Ep014 Unveiling the Mysterial Way: Discovering Resilience with Suzanne Anderson

In this episode, I interview renowned author and transformational guide Suzanne Anderson to explore personal growth, resilience, and self-compassion in challenging times.

Highlights:

• Discover Suzanne's transformative journey and her insights on embracing self-compassion. 
• Dive into Suzanne's latest book, "You Make Your Path by Walking." 
• Learn about the underlying limiting beliefs faced by many women. 
• Get inspired by Suzanne's vision of the conscious feminine on earth. 
• Find out how Suzanne plans to contribute to the world post-book release. 

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Transcript

Carmen Hecox: 0:00

Welcome to Create the Best Me. I am Carmen Hecox, a personal development coach, and I am so excited to be connecting with you today. 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. 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. 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. Well hello there, fearless midlife trailblazers! Welcome to Create the Best Me. If you are new here, I'm so glad you made it here. 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. I am Carmen Hecox, your host and personal development coach. Today's guest is Suzanne Anderson, the founder of The Mysterial Woman, a psychologist, author, coach, leadership consultant, and transformational teacher. 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. 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. 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. 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. Suzanne Anderson, welcome to Create The Best Me. I am so happy to have you on the show.

Suzanne Anderson: 2:25

Thank you, Carmen. Great to be here.

Carmen Hecox: 2:27

Great. So, for the people that do not know you, can you please, tell the viewers who you are?

Suzanne Anderson: 2:34

Well, let's see, what's the summary? 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. And that is the substance of the, the book that we'll talk about today. 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. Did years of research in our university women's leadership programs that trying to basically figure out which we did, I think. 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. Not just professionally, but also personally with more of their true nature, more of their authentic presence. And that was my first book, the Way of the Mysterial Woman Upgrading How You Live, love and lead. And, uh, yeah so, I think we're going to probably the conversation today. 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. We'll probably spam this whole territory.

Carmen Hecox: 4:14

Perfect. And I must say, first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to read your book that is coming out. You make your path by Walking. I think that this book is, well first of all, your writing is amazing. I love your writing. It was a, it was as if though you held my hand and took me through every single scene of what was going on. I could see it. I could smell it. I, it was almost like, almost like David Frost.

Suzanne Anderson: 4:45

Oh wow.

Carmen Hecox: 4:46

Impressive writing. I recommend every woman read this book. 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. 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. You were able to strap on those boots and just keep going. 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.

Suzanne Anderson: 5:55

Hmm. Well, yeah. Well thank you Carmen, for saying that. 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. 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. In that tumultuous moment that I'm sure we'll talk about. I didn't have a plan. 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. 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. And so, I knew something about trauma at some level, but, and therefore equipped in some ways to go through something like this. But it was the most difficult thing for sure I've ever been through. And while my strength up to the moment, of this event helped me. 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. 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. We become more ourselves, we become more of our, of our essence, we could say. Yeah.

Carmen Hecox: 8:04

Yeah. I know that you've already have an Award-winning book. What inspired you to write this book?

Suzanne Anderson: 8:12

Yeah. Well, I didn't initially think I would write this book. 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. 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. Susan Cannon, we were getting ready to take this book out and get it published. And we, as I mentioned, discovered some things and we knew we needed to share this. There are a lot of women that needed to understand why are we feeling like, how did we get where we are? You know, we're successful in our business. We've got families, we've made it sort of, let's say in the outer world and yet this interdiscipline is happening. What is going on? And we would say, and I would say there's, this is an evolutionary. 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. And we're at the end of that. And when you can see that, you know, okay, this isn't me. I haven't made a, I haven't failed. There's actually something, this is an invitation to grow. So I was there, I was like, in this exciting, I'm gonna take this new manuscript out through the world. And then in September, that was September into the end of December, ready to go. And then on January the third, 2013, my husband took his life. 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. I was gonna go flying, take this book out in the world, and life said not so fast. You're going to do some living of all of these concepts first deeply. 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. Get a publisher. Get it printed. That came up in 2016. It wasn't until a few years later that I decided to even write. I'd done a lot of journaling. It was always a practice. I did, and I did journaling from the moment that David died. So, I had those sort of notes but they were random notes just for me. And then I got to the place where I realized I actually need to write my story now. I need to write it for me. I was not writing it for you, the audience here today. 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. That was my own integration that I needed to do. 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. This is gonna be really helpful for other people. And, and sort of the book. And then I thought, okay, there was a book that I couldn't find when David died. I looked for different books. 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. So that is, that is why, and here we are today. It comes out in June. And, um, you know, I'm really, I'm sort of in the next phase of this process. That's why I suppose I started the introduction to myself saying, I'm a woman walking through this phase of my life. 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.

