautiful for people to look at where were my parents actually trying to protect me, you know, within the society, the way that they understood it to work, how can we reframe different patterns as protection? And it's not always true. I mean, everyone has a wide range of what our experience was growing up, but I think that's a good place to start.
Yeah. Becoming more aware.
Yeah. But this compassion and awareness I think is really key.
Yeah. And as we start to come more into harmony and balance some of these masculine and feminine ways of being and wake up to the sacred feminine within us, that's going to elevate every area of our life, including money.
Yes. And so I would love to hear your perspective on how, what's the work you found helpful to support people in feeling more empowered and confident with money? Yeah, that's a great question.
You know, I really feel that the first part for people to go is to ask themselves, if I had all the money I wanted, what am I afraid would happen? Am I afraid that someone wouldn't like me anymore? Am I afraid that people would say X, Y, Z? And it's just such a good way to point at where our internalized patriarchy is still alive and well, and to really handle those shadows and to be able to withstand those fears. Because a lot of those fears are valid and will probably happen.
You know, as I have become more expressed and more myself, I have lost so many friends. I've had a lot of people misunderstand my intentions.
I've had a lot of people who've been really excited to take me down when I fuck up because of course I do. And I have to know that I'm actually willing to stand in that fire.
And so I find that the path of holding abundance is really just the path of self-expression and being visible. And then I think the other piece that's really important is that there are so many people who are great at their work and it doesn't always mean that they're going to make money doing it.
I really wish it were true. And so with that, I think it's so important that people understand that the wisdom and the magic of like how to run a company can be super fun to figure out, but to do it in a way that lights you up and to have it be part of your purpose and to get in there with it and to not be afraid of it.
And, you know, women have been brainwashed to be told that we're not great with money. It's like fifth grade math most of the time, not all the time, but just get out your calculator, do some budgets, do some math, get excited about what you want to create, really understand how much things are going to cost, really understand how much, if you want to be an entrepreneur, exactly how to run your company and notice along the way, it's that self-awareness piece.
Where are you telling yourself that you can't, or you don't want to, or you're not good at it? It's actually, if you just take some time to teach yourself how to do it, it's not that hard to figure out. I just am realizing that this whole conversation has been about power.
Yes. It's really, and money is one reflection of that.
Exactly. And what, what was I inherited? What did I witness from mom and dad or whoever my primary caretaker was? And what's my truth? And if I'm willing to be true to myself, even if other people don't like it.
Because I love teaching people about money and feeling empowered and using business as a personal development path. To me, that's the only way it makes sense.
It's got to be more than just making money. It's got to be about service and impact.
I mean, there's, it is, there's so many other better ways to make money besides being an entrepreneur. I just like, let me be the first person to say that.
And I want to go, I actually want to correct something that I said, because I actually don't want to paint a picture that having your own business is easy. I find that it is actually really difficult and not everyone is actually wired to do it.
And I don't think it is the path that everybody needs to take. Yeah.
Some people really want security and safety and that's beautiful. The way that I teach it is that using your own fears to insource that safety rather than outsource it.
It may be more challenging for those people if they're not willing to do the work, but if they

do the work to wake up from fear and integrate and feel the thing they're afraid of, actually their entire life gets freer and easier as a result. That's beautiful.
Yeah. I mean, it has to be the path of awakening every day.
If you're going to choose it, because you know, the thing that I experience a lot are projections.

For sure.

