Jessie Krebs spent her early life escaping into the wilderness — not for adventure, but for safety. Childhood abuse, a body that didn’t feel safe around people, a military career that taught her everything except how to trust herself. What the outdoors gave her was the one thing she couldn’t find anywhere else: the feeling of just being a creature on the planet.

In this conversation, HeatherAsh and Jessie talk about what really happens when women step into the wild — and why it’s so much less about survival skills and so much more about remembering who they are. Jessie is a SERE instructor, wilderness therapy veteran, and Alone Season 9 contestant who has spent decades watching women walk into her programs with their eyes on the ground and walk out standing tall.

They get into why women have been trained to see nature as dangerous, how patriarchy and fear of wilderness are the same story, what bow drill fire has to do with your emotional patterns, and why Jessie’s three rules for surviving any emergency apply just as well to your life at home.

Episode Highlights:

1. How childhood sexual abuse sent Jessie outside — and why the wilderness was the only place that felt safe
2. The military, SERE training, and the unlikely path from introvert to instructor
3. What wilderness therapy actually looks like — and what 11 years of it taught Jessie about masks, patterns, and healing
4. Why women arrive in Jessie’s programs feeling incapable and what happens when someone puts a rope in their hands
5. The statistics nobody talks about: why the bear isn’t what you should be afraid of
6. Jessie’s 46 days on Alone Season 9 and the TV show Braver for teens
7. The three survival rules that work in the backcountry and in your office: relax, signal, insulate

Resources & Links:

• Learn more about Jessie and her courses:https://www.owlsskills.com/
• Follow Jessie on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/owls.skills/

Meet Jessie Krebs

Jessie Krebs has spent her life finding her way back to the wild. What began as a child’s escape from abuse became a calling — through 11 years as a wilderness therapy field guide, a career as an Air Force SERE instructor, and now as the founder of O.W.L.S. Skills (Outdoorsy Women Learning Survival), where she teaches women and underrepresented communities how to handle real emergencies in real wilderness.

She has appeared on History’s Alone Season 9 and National Geographic’s Mygrations, taught on MasterClass, and leads everything from single-day courses to multi-week expeditions. Her guiding conviction: the wilderness doesn’t judge — and in that freedom, people heal things they didn’t even know needed healing.