Carmen Hecox: 12:14

So, tell me something. 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?

Suzanne Anderson: 12:53

That's a great question. 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? And I knew, I watched the incredible changes in, in people. So I knew it was making a difference and was making a difference in my own life. But what I didn't know was, would it hold up? 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. So, you lose everything that you might have done and that whole pathway. But I also lost my home. I also left the island I lived on. You mentioned some of these things before I, I closed my business down. It was like everything in my outer world was gone within six months. All the ways my identity had been wired together. And I will say, that's an enormous shattering at every single level. Sometimes you go through one element of those, but not all of those things. And what I can now say without, hesitation at all is that this inner operating system does hold up in every circumstance. You know, I am a living experience of that or a witness, basically evidence, of that. 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. I would never have said that I didn't have all of me involved. Right, but something that identity shattered for sure at every level. 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. To myself, to life, to being a loving presence in the world. And in the work that I do, I think that makes a difference. Yeah.

Carmen Hecox: 15:50

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? 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.

Suzanne Anderson: 16:18

Yeah. Yeah. 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. That's just life. It's not wrong. There will be, or disruptions, let's say to the, to the way I expected my life to go. 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. 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. Because actually the discomfort is the direction of the awakening. 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. I want my aliveness; I want my creativity. And sometimes that means I wanna look backwards. I wanna go back to someone I was before, cuz that's the only thing I've seen. Or it means I gotta burn down the barn, you know, leave my marriage, leave my job, leave my community, whatever. And I would say it's actually that's like the call of your future self. Someone who has that freedom. 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. You can see ways of being that you don't. You know, ways, maybe you put parts of yourself into the, into the closet and you want those parts back again. Well, that wasn't wrong. I actually call that, or it is called the adaptive child. Like we learned to put parts of ourselves in shadow for good reason to get love, safety and belonging. And that wasn't a mistake. But right now it's like that is, you need that part of yourself. You want that part of yourself back. 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. Really use the time to, to really see who you are. Who you want to become, and then take the steps one at a time. You make your path by walking to go in that new direction. Because my experience would say, you can actually end up somewhere you couldn't even have imagined when everything fell apart, right? Because you cannot see that future self. You don't have the eyes to see it actually. You have a limited consciousness. The work I do is about awakening consciousness. Consciousness meaning the way you see the world. 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.

Carmen Hecox: 19:33

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. 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.

Suzanne Anderson: 20:01

Mm-hmm. Right. 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. Um, and because he chose that path, then there was a path I was, I was on. And sometimes it's like that, right where we did not choose the event that happens. Somebody divorces us, a child, you know, leaves, where we have a health crisis. I mean, sometimes these are situations that come to us and when they do, and this was key for me from the very beginning. The opportunity is to accept that this is the path I am on now. Well, everything in you of course doesn't wanna be on this path. Everything in me initially didn't wanna be on this path, didn't believe I was on this path. That's where denial comes in as a useful part of, of any kind of loss situation. But you don't wanna stay in denial too long. You want to be able to accept that this is the path and that I'm on. And now, how am I going to move through it?

Carmen Hecox: 21:16

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. We're going to lose a loved one. We may lose our job. We may lose our money. But your book you didn't give yourself time to sit in that loss. You used what you practiced, what you know, and as difficult as it was, you still pushed forward.

Suzanne Anderson: 21:49

Right. Well, what I would say, and this is the concept of you make your path by walking again. It is movement is really important. The movement that we move. 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. Like the movement is, I have to right now just sit and sob, like that's what I have to do. 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. And, and when we are able to do that to be with our emotions, the waves actually come and go. They don't, they don't, you know, the fear is that wave is gonna take me out. It's gonna be too big. And sometimes a wave, say grief would start to move for me, and it would be large and then I would call a friend. 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. So sometimes people, I think just push through, basically overriding the emotional body. And I would say that's a dangerous thing to do because the trauma, trail, so to speak, is in the body, right? You, it isn't. You can even say that trauma is what happens to you externally. It's actually more what happens to you internally. Some people, the same event could happen, and one person it's traumatic and another person, it's not traumatic. So you know, where your nervous system basically is overwhelmed by what happened. And so the capacity to be with the emotions in the body is super, super important. 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. I was actually able to run. 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. I was really glad that I was able to move that energy through the running. Now, some people in certain circumstances of, of trauma aren't able to do that. They literally aren't able to. They're, they're stuck. But I know that was very helpful for me in that initial moment. But everything else that I could do later to make sure the energy moved, uh, meant I exercised every day. I, you know, there were a lot of things I did. 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. Actually, in the back of this, of the new book, I do have a practice that women can use to do that. And in my first book I also give those practices

Carmen Hecox: 24:59

Yeah. 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. I think you were going to talk to a group of women. You were going to, do a presentation and you felt that wave hit you and you allowed yourself to, process it. But then you did phone a friend, you phone a friend to help you.

