From Burnout to Breakthrough
Everything can look good on paper. You’ve built a career. You’re showing up for your family. You’re doing what you’re supposed to do.
In this episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, I sit down with shamanic healer, spiritual teacher, and retreat facilitator Meghan Gilroy.
What starts as a conversation about spiritual journeys and power retreats opens into something deeper.
Because this isn’t just about going to pyramids or exploring spirituality.
It’s about disconnection. It’s about burnout. It’s about the moment when your life looks successful on the outside… but feels empty on the inside.
Meghan shares her journey from being an overachieving, people pleasing perfectionist to answering a deeper calling. One that required her to stop performing and start listening.
Together, we explore what it really means to move out of autopilot and into alignment.
What happens during a dark night of the soul.
In this episode:
Why success on paper can still feel empty
How disconnection shows up in high achieving women
The truth about people pleasing and self abandonment
What a dark night of the soul really means
How to move through seasons of breakdown and transformation
Why you cannot recreate your life using the same tools
Quotes from this episode:
“I was focused on teaching other people how to run retreats and doing business coaching, and I was hiding that shamanic part of me in the background.” – Meghan Gilroy
“You can’t recreate your life using the same tools that you used to create it the first time.” – Meghan Gilroy
“The most powerful woman is a relaxed woman.” – Meghan Gilroy
“When work is severely out of alignment, life will happen.” – Becca Powers
“You can almost see it in your hand what you’re supposed to do.” – Becca Powers
About Meghan Gilroy
Meghan Gilroy is a shamanic healer, spiritual mentor, and light amplifier who helps women answer the call of their soul and create a more aligned life.
Named a “spiritual leader for the next generation” in her early twenties by Don Miguel Ruiz, she has worked with thousands of women worldwide through retreats, workshops, women’s circles, and one on one mentoring.
Now based on a small ranch in Colorado, she blends spiritual wisdom with practical guidance to help women find healing, clarity, and purpose.
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Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of The Empowered Half Hour, and I'm so excited to bring you today's guest. Whenever I get to bring you guys a little like spiritual teacher, I get so happy because, well, I don't get to talk about it all the time on the podcast. I mean, sometimes I do, but not all the time, and there's that part of me that just loves the spiritual journey.
So let me go ahead and introduce you to today's guest. We have Meghan Gilroy, who is a shamanic healer, a spiritual teacher, and retreat facilitator. And she's a mama. She does a lot of things. We were just talking about that, and she definitely has that. But Meghan, welcome to the show.
Meghan Gilroy: I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I just love this blend of spiritual and practical and we're gonna have an amazing conversation.
Becca Powers: Oh my gosh. I know in our pre-talk we were getting all excited. I'm like, okay, I just…
Meghan Gilroy: We gotta save it. We gotta save it.
Becca Powers: Yeah. Like, I'm getting so excited.
The Call to the Pyramids
Becca Powers: So, alright, one of the things we talked about was that about 20 something years ago, you started taking journeys to the pyramids.
Meghan Gilroy: Mm-hmm.
Becca Powers: And today you are doing power journeys to the pyramids. I want to know, how did this all start? How did you go to the pyramids for the first time? Why did you go? Why are you so committed and passionate about it today?
Meghan Gilroy: Well, I'm happy to answer. So I was your typical overachieving, people pleasing, perfectionist in my early years. I'm sure a lot of us can be raising hands about that. And I was probably voted like most likely to be successful and least likely to be a shaman.
So when I was in my early twenties, I had one of those moments where this force in my life, this calling in my life, was guiding me even though I was trying to check off all the boxes about what I thought it meant to be successful. My life fell apart with relationship and career.
And I ended up meeting Don Miguel Ruiz, who wrote The Four Agreements, and a couple months later I found myself going on a trip to the pyramids with him. I didn't even know there were pyramids in Mexico at the time.
My spiritual home is now Teotihuacan, which are the pyramids outside of Mexico City. When I was there, I was able to shift out of being very goal oriented, trying to do the right thing, putting other people first, and shift into a place where I could open up to my soul and spirit guidance and intuition.
And that changed the trajectory of my life.
And since then I've been back countless times. My life again reached a point where I looked very successful. I had a beautiful ranch in Colorado, a seven figure business, and my kids were in good schools. But inside, I was quietly dying.
Not so intimate with my husband. Not so present with my children. Feeling like there was a piece missing because I was focused on teaching others and doing business coaching, while hiding the shamanic part of me in the background.
