We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shanell Larner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shanell, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?

This is my story of how my dad in Spirit was able to guide me to where he wanted his ashes to be placed after he passed. My Dad passed November 20, 2020. His passing was very difficult for me because we were very close. We were always intuitively connected. If I had been thinking of him, he would coincidently call within the next day or two. It was the same for him with me. If he was thinking of me, I’d feel it and reach out and call him. We just always knew how we were feeling. He was a great dad and had a significant influence on how I lived my life, and my health with working out. He took me to the gym when I was a little girl, and until I moved to go to college at MSU, we would workout together every now and then. My Dad had a strong spiritual connection with his mom who passed when he was 10 years old. He could feel her around him and would be guided by her through seeing the number 444. When he saw this number he knew it was his mom and she was with him helping him through life, or letting him know she heard him praying to her. After he retired, he moved back to Arizona where he was close to his childhood roots, and later discovered that his Mom was buried very close to where he lived. He called me in tears when he found his moms resting place. In 2016 when I went to Arizona to visit my Dad and also to do my first ever Ironman 70.3 triathlon, he took me to meet his Mom. It was a surreal moment to see my dad standing over his moms headstone. For a moment, I saw the 10 year old boy needing the maternal love of his mother. He stood there, looking down, smiling, and I could tell they were talking to each other. The grave site next to her was where his dad was supposed to be buried, but through a series of events in his childhood, his dad was buried somewhere else, and my dad was never able to find him. At that time, seeing my Dad and how he was connecting with his Mom, I knew it was divine intervention that his Dad was placed somewhere else. My dad was meant to be placed next to his mom. I made an internal promise to myself that when my Dad’s time came, I would place him by his mom.
His time came a few years later and I kept my promise. A very long story, but through a series of my own traumas and events in 2020 that followed me into 2021, I was not able to place my dad by his Mom till his one year anniversary of his death. I drove from Michigan to Arizona by myself with my 4 dogs. It was an experience I needed to help heal from the loss of my dad, and all the other trauma’s in 2020 and 2021. The road trip was very long and arduous, but it was much needed. In the 30 hours of driving, I reflected on my childhood, my dad, the memories, and just how much of an influence on my life he had. I cried to him often, I replayed voice mails I had saved on my phone. I sat in hotel rooms along the way and read old text messages and laughed at the jokes we sent back and forth. I talked to him, and shared my heart and thanked him for guiding me through this journey of taking him to where his Mom was buried. It was a much needed emotional cleansing.
The afternoon that I got to the Cemetery, my heart sank and I was consumed in fear because as I pulled into the parking lot, I realized I had no idea where his Mom was buried. When my dad took me to visit her in 2016, we came into the cemetery from a different direction. I had no idea where she was, or how to find her because I was on the other side of the cemetery. This cemetery was massive and had over 70,000 plots. I started to cry to my dad and asked him to take me to her. I told him I didnt know where to go and cried very hard. I was so upset with myself that I drove 30 hours and never thought to look where she was buried. I had no idea where to start, but I knew I was never going to find her. The cemetery was huge. I laid my head on my steering wheel and cried very hard. I felt pressure in my ears, which means intuitive messages are coming from someone in Spirit. I knew it was my dad so I paid attention. I heard him as if her were sitting next to me in my car. He said, “It will be ok Nellie (my nick name) just go down that road and make a right.” There was a road off the parking lot so I headed down it. Nothing looked familiar and I continued to cry. I told my dad this was up to him and he had to guide me. I opened my intuition up and followed. When I felt pressure intensify, I listed and turned where I heard him say to turn. As I reached the back of the cemetery, I heard him say “Keep going till you hit were the road makes a circle” By now, I was recognizing the area from when I was there in 2016, but there were hundreds of headstones that all looked like his Moms. I drove slowing around the road that drove in a circle. The pressure in my head intensified to the point it gave me a headache. I knew this meant to stop my car. I dried my tears, but more came behind them as the reality of what I was doing was surfacing. Spreading my Dad’s ashes next to his mom, laying him to rest, saying goodbye. As tears flowed uncontrollably down my face, I got out of my car to look for his Mom’s headstone. There