Leah Guerrero is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. She’s from a small town in South Texas but she’s lived in New York City (where she volunteered through AmeriCorps and later got her masters degree at a prestigious art school), spent extensive time in Botswana working with her best friend to lay the ground work for building the first pediatric hospital there (she also got married in Botswana!), lived in Sydney Australia (before dropping out of Bible College), moved back to her hometown (to teach art at the local school), then followed her husband to California where he found work but she didn’t (or at least not in the way she anticipated) to currently living in the Texas Hill Country where her and her husband currently own and operate The Inn Between, a Bed & Breakfast…and she’s only 32 years old (we think).

I’ve titled this episode “Disappearing (INN) Service” because that’s exactly how I see Leah shining her light in the world. Sometimes we think it’s about being front and center (and it totally can be but it just doesn’t have to be), regarding the service role(s) we play in the world. For Leah that was initially through her art (showing it in galleries, driving an old school bus on a two month journey with the intention of creating an equalizing space for people of all demographics to come together) and do good endeavors with AmeriCorps and her work in Botswana. But today it’s through her role as an innkeeper, hence the title “Disappearing (Inn) Service”, where she provides a loving space for families to make memories together, solo travelers to rest and renew and everything in between (see what I did there? ;)).

In this conversation, Leah shares her outer and inner journey. She shares the major lessons learned (like coming face-to-face with a dominant Type 3 Enneagram’s biggest fear), staying aligned with her inner voice/intuition (something’s she’s known and listened to since she was a little girl), what it means to fit in or have a sense of belonging wherever you are, and we also challenge the myth of selfishness (which, spoiler alert, is what it took for her to see that being an innkeeper was the right next step in her journey).

You can follow Leah/learn more about The Inn Between on Facebook and Instagram (@theinnbetweentx)...and you can book your stay by heading to www.innbetweentx.com. 

Shanna Covey is the author of A Call to the Heart, Shifting Out of Ego Into Spirit. She is a life coach who uses a spiritual lens to help people align more deeply with the truth of their nature. When people are aligned with their inner nature, they live confidently from that truth. From this inner knowing, they learn to direct their lives according to their unique soul blueprint. You can follow her on Facebook (@ShannaKayCovey) and Instagram (@ShannaCovey).

I’ve shared amazing conversations with her my whole life! And I’m so excited to bring one of those conversations to YOU! Today’s guest is Phyllis Kruciak…a bestie…a lifer…a member of my soul tribe. We’ve known each other since elementary school. Growing up, she was a light for me, in many ways. She helped me navigate emotional situations. She broadened my mind just by sharing topics that were on her mind…things I wasn’t thinking about, but, because she brought them up, I got interested in them (and learned a lot). Since then, we’ve navigated our 20s and 30s together (and now the very beginning of our 40s!), often getting together for “catch up sessions” that involve a minimum of three hour nonstop chats.

In this episode, we share the abrupt wall we each hit when we entered our first career type job and what it taught us, the challenges and blessings our unique gifts (in her case, intelligence) offer us in terms of inner growth and connecting with and understanding others, googling the meaning of life (the roots of that inquiry and the journey it leads us on), panning out into a more soulful perspective in order to shift from comparison to compassion, shifting from fear to love and from lack to greater inner abundance, dropping from our head to our heart (and back into our spiritual mind) in order to better balance love and wisdom, consciously connecting to service in our day-to-day and the power the law of allowance offers us in our personal growth journey.

We fit a lot in our one hour conversation! It’s a soulful conversation that’s chock full of wisdom…one you won’t want to miss!

Bios...

Phyllis Kruciak is bright…like really bright. She once wrote an essay for a $25,000 scholarship the night before it was due and won the scholarship (none of us were surprised). She’s a system’s thinker meaning she can pull from multiple disciplines, like psychology, philosophy, spirituality, political science, etc., to draw observations, insights and solutions, which also makes her a great strategist and problem solver. When it comes to intelligence she has the best of both worlds…IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence). For the past 20 years, she’s held some sort of leadership position where she’s often simultaneously managing employees and strategizing on behalf of the business. I see her as a bright light in this world because she uses her gifts to help others. Whether she’s acting as a friend, boss, business partner, daughter, sister, aunt, etc., she uses her gift of insight with care and compassion for the person she’s helping.

