I Had It All and Then I Didn't: Dr. Susan Miele on Identity, Menopause, and Beginning Again

What happens when everything you built your identity around disappears in less than a year?

Dr. Susan Miele was a Chief People Officer at a Fortune 500 company. She reached the C suite before 40, which had been her goal since she was a teenager. Her career was not just what she did. It was who she was. Then at 42, undiagnosed perimenopause began dismantling everything. Her performance. Her marriage. Her sense of self. She resigned without a plan, downsized her life, and then watched her new home burn to the ground twelve days after moving in.

In less than twelve months she lost her career, her health, and her home.

What followed was not a reinvention. It was a pause. And that pause became the foundation for her book, Paused: Redefining Identity When Our Story No Longer Holds Us.

In this conversation we get into the story she wrote for herself at fourteen and lived into for decades, what perimenopause really looks like when it does not look like what anyone told you to expect, why she spent seven years trying to get back to who she was before she realized there was no going back, the three questions that anchor identity, who am I, how did I get here, and where am I going, what it means to try on possible selves like clothes in a dressing room, and why the struggle is the path.

This episode also touches on menopause in the workplace and why less than twenty percent of US companies currently offer any menopausal benefits, even as fifty percent of their workforce will experience it.

If you have ever defined yourself by what you do and wondered who you would be without it, this conversation is for you.

Connect with Susan: 
Website: www.susanmiele.com 
Substack: https://susanannmiele.substack.com/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-a-miele-phd/
LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/paused-refections-on-identity-7318329934446276609/
Susan A. Miele PhD Book: Paused: Redefining Identity When Our Story No Longer Holds Us, available wherever books are sold

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Transcript

I Had It All and Then I Didn't: Dr. Susan Miele on Identity, Menopause, and Beginning Again | A Beautiful Fix

Susan Miele (00:00)
I just had to face it, I obviously can't do this job anymore. It must be stress. It must be burnout. Perhaps I'm having a nervous breakdown.

Susan Miele (00:10)
I need to take a break or else my husband's gonna leave me and I'm gonna get

Tracy | a beautiful fix (00:13)
Yes.

Susan Miele (00:14)
fired I have to do something. I had to take whatever little bit of agency I had and do

Tracy | a beautiful fix (00:19)
Yes.

Susan Miele (00:20)
something to say, okay, I have some control over this. This is not gonna control me. And the best thing I could come up with was to quit and then make the lifestyle changes to support that and give myself some space to figure out.

Susan Miele (00:36)
what was going on

Tracy | a beautiful fix (01:32)
Today's guest is Dr. Susan Milley, writer, speaker, leadership expert, and author of Paused: Redefining Identity When Our Story No Longer Holds Us. After spending more than three decades helping leaders and organizations navigate change, Susan unexpectedly found herself facing a profound transition of her own. After losing her career,

Tracy | a beautiful fix (01:59)
Her health and her home in less than a year, Susan found herself facing a question many of us eventually encounter. Who am I when the story I've built my life around no longer fits? Rather than rushing to reinvent herself, Susan chose something much harder. She allowed herself to pause. That experience became the foundation for her book, Paused, where she blends her lived experience with identity theory.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (02:27)
And human development to help others navigate life's unexpected transitions with greater compassion, courage, and clarity. Susan is also a 5'1 spleenic projector in human design. Projectors are often gifted at seeing people and systems in ways others can't, and they're designed to wait for the right invitations rather than forcing opportunities. Susan, welcome to A Beautiful Fix.

Susan Miele (02:56)
Thank you so much, Tracy. It's great to be here.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (03:00)
It's so wonderful to have you here. And there's so many parallels between our stories. I'm just really excited to dig in here because when I left my corporate career suddenly, just kind of took a leap of faith, I allowed myself to pause. I didn't call it a pause, but I just l allowed myself to be, to just be for the first time in my life. I knew that rushing back into something or trying to.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (03:29)
solution it too early was gonna lead me back to the the same kind of situation. So I'm really interested to dig into this. But before we go there, just tell us a little bit about the woman you were before everything changed. Like how would you have described your identity at that point in your life?