Because so much of, especially if you are wanting to build a company, companies like we have, like we're very visible as people and people project onto me all the time. And I just have to know that that's actually part of my job is to be a mirror for other people.
And the only way that I can move through that and stand in that is that if I'm an incredible integrity in my own life. So a lot of what I pay attention to, and I really do use this in relationship with making money is I really prioritize what is happening when no one is looking.
Those are the pieces, like my innermost thoughts about myself, the way that I am running my company, the way that I'm in relationship with people, the way that I am leading behind closed doors, the way I am in my friendships. I need to be in full integrity all the time.
Because when those projections come, I need to either know that they're really not true and I am good with me, or I have to love myself enough to be like, oh yeah, I'm totally doing that. You're totally right.
And I'm going to be humble and clean that up and be better. And you kind of like have that flexibility and that dance.
Without the personal development, it's just hard. And with using it as a path for awakening, children, money, relationships, everything gets to be so much easier because you're willing to feel the thing that you were avoiding.
Totally. And you're wake up out of the identity of who you thought you were trying to pretend to be yeah and then it just is freer it's like oh yeah i could see where i was like that or yeah oh that you know being holding that sacred mirror to know that that's their authority issues getting projected because you're the boss or because you are seen a certain way online yeah i know for it's just this as we're talking're talking, I'm just seeing power over power under, you know, and I really just recently been looking at what I was influenced around power from my mom and dad, my dad being an eight, a challenger in the Enneagram, my mom being a peacemaker, a nine.
I was like, that's a fun dynamic. And, and also looking at the lens of men and women through my younger misunderstandings of like, this is what it looks like.
And so, you know, one time I was talking to Amelia, my husband, where I was asking him about investing in a mastermind. It was a week long mastermind.
It was very expensive. And I was asking him about doing it.
And I'm like, why am I asking him? And he's such a beautiful human and very clean about money. And he's usually just very encouraging, which helped me just wake up from also, if he were challenging, I'd probably be mad at him and still use it as a personal development path.
But I was still like, why am I asking him? And I was like, oh, because I saw my mom asked my dad. And so that was my own inheritance that I bought into.
I was like, no, I know how to make money and spend money. And so just the slower, like being more mindful to wake up to having compassion and being like, Oh, I get to do it differently.
Even if it's uncomfortable, it's a lot more freeing. Yep.
And I think there's always this, and it's like all women everywhere have been doing that, you know, for over the past few thousand years. So we just have like, that is the soup that we are swimming in.
And we have an amazing opportunity to learn how to do it differently. And it is just like, it's all those opportunities just right in our own partnerships, I believe is the perfect place to start to look at where are you holding hierarchy in your marriage? If you're married, like really start there, because if you are holding hierarchy in your marriage and you are putting your male partner over you, you will never be able to step into leadership in your own life.
Literally ever. And sometimes on a sales conversation, when I train people around sales is asking, are you asking for support or permission? And so that it's a coaching opportunity to help somebody stand in their power.
And I would celebrate and have celebrated a no, if it's a clear no. If it's a, I want to, but I don't think I'm capable.
I want to, or I can't afford it. Then there's an opportunity to help them step into their power.
That's what it's really about. And so for me, I had to look at, oh, I saw my dad making money.
My parents had an agreement that my mom would raise the kids. And I thought that was weak.
I thought it was, she wasn't as strong because she raised the kids. And I feel embarrassed to even say that.
And that was the conditioning that I had until I had kids. And I was like, I am so sorry.
Called my mom. I had no idea what I bought into.

But my younger self still, I needed to clear and clean house around patriarchal conditioning

or thinking that money was better or I'd be more empowered and had nothing to do with that.

And so really cleaning that up was important for me and having compassion for what I bought into

Thank you. empowered and had nothing to do with that.
And so really cleaning that up was important for me and having compassion for what I bought into from society and also just making amends with my mom and being like, I see your strength. That's really beautiful.
That was important for me to go back to see her in her power at a time where I didn't see her in her power because that supported me in coming into right relationship with my own feminine. That's so beautiful.
And there's more, there's more work for all of us around, around this work, but I want to come back to ceremony. Cause you've said ceremony quite a few times.
Talk to us about what ceremony is in your world and how it can support us in connecting with the divine. Yeah.
So I just, I could be in ceremony all day, every day. It is my absolute favorite thing.
It's like taking a bath in the cosmos, you know, it's just so yummy. And we do, we don't do plant medicine.
There's first of all, there's so many different types of ceremony. Um, you can do plant medicine ceremonies.
You can do ceremonies, many different lineages. So the one, the type of ceremony that I lead, the way I do it is it's a mix of my lineage,

just the 13 moon lineage and a mix of my own medicine that I have brought in.

