Chaotic Compass

About Chaotic Compass

I'm Stefanie – mom of four, business owner, podcast host, and professional chaos navigator. I created Chaotic Compass to give voice to the messy middle—the part no one posts about, where you're holding everything together with a hair tie and hope. This space is for the women who are tired of pretending and ready to start living with more honesty, more alignment, and more freedom. Whether I'm behind the mic, wrangling fishing rods (or kids), or deep in a being the unpaid uber during an existential crisis, I'm here to share the real, raw, and ridiculous truths of life so you feel a little less alone in your own chaos. Welcome aboard—I promise, we might be messy, but we’re moving forward.

Publisher

Stefanie Wainwright

Category

comedy · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Feb 2021

Latest episode

22 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

114 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   22 Sept 2026

   ️ Episode 113: Am I Living My Life or Just Managing It?: Navigating the Mental Load, Midlife & Turning 40

   🎙️ Episode 113: Am I Living My Life or Just Managing It?: Navigating the Mental Load, Midlife & Turning 40 🪦 May we have a moment of silence for the woman I thought I'd be at 40. Except...I don't actually remember who the fuck I thought she'd be. 😂 I just know she probably wasn't living with her mother again, sitting in Teams meetings talking about metrics, and spending every waking hour figuring out what somebody needs next. Because lately, I'm fucking tired of handling shit. 😵💫 💻 Work ⚽ Kids 📅 Schedules 👨👩👧👦 Family 🚗 Appointments, practices & rides 🍕 And WHY are we figuring out dinner again? Didn't we just eat yesterday?! Somewhere along the way, I became the person who figures everything out. And the weirdest part? I don't hate my life. ❤️ I love my family. I want to watch my kids do their things. I want time with my husband. I want trips ✈️, adventures 🌴, this podcast 🎙️, and a full life. I don't necessarily want less. I just want ROOM. 🫠 In this episode, we're talking about: 🧠 The invisible mental load of motherhood 💼 Being mentally halfway out the corporate door 🎂 Turning 40 and wondering WTF happened 📅 Why one 2:30 plan somehow owns your entire day ❤️ Loving your life while still feeling completely overwhelmed 😶 Being extremely functional...but not really feeling present 🌴 Craving freedom, spontaneity and more of yourself again And the question I can't seem to shake: Am I actually living my life...or am I just managing it? Maybe I don't need an entirely different life. Maybe I just need more space to actually experience the one I already have—and more room to be ME inside of it. So RIP to the woman I thought I'd be at 40. 🪦 Actually...fuck that. She's not dead. She's just overstimulated and would like everyone to stop asking her what's for fucking dinner. 😂🍕 🎧 Grab a drink and come navigate the chaos with me. ✨ Mental load • Motherhood • Turning 40 • Midlife • Corporate burnout • Working moms • Finding yourself again

2. 

   11 Sept 2026

   ️ EPISODE 112 — I Want More, I Just Don’t Know What Yet: Navigating the Messy Middle

   Have you ever looked at your life and thought…there has to be more than fucking this? 😵💫 Because that’s where my brain has been lately. I’m 40. I have a family I love, a good job, bills to pay, businesses, kids going in a million directions—and somehow I’m still sitting here wondering, is this really what I’m supposed to do for the next 20+ years? In this episode, I’m talking about wanting more out of life without having the luxury of just blowing everything up to go find it. 😂 I want to build something of my own. I want more control over my time. I want freedom. And yes, I’m struggling with watching my husband have some of that freedom while I’m still sitting through corporate meetings and trainings wondering what the actual fuck I’m doing there. 😬 But this isn't just about hating corporate life. It's about midlife, motherhood, marriage, money, identity, financial pressure, starting a business, and figuring out what you actually want your life to look like at 40—especially when you're responsible for a whole lot more than just yourself. I don't have the grand plan figured out yet. I'm somewhere between “I can't keep doing this forever” and “okay…so what the hell do I do instead?” And maybe you're there too. 🩵 🎙️ Grab your coffee, Tito’s, or emotional-support beverage of choice and let’s navigate this shit together.

3. 

   4 Sept 2026

   ️ EPISODE 111 — Where the Fuck Have I Been? Navigating 9 Months of How I Fell Off The Face Of The Earth

   🎙️ EPISODE 111 — Where the Fuck Have I Been? Navigating 9 Months of How I Fell Off The Face Of The Earth Well, fuck. Apparently it’s been NINE MONTHS since I recorded an episode. 🤦♀️ Was this a planned podcast break? Nope. Did I have some beautiful spiritual awakening where I decided to step away, find myself and come back as a better version of me? Also nope. I just… stopped recording. 😂 And then one week turned into two, two turned into a month and suddenly it’s September and I realized I could have made an entire fucking human in the amount of time I’ve been gone. Thank God I didn’t. 🙌 So where the fuck HAVE I been? ⚽ Sitting on the sidelines of approximately 4,739 soccer games. 🎭 Somehow becoming a musical mom AGAIN— and yes, there was MORE THAN ONE musicals. 🎓 Watching my oldest graduate high school with highest honors while wondering who the hell authorized me to be old enough to have a high school graduate. 🚤 Trying to keep a 64-year-old wooden fishing boat alive while she did her absolute best to take all of our money. 💻 Going to my regular corporate job every day like a respectable member of society while the rest of my life was a complete fucking circus. 🏝️ Escaping to Ocracoke because obviously. 🎓 Packing up that same child I JUST watched graduate and DROPPING HER OFF AT COLLEGE. Apparently you raise them for 18 years and then you're just supposed to... leave them there?! What the fuck is that? 🖋️ Oh yeah, I got a tattoo. ⚰️ And there was even a funeral. And before anybody gets excited — no, it wasn't Ryan's. He's still alive. Currently. 😂 Basically, I blinked around Christmas and somehow woke up as a 40-year-old mother of a fucking college student. Aggressive. So this episode is one giant catch-up session about what the hell has been happening while Chaotic Compass has been collecting dust. We’re talking motherhood, raising teenagers, high school graduation, sending your oldest to college, working a corporate job, running family businesses, marriage, midlife, travel soccer, boat problems, Ocracoke and all the other shit that has somehow happened in the last nine months. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I’ve also been doing my regularly scheduled: ✨ What the fuck am I doing with my life? ✨ Because apparently that comes free with turning 40. 🫠 Maybe it’s a midlife crisis. Maybe I’m evolving. Maybe I’m just really fucking sick of Outlook. Could be all three. The truth is, I never actually decided to quit the podcast. I just kept making coming back WAY more complicated than it needed to be. I needed a plan. I needed a strategy. I needed to figure out video. I needed to figure out social media. I needed to figure out what the podcast was going to become. Blah. Blah. Fucking blah. Eventually I realized: 🎙️ Bitch. Just turn the microphone on. So I did. No giant comeback plan. No promise that I suddenly have my shit together. And absolutely no guarantee that I know what I'm doing from here. But I'm back. I have approximately nine months of shit we need to talk about, 47 tabs permanently open in my brain and a microphone sitting in front of me. Seems like enough of a plan to me. 🤷♀️🍹 Welcome back to Chaotic Compass — where motherhood is wild, midlife is weird, and apparently disappearing for nine months is completely on brand. Let’s fucking go. 🎙️🧭 🧭 Stay Real, Stay Chaotic Thanks for tuning in, babes. Until next time: stay real, stay chaotic, and keep a drink close. 🥂

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

515

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 30 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

10

Social presence

0

YouTube

66

Engagement

60