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Unveiling the Mysterial Way: Discovering Resilience with Suzanne Anderson · Create The Best Me

• 0:00
  Carmen Hecox: Welcome to Create the Best Me.
• 0:02
  Carmen Hecox: I am Carmen Hecox, a personal development coach, and I am so excited to be connecting with you today.
• 0:09
  Carmen Hecox: Whether you're listening to the podcast or joining us on YouTube, my goal is to help women navigate through midlife challenges with compassion, inspiration, and empowering conversations.
• 0:21
  Carmen Hecox: Each week we'll dive into thought-provoking topics, designed to build self-confidence, overcome invisible women's syndrome, and find the courage to create the best version of yourself.
• 0:34
  Carmen Hecox: I'll also be joined by expert guest who will share their wisdom and insights, so make yourself comfortable and let's embark on this journey together.
• 0:44
  Carmen Hecox: Well hello there, fearless midlife trailblazers! Welcome to Create the Best Me.
• 0:48
  Carmen Hecox: If you are new here, I'm so glad you made it here.
• 0:51
  Carmen Hecox: If you're a returning listener, welcome back to the one and only place where we encourage and empower women in midlife to pursue their dreams and live life to the fullest.
• 1:03
  Carmen Hecox: I am Carmen Hecox, your host and personal development coach.
• 1:07
  Carmen Hecox: Today's guest is Suzanne Anderson, the founder of The Mysterial Woman, a psychologist, author, coach, leadership consultant, and transformational teacher.
• 1:19
  Carmen Hecox: Her pioneering work in guiding women to awaken their full, Feminine and Masculine strengths combined with insights and practices from ancient wisdom, depth psychology, and modern neuroscience.
• 1:32
  Carmen Hecox: She has dedicated the past thirty years to decoding and embodied, integral, and accelerated archetypal pathways to unlock the next level of our innate potential.
• 1:44
  Carmen Hecox: Combining her graduate studies in women's developmental psychology together with her decades as a leadership consultant, Suzanne wisely guides women to awaken to the next level of consciousness and leadership capacity, making the change in themselves as they want to shape the world.
• 2:04
  Carmen Hecox: She facilitates global online program workshops and retreats and is the author of"You Make Your Path by Walking." Let's dig into the conversation now.
• 2:17
  Carmen Hecox: Suzanne Anderson, welcome to Create The Best Me.
• 2:21
  Carmen Hecox: I am so happy to have you on the show.
• 2:25
  Suzanne Anderson: Thank you, Carmen.
• 2:26
  Suzanne Anderson: Great to be here.
• 2:27
  Carmen Hecox: Great.
• 2:28
  Carmen Hecox: So, for the people that do not know you, can you please, tell the viewers who you are?
• 2:34
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, let's see, what's the summary?
• 2:38
  Suzanne Anderson: I think I'll just say I am a, a woman making my way through, this beautiful world, having gone through a very, very difficult, and traumatic loss.
• 2:54
  Suzanne Anderson: And that is the substance of the, the book that we'll talk about today.
• 2:59
  Suzanne Anderson: But my background that in some ways prepared me for the way that I was able to go through this very difficult, loss, is that I work with women and leadership, and I'm a psychologist and a coach and what I would say, a transformational teacher.
• 3:18
  Suzanne Anderson: Did years of research in our university women's leadership programs that trying to basically figure out which we did, I think.
• 3:27
  Suzanne Anderson: What's a pathway for women that can really let them, you know, in this, these particular times that we're in the midst of right now, what I would call dynamic evolutionary times really show up in the world.
• 3:43
  Suzanne Anderson: Not just professionally, but also personally with more of their true nature, more of their authentic presence.
• 3:51
  Suzanne Anderson: And that was my first book, the Way of the Mysterial Woman Upgrading How You Live, love and lead.
• 3:57
  Suzanne Anderson: And, uh, yeah so, I think we're going to probably the conversation today.
• 4:02
  Suzanne Anderson: Imagine Carmen we're kind of going to explore since your audience is women and we're talking about difficult things that can happen and how you go through them.
• 4:11
  Suzanne Anderson: We'll probably spam this whole territory.
• 4:14
  Carmen Hecox: Perfect.
• 4:14
  Carmen Hecox: And I must say, first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to read your book that is coming out.
• 4:21
  Carmen Hecox: You make your path by Walking.
• 4:23
  Carmen Hecox: I think that this book is, well first of all, your writing is amazing.
• 4:28
  Carmen Hecox: I love your writing.
• 4:30
  Carmen Hecox: It was a, it was as if though you held my hand and took me through every single scene of what was going on.
• 4:38
  Carmen Hecox: I could see it.
• 4:39
  Carmen Hecox: I could smell it.
• 4:40
  Carmen Hecox: I, it was almost like, almost like David Frost.
• 4:45
  Suzanne Anderson: Oh wow.
• 4:46
  Carmen Hecox: Impressive writing.
• 4:47
  Carmen Hecox: I recommend every woman read this book.
• 4:52
  Carmen Hecox: And the reason I say that is because your book talked about common issues that women of many ages go through, whether it's infertility, dissolution of a marriage, loss of a husband, best friend, soulmate, financial loss, loss of a pet who was in your life for over 14 years, and at the end you come, or at least this is how I read the book.
• 5:19
  Carmen Hecox: Is you displayed a woman of strength, courage, resilience, and no matter how everything almost seemed as though everything was falling in front of you and work sort of working against you.
• 5:36
  Carmen Hecox: You were able to strap on those boots and just keep going.
• 5:42
  Carmen Hecox: There was just so much strength and I feel like you personally through this book became a stronger, wiser, and an inspirational woman at the end.
• 5:55
  Suzanne Anderson: Hmm.
• 5:57
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, yeah.
• 5:58
  Suzanne Anderson: Well thank you Carmen, for saying that.
• 5:59
  Suzanne Anderson: And I, I would say, Um, this is the title of the book, You Make Your Path by Walking, which actually comes from a poem that I loved by Antonio Machado.
• 6:11
  Suzanne Anderson: It was sort of a mantra I would say to myself, all the time because I didn't actually know how I would get through everything that came apart.
• 6:23
  Suzanne Anderson: In that tumultuous moment that I'm sure we'll talk about.
• 6:28
  Suzanne Anderson: I didn't have a plan.
• 6:29
  Suzanne Anderson: What I had was because of the work I was already doing and the work I, I could say I've done in my life of understanding, I understood trauma.
• 6:41
  Suzanne Anderson: That's the work I do developmental trauma, working with women to help them basically heal those earlier wounded parts of ourselves that we put into the shadows when we were younger, bring them back again.
• 6:55
  Suzanne Anderson: And so, I knew something about trauma at some level, but, and therefore equipped in some ways to go through something like this.
• 7:04
  Suzanne Anderson: But it was the most difficult thing for sure I've ever been through.
• 7:09
  Suzanne Anderson: And while my strength up to the moment, of this event helped me.
• 7:16
  Suzanne Anderson: You are absolutely right that as I made my path by walking, I would say I really, I cultivated a whole other level of resilience and capacity and that is what I hope my book really, that's basically why I made the effort to get this into a book that could go out.