Suzanne Anderson: 25:26

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. And I went to this outdoor university village here in Seattle. Yeah. And I saw, it was just a simple thing. I saw a couple standing against a store and he reached out for her hand in a particular way that reminded me of David. And all of a sudden this wave, this huge wave came over me completely uninvited and unexpected. 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. And I had this trauma tribe of, women that I could call. They knew that I might need them at any time when the waves would be bigger than I could handle. And she was, she just said, look, you're doing great. So good that you tried this. You went out, you're starting to stretch, but you just got a little bit too far today. So I think that's enough for today. Let's get back to the car and we'll come home. 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. I'm starting to come back out into the world and to be compassionate with myself and gentle with myself as I did that. And that little step was actually a really positive step forward. But I wanna speak about the other one, Carmen, that you mentioned about the speaking, cuz I think that was also really important. 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. And I was invited after David died and somehow I thought, oh, that's way out there in August. I'm gonna be fine. You know, what do I know about how long it would actually take? 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. Although I know a lot like that part of me is not the part of me I wanted to speak from. 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. I thought, I am going free fall here because I have to be authentically me. And authentically me. The invitation is really different right now. 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. 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. And then I walked over to the other side of the stage and I stood in the dark cuz it was darker. Well, they finally got a light on me eventually over there. But I right at the edge of the stage and I said, this is the edge I'm gonna speak from. 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. And this operating system I want to talk to you about does hold up. I'm standing here. This vulnerability is our strength. 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.

Carmen Hecox: 29:25

I remember when I read about that, I almost started crying cuz I thought, oh my goodness. She is so strong and vulnerable at the same time. It was just so raw, but so real. It was the real you and I think kind of taking that next step to healing. That's how I read it. I don't, I don't know if that's what, what it was meant to be, but that's how I read it.

Suzanne Anderson: 29:56

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. It was like, stand in this naked place and see, can you find your strength and your voice here? I, I knew I was a good speaker from the other place, but could I do that from here? Uh, so there was a risk involved absolutely. There was a risk involved um, and but at some level it felt like it was the only thing I could do. It was the only honest thing I could do. 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. It's like you just can't put up a false front anymore. You don't want to do that. You have no energy to do that, or enthusiasm to do it. It's like there's something that happens. 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. You don't want to put back on some kind of mask or be some kind of something. And I just had no energy to do that so that, that was healing. 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. 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. It was so powerful. So that was really, that was really, um, um, wonderful to remember.

Carmen Hecox: 31:58

Yeah, that's amazing that, somebody from the audience was actually interviewing you and giving you their perspective of what they saw.

Suzanne Anderson: 32:09

Yeah. Yeah.

Carmen Hecox: 32:10

I mean, cuz I read it and I just, I wanted to cry when I read that part. Cause I thought, geez, she's so strong. She's so strong. I know that, you talked about in the book about, facing something that you weren't not familiar with. for example, finance. 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. What did that feel like?

Suzanne Anderson: 32:43

Right. 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. He had a separate, I had a women's leadership business. He had his own business, which was an Indonesian antique furniture business. He had a workshop in Java. He had a workshop, a very big store here in Seattle. And, his whole business was going to come apart. 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. So it came all down around me and that was what I had to face, which was our finance. 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. We had a very large estate on an island near Seattle. 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. 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. And just to face the financial world that, you know, I think it wasn't my strength. I, I do feel I was in shadow about that. That was a mistake for me. That was a naivete, kind of that, you know, enormous trust and it's all gonna be okay. 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. So it was hard. 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. I used to have these, uh, I had some very good friends. I had these, these boots. They were little, I think I put this in the book actually. Um, and they were like little cowboy boots, but they were cowboy boots, shoes. And a friend of mine once said, uh, gave me this phrase, which I, I, which is basically don't f with me fellas. This ain't my first time at the rodeo. If you know that from Mummy Dearest from the movie, which I didn't know the movie actually at the time. 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. And it was a little symbol for myself. 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. That was my little, um, helpful somatic cue. Yeah.