Susan Miele (03:48)
My identity and my job were really one and the same. So it was very much I wore my identity, my professional identity, as if it was who I was was what I did. So my job and I were very interchangeable. I really there was very little light between it and while I had many other roles that I played in life, I didn't my identity had become really

Susan Miele (04:19)
solidly my about

Susan Miele (04:21)
the role I had as a chief people officer. at that point it was going on 20 years in human resources and I had reached the C suite before 40, which was my goal was to be in the C suite as a chief people officer by the time I was 40, and that happened around 38. And it was such an accomplishment and I was I had worked so hard for it and I just lost sight of everything else and my job and I became one in the same.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (04:53)
is thirty-eight and the chief people officer. Wow. So in less than a year you lost your career, your health and your home. Help us understand what what happened there.

Susan Miele (05:08)
So I'm one of twelve percent of women who go through menopause before 45. So I was only 42, and this was almost this was more than 20 years ago now, Tracy. So I and I had no typical symptoms of menopause, or at least the symptoms that are most commonly talked about. So I didn't have hot flashes, I didn't have an irregular period, I had predominantly actually almost exclusively.

Susan Miele (05:39)
cognitive decline and irritability, all all cognitive symptoms that seemed much more aligned with stress, burnout.

Susan Miele (05:51)
Perhaps a nervous breakdown. It seemed like I was, you know, just not able to function. So I went from high performing chief people officer, hit around 42, and all of a sudden I couldn't hold a thought together. My performance was suffering. Everything was suffering, but of course, given my identity, given how closely tied my identity was to my work, that was where I showed up most, obviously, for me.

Susan Miele (06:21)
And where I was trying to do

Susan Miele (06:23)
most to hold it together. And then as a result of that, the effort to try to just hold it together every day was impacting my marriage, my life, and my health was being impacted by perimenopause, but I I had no words to describe that. So every doctor I went to said I was working too hard, that I was burned out. My daughter was only five at the time and I was working too hard, I was burned out, I was stressed out, anxiety, depression, very

Susan Miele (06:53)
Okay.

Susan Miele (06:54)
Consistent diagnosis, which women still get today instead of the correct diagnosis of perimenopause. Although hopefully, Tracy, it's happening less today. There's so much more information out there for women. But back then, and it was only a few years after the WHI study when hormone therapy had been taken off the market. So even if I had been correctly diagnosed, I'm not sure that I would have been correctly treated. So as a result of that, my performance artwork was.

Susan Miele (07:24)
really suffering and I had a particularly pivotal moment where I messed up a presentation and I couldn't hold it together and I was like on the floor, the hotel bathroom where I had been presenting in a conference room and then I just couldn't come back from that. I resigned the next day because I thought this is it. Like I'm either gonna continue to decline from a performance perspective that I lose my job or my credibility is getting so thin that I just

Susan Miele (07:54)
Need to take action. So I had didn't have a plan other than that I wanted to try to save my marriage and my health and save whatever little bit of professional credibility I still had left there and have whatever little agency I had. So I resigned without a plan and it was

Susan Miele (08:14)
a big decision. It was a big job. It was we had lived into that lifestyle. So we had to make subsequent decisions, which was to sell our house, take our daughter out of private school. So in and that was the sort of the first piece was my health, then my career. And then we sold that house. We bought a new house within that that year, nine or ten months. And then after moving into that house for just we lived there only 12 days, it burned to the ground. So in

Susan Miele (08:43)
twelve months I went from s sort of what you would describe as having everything to having nothing at all. But thank goodness we were all safe. So we had that and we none of us were hurt in the fire other than

Susan Miele (09:02)
emotionally impacted, but we were not physically, we were not hurt. So it was like it was reckoning, reckoning, reckoning. So by the third reckoning, I was like, now what? I at least without the job, I had the outward p appearance of success. I had a beautiful home, I had my clothes, I had my things. So I I didn't have the markers of success as in my professional mask that I had been wearing for twenty years, but I still had the things that one