• 7:34
  Suzanne Anderson: That difficult things do happen to us all in our lives, and it's how we walk through those events that not only determines where we go, but whether we change in that process, whether we become more whole.
• 7:54
  Suzanne Anderson: We become more ourselves, we become more of our, of our essence, we could say.
• 8:03
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 8:04
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah.
• 8:06
  Carmen Hecox: I know that you've already have an Award-winning book.
• 8:09
  Carmen Hecox: What inspired you to write this book?
• 8:12
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 8:13
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, I didn't initially think I would write this book.
• 8:18
  Suzanne Anderson: I really was, as I was saying, I think really putting one foot in front of the next really, going through this process in the most present way that I could.
• 8:31
  Suzanne Anderson: And the very first thing I had to do the first book, The Way of The Mysterial Woman, was just a manuscript when, at the end of 2012, and we were, my co-author and I, Dr.
• 8:43
  Suzanne Anderson: Susan Cannon, we were getting ready to take this book out and get it published.
• 8:48
  Suzanne Anderson: And we, as I mentioned, discovered some things and we knew we needed to share this.
• 8:52
  Suzanne Anderson: There are a lot of women that needed to understand why are we feeling like, how did we get where we are?
• 8:59
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, we're successful in our business.
• 9:01
  Suzanne Anderson: We've got families, we've made it sort of, let's say in the outer world and yet this interdiscipline is happening.
• 9:06
  Suzanne Anderson: What is going on?
• 9:09
  Suzanne Anderson: And we would say, and I would say there's, this is an evolutionary.
• 9:14
  Suzanne Anderson: It's not just me as an isolated woman feeling this, there's something going on like a whole paradigm for women about wholeness that's in the process of needing an upgrade.
• 9:25
  Suzanne Anderson: And we're at the end of that.
• 9:26
  Suzanne Anderson: And when you can see that, you know, okay, this isn't me.
• 9:29
  Suzanne Anderson: I haven't made a, I haven't failed.
• 9:31
  Suzanne Anderson: There's actually something, this is an invitation to grow.
• 9:33
  Suzanne Anderson: So I was there, I was like, in this exciting, I'm gonna take this new manuscript out through the world.
• 9:39
  Suzanne Anderson: And then in September, that was September into the end of December, ready to go.
• 9:45
  Suzanne Anderson: And then on January the third, 2013, my husband took his life.
• 9:52
  Suzanne Anderson: So, it's important probably to just put that out there and get that critical event on the table here in the conversation with us, because basically the momentum was up and out.
• 10:03
  Suzanne Anderson: I was gonna go flying, take this book out in the world, and life said not so fast.
• 10:08
  Suzanne Anderson: You're going to do some living of all of these concepts first deeply.
• 10:13
  Suzanne Anderson: So, that is what I needed to do as we'll talk about, and that took a year and a half probably before I could get back to that first book and actually complete it.
• 10:27
  Suzanne Anderson: Get a publisher.
• 10:28
  Suzanne Anderson: Get it printed.
• 10:29
  Suzanne Anderson: That came up in 2016.
• 10:31
  Suzanne Anderson: It wasn't until a few years later that I decided to even write.
• 10:36
  Suzanne Anderson: I'd done a lot of journaling.
• 10:37
  Suzanne Anderson: It was always a practice.
• 10:38
  Suzanne Anderson: I did, and I did journaling from the moment that David died.
• 10:42
  Suzanne Anderson: So, I had those sort of notes but they were random notes just for me.
• 10:46
  Suzanne Anderson: And then I got to the place where I realized I actually need to write my story now.
• 10:52
  Suzanne Anderson: I need to write it for me.
• 10:54
  Suzanne Anderson: I was not writing it for you, the audience here today.
• 10:58
  Suzanne Anderson: I needed to write myself back together, walk myself back over the incredibly traumatic territory that I had traversed, and then see how, where, who I was now.
• 11:07
  Suzanne Anderson: That was my own integration that I needed to do.
• 11:11
  Suzanne Anderson: And after that I showed what I'd written to my editor from the first book and she said, you've got to make this into a book for others.
• 11:22
  Suzanne Anderson: This is gonna be really helpful for other people.
• 11:25
  Suzanne Anderson: And, and sort of the book.
• 11:26
  Suzanne Anderson: And then I thought, okay, there was a book that I couldn't find when David died.
• 11:31
  Suzanne Anderson: I looked for different books.
• 11:34
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm not saying there were lots of great books out there on how to walk through, difficult loss, but none of them really spoke to me.
• 11:44
  Suzanne Anderson: So that is, that is why, and here we are today.
• 11:49
  Suzanne Anderson: It comes out in June.
• 11:50
  Suzanne Anderson: And, um, you know, I'm really, I'm sort of in the next phase of this process.
• 11:57
  Suzanne Anderson: That's why I suppose I started the introduction to myself saying, I'm a woman walking through this phase of my life.
• 12:04
  Suzanne Anderson: Because I still feel like this is the, there's something about this threshold that I'll be crossing here shortly, where the book comes out that will mark as that sort of full cycle.
• 12:14
  Carmen Hecox: So, tell me something.
• 12:15
  Carmen Hecox: You had already written The Mysterial Woman and you had done all this research and worked with women, and you were ready to put together a program, introduce it to women, as a program and as a book, do you feel that what you went through as a result of losing, David taught you a little bit more than what you had already knew and learned and did all the research before?
• 12:53
  Suzanne Anderson: That's a great question.
• 12:54
  Suzanne Anderson: I think what happened was I suppose I, I always understood that the research basically led to a pathway for women, these very specific feminine and masculine archetypal activations that happen as a woman, and that's what the first book is about, that we were leading women through how do you really cultivate all of yourself?
• 13:19
  Suzanne Anderson: And I knew, I watched the incredible changes in, in people.
• 13:23
  Suzanne Anderson: So I knew it was making a difference and was making a difference in my own life.
• 13:27
  Suzanne Anderson: But what I didn't know was, would it hold up?
• 13:33
  Suzanne Anderson: Would this, what I call a kind of a new inner operating system hold up in the most difficult situation possible because let's just share here and you'll read more about this in the book when you get it, but, I didn't just lose my husband, but of course, when you lose your beloved partner, you lose also the, the future you had together.
• 13:56
  Suzanne Anderson: So, you lose everything that you might have done and that whole pathway.
• 14:02
  Suzanne Anderson: But I also lost my home.
• 14:05
  Suzanne Anderson: I also left the island I lived on.
• 14:07
  Suzanne Anderson: You mentioned some of these things before I, I closed my business down.
• 14:12
  Suzanne Anderson: It was like everything in my outer world was gone within six months.
• 14:18
  Suzanne Anderson: All the ways my identity had been wired together.
• 14:21
  Suzanne Anderson: And I will say, that's an enormous shattering at every single level.
• 14:26
  Suzanne Anderson: Sometimes you go through one element of those, but not all of those things.
• 14:30
  Suzanne Anderson: And what I can now say without, hesitation at all is that this inner operating system does hold up in every circumstance.
• 14:40
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, I am a living experience of that or a witness, basically evidence, of that.
