Welcome back to Season 3 of The Clarity Shift podcast 🥳
It feels good to say that — to reopen this space in Aries season, in the spring of 2026, with the energy of beginnings and fire and forward motion. The Clarity Shift has always been the umbrella, the larger container that holds all the threads I explore: the Capacity Conversations, the A Day in the Life series, and whatever else wants to emerge. Those subseries live inside this bigger ecosystem, this wider field of curiosity and inquiry.
And now, as Season 3 opens, something new is growing alongside it — my cacao and ritual business, a project rooted in sovereignty, presence, and being in the now. I’m locally producing two cacao blends, candles, and a growing collection of designs — stickers, bookmarks, ritual tools — all meant to help us ground offline, return to our bodies, and create accessible, personal rituals that anchor us in the moment. It’s a business, yes, but it’s also a path, a passion, a practice. And it’s deeply connected to what we talk about in today’s episode.
Because today, I’m joined by Anna Schmunk — artist, spiritual director, builder, seeker, and someone whose presence feels like a deep exhale.
Anna Schmunk is an artist, spiritual director, dog lover, and human living in Nashville, TN. Anna hosts retreats and works as a spiritual director to help people with the difficult process of change. She writes about art, spirituality, identity, and belief in her newsletter Everything is Connected.
This conversation is the perfect way to open a new season: honest, meandering, reflective, spiritually curious, and rooted in the question of what it means to be human in a world that often asks us not to be.
On Art, Work, and the Long Pause Between Them
Anna shares that she was an art major in college, and then… she stopped. Completely. For years.
Work became the creative outlet.
Work became the place where the energy went.
Work became the thing that filled the space where art used to live.
“I was working with a team to build things. So it did feel like enough — until it wasn’t.”
She ended up in product management almost by accident — a mentor handed her a book and said, “I think you’re a product manager.” And she was good at it. She built software for fifteen years. She climbed the ladder. She hit the milestones.
And then the enoughness stopped being enough.
She took an expressive art class. She left a corporate job. She had space for the first time in a long time. And in that space, something else emerged:
The call toward spiritual direction.
On Spiritual Direction (and Why It Feels Like a Secret)
I didn’t know spiritual direction was a thing — not in the way Anna describes it.
Not therapy.
Not coaching.
Not astrology.
Not problem-solving.
Not fixing.
Not doctrine.
But witnessing.
Noticing.
Savoring.
Holding space for the presence of the divine — however you define that — in someone’s actual lived experience.
“Spiritual directors ethically don’t have an agenda. We’re not here to keep you in a particular belief system. We’re here to help you notice how God is working in your life.”
It’s centuries old.
Rooted in monastic traditions.
Monks and nuns sitting with people in the 1300s and 1400s, helping them notice the movement of the divine.
Why don’t more people talk about this?
Why isn’t this offered as a normal part of being human?
Why is this not the default spiritual support instead of fear-based doctrine or productivity-based self-help?
I’ve done therapy.
I’ve done coaching.
I’ve done astrology.
I’ve done all the modalities.
But none of them offered what Anna describes:
A container for presence.
A container for being witnessed.
A container for noticing without needing to fix.
And that feels like medicine.
On Deconstructing Faith and Rebuilding Something Truer
Both Anna and I grew up in religious environments that were rigid, fear-based, and rule-oriented.
For Anna:
“We had very clear doctrinal statements. If you believe this, that’s good. If you don’t, you’re wrong.”
For me:
Southern Baptist, Cuban church, fear of God, nightmares, obedience, punishment, no mystery, no softness.
And yet — both of us found our way back to spirituality through curiosity, not doctrine.
Through mystery, not certainty.
Through love, not fear.
Anna says:
“I do believe God is love. And that our best interests are cared for. And that who you are matters.”
Everything else?
Open for questioning.
Open for unlearning.
Open for reimagining.
And that openness — that willingness to sit in the unknown — is what spiritual direction makes space for.
On Being Human in a World That Doesn’t Want You to Be
Anna said:
“So many of our work environments are openly hostile to humanity.”
And she’s right.
We put on emotional armor to go to work.
We suppress our grief, our intuition, our exhaustion.
We perform productivity.
We perform stability.
We perform being fine.
And then we come home depleted.
We try to fill the void with work, fitness, consumption, online noise, perfectionism, future-tripping, preemptive stress, or pre-grieving.
But the void is spiritual.
The void is presence.
The void is mystery.
The void is the lack of being witnessed — by ourselves, by others, by something greater.
And the antidote?
Not more doing.
But being.
“In the present moment is the only moment God is accessible.”
That line from Anna stayed with me.
Because it’s true.
You can’t access God in the future — that’s anxiety.
You can’t access God in the past — that’s rumination.
You can only access God — or presence, or spirit — now.
Which is exactly what my cacao and ritual work is trying to support:
A return to the now.
A return to the body.
A return to presence.
On Capitalism, Money, and Opting Out (As Much As Possible)
We also went deep into capitalism — how to navigate making money while trying not to be consumed by the system.
Anna is learning about capitalism’s origins, its violence, its extraction, and its dehumanization. And she’s trying to figure out how to:
honor her time
honor her values
offer spiritual direction
offer sliding scales
redistribute income
support mutual aid
support small businesses
avoid Amazon and Target
spend less overall
and still… live
It’s messy.
It’s imperfect.
It’s human.
And it’s the work so many of us are doing right now — trying to create something meaningful without feeding the machine that drains meaning from everything.
On Communication, Neurodivergence, and Letting People In
One of my favorite parts of the conversation was when Anna talked about being perceived as intimidating — especially by men — because she’s an internal processor.
She thinks before she speaks.
She has a resting “thinking face.”
She’s direct.
She’s introverted.
She’s likely on the spectrum.
She has ADHD.
And she’s learning to let people peek inside — when she chooses to.
Communication is its own spiritual practice.
Its own noticing.
Its own form of presence.
And it’s something we’re all learning in real time.
On the Question That Changed Everything
Anna shared that a spiritual director once asked her:
“How do you want to be in this situation?”
Not:
How do you fix it?
How do you optimize?
How do you win?
How do you climb?
But:
How do you be?
How do you inhabit your humanity?
How do you embody your values?
How do you show up in alignment with who you are becoming?
This question has shaped her life.
It’s shaping mine now too.
Where to Find Anna
If you want to learn more about her art, her spiritual direction work, her retreats, her workshops, or just follow her journey:
Website: https://www.annaschmunk.com
Newsletter: Anna Schmunk
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@annajoyschmunk
Spiritual Directors International: if you want to find a director near you
Closing Reflections + What’s Coming in Season 3
This conversation felt like a session in itself — a witnessing, a noticing, a savoring.
It reminded me that:
We are allowed to be messy
We are allowed to question
We are allowed to slow down
We are allowed to be human
We are allowed to seek the divine outside of doctrine
We are allowed to create without monetizing
We are allowed to rest
We are allowed to be present
We are allowed to be witnessed
And as Season 3 unfolds, I’ll be sharing more about my cacao blends, my ritual tools, my sovereignty work, and the path that’s emerging in real time.
Welcome to Season 3.
Welcome to spring.
Welcome to the now.
Stay tuned for the first episodes exploring this new business, this new chapter, and this new way of being.
