Jenny Cornejo on Slowing Down Enough to Hear Yourself
What if life’s hardest transitions are not interruptions… but invitations?
In this episode, I sit down with my longtime friend, Jenny Cornejo, founder of Wildflower Transformation, for a conversation that feels both grounding and expansive.
Jenny’s work began through organizing physical spaces, but over time she discovered that true transformation often starts beneath the surface. Together, we explore what happens when we stop trying to control the unknown and begin trusting ourselves through change.
We talk about life transitions, grief, community, nervous system awareness, ritual, women gathering in circle, and the quiet wisdom that lives in our bodies.
Jenny also shares stories from her recent visit to Teton Valley, including riding horses through snow, blessing the land, and reflecting on loss, ancestry, and what it means to stay open to mystery.
If you are standing in a threshold season of life, this conversation is a reminder that you do not need to rush through it.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why external organization can reveal internal truth
- Moving through divorce, grief, and identity shifts
- The role of community and being witnessed in transition
- Somatic awareness and reconnecting with your body
- Lessons horses can teach us about trust and presence
- Ritual, circles, and creating belonging
- Women, cycles, slowing down, and honoring seasons of life
- Finding magic in the unknown
Connect with Jenny:
- Website: Wildflower Transformation
- Instagram: @wildflower.transformation
- Facebook: Wildflower Transformation Facebook
- Digital Card: Jenny Cornejo Digital Card
If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone walking through change and remind them they do not have to navigate it alone.
Adventure on!
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1 SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, welcome back to the Adventure Paradox
podcast.
Today we have a guest who is an old and dear friend of mine.
We've known each other for a long time since I was pregnant
with my first daughter, Grace.
I'll tell a little bit more about that.
But she also paid us a visit in the last month to the incredible
Teton Valley.
We had so many adventures.
I can't wait to get into all of that.
But first, without further ado, I'll give you a formal
introduction in just a moment.
Jenny Cornejo, how are you?
And where in the world are you zooming in from?
SPEAKER_00: I am feeling very live after being out of my
family's land.
And I'm coming here from Illinois, about an hour north of
Chicago, 30 minutes south of Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
And you say family's land, but that is actually a mic drop in
and of itself, because correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you
on fifth generation land?
Could you please say more?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'm the fifth generation of my family's land.
It has been in our family for over 100 years.
And I just know that I am being called to continue to steward
the land well and continue the path that my
great-great-grandparents laid before me.
SPEAKER_01: That is so cool.
And I've been to your family's land and been there for circles.
And we're going to talk about all of these incredible things.
But I just think it's so incredible to hang out with
someone who's so deeply connected to their roots and
still living so grounded on the very land that their ancestors
lived on a hundred years ago.
That is rare and precious and such a special gift to share
with all of us.
So thank you.
So Jenny Cornejo is the founder of Wildflower Transformation and
a Life Transitions Coach, the Art of Being Guide, Circle
Facilitator, and Death Doula who supports women in trusting
themselves and building confidence beyond the identities
and lives they have known.
Her work is deeply relational, ancestor honoring, and nervous
system aware, guiding women through life's thresholds with
emotional honesty and care.
Through circles and one-on-one guidance, she helps women
embrace the full spectrum of their human experience and
reclaim their wholeness so they can live their truth with love.
Wow, that in and itself is a mic drop.
How did you come out with that?
Reclaim their wholeness so they can live their truth with love.
It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: I honestly believe it started with organizing
first.
So that's how we first met was with organizing, like I wanted
to help people organize their external world.
And the more I got into supporting clients, I was like,
wait a second, we're not doing the internal work.
And I was recognizing there was like fragmentation happening
with a lot of my clients, and there was almost not
disassociation, but something along those lines.
And there wasn't the recognition of the wholeness that what they
already were.
So the moment that we can just step into that, everything else
starts to fall into place because now we're showing up
from this full version of ourselves that we've always
been.
But now we show up into the world differently.
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
Oh my gosh, total mic drop right there.
I feel like witnessing your journey, and you've witnessed my
journey.
So I called Jenny and she was working for the organizing
girls, right?
Which was like a group, although you were one of the head
honchos, not the boss, but pretty much the head girl.
And you guys came out and I was six, seven, eight months
pregnant, and I had all these boxes to unpack.
And I just didn't have the energy or bandwidth to figure
out.
First of all, I literally couldn't even carry these boxes
around.
And I literally needed help.
And I was so grateful for the support and working with
professional organizers to really think about how am I
setting this home up?