• 14:47
  Suzanne Anderson: And so I would say I deepened my understanding of everything I already understood, lived it cellularly and I, I can say that I am more, there's more of me available to myself and to the world and to the work that I do in the world than there was before now.
• 15:09
  Suzanne Anderson: I would never have said that I didn't have all of me involved.
• 15:13
  Suzanne Anderson: Right, but something that identity shattered for sure at every level.
• 15:21
  Suzanne Anderson: And the Phoenix I could say of myself that has risen over these hard-earned, um, years has, yeah, I'm, I would say there's more, I'm more available.
• 15:38
  Suzanne Anderson: To myself, to life, to being a loving presence in the world.
• 15:46
  Suzanne Anderson: And in the work that I do, I think that makes a difference.
• 15:49
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 15:50
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, when I was reading your book, it was almost like, you know how they say peeling back an onion to get to the core?
• 15:58
  Carmen Hecox: And I thought, oh my goodness, Suzanne is a prime example of peeling back all those layers, all those layers of who you thought you were to becoming the core of who you really are and what you really know.
• 16:18
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 16:19
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 16:19
  Suzanne Anderson: And I would imagine for your listeners that you know, and because your audience is midlife women, you are going to be going through losses.
• 16:30
  Suzanne Anderson: That's just life.
• 16:31
  Suzanne Anderson: It's not wrong.
• 16:33
  Suzanne Anderson: There will be, or disruptions, let's say to the, to the way I expected my life to go.
• 16:39
  Suzanne Anderson: Things will happen and the opportunity as I see it, is to use those times, not as the thing we somehow have to get through to get back to some, to somewhere we were before.
• 16:55
  Suzanne Anderson: But actually, to use the disruption as a way to grow because we know, and one of the sort of mottos of in my programs is welcome change, welcome discomfort.
• 17:08
  Suzanne Anderson: Because actually the discomfort is the direction of the awakening.
• 17:14
  Suzanne Anderson: And it isn't to go back to some, sometimes, you know, and I would say in my first book, really, we go into this more, there is this experience for a lot of women of like, I want my freedom again.
• 17:24
  Suzanne Anderson: I want my aliveness; I want my creativity.
• 17:26
  Suzanne Anderson: And sometimes that means I wanna look backwards.
• 17:29
  Suzanne Anderson: I wanna go back to someone I was before, cuz that's the only thing I've seen.
• 17:33
  Suzanne Anderson: Or it means I gotta burn down the barn, you know, leave my marriage, leave my job, leave my community, whatever.
• 17:41
  Suzanne Anderson: And I would say it's actually that's like the call of your future self.
• 17:47
  Suzanne Anderson: Someone who has that freedom.
• 17:49
  Suzanne Anderson: And you can find that freedom in the disruptive circumstances, like let them be the opportunity that because it's shaking things up, you can see patterns you haven't seen before.
• 18:02
  Suzanne Anderson: You can see ways of being that you don't.
• 18:05
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, ways, maybe you put parts of yourself into the, into the closet and you want those parts back again.
• 18:12
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, that wasn't wrong.
• 18:13
  Suzanne Anderson: I actually call that, or it is called the adaptive child.
• 18:16
  Suzanne Anderson: Like we learned to put parts of ourselves in shadow for good reason to get love, safety and belonging.
• 18:23
  Suzanne Anderson: And that wasn't a mistake.
• 18:24
  Suzanne Anderson: But right now it's like that is, you need that part of yourself.
• 18:28
  Suzanne Anderson: You want that part of yourself back.
• 18:30
  Suzanne Anderson: And so, I would say this is the opportunity through disruption, which could look like, loss of trauma or as I said, other circumstances in your life.
• 18:39
  Suzanne Anderson: Really use the time to, to really see who you are.
• 18:49
  Suzanne Anderson: Who you want to become, and then take the steps one at a time.
• 18:54
  Suzanne Anderson: You make your path by walking to go in that new direction.
• 18:59
  Suzanne Anderson: Because my experience would say, you can actually end up somewhere you couldn't even have imagined when everything fell apart, right?
• 19:10
  Suzanne Anderson: Because you cannot see that future self.
• 19:14
  Suzanne Anderson: You don't have the eyes to see it actually.
• 19:16
  Suzanne Anderson: You have a limited consciousness.
• 19:19
  Suzanne Anderson: The work I do is about awakening consciousness.
• 19:21
  Suzanne Anderson: Consciousness meaning the way you see the world.
• 19:24
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, so you wanna awaken more consciousness, see yourself in ways you haven't before, and you, you know, may very well surprise yourself.
• 19:33
  Carmen Hecox: Exactly, cuz I know I talk a lot about personal growth, about challenging yourself To develop more personal growth, to be somebody who you didn't imagine.
• 19:43
  Carmen Hecox: And your book really talks about, it was almost you forced yourself, or you did not force yourself the circumstance that stood before you forced you to grow in a whole different way that you never imagined.
• 20:01
  Suzanne Anderson: Mm-hmm.
• 20:02
  Suzanne Anderson: Right.
• 20:02
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, you could say David chose to take his life, and I go into all of the factors that were a part of that in the book.
• 20:12
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, and because he chose that path, then there was a path I was, I was on.
• 20:18
  Suzanne Anderson: And sometimes it's like that, right where we did not choose the event that happens.
• 20:25
  Suzanne Anderson: Somebody divorces us, a child, you know, leaves, where we have a health crisis.
• 20:33
  Suzanne Anderson: I mean, sometimes these are situations that come to us and when they do, and this was key for me from the very beginning.
• 20:45
  Suzanne Anderson: The opportunity is to accept that this is the path I am on now.
• 20:50
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, everything in you of course doesn't wanna be on this path.
• 20:53
  Suzanne Anderson: Everything in me initially didn't wanna be on this path, didn't believe I was on this path.
• 20:57
  Suzanne Anderson: That's where denial comes in as a useful part of, of any kind of loss situation.
• 21:03
  Suzanne Anderson: But you don't wanna stay in denial too long.
• 21:06
  Suzanne Anderson: You want to be able to accept that this is the path and that I'm on.
• 21:11
  Suzanne Anderson: And now, how am I going to move through it?
• 21:16
  Carmen Hecox: Exactly, and you know what I really enjoyed about your book is that, like you mentioned; we're all going to face difficult circumstances in our life.
• 21:24
  Carmen Hecox: We're going to lose a loved one.
• 21:26
  Carmen Hecox: We may lose our job.
• 21:28
  Carmen Hecox: We may lose our money.
• 21:30
  Carmen Hecox: But your book you didn't give yourself time to sit in that loss.
• 21:39
  Carmen Hecox: You used what you practiced, what you know, and as difficult as it was, you still pushed forward.
• 21:49
  Suzanne Anderson: Right.
• 21:49
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, what I would say, and this is the concept of you make your path by walking again.
• 21:53
  Suzanne Anderson: It is movement is really important.
• 21:57
  Suzanne Anderson: The movement that we move.
• 22:00
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, the pushing forward, I went, I might say it more like moving forward because sometimes even the movement means you have to be still.
• 22:12
  Suzanne Anderson: Like the movement is, I have to right now just sit and sob, like that's what I have to do.