Susan Miele (09:32)
often defines them in different ways from a personal identity and then that was gone. I mean I didn't even own a pair of underwear. The next day I had to, that evening I had to borrow clothes from a friend. I had nothing. I was in my pajamas. So it it was a a long process to build, rebuild back from that.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (09:54)
Okay, so let's let's go back. That story was amazing. I was right there with you, just picturing what that must have felt like because again, I see so many parallels. I now looking back, I'm pretty sure I was in perimenopause, the last portion of my career when I was going through what I was going through and I didn't understand why I was feeling what I was feeling. It wasn't until later that I read a book on it and realized I saw the symptoms. Again, different like you said, it wasn't the the symptoms you typically think of and thought

Tracy | a beautiful fix (10:23)
I think that's why I was feeling so not like myself. I wish I had known about it. I wish my doctor had, you know, known about this or had mentioned it. Cause I would have had more grace with myself. Maybe I would have l understood a little bit more and given myself a little bit more runway. But you just, I remember.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (10:44)
Toward the end, not being able to focus on these global calls. And whereas I could focus before and I could produce and could get things done, could rely on me knowing that okay, I've got to do this, I started to get in the same place where I would find myself just not paying attention and or losing it like someone between Tracy and it was just a very interesting thing. But for you, I think about those presentations I had to do, for it to happen.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (11:13)
While you are presenting, did you say to three hundred people?

Susan Miele (11:16)
No, it was a small group of the executive team. It was probably more like thirty people, but it was my peers and my boss.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (11:19)
Okay. Okay. Yes.

Susan Miele (11:24)
And my boss asked me a question and it was a benign question, although he could be a bit antagonistic. He wasn't being antagonistic at that time. And I couldn't answer it. And then I couldn't and then I I I started crying and I

Susan Miele (11:41)
ran out of the room to the hotel bathroom because it was the build up. Like I I it just felt like the climax of months of trying to hold it together. And then

Tracy | a beautiful fix (11:51)
Yes.

Susan Miele (11:52)
I just couldn't. And then when I just had to face it, I was like, okay, I this isn't I can't I obviously can't do this job anymore. It must be stress. It must be burnout. Perhaps I'm having a nervous breakdown.

Susan Miele (12:06)
I need to take a break or else my husband's gonna leave me and I'm gonna get

Tracy | a beautiful fix (12:10)
Yes.

Susan Miele (12:10)
fired and I'm gonna be like I have to do something. I had to take whatever little bit of agency I had and do

Tracy | a beautiful fix (12:16)
Yes.

Susan Miele (12:17)
something to say, okay, I have some control over this. This is not gonna control me. And the the best the best thing I could come up with was to quit and then make the lifestyle changes to support that and give myself some space to figure out.

Susan Miele (12:34)
what was going on to get healthy and then ideally to go back to the C suite, but that took seven years. It took a long time to get back.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (12:44)
So Susan, when you were on that bathroom floor and you realized I can't keep the charades up, did you tell them what was really going on or did you just say, I just I have to go?

Susan Miele (12:56)
I left the building and then the next day I went to the office and the first thing in the morning I resigned. And I didn't say much, I just said I I I I need a break. it sort of boiled it down to I it there was

Susan Miele (13:13)
It was too much to even try to explain and I didn't know what was going on. And I didn't want

Tracy | a beautiful fix (13:17)
Right.

Susan Miele (13:18)
to name it in some way that I couldn't take back. I didn't want to say nervous breakdown. I didn't want to say I had menopause was nowhere on my radar. I had a barely six year old daughter. Like menopause happened to old people. Like I I

Tracy | a beautiful fix (13:31)
Yes, I'm sure.

Susan Miele (13:34)
I

Susan Miele (13:35)
It was didn't it never entered my mind. And in fact, for many years after I knew it was menopause, I still told the story as if it was two separate things. Like I had a very stressful job, I left it, and I went through early menopause. It took me seven, eight, nine years to be like, that was all one thing.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (13:59)
Wait a minute Yes.