were hundreds in front of me that were spread as far as I could see throughout the cemetery. But, I knew my dad would would show me where to go. I walked to the edge of the grass in front of my car, and her headstone was at my feet. He took me right to her headstone. I looked down at her name and cried even more. I said hello to the grandmother I was never able to meet and thanked her for helping my dad throughout his life. I told her to keep an eye on him and knew they were together in Heaven. I kneeled down next to her on the empty grave that was waiting for my Dad and I noticed a single feather. It was a perfect white feather placed in the center of where I was placing my Dad. I cried even more because I knew this was a sign from my Dad. He was so grateful I placed him next to his mom. I could hear the pride in his voice, I could feel his energy and how bright and full of joy it was. I could feel him let go of me so he could rest in peace. It was like his soul was releasing his trauma and finally laying to rest and I was feeling it as he detached from me. It was so beautiful and I am so grateful to be in the presence of seeing me dad’s soul cross that line between earth and heaven as he crossed over into his eternal peace. It was beautiful. I got to feel heaven and earth in the space of my dads spirit as he laid to rest. I sat in this space for several minutes to pray, cry and say my final farewell. When I got in my car, the clock said 4:44. I knew it was my Dad, and those 3 simple numbers said so much to me. He was at rest. He was in Heaven and he was now my Guardian Angel.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Prior to owning my business, I was a bank manager living a very stressful life as a single Mom. I worked long hours, and was realizing very quickly just how unhappy I was with my career, and the lack of direction it had in my life. I felt like I had hit a wall and the way I was living was the best it was going to get. The “best” wasn’t that great which is what lead me to my soul so I could find where I was supposed to go. At the time, I was doing Medium readings for free in facebook groups and chats to help people connect with loved ones in Spirit, or helping paranormal groups identify the spirit activity they were having in locations they were investigating. I was doing this daily in my free time and realizing very quickly I had a talent and should pursue this. I was also helping friends/family with their physical and emotional issues through my energy health readings, now known as Intuitive Health Reading.. I was able to see where they had energetic blocks in their energy that were causing illness. At the time I was doing this I did not realize it was a skill set. I thought everyone could do this. I was intuitively seeing what they could not which was helping them learn and grow from the information I was finding in their body and energy so they could heal energetically and physically. I came across a link for Reiki Certification and decided to look into it. This is where the seed to Define Your Glow was planted.
I learned Reiki and learned it well. I become consumed in learning about energy that flows through us and around us. I studied and self taught myself in a variety of energetic skill sets. I read about quantum physics, the law of attraction, Reiki Healing, Kundalini reiki. Spiritual belief systems, Ayurvedic modalities, and many other healing modalities and energy methods that are available to us. I became a Reiki Master Teacher and started teaching Reiki, and while working in banking, I mastered my energy work and rooted myself very deeply to a spiritual life style.
In 2017 I was sitting on my couch drinking my coffee and thinking more and more about banking and how unhappy I was. I was a new manager in a new bank and finding myself in a very unhappy space. My heart felt empty and in order to be a good banker, I had to shut off my soul and go numb so I could tolerate the stress, and all the toxic elements in the bank. I started to cry because I knew this was not my story. I started dreaming of what it would be like to own a business. What it would be like to have my life in my hands and not in the hands of corporate America’. I remember thinking to myself, “I want to glow.” I felt empty and dim, no light and I wanted to glow. I then took myself to my inner light, something I had learned in my studying,….. our Inner light, our power source. We all have it, we just have to look within to see it. Something many struggle with. The name came to me, “Define Your Glow.” Next thing I knew, I was on facebook setting up my business page, then ordering business cards and over the next year I was building a clientele. I resigned from banking in 2018 after I returned from a trip to New Zealand. While in New Zealand, I had a very profound spiritual experience. It’s a long story for another day, but my Guides came through in a manner of “I dare you to cling on to banking.” Lol I could tell they were giving me a couple choices. Hang on to banking and don’t see what happens because no changes were made, but I will have financial stability, which I already had. Or, walk away and see what happens because everything will change. I decided to walk away and put my energy into my business.