• 22:18
  Suzanne Anderson: So it was very important for me, and I know this through the work I do to be with the emotions that were present and to be with them honestly.
• 22:27
  Suzanne Anderson: And, and when we are able to do that to be with our emotions, the waves actually come and go.
• 22:35
  Suzanne Anderson: They don't, they don't, you know, the fear is that wave is gonna take me out.
• 22:39
  Suzanne Anderson: It's gonna be too big.
• 22:40
  Suzanne Anderson: And sometimes a wave, say grief would start to move for me, and it would be large and then I would call a friend.
• 22:49
  Suzanne Anderson: I knew I needed that limbic support to be able to hold the intensity of the wave, but it was very, very important that I was able to be with the feelings.
• 23:01
  Suzanne Anderson: So sometimes people, I think just push through, basically overriding the emotional body.
• 23:11
  Suzanne Anderson: And I would say that's a dangerous thing to do because the trauma, trail, so to speak, is in the body, right?
• 23:20
  Suzanne Anderson: You, it isn't.
• 23:21
  Suzanne Anderson: You can even say that trauma is what happens to you externally.
• 23:26
  Suzanne Anderson: It's actually more what happens to you internally.
• 23:29
  Suzanne Anderson: Some people, the same event could happen, and one person it's traumatic and another person, it's not traumatic.
• 23:34
  Suzanne Anderson: So you know, where your nervous system basically is overwhelmed by what happened.
• 23:40
  Suzanne Anderson: And so the capacity to be with the emotions in the body is super, super important.
• 23:47
  Suzanne Anderson: For example, for me, the um, the night that I discovered him and his, his body, I was able to run to find his body.
• 24:02
  Suzanne Anderson: I was actually able to run.
• 24:04
  Suzanne Anderson: Now, I knew this from the trauma work I do, but I was not thinking this, this was just something I knew that in my body later.
• 24:13
  Suzanne Anderson: I was really glad that I was able to move that energy through the running.
• 24:18
  Suzanne Anderson: Now, some people in certain circumstances of, of trauma aren't able to do that.
• 24:23
  Suzanne Anderson: They literally aren't able to.
• 24:24
  Suzanne Anderson: They're, they're stuck.
• 24:26
  Suzanne Anderson: But I know that was very helpful for me in that initial moment.
• 24:30
  Suzanne Anderson: But everything else that I could do later to make sure the energy moved, uh, meant I exercised every day.
• 24:39
  Suzanne Anderson: I, you know, there were a lot of things I did.
• 24:41
  Suzanne Anderson: I would, I went a wave of emotion would, would arise if I could I let myself be with that feeling, let it rise and fall.
• 24:49
  Suzanne Anderson: Actually, in the back of this, of the new book, I do have a practice that women can use to do that.
• 24:56
  Suzanne Anderson: And in my first book I also give those practices
• 24:59
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah.
• 25:00
  Carmen Hecox: And I remember you talked about riding the wave where you felt you were, I can't remember where exactly you were at, but you were somewhere and it hit you.
• 25:09
  Carmen Hecox: I think you were going to talk to a group of women.
• 25:12
  Carmen Hecox: You were going to, do a presentation and you felt that wave hit you and you allowed yourself to, process it.
• 25:21
  Carmen Hecox: But then you did phone a friend, you phone a friend to help you.
• 25:26
  Suzanne Anderson: That was actually the very early stage of um, but maybe eight months, nine months after David had died and I'd moved and I'd left the island I lived on and I lived in Seattle and I was on my own and I thought, I'll go to a, I'll get out now I'm ready to get out and go to a mall.
• 25:47
  Suzanne Anderson: And I went to this outdoor university village here in Seattle.
• 25:51
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 25:52
  Suzanne Anderson: And I saw, it was just a simple thing.
• 25:55
  Suzanne Anderson: I saw a couple standing against a store and he reached out for her hand in a particular way that reminded me of David.
• 26:05
  Suzanne Anderson: And all of a sudden this wave, this huge wave came over me completely uninvited and unexpected.
• 26:14
  Suzanne Anderson: And, as grief does happen in that way, and I, I took my own self over to a bench and I called a friend and she was great.
• 26:22
  Suzanne Anderson: And I had this trauma tribe of, women that I could call.
• 26:25
  Suzanne Anderson: They knew that I might need them at any time when the waves would be bigger than I could handle.
• 26:29
  Suzanne Anderson: And she was, she just said, look, you're doing great.
• 26:32
  Suzanne Anderson: So good that you tried this.
• 26:34
  Suzanne Anderson: You went out, you're starting to stretch, but you just got a little bit too far today.
• 26:40
  Suzanne Anderson: So I think that's enough for today.
• 26:42
  Suzanne Anderson: Let's get back to the car and we'll come home.
• 26:45
  Suzanne Anderson: And that was really important for me because it also said, it's not a mistake, it's part of how we are starting to recalibrate the nervous system.
• 26:54
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm starting to come back out into the world and to be compassionate with myself and gentle with myself as I did that.
• 27:01
  Suzanne Anderson: And that little step was actually a really positive step forward.
• 27:06
  Suzanne Anderson: But I wanna speak about the other one, Carmen, that you mentioned about the speaking, cuz I think that was also really important.
• 27:11
  Suzanne Anderson: It was around the same time, because I'd been invited to be a speaker as a keynote speaker here at a big event called Emerging Women.
• 27:21
  Suzanne Anderson: And I was invited after David died and somehow I thought, oh, that's way out there in August.
• 27:29
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm gonna be fine.
• 27:30
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, what do I know about how long it would actually take?
• 27:34
  Suzanne Anderson: So, here I am getting ready for the thing and I realized there is no way I can speak from the expert on women and development and women and leadership.
• 27:43
  Suzanne Anderson: Although I know a lot like that part of me is not the part of me I wanted to speak from.
• 27:50
  Suzanne Anderson: So I had a whole speech, the whole thing planned and I just sat there and I, before I was invited to come up, I just tucked my, my speech under my chair.
• 28:00
  Suzanne Anderson: I thought, I am going free fall here because I have to be authentically me.
• 28:08
  Suzanne Anderson: And authentically me.
• 28:11
  Suzanne Anderson: The invitation is really different right now.
• 28:13
  Suzanne Anderson: And what I did was I stood on the stage, I started where the light was, um, and I had had slides planned and everything.
• 28:21
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, but anyway, I stood there and I said, this was the over, here's the talk i I was going to give, and it's the talk about what I know about it, what it is to be women leading right now in these new ways of leading, using all of our feminine and masculine essences, etcetera.
• 28:39
  Suzanne Anderson: And then I walked over to the other side of the stage and I stood in the dark cuz it was darker.
• 28:44
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, they finally got a light on me eventually over there.
• 28:46
  Suzanne Anderson: But I right at the edge of the stage and I said, this is the edge I'm gonna speak from.
• 28:50
  Suzanne Anderson: This is the naked edge here, that I'm on right now as a result of having, you know, having lost everything that mattered most to me.
• 28:59
  Suzanne Anderson: And this operating system I want to talk to you about does hold up.
• 29:05
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm standing here.
• 29:06
  Suzanne Anderson: This vulnerability is our strength.