Carmen Hecox: 36:03

Yeah, I remember reading about that too, when you started talking about it. I'm like, yeah, I do remember the boots. Yeah. What I really admired about you too is the community of friends, women that you had.

Suzanne Anderson: 36:17

Right.

Carmen Hecox: 36:18

I think that at least the way I saw it is they were your anchor.

Suzanne Anderson: 36:23

Oh, a hundred percent. They were, and they, you know, I worked with women for years. That was, that's still the work I do. 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. And I would say to anybody going through, an incredible time of loss like I did, and, you know, a brutal time of loss. 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. 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? It's, but if you put, for example, a, a tuning fork. 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. We do this with one another, we resonate. 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. Can support you when you're going through something. 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. How to bring their women friends in around and help them. How to create the circles of support that allow you to go through something like this with. With more of yourself involved because the way that you, any kind of traumatic event, um, it will hit your conscious mind. Yes, you know, it's being disrupted consciously, but you are also very disruptive unconsciously. And rituals, for example, can be super, super helpful, simple rituals. 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. 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. 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. And there was a little pomegranate juice in each. And at the end of each reading of that little blessing of what this house had held. She'd take a drink of the pomegranate juice, a symbol really of like, I'm taking this with me. I'm taking all the good things that were a part of my life here with me into my next life. And I did a lot of those. And I go into these in the book, um, rituals with my community, with my friends. Was very, very healing for me and for, for, for others.

Carmen Hecox: 39:45

You write about the eight meta capacities that you use to move through loss. Can you explain how those. How those are used here or how can you explain what those are?

Suzanne Anderson: 39:56

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. And after they'd done the work of cultivating the healthy mother, the healthy hero, the healthy father, the healthy maiden, healthy chrome. These, that's the archetypal pathway. And we were just starting to see them. 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. My life went in a complete different direction. When it came time to write the book, I'd done that writing of just write, putting everything down and for myself. And when it came time then to create it as a book for others. And I pulled up and sort of took a look at what I'd written. I realized that I'd actually been living those capacities that I had just seen. Like it had not occurred to me in all those years. Um, but. I could then see it and I thought, oh my God, that is what I've actually been doing. I've been living these. 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. Embracing Paradox is another one. How do you hold so much polarity? 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. For the complexity of these times. We need these in our lives right now. We simply need these ways of being. This is what the world is, and we have to grow in order to become women who actually can express these ways of being. So that's what, uh, they are. And I ended up writing, um, uh, a story or actually. 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. 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. I see now. 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. I actually grew these capacities.

Carmen Hecox: 43:00

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? 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. You make the best out of what's in front of you. You look at the situation and you turn it into something that that does work.

Suzanne Anderson: 43:35

Right.

Carmen Hecox: 43:36

I thought, I've been reading this book this. This is what I do with it. And then, I went downstairs and I told my husband, I says, you remember this situation? Well, here's what I'm gonna do with it. And he says, wow, that's, you've been moping around for two days about it. And this is what, where? How'd you come up with this? And I said, Suzanne told me.

Suzanne Anderson: 43:57

That's great. Well, it's such a different way to live, Carmen. You know, that's the thing. There's suffering and then there's what the Buddhist calls suffering, the suffering. The suffering is, this didn't go the way I wanted it. This is hard. This is hard. 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. 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. And so then saying, okay, all right. If this is what it is, what does that mean to me? Now? What is the next step I take? Because sometimes we just, if you stay stuck in that way, you were describing, you miss the. 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? If you would just move, keep moving, go, okay, this isn't, this wasn't trying to happen. I guess that's not what that is. So now what is trying to happen? What can I see? 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.

Carmen Hecox: 45:42

If someone listening right now or watching right now is going through a difficult time. 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?

Suzanne Anderson: 46:04

Yeah, I'd probably start with. Sort of where we were just speaking, which is self-compassion. To be so kind to ourselves, we're, we're so hard on ourselves. 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. 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. Can I acknowledge this is hard right now? I'm, I'm suffering. This is a moment of suffering and can I be gentle with myself? You know, may I be kind to myself right now? It's actually quite remarkable. How that simple somatic practice of self-compassion can change the neuroscience. 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. Systems down, literally settle, settle our nervous system. We get more of our creative problem solving self to come online. We get more of the part of us that knows that I am enough. 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. The primary first one is, I am not enough. 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. 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. Yeah. That didn't work out. Whatever that thing is out there, but you're doing great. You're okay. You know, I'm right here with you and I'm gonna help you make the next step. You know, that sort of turn toward the self is a very, very powerful thing to do.