When I realized I could no longer sacrifice what I was doing each day, I had to get more aligned with who I was and why I'm here on the planet. My life went through that dark night of the soul.
But coming through the other side meant I could finally be in a place of relaxation, regulation, and power instead of stress, resentment, and frustration.
What Happens in Places of Power
Since then, I've been taking groups to the pyramids of Egypt, which are absolutely incredible.
When we take ourselves out of our everyday lives for extended periods of time, many of us have already read the books, listened to the podcasts, gone on workshops. But when we actually give ourselves permission to go to a place of power, designed by the ancients to support awakening and transformation, something shifts.
“When we actually give ourselves the permission to go to a place of power… that’s when you really can start to answer that call of your soul and amplify your sacred light and activate that lit up life.”
And when you come home, something is fundamentally anchored and shifted in your body, and you can integrate it into your everyday life.
Disconnection and the Modern Woman
Becca Powers: I think there's so many listeners who are in that place right now. Successful on paper, but going to bed depleted. Wondering if they even spent time with their kids or just looked at them.
And to know this disconnection is normal in today's society, but they don't have to settle for it.
So what should they be thinking right now if they're in that state?
Meghan Gilroy: We're used to relying on how we were told we're supposed to be. Most women were brought up as caretakers, people pleasers, attuning to the outside world, putting ourselves last.
So when you start saying, I matter, I am willing to put myself in the center of my life, that's a fundamental shift.
“You can’t recreate your life using the same tools that you used to create it the first time.”
We are used to pushing, using willpower and smarts. That’s why we’re exhausted.
The shift is into a more divine feminine way, tuning into your soul, inner guidance, and spirit guidance. Following what you feel in your heart or gut, even if it doesn’t make logical sense.
One of the ways I guide people is through shamanic journeying without plant medicine. Almost always, people drop into a place of quiet and coherence where they can finally listen.
And I think our culture actually discourages this.
“The most powerful woman is a relaxed woman, who knows she is sacred and worthy.”
Becca Powers: There's an epidemic of disconnection happening right now.
Meghan Gilroy: Or even your own intuition. And I think that's intentional.
Yeah. I mean that, that the patriarchal system, it's invested in not having us listen to what's true to us. Because if we're attuned to external validation, attuned to what everyone around us wants, attuned to what this is ourselves, we won't.
And that's why when we go into ceremony, when we do sacred practices, when we come into community with other women, when we go on these kind of power journeys and retreats, then you're able to access that wisdom and you're able to realize you're not alone.
And you're able to have a support system of women who say like, we got your back. You're not crazy. And I think that's the biggest travesty of the way our system is set up right now, is that we've all been taught that, you know, those synchronicities or you have a download and or you talk to some spirit guides, dismiss it or you're crazy.
Becca Powers: Exactly. Right.
Meghan Gilroy: Or you don't even understand like, how do I even do that? So many people don't even understand what those signs are and how you access your clairvoyant, clairsentient, they don't even know what it is and they're already doing it. It's just that no one's helped them put the pieces together, or recognize the signs.
And then a lot of my work has to do with self-trust and to start trusting those messages you hear and to hear them and then also act on them. And that really reconfigures your life over time.
Becca Powers: And I think you might be able to help some of the listeners maybe think about catastrophe in their life a little different too. And meaning like that dark night of the soul. I've been through a few seasons of that and I might actually even be going through another one.
What I have found and kind of curious your take on this is like when work severely out of alignment, life will happen.
Meghan Gilroy: Yes.
Becca Powers: And it will feel like we lost our shit. Like we're not holding it together two by four over the head.
Meghan Gilroy: Yeah.
Becca Powers: Like it like we did something wrong. But it's actually, in my opinion, I feel like it's the universe coming to step in and be like, Hey girl, like you were way off. Way off course.
And you might, so what I want the listener I wanna talk about is like, if you're listening to this and you have a lot on your plate, you might have maybe you've lost a job and you're going through a divorce, or you have a combination of chaos, like there's a chaos tornado in your life right now. It could be an invitation.
Meghan Gilroy: Yeah, I'd love to. To break down how I think about that and experience it. Because I've also gone through many of those cyclical, dark nights of the soul. And thank God I've had mentors and women around me that can help hold me through that.
And over time, obviously I know how to hold myself and hold other women through that. And so when you are in a cyclical cycle of creation, which mimics nature, there's the time of spring, and in the shamanic tradition, we would say it's in the East where it's the vision, it's the newness, right? It's the flowers coming up out of the ground.