• 29:10
  Suzanne Anderson: And then I spoke from that place and that was a really important moment for me actually to, to be there, to take myself into that place and speak from that place.
• 29:25
  Carmen Hecox: I remember when I read about that, I almost started crying cuz I thought, oh my goodness.
• 29:31
  Carmen Hecox: She is so strong and vulnerable at the same time.
• 29:36
  Carmen Hecox: It was just so raw, but so real.
• 29:40
  Carmen Hecox: It was the real you and I think kind of taking that next step to healing.
• 29:48
  Carmen Hecox: That's how I read it.
• 29:50
  Carmen Hecox: I don't, I don't know if that's what, what it was meant to be, but that's how I read it.
• 29:56
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, the healing was in that sense, it was, really, I, I call that authentic presence as one of the meta capacities I write about in the book.
• 30:07
  Suzanne Anderson: It was like, stand in this naked place and see, can you find your strength and your voice here?
• 30:19
  Suzanne Anderson: I, I knew I was a good speaker from the other place, but could I do that from here?
• 30:27
  Suzanne Anderson: Uh, so there was a risk involved absolutely.
• 30:30
  Suzanne Anderson: There was a risk involved um, and but at some level it felt like it was the only thing I could do.
• 30:37
  Suzanne Anderson: It was the only honest thing I could do.
• 30:40
  Suzanne Anderson: And, and so in that sense, it was healing for me because, I felt congruent and the the congruence and anyone knows who's gone through a lot of loss, that's everything.
• 30:51
  Suzanne Anderson: It's like you just can't put up a false front anymore.
• 30:55
  Suzanne Anderson: You don't want to do that.
• 30:56
  Suzanne Anderson: You have no energy to do that, or enthusiasm to do it.
• 30:59
  Suzanne Anderson: It's like there's something that happens.
• 31:01
  Suzanne Anderson: The possibility is there anyway and a dramatic loss or change of some kind in your life where you just contact the the electric current, you could say, of your true being, and then you do not want to give it up.
• 31:18
  Suzanne Anderson: You don't want to put back on some kind of mask or be some kind of something.
• 31:22
  Suzanne Anderson: And I just had no energy to do that so that, that was healing.
• 31:26
  Suzanne Anderson: And it, I think it was interestingly actually, I did a podcast about a month ago with someone who had, was there, I was she was like describing this experience and they were there.
• 31:40
  Suzanne Anderson: They were from Seattle and they described being in the audience that was so amazing for me and she said, you know, you could have heard a pin drop in the room.
• 31:51
  Suzanne Anderson: It was so powerful.
• 31:54
  Suzanne Anderson: So that was really, that was really, um, um, wonderful to remember.
• 31:58
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, that's amazing that, somebody from the audience was actually interviewing you and giving you their perspective of what they saw.
• 32:09
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 32:09
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 32:10
  Carmen Hecox: I mean, cuz I read it and I just, I wanted to cry when I read that part.
• 32:14
  Carmen Hecox: Cause I thought, geez, she's so strong.
• 32:18
  Carmen Hecox: She's so strong.
• 32:20
  Carmen Hecox: I know that, you talked about in the book about, facing something that you weren't not familiar with.
• 32:25
  Carmen Hecox: for example, finance.
• 32:27
  Carmen Hecox: Finance was something that you were never, it was something you weren't as knowledgeable as David was, but it was something that you had to take on.
• 32:41
  Carmen Hecox: What did that feel like?
• 32:43
  Suzanne Anderson: Right.
• 32:45
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, so one of the reasons that I'm quite sure, David, left this world was that his business was about to come down all around him.
• 32:57
  Suzanne Anderson: He had a separate, I had a women's leadership business.
• 32:59
  Suzanne Anderson: He had his own business, which was an Indonesian antique furniture business.
• 33:04
  Suzanne Anderson: He had a workshop in Java.
• 33:06
  Suzanne Anderson: He had a workshop, a very big store here in Seattle.
• 33:10
  Suzanne Anderson: And, his whole business was going to come apart.
• 33:13
  Suzanne Anderson: And I know there was a lot of shame for him around that and I think he couldn't stay and, and face it basically.
• 33:23
  Suzanne Anderson: So it came all down around me and that was what I had to face, which was our finance.
• 33:29
  Suzanne Anderson: And my, when I had, I had met David 10 years before and it was my second marriage and I had sold a home and I'd put my money into our property, bought extra acres of it.
• 33:40
  Suzanne Anderson: We had a very large estate on an island near Seattle.
• 33:45
  Suzanne Anderson: And so his debt was more than our asset, which was basically the main asset was this enormous property, which was a very substantial asset.
• 33:57
  Suzanne Anderson: So here I was, you know, basically having to go into these business meetings, going to figure out the finances of his business and I had a very simple business compared to his.
• 34:10
  Suzanne Anderson: And just to face the financial world that, you know, I think it wasn't my strength.
• 34:16
  Suzanne Anderson: I, I do feel I was in shadow about that.
• 34:21
  Suzanne Anderson: That was a mistake for me.
• 34:22
  Suzanne Anderson: That was a naivete, kind of that, you know, enormous trust and it's all gonna be okay.
• 34:27
  Suzanne Anderson: And I would say I'm much, it's something I've, I've made some enormous steps forward in my life in needing to understand and what is the financial world and and how to be in it, but it was very, very hard to do initially because I also was in trauma, so I, you know, your prefrontal cortex goes offline for the for the large part.
• 34:53
  Suzanne Anderson: So it was hard.
• 34:55
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, but I brought in people to help me with it and yeah, that was really something for me to go through that, the fire of that, and I learned an enormous amount.
• 35:08
  Suzanne Anderson: I used to have these, uh, I had some very good friends.
• 35:13
  Suzanne Anderson: I had these, these boots.
• 35:15
  Suzanne Anderson: They were little, I think I put this in the book actually.
• 35:17
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, and they were like little cowboy boots, but they were cowboy boots, shoes.
• 35:23
  Suzanne Anderson: And a friend of mine once said, uh, gave me this phrase, which I, I, which is basically don't f with me fellas.
• 35:30
  Suzanne Anderson: This ain't my first time at the rodeo.
• 35:33
  Suzanne Anderson: If you know that from Mummy Dearest from the movie, which I didn't know the movie actually at the time.
• 35:38
  Suzanne Anderson: And so I used to put my don't f with me shoes on when I would go to these business meetings all the time.
• 35:44
  Suzanne Anderson: And it was a little symbol for myself.
• 35:45
  Suzanne Anderson: Like I'd show up with the lawyer and the accountants and the, and I'd, I'd sort of like try to get my ground or my strength like you can do this girl, you got this, you are gonna do this.
• 35:57
  Suzanne Anderson: That was my little, um, helpful somatic cue.
• 36:02
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 36:03
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, I remember reading about that too, when you started talking about it.
• 36:05
  Carmen Hecox: I'm like, yeah, I do remember the boots.
• 36:07
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah.
• 36:08
  Carmen Hecox: What I really admired about you too is the community of friends, women that you had.
• 36:17
  Suzanne Anderson: Right.
• 36:18
  Carmen Hecox: I think that at least the way I saw it is they were your anchor.