Carmen Hecox: 48:25

So tell me, Suzanne, what are you working on next?

Suzanne Anderson: 48:31

Right. Well I think as this new book comes out, that's the next piece. And what are the, the program, the work I do is our transformational programs, right now for women. But, you know, what will I do when this book comes out? Will it be for women and men? My interest is remains to help to midwife what I would call the conscious feminine on earth in men and in women, in fact. Um, that's where I think we are. And, and that is what I think we, we need personally. We need collectively to, to shift. What's happening on the planet right now to take care of planet Earth. To acknowledge we have a climate crisis and we have to care about that earth. We have to care about this earth first, our own earth, and to come into relationships, to be able to hold more complexity. Then we can right now where everything gets so polarized and there's so much politics. That's, I don't think helpful or certainly doesn't bring a planet of peace and love. So I'd say I'm, I'm in the, on the creative edge right now, excited about it. 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. 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.

Carmen Hecox: 50:02

And when exactly does this book get released out?

Suzanne Anderson: 50:06

June 13th. June 13th,

Carmen Hecox: 50:08

Oh, June 13th. I was thinking July for some reason. Oh my goodness. It's right around the corner and the book, You Make Your Path by Walking. I absolutely love the book. I think I could read it again.

Suzanne Anderson: 50:23

I'm hoping women will and, and men as well, of course. But I know your audience is women. I'm hoping I kind of wrote it to be somewhat of a guidebook you go back to. That's why actually I highly recommend you get the paper version. That's the next thing. I wanna make sure you get one of those. Um, I just got a box of them last week from the publisher. And they're just so, uh, like, you know, the hand feel of the book is awesome. I'll just say that.

Carmen Hecox: 50:52

It, you know, and I, I really think that the book is not just for women. Because women, men, we all have different challenges that we face, and I think that your book has so much learning for everyone.

Suzanne Anderson: 51:09

Absolutely, and I wrote it for men and women. 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. But the research we did was with women. So that is what I'm representing in the book, but yeah.

Carmen Hecox: 51:26

If people want to learn more about you, where can they learn more about you? Where can they find you?

Suzanne Anderson: 51:33

My website is mysterial, m y s t e r i a l woman.com. 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. And, you'll find Mystery Woman on Instagram, on LinkedIn and Facebook. Yeah, you can get on my mailing list and then find out what all is happening.

Carmen Hecox: 51:56

Do you still have, classes online?

Suzanne Anderson: 51:58

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. 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. And, uh, I think it's$15 or something. It's very low cost. It's just basically. Plus the book. I think you have to buy the book as well. Um, you can pre-order the book right now. For those that know they are interested in getting that at Amazon, go to your local bookstore, which I always love to recommend. Um, if you have an in-person bookstore

Carmen Hecox: 52:43

Yeah. I also saw it's available at Target.

Suzanne Anderson: 52:46

What is that? It should be available everywhere. Yeah.

Carmen Hecox: 52:50

I was looking this morning and I thought, where's, where's her book available? And I saw Amazon and I saw Target. I'm like, oh, cool.

Suzanne Anderson: 52:58

Yeah, that's good to know. I didn't know that. Barnes and Noble, I mean, basically our publisher goes, a distributor has it everywhere, so I'm sure they would find it everywhere. Yeah.

Carmen Hecox: 53:07

Very good. Well, like I said, Suzanne, this has been an honor. Thank you so much for writing this book. This book is amazing. I absolutely loved it. I felt a lot of the stuff that you were going through, And I, and I was right there cheering something good, something good. Give her something good. But I think, you've come out as a stronger, better version of who you are. And I thank you so much for putting this book out

Suzanne Anderson: 53:42

Well, thank you, Carmen. Thank you for introducing me to your audience.

Carmen Hecox: 53:46

And thank you so much for, being my guest.

Suzanne Anderson: 53:49

Bye-bye.

Carmen Hecox: 53:50

Bye-bye. What an incredible episode! Suzanne Anderson is a true master transformational learning and exceptional writer. Suzanne's information and this episode's transcripts can be found at createthebestme.com/ep014. 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. 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. It's not our job to take ownership of their thoughts and actions. Instead, we must focus on making our own path by walking. No matter where you are in life I strongly recommend reading this book for its insightful teachings. 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. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe to stay updated. Please join me next week as we'll dive into the topic of embracing the change of midlife. This episode is packed with actionable steps, so be sure not to miss it. 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. Thank you for watching, catch you next time. Bye for now.