Shanna Covey is the author of A Call to the Heart, Shifting Out of Ego Into Spirit, (Phyllis helped me edit A Call to the Heart!). She is a life coach who uses a spiritual lens to help people align more deeply with the truth of their nature. When people are aligned with their inner nature, they live confidently from that truth. From this inner knowing, they learn to direct their lives according to their unique soul blueprint. You can follow her on Facebook (@ShannaKayCovey) and Instagram (@ShannaCovey).

If we got everything we wanted, when we wanted it, there would be little room for true inner growth and awakening. So along the journey of life, we bump into catalysts meant to turn us inward in order to gain the gift(s) that lie inside them. By all (non-soul growth oriented) accounts, today’s guest, my sister-in-law, Emily Covey, had every right to be upset, frustrated and disappointed. She longed to be a mother…to have the maternal experience of carrying a child and bringing life into this world. But after YEARS AND EVEN MORE YEARS of trying to conceive she was no closer to the thing she longed for. This was the biggest frustration in her life...the thing she felt was missing. All would be okay if…

Whether you relate to this exact catalyst or not, the idea that something is missing or should or shouldn’t have happened is common to all of us. It’s the source of our frustration, pain and suffering. It’s ALSO the thing leading us to a deeper awakening around the constricted perceptions we’re carrying…if we choose to use them to that end. Emily did. It wasn’t easy to see friends get pregnant…and then pregnant again. It wasn’t easy having friends skirt around telling her when they were pregnant for fear it would hurt her feelings. It wasn’t easy riding the cycle of hope and frustration month after month…year after year. Fortunately, she got her happy ending but it wasn’t until she faced and healed the pain around the idea of not having the thing she desired. It wasn’t until she learned she could be at peace without clinging and gripping onto the one thing she thought could offer her peace. And that’s the key lesson every catalyst is teachings us.

I chose Emily as a guest on Always Shine Brightly because, despite all the ways she naturally shines bright, she did the work around the biggest thing that was causing her pain and dimming her light in those moments of deep frustration, which is exactly what I look for in a guest. Join Emily and I as she walks us through her journey to motherhood and shares the lessons she learned along the way.

Emily is a lifestyle blogger, creative extraordinaire, fire wife and mama (via adoption and bio) to her two greatest love poems. She’s here to bring value to your life one luxuriously kind thought at a time. To make life lighter and brighter and create a massive ripple effect of kindness. You can follow her on Instagram (@proseccoandpeace) and visit and subscribe to her blog at www.proseccoandpeace.com.

As mentioned in this episode, part of Emily’s mission and passion is to spread kindness and bring awareness to infertility issues and adoption. She encourages people to reach out to her if they’re considering adoption and want an encouraging perspective from someone who has gone that route. Feel free to DM her on Instagram (@proseccoandpeace).

Shanna Covey is the author of A Call to the Heart, Shifting Out of Ego Into Spirit. She is a life coach who uses a spiritual lens to help people align more deeply with the truth of their nature. When people are aligned with their inner nature, they live confidently from that truth. From this inner knowing, they learn to direct their lives according to their unique soul blueprint. You can follow her on Facebook (@ShannaKayCovey) and Instagram (@ShannaCovey).

Hi I'm Shanna Covey creator and host of Always Shine Brightly. I named this podcast Always Shine Brightly because I believe it's what we're each here to do. And in times where we feel we're not shining bright, I feel it's still our purpose to work through and shift whatever is dimming our light. My overall intention with the podcast is to speak with guests who I see as bright lights in the world despite any struggles they may have gone through. I believe in shining a light on those who are shining bright (see what I did there ;)), we show and encourage others to do the same. And the more of us who do this the better the world becomes. I invite you to join me on this shared mission to make the world a brighter place.

This first episode is a solo episode where I introduce myself, share a bit of my spiritual journey (how it began, what prompted it, where it's led me), and in doing so, share the soulful lens I see the world through.