• 36:23
  Suzanne Anderson: Oh, a hundred percent.
• 36:24
  Suzanne Anderson: They were, and they, you know, I worked with women for years.
• 36:27
  Suzanne Anderson: That was, that's still the work I do.
• 36:31
  Suzanne Anderson: And I had created this incredible circle of women that, that were, worked with me, that were my, my dear connection, and they and my family actually were everything.
• 36:43
  Suzanne Anderson: And I would say to anybody going through, an incredible time of loss like I did, and, you know, a brutal time of loss.
• 36:51
  Suzanne Anderson: Whatever it is, the community is everything because you, you, you are being torn apart by, if there's an outer event, especially that's hit you, then what are the, the fields, I call them fields, but let's say.
• 37:08
  Suzanne Anderson: The communities, the loving communities that you can rest back in because you don't have that going on inside in the moment you're, you're disrupted, right?
• 37:19
  Suzanne Anderson: It's, but if you put, for example, a, a tuning fork.
• 37:23
  Suzanne Anderson: In a room and you hit and put three other, three or four other tuning forks around it, and you hit one tuning fork, they will all start to resonate with that note, we actually know this as the neuroscience of our limbic systems.
• 37:35
  Suzanne Anderson: We do this with one another, we resonate.
• 37:37
  Suzanne Anderson: So having those good friends, even one good friend that becomes your buddy, that becomes a person you can call, that is can hold you.
• 37:48
  Suzanne Anderson: Can support you when you're going through something.
• 37:53
  Suzanne Anderson: And in fact, many women I've worked with here who are in my programs, for example, have learned how when they are leaving a life, so getting divorced and leaving a home and so on.
• 38:05
  Suzanne Anderson: How to bring their women friends in around and help them.
• 38:09
  Suzanne Anderson: How to create the circles of support that allow you to go through something like this with.
• 38:17
  Suzanne Anderson: With more of yourself involved because the way that you, any kind of traumatic event, um, it will hit your conscious mind.
• 38:26
  Suzanne Anderson: Yes, you know, it's being disrupted consciously, but you are also very disruptive unconsciously.
• 38:33
  Suzanne Anderson: And rituals, for example, can be super, super helpful, simple rituals.
• 38:40
  Suzanne Anderson: One ritual I helped a woman, create was she was leaving a home that been a divorce, that she'd been in the home for years, and all her women friends came over with her.
• 38:51
  Suzanne Anderson: They sat in the circle and she'd written on little pieces of paper, these key moments of blessing basically it's things that she'd loved that had happened in this house.
• 39:01
  Suzanne Anderson: And, the her women friends were her witnesses and she would read one of those and then take these little, a tiny little glass, like a little, sherry glasses.
• 39:15
  Suzanne Anderson: And there was a little pomegranate juice in each.
• 39:17
  Suzanne Anderson: And at the end of each reading of that little blessing of what this house had held.
• 39:22
  Suzanne Anderson: She'd take a drink of the pomegranate juice, a symbol really of like, I'm taking this with me.
• 39:27
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm taking all the good things that were a part of my life here with me into my next life.
• 39:33
  Suzanne Anderson: And I did a lot of those.
• 39:35
  Suzanne Anderson: And I go into these in the book, um, rituals with my community, with my friends.
• 39:40
  Suzanne Anderson: Was very, very healing for me and for, for, for others.
• 39:45
  Carmen Hecox: You write about the eight meta capacities that you use to move through loss.
• 39:49
  Carmen Hecox: Can you explain how those.
• 39:52
  Carmen Hecox: How those are used here or how can you explain what those are?
• 39:56
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah, well this, this, there were eight what we called meta capacities, that at the end of women going through our longer our programs, they were starting to show these ways of being.
• 40:09
  Suzanne Anderson: And after they'd done the work of cultivating the healthy mother, the healthy hero, the healthy father, the healthy maiden, healthy chrome.
• 40:17
  Suzanne Anderson: These, that's the archetypal pathway.
• 40:19
  Suzanne Anderson: And we were just starting to see them.
• 40:21
  Suzanne Anderson: This was, you know, this was the end of 2012, as I mentioned, where, uh, the book was ready to come out, and so we'd identified them and, and then all hell broke loose let's just say.
• 40:37
  Suzanne Anderson: My life went in a complete different direction.
• 40:41
  Suzanne Anderson: When it came time to write the book, I'd done that writing of just write, putting everything down and for myself.
• 40:48
  Suzanne Anderson: And when it came time then to create it as a book for others.
• 40:52
  Suzanne Anderson: And I pulled up and sort of took a look at what I'd written.
• 40:54
  Suzanne Anderson: I realized that I'd actually been living those capacities that I had just seen.
• 41:03
  Suzanne Anderson: Like it had not occurred to me in all those years.
• 41:07
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, but.
• 41:08
  Suzanne Anderson: I could then see it and I thought, oh my God, that is what I've actually been doing.
• 41:12
  Suzanne Anderson: I've been living these.
• 41:14
  Suzanne Anderson: So for example, the meta capacity, I'll just, they're eight of them and I'll just, uh, say a few multidimensional knowing what it is to know if your at all different levels to use our rational, knowing, our intuition, our ability to, to tune into other realms of being our emotional intelligence, our social intelligence, so on.
• 41:35
  Suzanne Anderson: Embracing Paradox is another one.
• 41:37
  Suzanne Anderson: How do you hold so much polarity?
• 41:41
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, there are eight of these and you can find out more in the book themselves, but you can see how when we've identified these capacities back in 2012, it was these are the capacities that are a match.
• 41:53
  Suzanne Anderson: For the complexity of these times.
• 41:54
  Suzanne Anderson: We need these in our lives right now.
• 41:55
  Suzanne Anderson: We simply need these ways of being.
• 41:58
  Suzanne Anderson: This is what the world is, and we have to grow in order to become women who actually can express these ways of being.
• 42:06
  Suzanne Anderson: So that's what, uh, they are.
• 42:09
  Suzanne Anderson: And I ended up writing, um, uh, a story or actually.
• 42:14
  Suzanne Anderson: Some of the, the memoir stories that describe that capacity so that women can actually, women and men, um, who read the book can see, oh, that's what that is.
• 42:27
  Suzanne Anderson: I've actually had people in other podcasts I've done who have said it was so helpful to them who had gone through a difficult and traumatic situation, for example, to read and say, oh, that's what I developed.
• 42:44
  Suzanne Anderson: I see now.
• 42:45
  Suzanne Anderson: No, they may not have seen it in the moment, but being shown a certain map, they could say, I did build that capacity rather than I just got through this situation.
• 42:55
  Suzanne Anderson: I actually grew these capacities.
• 43:00
  Carmen Hecox: Well, I remember, I was telling my husband this about, two weeks ago, I had a situation that didn't go quite like I planned it cuz I'm more of a planner type of person and I was sitting in it just pretty upset that what am I gonna do with this?
• 43:15
  Carmen Hecox: This didn't work out the way I wanted it to, to work, and I was lacing up my shoes and I thought, well, Suzanne would say, you make your path by walking.
• 43:25
  Carmen Hecox: You make the best out of what's in front of you.