Susan Miele (14:02)
It wasn't

Susan Miele (14:03)
And and your stressful job and you just happen to go through menopause, but because

Susan Miele (14:08)
Peromenopause in particular back then wasn't well understood or discussed, I guess, probably more so than understood. It it wasn't didn't really even have a name, that transition, right? That was the transition. the transition to, you know, the rest of your life being postmenopausal, which we don't talk about either really effectively. menopause is actually one day. The rest of it is the mess before and after, but we talk about it like it's all one thing. So

Susan Miele (14:38)
I when I eventually was like, it was actually I realized

Susan Miele (14:43)
To your point, if I had known or just given myself some grace or some space or leave of absence, or I had access to hormone therapy, or access to even someone who could tell me, Hey, this is perimenopause, don't worry, you'll be fine. You're not gonna just continue on a downward spiral. It'll you'll come through this. But I had no answers and I felt quite desperate to make some decision on my own and not let

Susan Miele (15:14)
whatever was happening to me be my complete undoing.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (15:18)
Course, it's the loneliest feeling because you feel like you are completely going through this yourself. No one else is feeling this. so moving into your your book, paused, redefining identity when our story no longer holds us. You talk about it, what it means to pause in the middle of your own story, to find the beginning of something truer. It's that moment when everything that defines you is gone.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (15:47)
And you discover that the next chapter doesn't have to look like the last one. That is so just powerful because when you get to a certain age, you feel like you know yourself so well. You have accumulated all these things, the titles, all of these things that you're so proud of. They clearly are who you are. They define you. When you go to parties, this is who I am. When you get to that point where that identity no longer matches, it's a

Tracy | a beautiful fix (16:16)
really odd place to be. Can you can you talk a little bit about that? Because with the pause you were talking about how it's not reinvention. It's it's rewriting.

Susan Miele (16:27)
Yes. Yes. So one of the reasons I love the lens of identity to tell this story through is narrative identity is foundational identity theory and it is we write our story and then we live into it. So we write the story that I started writing at probably fourteen, which is I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna get a job that involves, you know, a briefcase and a suit and a fancy office,

Tracy | a beautiful fix (16:54)
Yeah.

Susan Miele (16:55)
and I'm gonna make a lot of money.

Susan Miele (16:57)
and I'm gonna have nice things. So that story I wrote for myself when I was a teenager. And then I worked really, really hard to live that story. And I did. So that who I was was that story. That was my identity.

Susan Miele (17:16)
And so when the when it started coming apart, I was like, I I didn't have I couldn't name that. I couldn't say that's narrative identity and I can rewrite my story. I was like, I need to go back. I need to go back. I have to get back. I have to go back.

Susan Miele (17:33)
I have to get well. I have to figure out how to rebuild that life that I had. Like it for two years I was like stuck in like a liminal space trying to figure out how to get back until finally I was like, wait, there's no going back. You have to rewrite a new story. This is not a recover, this is a rebuild, this is a reconstruct. There that person's gone, that house is gone, all that stuff's gone. And

Susan Miele (18:02)
You know, that job's gone, there's no going back. So you have to go forward and recognize that the the struggle is in fact the path and embrace that for what it was as opposed to resist it. And that was what and once I did and and started trying on different selves and testing out who was I going to be in the next chapter.

Susan Miele (18:30)
it became clear that this was just it was part of my journey was to

Susan Miele (18:36)
Be a more well-rounded person, not just be defined by my job, but to explore all the different ways. You can, you know, not I do I do a lot of different things now. And during that time I started my doctoral work and became a PhD. So I did a I really expanded my horizons quite a lot from my narrow definition of who I was until I was in my young 40s. And so my second chapter as a CPO and my second chapter,

Susan Miele (19:06)
my life and career, I was so much more well rounded and wasn't just defined one-dimensionally by my work.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (19:18)
That's such a beautiful reframe that the struggle is the path. And that you are so much more multidimensional than the original story you gave yourself when you were 14 years old. And I think when you can go through something like this and have that realization, the world opens up.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (19:41)
Because when you're sitting at home after having to resign from this career, your baby, your everything, it can be very lonely, it can feel scary. How do I get back? But when you have that realization that wait, there's more, I can do other things. I'm more than this one little definition and this whole world is out there that I can choose from. I think if you can get to that place, it really opens up a whole new world of possibility. so then what what made you decide to write

Tracy | a beautiful fix (20:10)
A box.