Where will it make sense to have things?
And what are all these things I've brought with me?
And do they serve me in this next chapter, which was
motherhood for me?
And I didn't even know what I was gonna need, really, but
like, you know, it made sense to have diapers and baby clothes in
the baby room and little things like that, pots in the kitchen.
So I look at my journey with organizing and ordering my life
and what a beautiful reflection it's been.
The more I refine, the more I let go of, the clearer I can get
about what really matters and what's really important.
But I'd love to hear more about your journey because you're
actually showing up and working with people.
And then what was it like for yourself personally?
Because again, I've also known you as a personal friend.
We've done some different coaching work together too.
I'd love to hear what was going on for you personally in your
own inner world and transformation as you sort of
moved away from organizing, although I know it's still a big
part of your business, and we'll talk more about that, but into
more of this internal, deeper organizing work.
SPEAKER_00: Grateful you asked that question.
It is very personal.
I will share that because I think for me, organizing was a
way for me to have clarity in my external world.
And as I was removing in just my own home space, before I was
like when I was working with clients still, but I started to
remove things and I started to gain more clarity.
And then it became really clear that the marriage that I was in
was no longer supporting me and it hadn't been for quite some
time.
So it allowed me to start to say yes to where life was calling
me, which was getting a divorce and really jumping into the work
that I do with people internally.
So it was a journey of letting go of the life, the stage,
everything that I had ever created to start all over and
walk into the unknown.
And I think it continued to gain clarity as I was organizing with
clients because it is such a physical job that I'm like, I
also need a little bit more ease for my physical body.
So how can I bridge that gap?
And that's what led me into the life transition coaching, is
because I was like, I'm really good at holding space.
This is something I've done.
And once I had done my inner work and removed some of the
excess that wasn't supporting me anymore, it opened up the
possibility because I could now hold space for even more because
I've done some of the harder work.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: You really coined it, life transitions, right?
And leaving a marriage is a life transition.
Losing a loved one is a life transition, right?
Changing jobs or losing a job is a life transition.
You've had so many life transitions, and I don't even
know the number of life transitions you've supported
others in.
If you were to define those life transitions as having a couple
of key elements or things they need to move through them
successfully, what do you think those would be?
SPEAKER_00: So, what we need when we're going through
transitions is support.
We need somebody that has maybe walked a similar path and they
can shine a light where we may feel like we're in the complete
darkness.
So we need support as well as, I believe, a sense of a community
that we can also lean into because having community can
keep cheering us on when we're doing the hard things.
Because when you're choosing divorce or leaving a job or all
the other transitions I've had, sometimes you doubt yourself.
Actually, not sometimes a lot of times you doubt yourself and you
disbelieve that there's more possible on the other side of
this because you're just in the mess of it and you're feeling
really messy.
And meet having others to witness you in your messiness
and say, Yep, and I still love you and I'm still gonna hold
space for you.
It still belongs.
It's transformative because then you move yourself, not yourself,
but that doubt and that disbelief and the fear, because
there's a lot of fear in the unknown.
And that would be the other piece that I would say is
outside of like when you recognize that fear, it's
starting to use that fear to move you rather than letting the
fear drive you.
SPEAKER_01: So good.
Yeah, so good.
Let it move you, not drive you.
You know, a quote that came into my mind this morning was be the
thermostat, not the thermometer, right?
And I think folks who hold space like you for people to work
through big transitions, they learn to be the thermostat of,
okay, what is it that we're going for here?
Right?
What is it that I'm holding that I know is possible for you?
And holding all these things you've been going through and
are going through and are in the middle of, like you're in the
fire, right?
And then this person, they're hot, they're cold, they're in
the middle, they're not quite sure if they're right, what's
going on, right?
So we be that thermostat and really hold that temperature for
them.
And I think when someone's in a huge life transition, they don't
even know what their temperature is sometimes, that sort of
out-of-body experience.
Can you speak more on somatic work and maybe embodiment work
when someone is going through something?
SPEAKER_00: What I also discovered in my journey, cat,
was I was coming so much from my head and I was disconnecting
from my body.
So helping clients bridge that gap into the wisdom of their
body is life-changing because it's noticing those subtle
things.
So it's taking the moment to pause and recognize what is
arising in you to then learn to be with it.
And that takes time and practice, but having somebody
witnessing you in it can make it a little bit easier.
And I believe our bodies have 360 degrees of information,
whereas our brains tend to operate with blinders on.
And we know how horses work when they have blinders on, they see
what's right in front of them.