And then if you move into south and summer, that's the time where you're working. You're saying yes and no. You're creating, you're in full visibility.
And then we move into the west and fall, and that's when you're harvesting and you're healing.
And then north and winter is a time of fallowness. It's the time when everything dies and it goes back into the earth.
And as a culture, we like east and south, we like spring and summer. We like the perpetual growth we like, but we don't so much like when you have to go inward, when things fall away, when you feel like you're dying.
And there has been so many times when my life looks like it's falling apart and I'm literally on the ground, saying I don't understand what's happening.
And there you can't see your way out of that. And I really believe that during those times, it's not that you're meant to because you have to allow that process to happen.
And when you have a community or you have a mentor that's holding the space for it, it certainly makes it easier.
And so many women go through that healing phase and go through that phase of understanding their beliefs, their agreements, their stuck emotions, their nervous system patterns.
And when they start to feel like, Ooh, I'm ready for something like what's next? That's also a whole other phase of creation.
And they don't realize that you need time to vision based on who this new you is and who this new identity is and what dreams does she have, that you actually stepped across a threshold into a whole new way of being.
And from the visioning, you also need support. And then how do you go after you've been activated? How do you go out and create and stay alignment with your soul's calling even when the world around you might be contesting that.
And that allows you to really be in service and bring your soul gifts to your families and community and the world.
And I feel like that is so important right now. Like the world is screaming for women to wake up and go from confusion to clarity and go from burnout to fulfillment. Self-doubt to self-trust from playing small to sacred leadership.
And unfortunately, you know, you don't, it's not like a tree just goes from like a seed to a full grown tree to dropping its leaves back into the ground.
So we have to allow ourselves the time to go through these cycles.
And as excruciating as it is to go through the dark nights, every single time I've walked through that or I've walked one of my clients through that, you come through more aligned, you come through more fulfilled, you come through more authentic.
You come through in a way that I truly believe that when you are in alignment with your soul, it's not that you don't have bumps or challenges, but you are in that basic state of like, I can breathe deeply.
And it's almost like a shortcut, a healthy shortcut. It's like spirit is supporting you as you go because you're doing what you're here to do.
And so instead of putting all this effort into that misalignment and the places where you're burning up energy, because you're frustrated and resentful and exhausted, you're actually being carried by a current and a flow.
And then the people come into your life that are meant to support you and the situations have less drama in it and the opportunities open up.
Clarity, Strength, and Inner Alignment
Becca Powers: I love so much of what you said because I think you really gave a detailed and visceral response to what it's like to go through that.
But to be able to land on the other side of it and get through it, and then to have that clarity, to have like true confidence. It's not the confidence of like a skill, but it's the confidence within yourself.
Like you said, like a self-trust that like I'm me and no matter what happens to outside like I am okay.
And that is one of the gifts that I've gotten through my dark night.
Meghan Gilroy: Yes.
Becca Powers: Coming through the dark night of the soul is like, oh wow.
Like I can say I am this beautiful person who can withstand many things.
And it also opens up gifts and specialness and the contributions that we can make.
For some reason, once you get to the other side, you can almost see it in your hand what you're supposed to do.
Meghan Gilroy: Yes.
And you know my biggest wish for anyone is really that you're able to hold yourself no matter what.
So right now our world is getting very noisy and chaotic, and I think that's gonna be one of the biggest skill sets that is gonna allow us to find our way through.
Our lives are busy and full. So when you can say, no matter what's happening on the outside, I still am in touch with what's true and right for me, and I'm in a place of resource.
And I'm in a place of vibrancy and inspiration.
And of course we have our days and our challenges, but when you have that basic strength and resilience and clarity, then you're able to navigate through.
And you get to reach your hand out to other people and say, I got you. I see you.
You get to be that light that holds that space for everyone else.
And just because you've gone through it once, we often have multiple times of this in our life.
So the goal isn't that you're trying to get your life to look perfect, but you can keep hearing the guidance, and you can keep knowing that no matter what's going on, you're able to meet it and find your way through.
Becca Powers: Yes. I love that. So let's move the conversation into the pyramid. So we've talked a little bit about being on autopilot, what that feels like. We've talked about autopilot erupting into complete dark night of the soul in a chaos tornado.
But let's talk about the soul journey. Like you take people to pyramids, to places of power so that they can come into power, the power within themselves.