Susan Miele (20:12)
Book came well first. I started speaking around menopause in the workplace. So when I left corporate for the second time three and a half years ago, and that was really my retirement at that point from the corporate world, I started speaking about the impact of menopause on the workplace and how we need to normalize the conversation. So my work started very specifically. I was like, I'll use my corporate experience, I'll use my lived experience, and I will help companies.

Susan Miele (20:43)
Get better at this. The way we got better at normalizing mental health, the way we got better at normalizing fertility benefit. Like we got over my career in human resources, we normalized many different taboo conversations that might have been in the 80s when I first started. So I'm like, I'm gonna help normalize the conversation. And then I realized the lens of that for that particular work was impactful, but that menopause is more than just a

Susan Miele (21:12)
A physiological event. It is an identity event for many, for many of us. So it felt too narrow to just talk about it in that menopause in that regard. So that's set me to think about the lens of identity. And then when you think about identity, it's like, who am I? But it's also the other two legs of this three-legged identity stool: who am I? How did I get here?

Susan Miele (21:42)
Where am I going? So if we only look at one dimension of identity, it's easy to see how we get stuck. So if the the story only says who am I, and who am I is this you know high-powered C level person with fancy clothes.

Susan Miele (22:01)
How did I get here though? Like that I didn't grow up that way. My my father worked in a shipyard. My mother was a secretary when she finally went back to work. She was a stay-at-home mom. I grew up in a lower middle class blue-collar suburb of Boston. Like, how did I get there? And why was that so important to me?

Susan Miele (22:20)
And then where was I going? Was that it? Was just being the next biggest chief people officer the end of the story? Like so looking at it from the three legs of the stool of identity just felt so

Susan Miele (22:35)
it's felt felt like a much more helpful lens for people. So that's why that's how the book came about. So if you look at each of those th those questions are each answered in the book in in one way or another. and when I got my PhD I was in my fifties. So I always thought I need to put it to use in some way. So layering the theory over the story felt like a really nice way to do that. And that's that's what I did. And it it's been pretty well received so far. It's been less than two months though since the book

Tracy | a beautiful fix (23:07)
Congratulations on bringing that into the world. And so I'm curious, when you went back to corporate America, and you were talking to them about paramenopause, how was that received? Was was it welcomed or was it like, we you know, we don't really talk about that or have time to think about it, or it's not that important.

Susan Miele (23:28)
It's it's still really not talked about. So

Susan Miele (23:35)
And the irony is not lost on me. I was the chief people officer and I didn't really consider it. Even when I went back to my second chapter as chief people officer, the demographics of the company, like it just didn't occur to me that it was ready for prime time in terms of ready to be normalized. And then when I left is when I was like, wait a second, all this social media there's so much like three years ago, right? Menopause was exploding on the social media front. Influencers, books, in our mainstream media.

Susan Miele (24:05)
In your local bookstore, all over the internet. So I was like, wait, wait, wait, now this might be an opportunity to see what companies are doing now that I'm away from it. And then I went back and I realized, God, they're really not doing anything. And so it's very mixed still. And only about less than 20% of companies in the US offer any kind of menopausal benefits. I have had quite a number of lovely conversations at companies with women's resources groups.

Susan Miele (24:35)
with lunch and learns, but it's still not, it's not taking off in the workplace the way it is outside of the workplace when you see it in your feed everywhere if you're

Susan Miele (24:49)
Anywhere from 40 to 65, I think it's probably it's all it's pretty much all over. So in the workplace it still has a ways to go in terms of normalization. And I feel like a lot of the work that's happening now will hope hopefully for the next generation. It'll just be a normal part of day-to-day. It won't feel like it's such a big deal to go through perimetopause or menopause at work.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (25:13)
Hopefully because it benefits the corporations. You know, I I don't have the stats at hand, but I know it really impacts a lot of, you know, obviously women and their careers at a time where they're very pivotal to these these companies. So it's in everyone's best interest to not have that talent be lost or for them to feel like they have to move on, you know, instead of being able to stay there and work through this and and understand it. So it's

Susan Miele (25:37)
Yeah, it's a sign it's the thing is it's such it is a business issue. 50% of your workforce is going to experience menopause. You know, it's at some

Tracy | a beautiful fix (25:48)
Yes.

