Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Guerrero.
Amy, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was fascinated with relationships since I was born. My family used to call me Lucy from the Peanuts because I wanted to observe and listen to stories and give people suggestions on what I witnessed. This curiosity led me to study relationships at UT Austin where I began my career as a property manager at 20 years old.
This was a behind the scenes into people’s homes view of what happened behind closed doors. How people related, what really happened in the family systems and in the emotional lives of others. Looking back, I can see that I was observing to normalize how I felt and looking for answers of how I can choose differently to heal. When I started practicing yoga in 1999, I knew the answers to my healing process lived in my body. I studied everything I could get my hands on and settled into a life long personal development process. In that time, I continued to work with people in relationships through real estate, business and personal coaching, yoga teaching, nutrition coaching and more.
In 2013, I decided that I would heal all of my emotional trauma before I turned 40. I had a list of things that I felt if I accomplished I would be FREE and move into my 40’s with more freedom than I had ever felt, I would be healed. The biggest “task” on the list was to amend my relationship with my birth mom. To make a really long story short, I carried around a story and the felt sense that since she rejected me, everyone would reject me and I was unloveable at my core because I was “abandon”. I had this feeling that if I could understand her choices and amend our relationship every other relationship in my life would heal and I could be “whole and complete”.
Shortly after finding her on people finders, meeting her and starting to work on a new relationship with her, I became physically dependent on my favorite, most trusted ally and coping mechanism alcohol. The day I woke up shaking and needing to have another drink was the beginning of my choice to be here now as the woman I am in this moment and the owner of Thrive in Recovery.
It was at my first treatment center in Northern Californias wine country in 2014 that I started to write out a business plan to bring Thrive in Recovery to the world. I knew immediately the traditional treatment model was not going to work for me to truly heal and thrive at the deep level I craved and desired. I knew it was going to take a highly integrative approach that started with my body releasing the physical and emotional trauma I created and the intergenerational trauma I was carrying around as some kind of badge of honor.
And so for two years, I struggled and suffered on a road less traveled without a real guide and no map other than what I knew and felt in my body was right for me. I had guides, mentors, therapists, sponsors, friends, family but no one with the same lived experiences of me that was choosing a conscious sober lifestyle and wanted to heal from the root cause (the emotional trauma). The path for me to be here now included 15 months of living sober until the emotional pain and confusion would get so bad that I would attempt to drink myself to never wake up. I wanted to disappear, so my pain would disappear too. The details include over five treatment centers, detoxes, over 20 trips to the emergency room, three psychiatric holds, broken teeth, sexual assault, a whole lot of yucky gross detoxes and a shit ton of emotional and physical pain to myself and everyone around me. Whew!
In June of 2016, from a small fishing town in Texas where I tried to disappear for the last time, I decided it was time for me to advocate for my healing and figure this out for me so I could actually start sharing it with others. When I arrived at the last treatment center I lived in, I blew over a .04 and told the psychiatrist with no uncertainty that I was going to design a more integrative path to healing and guide people through the process.
I brought all the materials I designed from 2014 on and I got to work. In September of 2016, I began sharing my practices with people in my communities and people began investing in themselves to work with me 1:1.
In December of 2017, I was ready to take my 1:1 practice to a bigger platform and open doors (well, the zoom room) to support people all over the world.
The 6+ years of getting here and my commitment to continuing education support me to hold the space I do for the people that I serve. My lived experiences, my commitment to live moment to moment as a conscious sober woman, and my choice to consistently practice what I teach support my clients to deeply trust that they can feel safe to share, release, and repair at a deep level.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Ha! It has been far from a smooth road. My focus on relationships continued with the motivation of heartache in December 2017 and the worst flu of my lifetime that stayed in my lungs protecting my heart until April 2018. So, from a sweaty puddle of tears and a fever, I invested my entire retirement account and every cent I had into myself and my business. I went all-in with continuing education, mentors and invested over 100k in the first year. It was far from smooth, I had a primal cue to earn and a heart to serve which can be conflicting for an entrepreneur.
Everything you can imagine can go wrong has and I learned deeply what it feels like to choose to be supported. The first few months, my 12-step community disagreed with me, so I chose to find a new tribe of people that would cheer me on and support me through the emotional trauma that comes up from choosing to play big in the world.
There were many sleepless nights, tears, fear of finances and so much more that have happened to arrive here right now. And I would not trade any of the experiences for again, it supports me to support others start their businesses and thrive in their relationships.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Thrive in Recovery – what should we know?
Thrive in Recovery is trauma-informed recovery life coaching. I support people in recovery (from all things) to have the love they want and thrive in all of their relationships. I believe how you relate to one thing is how you relate to everything. When you choose to heal at deep levels you can relate to yourself with more confidence, courage and vulnerability and then relate to the world with that feeling tone.
I am known in the recovery spaces as a Relationship expert, willing to talk about the hard, weird things that are underneath the escaping behaviors us humans use to cope with our pain. You will hear me talking about boundaries, self-love, sex, intimacy, dating, money, food and movement and how when you are relating to these things from a place of unhealed trauma you are often just getting by and surviving and far from thriving.
I am so proud of the people I serve to watch my clients go on to thrive, to strengthen their connection with themselves so they get the love they want in all areas of their life is SO-fulfilling. I get to witness people get married, fall in love all over again, bond with their children on a deep level, amend years of pain with their parents, siblings and family. I witness my clients quit their soul-sucking jobs, I support them to start thriving businesses and receive abundance in their lives. Just this month alone, four people I support are moving into new homes and feeling more confident and loved than they ever have in their lives.
What sets me apart from others is what my clients say is my “one stop shop” abilities. I can hold the space, guide and support you to deep places of trauma healing and creating a plan of action on a google doc in the same session. We take action together to heal and create the lived experiences, new neural pathways and what I call new “library” of experiences to build from. It is a process of choosing differently with aligned support, in a safe container, with a tribe and guide that have been there before cheering you on to keep going. The approach I take is totally integrative, I share with my clients that we will go into all the nooks, crannies and closets that feel aligned at the time to give you the freedom and love you desire.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Soft Resilience. WTF is that? I am still figuring it out too.
It’s like I teach, I am resilient as fuck and I am soft, feminine, vulnerable, heart-centered empathic and all the things.
It takes this flow of the energies of my utilitarian, entrepreneur nature to create structures, systems to earn and continue to reinvest and be a business owner.
And it takes the energies of my lived experiences, education, emotional intelligence, heart to be and show up as the practitioner that I be.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.amyguerrero.com
- Phone: 415.343.2990
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @thriveinrecoverywithamy
- Facebook: @thriveinrecoverywithamy
- Twitter: @recoverywithamy
- Other: linkedin.com/in/thirveinrecovery
Image Credit:
Debora Giannone, Peter Valentino
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