• 43:28
  Carmen Hecox: You look at the situation and you turn it into something that that does work.
• 43:35
  Suzanne Anderson: Right.
• 43:36
  Carmen Hecox: I thought, I've been reading this book this.
• 43:38
  Carmen Hecox: This is what I do with it.
• 43:39
  Carmen Hecox: And then, I went downstairs and I told my husband, I says, you remember this situation?
• 43:44
  Carmen Hecox: Well, here's what I'm gonna do with it.
• 43:47
  Carmen Hecox: And he says, wow, that's, you've been moping around for two days about it.
• 43:51
  Carmen Hecox: And this is what, where?
• 43:53
  Carmen Hecox: How'd you come up with this?
• 43:54
  Carmen Hecox: And I said, Suzanne told me.
• 43:57
  Suzanne Anderson: That's great.
• 43:58
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, it's such a different way to live, Carmen.
• 44:01
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, that's the thing.
• 44:02
  Suzanne Anderson: There's suffering and then there's what the Buddhist calls suffering, the suffering.
• 44:07
  Suzanne Anderson: The suffering is, this didn't go the way I wanted it.
• 44:09
  Suzanne Anderson: This is hard.
• 44:10
  Suzanne Anderson: This is hard.
• 44:11
  Suzanne Anderson: And then there is the making it harder on ourselves where we well sort of wallow in the failure or in the thing that it didn't work.
• 44:21
  Suzanne Anderson: And there's no question that their feelings of disappointment to process when something doesn't happen the way you wanted it to happen or that, that, that is absolutely true, but there's also looking at it, this is what it is now.
• 44:37
  Suzanne Anderson: And so then saying, okay, all right.
• 44:39
  Suzanne Anderson: If this is what it is, what does that mean to me?
• 44:43
  Suzanne Anderson: Now?
• 44:44
  Suzanne Anderson: What is the next step I take?
• 44:45
  Suzanne Anderson: Because sometimes we just, if you stay stuck in that way, you were describing, you miss the.
• 44:54
  Suzanne Anderson: The stone that's waiting to rise up in front of you, if you would just step into that void, and this is the movement, right?
• 45:00
  Suzanne Anderson: If you would just move, keep moving, go, okay, this isn't, this wasn't trying to happen.
• 45:06
  Suzanne Anderson: I guess that's not what that is.
• 45:07
  Suzanne Anderson: So now what is trying to happen?
• 45:10
  Suzanne Anderson: What can I see?
• 45:12
  Suzanne Anderson: You know and that's the ability to be part of what I call the mysterial way of being, part of the ability to be with mystery, to be with uncertainty and ambiguity and, um, Which is what we experience very often at midlife, for example, like how to be with that rather as an opportunity for something new to emerge than just the incredible suffering of it's not what it used to be, and wanting to go back.
• 45:42
  Carmen Hecox: If someone listening right now or watching right now is going through a difficult time.
• 45:49
  Carmen Hecox: What kind of advice would you give them to help them see things in a different perspective or grow from what this difficult situation is, is bringing to them right now?
• 46:04
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah, I'd probably start with.
• 46:07
  Suzanne Anderson: Sort of where we were just speaking, which is self-compassion.
• 46:11
  Suzanne Anderson: To be so kind to ourselves, we're, we're so hard on ourselves.
• 46:16
  Suzanne Anderson: It's, I know this personally and I know this from hundreds of women that I've worked with and the work that I do we're just so hard.
• 46:25
  Suzanne Anderson: And the expectations we have for how we need to be and how perfect we need to be in all the domains, it's like, Really the, the capacity to just be, kind to say, you know, I have in the book a simple self-compassion practice, which is really just saying, you know, this is hard right now.
• 46:42
  Suzanne Anderson: Can I acknowledge this is hard right now?
• 46:44
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm, I'm suffering.
• 46:45
  Suzanne Anderson: This is a moment of suffering and can I be gentle with myself?
• 46:51
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, may I be kind to myself right now?
• 46:54
  Suzanne Anderson: It's actually quite remarkable.
• 46:57
  Suzanne Anderson: How that simple somatic practice of self-compassion can change the neuroscience.
• 47:06
  Suzanne Anderson: And one of the issues when we're in a time that's so confusing is that our minds, we, we get a lot of different messages coming from different parts of us, and if we can settle our.
• 47:22
  Suzanne Anderson: Systems down, literally settle, settle our nervous system.
• 47:25
  Suzanne Anderson: We get more of our creative problem solving self to come online.
• 47:32
  Suzanne Anderson: We get more of the part of us that knows that I am enough.
• 47:36
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, one of the deep underlying limiting beliefs for, for women that we found in our research that we, I go into in the first book.
• 47:43
  Suzanne Anderson: The primary first one is, I am not enough.
• 47:47
  Suzanne Anderson: Like that just lives deep down in our DNA and it's now, I would say, because we've been inside a masculine model of wholeness for 5,000 years, over 5,000 years actually, and women have felt that sense of, I'm not enough.
• 48:01
  Suzanne Anderson: But how you move to I am enough just as I am, is that, you know, that first act is the turn toward the self with kindness.
• 48:10
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 48:10
  Suzanne Anderson: That didn't work out.
• 48:11
  Suzanne Anderson: Whatever that thing is out there, but you're doing great.
• 48:14
  Suzanne Anderson: You're okay.
• 48:16
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, I'm right here with you and I'm gonna help you make the next step.
• 48:20
  Suzanne Anderson: You know, that sort of turn toward the self is a very, very powerful thing to do.
• 48:25
  Carmen Hecox: So tell me, Suzanne, what are you working on next?
• 48:31
  Suzanne Anderson: Right.
• 48:32
  Suzanne Anderson: Well I think as this new book comes out, that's the next piece.
• 48:37
  Suzanne Anderson: And what are the, the program, the work I do is our transformational programs, right now for women.
• 48:46
  Suzanne Anderson: But, you know, what will I do when this book comes out?
• 48:48
  Suzanne Anderson: Will it be for women and men?
• 48:50
  Suzanne Anderson: My interest is remains to help to midwife what I would call the conscious feminine on earth in men and in women, in fact.
• 49:01
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, that's where I think we are.
• 49:03
  Suzanne Anderson: And, and that is what I think we, we need personally.
• 49:06
  Suzanne Anderson: We need collectively to, to shift.
• 49:09
  Suzanne Anderson: What's happening on the planet right now to take care of planet Earth.
• 49:13
  Suzanne Anderson: To acknowledge we have a climate crisis and we have to care about that earth.
• 49:18
  Suzanne Anderson: We have to care about this earth first, our own earth, and to come into relationships, to be able to hold more complexity.
• 49:25
  Suzanne Anderson: Then we can right now where everything gets so polarized and there's so much politics.
• 49:32
  Suzanne Anderson: That's, I don't think helpful or certainly doesn't bring a planet of peace and love.
• 49:38
  Suzanne Anderson: So I'd say I'm, I'm in the, on the creative edge right now, excited about it.
• 49:43
  Suzanne Anderson: To see what I'll, what beyond the work I'm already doing with women are the ways that I can, and I've got a wonderful faculty team that works with me.