Susan Miele (25:49)
point in their career. And if it's not s in your workplace, then it's at your home, you know, your w your wife, your mother, your sister, your cousin. Like it's it normalizing it feels like it almost feels silly sometimes that we haven't normalized it yet, but it's i I think the taboos of the ages.

Susan Miele (26:08)
The stigmas associated with it, I think are still pretty prevalent. And I wonder myself, like if you had known at the time in your career that, wow, this is parametopause, would I have said that back then? Probably not. I probably still would have been like, I'm out. I don't know.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (26:28)
Ha ha ha.

Susan Miele (26:29)
I don't know. I guess the tools, I didn't have the tools and I that's why

Tracy | a beautiful fix (26:33)
Yeah.

Susan Miele (26:33)
I'm trying to help give people the tools now, in my in one dimension of my work. but I think we still have quite a ways to go, at least here in the US. But we we catch up, you know, the UK's way ahead of us. some of the other European countries are way ahead of us, so hopefully we'll catch up.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (26:51)
So if someone's listening to this right now and they're starting to kind of realize they might be in perimenopause or they're just realizing that maybe their identity, the story that they've been living by no longer fits, where would you suggest that they start?

Susan Miele (27:09)
Yeah, I think it depends on so that I that's one of the reasons I wanted to broaden the lens because I think you can your identity can rupture from lots of different things. It could be illness, it could be divorce, it could be emptiness. There's lots of career is one of them, certainly menopause is one of them. So I think it's it sort of depends on if you're

Susan Miele (27:34)
embracing that change or are you finding that change like impossible, right? So for all those changes for me, I felt so stuck. I didn't know how to move. Like I was just stuck. And I think

Tracy | a beautiful fix (27:46)
Yes.

Susan Miele (27:47)
a lot of midlife people, not just women, but midlife people get stuck because they either, like I said, live into their job. So therefore they feel like they have no choice but to stick with that career or that high paying salary. Or they're

Susan Miele (28:04)
you know, so attached to the idea that, you know, being married is who they have to be or be like they like whatever the change might be that they have to confront, it's like

Susan Miele (28:17)
how do I how do I actually have the tools to do that? And I feel like the identity framework gives people the tools to help unstick themselves. For me, I had to get well first. And that my journey felt felt a little bit wonkier because I was so stuck, but part of that was the trauma and the grief and the not having hormone therapy that was keeping me quite literally from moving.

Susan Miele (28:47)
Like I was like stuck in that liminality, that hallway between one door closing and the other door opening. Like I was just stuck there. And it almost sounds silly, but acupuncture is what started me getting unstuck. It was like it was like the trauma and the grief had to move through me so that I could access myself again. Like I had to find my self-reliance that I had developed as a young person. And I had

Susan Miele (29:17)
To refine my agency. Like it was in there, but it was like overcome by trauma, by grief, by imposter syndrome at that point. Because then I thought, well, I you can tell me I had menopause. Fine. You can tell me it was perimenopause, but I failed. That was an epic fail. And what was I gonna say? he's gonna go out and interview for other C-suite jobs and be like,

Susan Miele (29:42)
I had a breakdown. no, no, wait. It was menopause. that's even worse. Like, what was the like I had I was so

Tracy | a beautiful fix (29:48)
Yes.

Susan Miele (29:49)
I was so stuck and it was like every and my health hadn't recovered yet. So I needed to find a way to unstick. And I I tell people all the time there's lots of things you can do to unstick, right? It could be meditation, it could be dancing in your kitchen, it could be getting out walking every day. Like it might not be acupuncture that unsticks you. I mean

Susan Miele (30:12)
It

Susan Miele (30:12)
might be therapy that unsticks you. It could be anything. But if you're stuck and you can't see a way, like you know that old identity is gone. Your kids are gone.