So the way that we do it, it's very ritualistic.

And first of all, like I'm setting that vibrational frequency in a temple space. So the temple is bathed in a color.
There are certain symbols in the temple. It's filled with flowers.
There are scents. It's very sensorial the way that we do ceremony.
And the first thing people do is they come in through a gate and it's always me and the other priestess, like my assistant priestesses that come and we hold gates and we have embodied the archetype already of the ceremony that we're using the archetypal frequency for. And when someone comes to the gate, they look us in the eye and we ask them a question.
And the question that we have for the great mother ceremony, just an example is I am the gate of empty presence. What do you need to lay down beloved so that you can enter this temple fully empty? And they have to answer out loud.
But what happens like 90% of the time is people come to the gate and they look me in the eye and they just start to cry because I am being the great mother. And it's just that first experience of the vibration because we remember it's in ourselves.
And then we come into temple and we sit down and we do a drop in. And then we do this really cool thing where we open our eyes, we do an open eyed meditation.
So everyone has eyes with another woman in the room. And it's, again, it's that presence, It's that heart opened love.
And so then we're activating the love and connection with each other. And then people start seeing stuff and it's so cool.
And then we name what we are aware of, and there's animals in the space and colors in the space and deities and beings that come in. And women who never have identified as being spiritual, you know, think this is the weirdest thing in the world are like, what the fuck is happening? This is wild.
And so that's why I love it because you can come in at any sort of phase. You don't have to practice.
You can just come in and be in the space. If you're willing to be present, it's just incredible.
And then we do the work of what's needed, you know, whatever the ceremony is around, you know, I do, I do a lot of ceremonies around discovering your soul's purpose. And so I'll bring women through a process that will help them really discover why they came to planet earth over the course of a couple of days.
You know, I do ceremonies that are around like touching the edges of our aliveness and of our joy. You know, I do ceremonies around leaving the path that we thought we were meant to take and coming onto the path of our soul.
You know, we do a lot of work around releasing heaviness of meeting our shadows of surrendering, uh, of, you know, deep remembrance of our gifts and the tools that we came into. And then we just get to like dance and be the magic of everything.
And then a lot of what I'm doing is I'm listening to the goddess and I'm feeling for what's real in the space. And I'm trained to feel where someone needs to speak, where there's a wobble.
And what's cool is that it's, it's, you know, it's an electrical field. So if there's one circuit that's off, the electricity isn't running through the whole group.
So I can feel when a circuit is off and I just will go over there and like touch it or tweak it or invite her to say something or ask her to like soften her shoulders. And you can tell she comes into more presence.
She comes into her, her authentic self. And then you can just feel like the in the whole circle and something just goes and then I can tell, okay, now we can move on to the next sort of piece that we need to do.
So it's this real like symphony of energy and transformation that happens. And it's just so fun.
You're like a conductor. This is sort of like a conductor.
Yeah. And that's shamanic as well.
And I, I experienced that with breath work where I like, I move over and I'll put my hands or I'll shift the energy, but essentially you're just moving energy in the field to support greater freedom. Exactly.
That's beautiful. It's really, it's such a fun process.
And you know, and I've been studying how to do this for 10 years. Yeah.
Wow. So it's just really, it's my art and I love it.
I love that you're doing this in the world. And I'm so grateful that you exist and I love you so much.
And I know my audience is going to want to stay connected. Talk to us about where they stay connected.
Well, Instagram is the best place. I'm Sarah Jenks on Instagram.
And my membership is probably the best place to start, which is called Holy Woman. And that's where we do new moon ceremonies every month.
And it's just a great way to like taste test and feel it. And it's super affordable.
And it's a great way to just like see what's up in there. And then there are deeper ways to work with me as well.
Yeah. Okay, great.
We'll put all the notes in the show notes. Thank you so much for having me.
Oh, it's so good. Yeah, so good.
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