And we miss all the other possibilities.
So once we can start to remove those blinders and come back
into our body and check in on all of that information that's
coming from 360 degrees, now we have much more information to
keep discerning where we're called to go and keep building
that trust with ourselves as well as discernment so we can
know what is forest and what might not be anymore.
SPEAKER_01: So good.
I love that.
And I of course love that you brought the horse analogy in and
the blinders.
And I got to interview the she's like the number one
neuroscientist of horse brains and human brains this week,
right?
Very interesting.
And one of the things that we shared on the podcast, and I
think that her episode's dropping in June, but we shared
how horses can see.
And the truth is horses have a very small blind spot in the
front of them, but their main blind spot is behind them, right
behind them.
They can actually see, I think 320 degrees.
So if you can imagine what it would be like to walk around in
space, we can see about 90 degrees, right?
Like we can see, I mean, if you put your hands out and then you
move your thumbs out, right?
You can see, wow, I can't see my thumbs anymore, right about 90
degrees.
So if you can imagine what it's like when we put a horse and a
rider together and we can see so much of what's in front of us.
We have double energy, double focus, double like this whole
thing.
And so then if you put blinders on, we're all they basically see
like humans, right?
They see like humans.
We asked them to only see what we see and not think about
anything else because you know what?
They got a lot more to think about otherwise, right?
So I'd love to hear because you came out to Teton Valley, you
wanted to ride a horse, you got to ride a horse, you also wanted
to bless the land, and we wanted to do a little bit of a land
ceremony.
And then we had sick kids and like some different things going
on, life being lifey.
What was your experience of being on a horse and all the
work that you've done?
I'd love to hear a little bit more about your experience
because that was such a magical day.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really was because there was like a little
blizzard coming through at one point.
So we waited.
It was still going when I got on the horse.
But for me, I've been doing somatic work for a number of
years now, but the horses they drop into like the deeper layers
that you're like, oh, wait, there's still more.
Of like, oh, I thought I knew and I was leading.
And I was like, and I guess I wasn't.
So I've taken some of that home with me to start to tune into
some of those subtle nuances of the shift in energy of me.
And even just you named it like when I would take deep breaths,
but when I was singing and riding, I had so much ease, and
Jack had so much ease.
And then I was at the same time able to bless the land with the
song as we're going by, like the two trees that have been planted
over two of your horses that have moved into the spirit
realm.
And it was such a blessing of having the contrast of the
blizzard and you couldn't see any blue skies to then the sun
coming out and blue skies and like just feeling that energy
shift.
SPEAKER_01: So good.
Oh, and I hope I'll remember if I haven't already.
Let's make sure we drop some reels of you riding with the
snow and you singing was such a spiritual experience, just that
moment and the way I really felt like the ancestors were there,
and there was someone and something more than us working
in the space.
It was really powerful.
And I'm also thinking about the two trees and those we've
crossed over and transitions and death, and specifically being a
deaf doula, and you've had a really, really big loss this
year.
And I don't know if there's anything you want to say about
that because someone else may have had a really big loss this
year, too.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
My mom moved to the spirit realm at the end of last year, and I
chose when I knew she was getting nearer to the end, I
chose to support myself and her really well by becoming a death
doula.
For me, it was really important to look at death face on and
just be with whatever showed up to stay open to it and not shut
down and not numb out.
So I would invite those that are going through some sort of
transition like this to be as present as you can be and take
the time to resource yourself, whether that's out in nature,
whether that's in community, whatever way you resource
yourself, so that when you are with the loved one that is
shifting, you can be fully with them with your heart open and
just connecting with great mystery because I saw so much
magic in that time.
And I even have chills as I say that.
Me too.
SPEAKER_01: You said it so beautifully, connecting with
great mystery.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And I feel your mom hearing that.
And I think all those who have had someone really close to them
cross over, like are closer to the mystery in those moments if
we open up and allow ourselves to be.
They put the blinders on and maybe they even fully shut down
and just can't look, can't feel, can't anything.
The clients who come to you who might be in that shutdown place,
how do you help them open up to the great mystery?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I like to say one of my teachers says the soul
is shy.
So giving them permission to start to slow down, which in our
very busy world that can be a challenge.
So we start small and I really work on the one degree shifts,
like Martha Beck talks about, and really supporting them to
just learn how to be more present because so often we
don't want to be with the harder emotions.
So we shut them down and we keep busy or do whatever we do to
start to give them permission to be in that space and to have
that witness and health so that when they're alone, they're more
able to, they have more capacity to.