Susan Miele (30:22)
They're off to college, your h ex your husband's gone and you're alone, someone's passed away, or you have an illness, and you're stuck in that hallway and you cannot see a way forward, you have to find a way first to unstick. Like, and what are what is that? You have to find some tool and some support. And it could be anything. It happened to be acupuncture for me. It was like life-saving.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (30:47)
And what was the time frame from when you first left your career and you starting to come to these realizations and start to put some kind of understanding behind what you went through, what you were going through and what you kind of needed to do? Was it immediate or did it take time?

Susan Miele (31:07)
No, it would have probably been sooner if the house didn't burn down. But

Tracy | a beautiful fix (31:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Susan Miele (31:12)
the house burned down like in within the year. So I think that definitely prolonged it. So before I was sort of felt like I was even on any kind of path out of the darkness, it was probably close to two years for me. Because the first year was I resigned, we pivoted, we sold the house.

Susan Miele (31:31)
Then we bought the new house and then that happened. So then it kind of I got it. So mine was a bit prolonged, but it could be it could be two years for for folks to, you know, embrace this idea that, okay, this is not okay. You know, the other option, right, is you can always recalibrate. Like I could have I could have recalibrated and perhaps if my house didn't burn down, that might have been. I would like I went into consulting after that. I quite enjoyed it. It's like I could have recalibrated life differently.

Susan Miele (32:01)
It's just that I couldn't let go of that identity story. I knew I had to write it differently, but it was still such an important part that any job that I tried during that seven years didn't feel like it felt like I was not living up to that.

Susan Miele (32:20)
little piece of the story that still felt important. Now I went back and I did it very differently. I it wasn't who I was anymore. It was just what I did. I I know you studied yoga. I I went from acupuncture to yoga and then those became sort of the pivotal parts of my healing journey until I eventually did get hormone replacement at seven years later at fifty. so I was one of those like

Susan Miele (32:49)
finally was able to access it. And so then the combination of acupuncture, yoga, hormone replacement therapy, and then all the things I had tried during that seven years, I was like, okay, I'm I had the courage to go back to the C suite in around 50.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (33:08)
And I guess my question for you, just hearing you just kind of recap all of that is was this a blessing or a curse? Everything that you went through?

Susan Miele (33:23)
I think retrospectively it was a blessing.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (33:27)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm just I'm thinking about this. It's like in society they tell you what success looks like and man, you checked those boxes. You you ha you had it. And you would have had every reason to continue along that path, but because you went through this

Tracy | a beautiful fix (33:45)
not only are you on the other side kind of a in a different place, you get to experience life in a different way, but I think about all the women that need to hear your story, that you are now speaking for them and bringing it back to corporate the thing that made you fall apart in that moment, you are now going and speaking on behalf of other women of here's one thing that, you know, could be happening with it. It's powerful when you

Tracy | a beautiful fix (34:12)
I hear these stories all the time from people who come on the podcast and I can always see where, like you said, the struggle is the path, you know. So I I'm saying that because if someone's listening to this, I want them to feel that that if you are struggling, if you are going through something, if there's a way that you can kind of look at your story, my story, other stories at on this podcast as

Susan Miele (34:34)
Yes.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (34:34)
what could this mean for me? What what could this be the universe is trying to shake me.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (34:40)
you know, awake into something else and what might that be and try to get a little bit excited about that.

Susan Miele (34:46)
Yes, and there's two theories in the book that I think are worth mentioning briefly without getting overly academic on you. one

Tracy | a beautiful fix (34:52)
Yeah.