November of 2019 I was thrilled to find a studio and have my official sacred space to run my business. I had a clientele and although I was not as financially established as I was in banking, I was building a business and felt successful. In March of 2020, the pandemic closed my doors and I have never felt so much fear ever in my life. I was going through a divorce, my dad was in his final days of passing from heart failure, my son was missing his senior year, and my finances were upside down. I truly felt I was going to lose everything very quickly. I wanted to run back to the stability of banking and apply for management positions, however, banks were also closed. I had only myself to rely on. I focused fully on my social media platforms, doing lives, and working my business around the clock. I was very quickly going global in building a clientele in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and throughout the US. By the end of the year, my business was thriving. In the middle of the pandemic, I was able to sell my home I lived in for 13 years, buy a home in Northern Michigan near Lake Michigan and have an office and work space in my home where I have been ever since. Through all of this I realized, my bank career was fear based, and I clung onto it because I did not believe in myself. I had zero faith in my strength and my abilities. My Guides put me in a position where I had to dig my heals in because there was no where to run so I had to stay and make it work. And I did. During the pandemic, my studio was closed, I went through a divorce and financial devastation, sold my house, bought a house, and still landed on my two feet at the end of 2020. When it all started, I thought all the work I was doing was me laying low and riding out a storm…. God was like.. “Nah, you are flying above it.”
I now have a Tiktok Platform (@defineyourglow) with 102,000 followers. My facebook has 5300 followers. In the beginning of 2020 it only had a few hundred and I did not have a TikTok. My business is global, and I have a website Defineyourglow.org My income far passes what I was making in banking and I feel I am living my soul purpose. I run my business intuitively and focus daily on not having control of my life, but having control of how I intuitively live it by listening daily to what the Universe has to say to me.
Thanks for being here.
Shanell

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

This story is where I mastered my ability as a medical intuitive by using it on myself so I could heal from a detrimental running injury. I am an avid runner and triathlete. Prior to becoming a triathlete, I was training to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Because of my not training properly, and running too much without the strength training I sustained a very serious running injury. After trying to train through it for several months, I knew I was making it worse. I decided to go to the Dr. for a diagnosis so I could get physical therapy and heal. Unfortunately, the diagnosis did not go as planned. After having and MRI, I was told that I had a stage 3 stress fracture in the femoral neck in my hip, a labrum tear, as a well as sever tendinitis and a strained hamstring. Basically, I was a mess. My doctor told me I needed surgery to have a pin put in my hip, I would no longer run….. ever…. And I could no longer lift heavy. He said cycling and swimming would be ok, but cross fit, and running were no longer something I could do because of the damage to my hip. At the end of my appointment, he handed me crutches and told me to use them for 4 months. I held them in my hand and started to walk out without using them. He tried to correct me with an alarmed, “Shanell! You need to use those starting now.” I looked at him and paused then said… “Not today. I’m not sending messages to my body that its broken by using these. My body isn’t ready to be broken.” I walked out holding the crutches in my hand. On my way home I stopped to treat myself to my favorite latte. Basically, drink my emotions in the goodness of cinnamon and vanilla while I had a good cry in my car. While sitting there in my sorrows talking to my body and apologizing for pushing it so hard, I saw a man walk into the shop. He was wearing a jacket that said “Ironman Lake Placid Finisher” I did not know what this meant but it made my heart very happy. I was not familiar with Ironman Triathlons, but in the doctors office while waiting to be seen I was flipping through the triathlon magazine on the table. I came across an article about the Ironman Kona and read about the champion. She had a great story and I was inspired by her strength. Seeing the man in a finisher jacket in the same day, I felt like this was a sign. I sat there in my coffee, dried my tears and instantly knew I was going to embark on an amazing journey. I talked to my injury. I asked her if she was ready to heal. I talked to my body and told it to get ready to heal because I was just getting started. I suddenly felt a rush of excitement as something new was coming to me. A new challenge, something to change me and make me grow in a new direction.
I sat in my car with my coffee and googled Ironman, then googled Ironman lake placid and read some more. The city looked beautiful and the course was incredible. I also read that it was one of the toughest courses in the US district because the bike and run was through mountains. The elevation was one of the most difficult in the Ironman series, which had me even more excited. I could not wait to try this. As I read the distance, my heart dropped,but I knew I could do it. The race is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile run. The run had me concerned because of my injury, however, I made a conscious choice to use the swimming and biking to heal back to running. I registered. I knew I could do this. I couldn’t wait!
Something I have always told myself that has helped me move through times where I feel blocked is that flowers and trees grow up. They do not grow back down into the dirt. They grow upwards. This was a time of growth. By letting my injury stop me from doing what I love, I was blocking my growth. This was a time to grow and learn so I embraced this injury and asked it to lead the way. Which it did.