If it's just for a little bit, we just start really slow and
right where they're at.
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
I love the slowing down, and it's making me think about your
circles.
I thought of them as full moon and new moon circles.
Not exactly sure what you're following right now or what's
going on with your circles, but they're on the land, and it's
pretty much always all women.
And I'd love to hear about that vision.
I know there's a story behind it, I don't remember of how the
women coming together and gathering in circle and ceremony
on your land came to be.
SPEAKER_00: To be honest, Kat, it began with a grieving
ceremony.
The I knew what I was starting on, the land was bigger than
what I could imagine at that moment.
And it was important that I grieve the blood that could have
been shed on the land as well as the ancestors that walked the
lands prior to us.
And that's where it really began.
And that seeded the dream of I had a women's circle that I
attended regularly in Minnesota.
I was like, I need one closer.
And when the church wasn't what I needed anymore, I had to
cultivate it for myself.
So for me, it's still around the moon because women cycle with
the moon.
And I call it a feminine circle because it's for women-oriented
beings.
And some of them identify as non-binary.
And what I tend to call the beings that join, the siblings,
is wildflowers.
And it's a metaphor for the land because I'm working to restore
the land to all native grasses and plants, as well as the women
or the beings are wildflowers because no flower says I'm
prettier than you, I'm brighter than you, I'm taller.
No, they just are.
So it's a gentle invitation for them to just be who they are.
SPEAKER_01: And the experience of being together in these
circles, and there's often singing, there's like a
meditative practice.
We might even do a little dance or movement.
I remember ones where we did art.
If someone's coming into the magic of one of your circles,
what could they sort of expect and anticipate they'll walk away
with?
SPEAKER_00: They will walk away with a sense of belonging from
the women that attend.
That's something they have.
But it is everything you just named.
It's song, it's embodiment practices, it's ritual.
So ritual is one of the big pieces that I always incorporate
because our ancestors would have rituals all the time.
We no longer live in ritual.
So to me, ritual physicalizes the spiritual and spiritualizes
the physical.
So it's a physical act to know something internally is changing
when you don't yet see anything.
So it can kind of give your soul that solace of like, okay, yeah,
I don't yet see anything.
And I say soul, actually, it's the ego.
Give the ego the solace that yep, it's not yet changing
externally, but I just did this act and I know something's
shifting.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so good.
I think we humans, that doubting Tom thing, right?
And again, I don't remember if it was the neuroscientist or
someone else I was talking to this week.
I did a lot of interviews this week, but someone was talking
about the percentage of our brain, human brains, that is
wired to visual cues.
And it's either 60 or 90 percent.
Forgive the dyslexia.
Either way, it's the majority.
That's a lot, right?
So when we start to realize we are so hell-bent on how things
look, right?
And I think we lose how things feel, and it's funny, this is
just coming through like right now as I'm talking, because we
live in this AI world of is it real?
What is it?
What's even going on?
And we lose the real energy and presence of what it is to be
human, which I know is one of your favorite talking points,
which is coming through because Roomy has his poem, This being
human is a guest house.
Every day, a new, I don't remember what it is.
Thank a new arrival, yes.
And we welcome them all.
But it's like, what are your thoughts about some of those
gray spaces of being human and moving through things?
Because I agree with you, like we're missing ritual, we're
missing ceremony, we're missing the village, hence the women's
circles of coming together.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
I lost the thread of what you asked me.
SPEAKER_01: Being human, sort of those gray spaces.
Because I see you painting a picture and filling in we need a
grieving ceremony on the land, right?
We need to bring circles of women together, right?
You're doing all of these beautiful things.
And I'm just curious, because I do think there's this huge
comeback happening right now.
There's this really strong resurgence and calling, and now
is the time for it.
And women specifically, I think, are finally ready to hear it and
move with it and change with it.
It's powerful, it's really powerful.
And what else are you seeing or hoping that there might be more
spaces?
And where maybe are you personally struggling with being
fully human?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
We have been programmed to be human doings.
We are human beings.
So the more we can be in spaces where we get to be, the more we
can bring that into our life.
Because one of my teachers says, This is great, but you can't
stay here.
Because unfortunately, we also have lives outside of this.
So the important part of when you come to circle or when you
come to these experiences is you take the feeling of being in
village and being fully witnessed, bring it back to your
world.
And that's where the magic starts to change because your
body now knows what it feels like to slow down, to not have a
full idea of what's coming, but staying open to the unknown so
that you can start to trust that a little bit more in your life.