• 49:53
  Suzanne Anderson: And what are all the ways that we together can help, the agents of change right now, helping others who want to make a difference in their lives.
• 50:02
  Carmen Hecox: And when exactly does this book get released out?
• 50:06
  Suzanne Anderson: June 13th.
• 50:07
  Suzanne Anderson: June 13th,
• 50:08
  Carmen Hecox: Oh, June 13th.
• 50:09
  Carmen Hecox: I was thinking July for some reason.
• 50:11
  Carmen Hecox: Oh my goodness.
• 50:12
  Carmen Hecox: It's right around the corner and the book, You Make Your Path by Walking.
• 50:19
  Carmen Hecox: I absolutely love the book.
• 50:20
  Carmen Hecox: I think I could read it again.
• 50:23
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm hoping women will and, and men as well, of course.
• 50:26
  Suzanne Anderson: But I know your audience is women.
• 50:27
  Suzanne Anderson: I'm hoping I kind of wrote it to be somewhat of a guidebook you go back to.
• 50:32
  Suzanne Anderson: That's why actually I highly recommend you get the paper version.
• 50:35
  Suzanne Anderson: That's the next thing.
• 50:36
  Suzanne Anderson: I wanna make sure you get one of those.
• 50:39
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, I just got a box of them last week from the publisher.
• 50:43
  Suzanne Anderson: And they're just so, uh, like, you know, the hand feel of the book is awesome.
• 50:50
  Suzanne Anderson: I'll just say that.
• 50:52
  Carmen Hecox: It, you know, and I, I really think that the book is not just for women.
• 50:57
  Carmen Hecox: Because women, men, we all have different challenges that we face, and I think that your book has so much learning for everyone.
• 51:09
  Suzanne Anderson: Absolutely, and I wrote it for men and women.
• 51:11
  Suzanne Anderson: This was the first book is, is really for women primarily, although actually many men have read the first book as well and have said they could relate to this developmental pathway.
• 51:21
  Suzanne Anderson: But the research we did was with women.
• 51:23
  Suzanne Anderson: So that is what I'm representing in the book, but yeah.
• 51:26
  Carmen Hecox: If people want to learn more about you, where can they learn more about you?
• 51:31
  Carmen Hecox: Where can they find you?
• 51:33
  Suzanne Anderson: My website is mysterial, m y s t e r i a l woman.com.
• 51:39
  Suzanne Anderson: And or you can put in, You Make Your Path by Walking and that'll take you to, that's a webpage on my website.
• 51:47
  Suzanne Anderson: And, you'll find Mystery Woman on Instagram, on LinkedIn and Facebook.
• 51:52
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah, you can get on my mailing list and then find out what all is happening.
• 51:56
  Carmen Hecox: Do you still have, classes online?
• 51:58
  Suzanne Anderson: Right with right now, I, we have absolutely had lots of, uh, I have one that's connected to the book launch, a workshop coming up the end of June, June 22nd through one of the local bookstores, and that'll be a 90 minute.
• 52:11
  Suzanne Anderson: Kind of workshop and a little bit more time with me, that would be a great opportunity to get the book and, and dive in a little deeper with me in more of a workshop format.
• 52:22
  Suzanne Anderson: And, uh, I think it's$15 or something.
• 52:25
  Suzanne Anderson: It's very low cost.
• 52:26
  Suzanne Anderson: It's just basically.
• 52:28
  Suzanne Anderson: Plus the book.
• 52:29
  Suzanne Anderson: I think you have to buy the book as well.
• 52:30
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, you can pre-order the book right now.
• 52:32
  Suzanne Anderson: For those that know they are interested in getting that at Amazon, go to your local bookstore, which I always love to recommend.
• 52:41
  Suzanne Anderson: Um, if you have an in-person bookstore
• 52:43
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah.
• 52:44
  Carmen Hecox: I also saw it's available at Target.
• 52:46
  Suzanne Anderson: What is that?
• 52:48
  Suzanne Anderson: It should be available everywhere.
• 52:50
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 52:50
  Carmen Hecox: I was looking this morning and I thought, where's, where's her book available?
• 52:54
  Carmen Hecox: And I saw Amazon and I saw Target.
• 52:56
  Carmen Hecox: I'm like, oh, cool.
• 52:58
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah, that's good to know.
• 52:59
  Suzanne Anderson: I didn't know that.
• 52:59
  Suzanne Anderson: Barnes and Noble, I mean, basically our publisher goes, a distributor has it everywhere, so I'm sure they would find it everywhere.
• 53:07
  Suzanne Anderson: Yeah.
• 53:07
  Carmen Hecox: Very good.
• 53:08
  Carmen Hecox: Well, like I said, Suzanne, this has been an honor.
• 53:12
  Carmen Hecox: Thank you so much for writing this book.
• 53:16
  Carmen Hecox: This book is amazing.
• 53:18
  Carmen Hecox: I absolutely loved it.
• 53:20
  Carmen Hecox: I felt a lot of the stuff that you were going through, And I, and I was right there cheering something good, something good.
• 53:28
  Carmen Hecox: Give her something good.
• 53:30
  Carmen Hecox: But I think, you've come out as a stronger, better version of who you are.
• 53:39
  Carmen Hecox: And I thank you so much for putting this book out
• 53:42
  Suzanne Anderson: Well, thank you, Carmen.
• 53:44
  Suzanne Anderson: Thank you for introducing me to your audience.
• 53:46
  Carmen Hecox: And thank you so much for, being my guest.
• 53:49
  Suzanne Anderson: Bye-bye.
• 53:50
  Carmen Hecox: Bye-bye.
• 53:51
  Carmen Hecox: What an incredible episode! Suzanne Anderson is a true master transformational learning and exceptional writer.
• 53:59
  Carmen Hecox: Suzanne's information and this episode's transcripts can be found at createthebestme.com/ep014.
• 54:10
  Carmen Hecox: For those seeking more of Suzanne's wisdom, I highly recommend pre-ordering her latest book,"You Make Your Path by Walking." In this book, Suzanne shares how she applied her teachings from"The Mysterial Woman" to her own life, including the difficult process of grieving her beloved husband, David.
• 54:30
  Carmen Hecox: One of the most valuable lessons I learned in this book is that we don't always have to understand what others are going through.
• 54:38
  Carmen Hecox: It's not our job to take ownership of their thoughts and actions.
• 54:42
  Carmen Hecox: Instead, we must focus on making our own path by walking.
• 54:48
  Carmen Hecox: No matter where you are in life I strongly recommend reading this book for its insightful teachings.
• 54:55
  Carmen Hecox: I want to express my gratitude to Suzanne Anderson for providing me a digital copy of"You Make Your Path by Walking" and sharing her profound insights with us.
• 55:06
  Carmen Hecox: If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe to stay updated.
• 55:11
  Carmen Hecox: Please join me next week as we'll dive into the topic of embracing the change of midlife.
• 55:18
  Carmen Hecox: This episode is packed with actionable steps, so be sure not to miss it.
• 55:23
  Carmen Hecox: Until next time, keep dreaming big, take care of yourself, and remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself.
• 55:34
  Carmen Hecox: Thank you for watching, catch you next time.
• 55:37
  Carmen Hecox: Bye for now.