Meghan Gilroy: Exactly
Becca Powers: But I would love to hear just kind of like what that journey looks like and what someone who were to take an adventure or a journey like this might be able to expect as far as an outcome, but also that reconnection to their soul.
I mean, I love so much of what you're saying. I'm like, let's go.
Meghan Gilroy: Yeah. Well, I think each journey is different because whether I'm taking someone to Mexico or taking them to Egypt, there's a different intent behind it. But what's feels the same to me is that when you go to a place of power, and there are many places beyond just pyramids that are like that on the planet when you go to a place of power, the ancients who created that embedded intent and energy and codes there. And there's also usually our type spirit guides.
So when I take people to Egypt, for example, we often work with the goddess Isis. And she is the goddess of magic and mothering and healing. And she wraps her wings around you to allow whatever is in that kind of shadowy, I don't wanna look at this. It's painful. It's causing me suffering or angst to be able to hold, like we were just speaking, like hold that to move it through.
And we work with Sekhmet who's the goddess of feminine ignation and anger and rage. And when I went to the pyramids a couple years ago, she's actually in a temple. There's a 3000 year old statue there. And I felt her like, insert a blade into my solar plexus, like this is happening in a vision and it like unlocked all the places inside of me where I wasn't connected to my anger.
And I don't mean anger in a lake. Throw it up on other people. I mean, a healthy anger that's showing me where my boundaries are and showing me like, this is okay for me and this is not okay for me. And that was an enormous couple year process.
And then we often work with Hawthorne who's the goddess of pleasure and play and creativity and your voice.
And so one of the things that I am journeying right now in my life is I've gone through so many, so much healing and dark nights, and I'm like, is my life really designed so it nourishes me? So as much as I give out, that much comes back. And I'm in a place where pleasure is important and joy is important, and peace is important.
And you know it's very eyeopening when you look at your life and you realize like, wow, those things are missing even when you've been on a big spiritual journey.
Joy, Healing, and the Missing Piece
Becca Powers: Yes, each time we go, I've experienced that myself. Not to interrupt you, but that's kind of where I am intentionally. Putting over the next couple years. I mean, I've had pretty profound spiritual awakenings and journeys. I've been on my spiritual journey for over 20 years, and every time I do a certification, I open up so much because you get embodied into the work.
But what I realized is that, you know, part of the spiritual journey is to have joy. Exactly. And pleasure and fulfillment and peace. And I'm like, oh yeah. Like you could be as spiritual as you wanna be or that your certifications have allowed you to be, or yourself has allowed you to be whatever container or words you put on it, but you could still be missing the essence.
Meghan Gilroy: Exactly. Like we're so busy healing that we forget there's a purpose to this.
Becca Powers: Yeah, that's, I mean, it's like, oh, I've been in this container healing, I've done this many hours in Asana and I've done this, this, and like, but still there.
Meghan Gilroy: I find that a lot with spiritual women is that we've done the healings, we've done the certifications, and there's still that missing piece.
And so when I go to Egypt and we're, you know, floating down the Nile and the birds and the reeds and the water, and that there's so many beautiful essential oils and all the spices in the souks, the marketplaces.
It's like there's a balance between doing these deep, deep spirit ceremonies where you're opening those channels to spirit. And of course there's places and times for healing, but there's also this deep recognition of like, I've done lifetimes of healing work, and I also deserve to just sink in and relax and exhale and enjoy.
And I think having that combination that as deep as we go into the spiritual side and as deep as we go into how can we actually integrate this into our everyday life, there's also actually that invitation to have fun, have the connections, have the dancing, the laughter, just enjoying the incredible food.
And that shifts something so that when you come back in your everyday life and you realize like, wow, you know, like I'll catch myself getting ready for something. I'm like gobbling my food up instead of like, right, this is meant to be an experience where it brings me enjoyment.
Or, you know, I actually do take the three minutes to sit in the sun and really connect to that ray of light.
So I think those kind of very simple practices are often missing from our world because we are so oriented to being in our heads and thinking and doing that we forget that quiet time, intuition, nature, supportive community. Those are super important as well.
And our retreats are like these beautiful, you know, it's not that we're like retreating from the world to get away from it. We're retreating so that we can strengthen and we can activate what we need to on our soul path and then come back into our lives in a more empowered way.