Because I think the gray might be the unknown, which most of us
have a fear of.
But the more we trust in the unknown, the more I believe we
allow more magic in the mundane and more great mystery to really
surprise us.
SPEAKER_01: So good.
I totally agree with you.
And it doesn't happen when Holding on so tightly, right?
It must be this way, and I must control, and I must know, I must
know.
I don't think we were ever meant to know all of it.
We're not God, right?
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
I heard something interesting today, and we're in
paramenopause here.
So, you know, let's pretend to be experts because we are,
because we're in it, right?
But I heard something interesting that when women
enter their 40s, a certain hormone, and I don't remember
which one, but listeners, if you know what it is, please email me
theadventureparadox at gmail.com because I would like to know.
But it's okay that I don't know.
What I do know is that this resonated as my experience,
which is that this certain hormone, whatever it is, thank
you, hormone in my body, it is the hormone of nourishing and
caretaking.
So a lot of women step into this space of there's certain things
I'm not going to tolerate anymore.
I'm just not going to do this or that or whatever it is.
I am leveling up.
Um this is what I'm okay with.
This is what I'm not okay with.
And I think it's so amazing that women cycle.
We organize our lives around our cycles.
And my oldest daughter is 10 and a half.
And I know at some point she's going to start her cycle.
I was 12 for the record.
And they say statistically, your daughter will start six to 12
months earlier than you did.
So we're kind of like starting to enter that potential window
for her.
And I've been thinking about something you said about one of
your teachers who said when you were at that time of the month,
we're going to slow down to your cycle, I believe.
Will you say more and really speak on?
Because I really think there's some connection around
organizing and organizing our lives and the cycle of our lives
as women, cycling and then moving into the space of no
longer cycling, or some of the changes that happen in these
final chapters, which are long, by the way.
Like we're partly at the midpoint.
Come on.
But it's a big pivot.
It's a big pivot.
SPEAKER_00: It is, it is finding ourselves again, you know, in a
way.
So for me, it's when we can start to witness ourselves in
the different seasons of our body.
So women go through every four seasons every month with our
cycle.
And when we can start to listen and notice when we're in our
fall, for me, what I notice when I'm in my fall is the inner
dialogue begins to get a little bit loud because it's there so
that when I'm in my winter, when I'm bleeding, then I have the
stuff to work with.
It's kind of like my inner ceremony time.
So if I can schedule out my calendar and organize myself so
that I have a little bit more space in my time.
So I'm not booked to the rim and beyond busy.
So I can have that downtime and space to just be take a nap, do
what I need to do and witness some of those inner stories that
are arising.
It allows me not to be in as much pain as I used to be back
in the day.
So there's more ease of my body because I'm listening and I'm
honoring and I'm allowing it to be there and not make it wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
So good.
I hope you have more teachings out there on this because I feel
like it's a really important topic and you're a really
beautiful teacher on this as well.
People are gonna want to find you.
How do they find you?
We'll put all these links in the show notes.
But what are your favorite websites, social handles?
Where do you want folks to connect with you?
SPEAKER_00: So I have my website,
wildflowertransformation.com.
They can find me on Facebook and Instagram under that same
handle, Wildflower Transformation.
And I think those would be the best ways.
I have a free gift on my site.
So there's lots of ways just so they can start to get a feel for
what I bring and what I'm here to support those that are
navigating transitions in.
I love it.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
Anything you want to leave our listeners with right now that
you feel like we didn't touch on or want to hold space for.
SPEAKER_00: I think the last piece is when you're navigating
transitions, we so often want to get to the other side.
We want to get through the not knowing, the messiness.
But when you can learn to just be there in the threshold, and
maybe you stand in a doorway as a physical remembrance of, okay,
I'm in between right now, I'm not yet there.
And imagine like your ancestors are there beside you.
Imagine like your very best friend, your partner, whoever it
is standing at that threshold with you, saying, Keep going, I
love you.
You are being supported beyond measure, and there is an army
that is surrounding you.
I mean, if you go back seven generations, it's over 2,000
individuals that came together to make you into existence at
this point.
So if you can just take that remembrance of, okay, it's okay
to not know right now.
I've got people saying, I love you.
They're standing with me.
I'm gonna be in the unknown so that when the next step appears,
I will take the next best step.
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
Hats off to you, girl, and to the work you're doing and all of
the incredible wisdom and magic that you shared with me and our
audience today.
Thank you so much.
Love you.
Can't wait to see you again.