I bought a road bike, a bike trainer for indoor riding, and found a gym with a pool. I did not run for 5 months but swam and road my bike daily. I made my own workouts with pool running and water aerobics to build the muscle back up in my hip and keep my legs strong. I road my bike, mastered hilly routes and built up my legs for the mountains I would be riding in placid.
While training myself and building back my strength. I cleaned up my eating. I went plant based, I learned about minerals, the body, and how it heals. I listened to myself intuitively and talked to my injury every day. I did not call it an injury. I called it my coach. When it hurt, I listened and would pull back on activity. When I felt strong, I pushed my workouts. Every day I listened to this area of my body and went where I felt intuitively guided. I used my skill set as a medical health intuitive to see the injury in my energy and focus fully on it healing, not that it was broken. I shifted my mindset and saw this entire process as my growing into something different, not being denied something I loved. I missed not running for 5 months, but in that time, I never told myself I wasn’t running. I focused fully on what I WAS doing and kept my perspective in this in check. In July of 2017, I finished crossed the finish line at Ironman Lake Placid. Prior to the race, I ran 3 marathons and finished faster than he year before. I was at my best fitness level and in better shape than before my injury. I was fully healed, and back to doing what I loved.
This was a time where, again, I was given 2 choices. Allow my mind to see my body as broken and learn how to cope with the loss of what I love. Or, see my body as self healing and learn my strengths so I can apply them to where I am weak so I can maintain balance in both while getting back to doing what I love. There is work in healing. Nothing that is worth having comes to us easy. It’s a choice we have to make, and that choice takes commitment. Once we commit to our strength and let it guide us through our growth, we become unstoppable.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Unlearning. This is such a significant part of what I teach with my clients in my spiritual guidance coaching sessions. A person has to unlearn the habits and behaviors that put them in a space of stress that manifested into illness/disease. When we are in survival mode as we work through trauma and stress, we disconnect from our emotions to avoid feeling pain. Those emotions and traumas get trapped in our energy and over time they will manifest into illness. To heal the illness and the emotions we have to go back in our minds to where the stress stared and evaluate our habits and behaviors that shifted as we were in survival mode. We have to uncondition our minds. The healing begins with our thinking and applying that thinking to our behaviors. I was a woman who had a variety of illnesses. Thyroid issues, hip pain and stiffness, knee pain that I blamed on running but realized it was stress related, migraines, acid reflux, food sensitivity, chronic fatigue, restless sleep, jaw pain and dental issues with my teeth, psoriasis and sensitive skin. All of these issues I thought were just how I was. I just thought it was me. As I stepped away from banking, changed my habits and behaviors that were causing me to be in a reactive state of survival, I started to notice i was feeling better. I was sleeping better. I had more energy. I was raw honest with myself and held myself accountable to thinking and behaviors that did not serve me. I shifted them and worked daily on my self talk, my emotions and holding myself accountable. Each day was a new lesson. Healing is not short term. It’s not something you do till you feel better. It’s a lifestyle that you grow into as you learn about yourself. You adapt to this way of living and thinking so you can be in a higher energetic frequency and thrive because you are no longer making fear based decisions from self doubt. You are in a state of awareness and balance so there is clarity in your thinking which is where your internal power in decision making comes from.
In banking, I thought life was about having a stable career with the corporate America perks such as salary, paid vacation, and health benefits. For some, this may be their purpose, however, for myself, I was empty and I was allowing myself to believe in a false mindset that banking was my best life because I had financial stability. I had to uncondition this thinking which helped me realize I was living a fear based lifestyle that was limiting my growth. I was missing out on not being fully present in my personal power. Through new habits like daily meditation, reading, eating clean and listening to my intuition, I was able to shift to my internal power and create a life that I deserve, while shifting from a life I feared. I don’t believe we ever arrive to one single destination or purpose in life. We grow through them and continue to level up. We are bound by nothing and our opportunities are infinite when we have full faith in ourselves and apply that faith to our personal power.

Contact Info:

• Website:  www.defineyourglow.com
• Facebook: Www.facebook.com/defineyourglow
• Youtube: Define Your Glow
• Other: TikTok @defineyourglow

Image Credits
All images were taken by myself in my home office or at locations near my home.