Becca Powers: Love that. I mean, I'm like looking at our time and we have like five minutes left, but there's so much in what you said. I feel like I could talk to you for like two hours even about the podcast thing, because even, I mean, yes, to just finish that statement, like to come back to being this. Like, we're so busy doing that. We miss being, and I think that's a really important takeaway for the listeners.
But I also, when you were mentioning that you were working with one of the ascended masters, goddesses that you felt a sword go through your solar plexus representing anger. I unintentionally worked with one. Collie is one that works with me.
I love and fear when she shows up, I'm like, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I know you right. But the first time I saw her, she showed up beautiful. Like so I know she has her goddess side and her warrior side, but she showed up in her goddess side and I was doing a massive like two hour meditation thing with live gongs and all that.
We were working sacral chakra as well, and I saw her come to me and my sacral chakra was outside my body.
She was like, your child, this is supposed to be. And I visually in my vision too, how you saw the sword. It's funny that we had different experiences but saying, you know, chakra with a deity, she pushed it back in me.
And my life was a lot different the moment from that moment on.
But there is a power and I was in an Omega retreat center and away from everything too. So I was able to connect and have that place to do that without the pressure around me.
Meghan Gilroy: So powerful and I think when you really adjust your solar plexus, which is that way that you're moving through the world and whether you have access to that will, but when there's that balance between it's actually connected to your heart and it's connected down into your root chakra, you do move through the world in a whole different way.
And so I often say to people, when I was a business coach, I could tell you like the ROI on doing an investment. And I'm like with a power journey, it's a little harder to say that, but I know for myself, when I went to Egypt last time, we also had an experience where there was divine masculine and divine feminine, and I saw how out of balance I was between the two of those.
And when I came back home and I ended up hiring more support of my business and just reorienting the way I allowed myself to be supported, it created such an enormous abundant growth for myself.
And that's what I love is like you have these experiences that you're like, this doesn't make any sense, right? Like, I'm standing in front of a 3000 year old statue and I have this vision, and yet it rebalances something in you that allows you actually to go back into your life. Make a change in your business, make a change in your marriage, make a change with your children.
Those kind of experiences are what are actually guiding us.
And I believe the more that we attune to being able to hear them and put ourselves in environments that allow them and be in supportive community, that the more quickly our world can change and the more we will be in a place of alignment and abundance and ease and all the good things for all of us.
Becca Powers: I believe that so much too. Well, right now we're coming down to the bottom and what I would love to do is, I am sure there's listeners right now, like how do I go on one of these power journeys.
So would you mind sharing with the listeners how someone could get in contact with you or how they might be able to come along and follow you to one of these?
Meghan Gilroy: Yeah, absolutely. The best way would be to go to my website, which is Meghangilroy.com and it's M-E-G-H-A-N-G-I-L-R-O-Y. I'm sure you'll link to it.
And we are going this November, 2026 to Egypt, and I haven't opened up to the public yet, but it's already half sold out. So if you're interested, you can also email me at [email protected].
Yeah, whether you wanna go on a retreat or I also obviously work with people one-on-one, and I teach things regionally here in Colorado. My biggest switch is just that each woman remembers that we have a sacred light within us.
And when we're glowing, when we're inspired, when we're relaxed, we're able to handle life and our responsibilities and all those expectations with more ease.
And so I just, I'm just excited for more and more women to be listening to our souls and reclaiming that wisdom so that we can not just transform our lives, but we just create that ripple effect through our communities and for the world.
Please come and find me. I absolutely adore the women who come on my retreats, the groups that come together. It's like they become lifelong friends and the experiences we have are just so beyond.
Becca Powers: That's awesome. I got head to toe goosebumps as you were giving that empowerment statement. And you know what's really cool? I normally ask the interviewee at the end, like, can you share an empowering statement? And you just did it naturally.
Well, thank you for sharing all the information as far as how to stay in contact with you.
Are you visible?
Meghan Gilroy: I'm on Instagram, but I'm not super great about it. I find that women respond to my in-person presence. So I mostly have a lot of that kind of word of mouth or how you and I got connected through a very special person.
People tend to find me, I mean, sometimes I've come into people's dreams like it's on some other channel that I can't quite describe. But I am on Instagram, just Meghan Gilroy.
Becca Powers: Alright, good.
Well, thank you so much for being a guest. I knew I was gonna love this interview and I absolutely did. It made my day. Thank you for coming on and sharing all your wisdom with us.
Meghan Gilroy: Likewise, thank you so much for having me and for all the work you're doing.
Becca Powers: Thank you.