Susan Miele (34:53)
is called possible selves, and possible selves is like that a a out, it's like an outcome or it's a piece of the narrative identity. It's like the little fragments that we try on. It's like c trying on clothes in a dressing room. This fits, this doesn't. And it's

Susan Miele (35:13)
I don't know, growing up in the sixties and seventies with parents who were children of immigrants, I didn't feel like I had possibilities. I felt like it was one path and one path forward. So being able to

Susan Miele (35:28)
downsize our lives so that I could try on some other possibilities and see what stuck was that was the blessing. And I don't want anybody to think, well, well, that's nice. You know, she's privileged. She got, I I I'm not particularly privileged. I didn't come for money. I put myself through college. I put myself through grad school. I we really had to make some big changes to accommodate these possibilities. But goodness, was that worth

Susan Miele (35:58)
It in the second chapter. And perhaps if I had stayed on that path, in fact, I know I if I stayed on the path earlier, I would have made a lot of money. Would I have even made it to this age as healthy as I am now? I don't know. Because it was so one-dimensional, and

Tracy | a beautiful fix (36:15)
Right. Yes.

Susan Miele (36:18)
I didn't have time to exercise, I didn't have time to do like I yoga was took too much time. Like

Tracy | a beautiful fix (36:24)
Yes.

Susan Miele (36:25)
it was like I worked and I

Susan Miele (36:28)
you know, took care of my family and my house and like so many of us and we can't s and I my parents were

Susan Miele (36:36)
were didn't need care, they were getting older, but like all the things that women do. So I had this few years where I was like, I'm gonna try to teach Pilates. Okay, I didn't really love that. Discard that. I liked consulting, but it wasn't the kind of impact that you could make in a really effective head of HR job. So I was like, okay, I did that for a while. And I was like, okay, I'm not gonna do that. Then it was like I did my 200 hour yoga teacher training and I love that. But most

Susan Miele (37:06)
I loved it because it gave me the philosophy of how to live and think differently. So then I started supporting a nonprofit in Boston. I did the I did every role on that nonprofit, including being interim president and board chair, which was for marginalized inner city girls, and that stuck. So that work stuck. Then I went back to school and pursued my PhD, became a PhD, and that really stuck.

Susan Miele (37:36)
And I was like, okay, now I have dimensions, right? I have a job. I have that thing that I do, but then I have yoga, I have ed academics, I have nonprofit work, and I s like I just felt like such a better developed person.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (37:57)
And digging into your human design a little bit, it all makes sense because,

Susan Miele (38:01)
Does it?

Tracy | a beautiful fix (38:02)
yes, as a projector, projectors are these amazing energy types that we walk amongst. And they're all about seeing people deeply. Like you think about your aura, projectors' auras are are very almost penetrating and probing. It's like projectors can see deeply into someone and make people feel very, very seen almost instantly. And so your job as a chief, you know, people.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (38:26)
Officer. Absolutely. Cause it's about guiding other people's energies, being able to see systems and processes, efficiencies, seeing things in others that others, you know, can't. and then the five one is very universal. It is about being on the big stages, it is about impacting others at kind of that level. but with a five one, you have to be careful because you can do all the things. It's a little bit of a fixer kind of archetype.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (38:54)
And just because you can do all the things doesn't mean that you should. And a lot of people with the 5-1 profile sometimes feel overwhelmed because people come to them and they project onto them what they need them to be. Like, Susan, you're amazing. You can do all these things. I need you to do them for me. But and you have to put up almost guardrails. You have to protect that energy because again, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. and then you also have splenic authority, which is very much so being able to make decisions that are in alignment with you.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (39:24)
In the moment. It's that into intuition. It's that voice that that speaks to you. It's very soft. It's a whisper. It comes once and then it goes. So you have to be very in tune with yourself and trust yourself to know when you get those hits to trust them and to let that be your guide versus your your mind, logic, or you know, other people. Does does that does that resonate with you at all?

Susan Miele (39:47)
Yes, it does. It r the particularly that last part, because I feel like that's what guided me that this last twenty years. And it wasn't at all what guided me my first twenty years, you know. My first twenty years were so performative and so checking off the boxes of that identity that I felt so committed to that I was going to just no matter what, I was gonna achieve and continue on that path. And then

Susan Miele (40:16)
I I was able during that seven years to to figure out to like I knew what fit and what didn't pretty quickly. Like I didn't linger. Once I had the freedom, right, once I had given up

Susan Miele (40:28)
the big job and the big house, then I had the freedom to say, well this doesn't work. So it doesn't matter. Pilates, no Pilates. Consulting, great.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (40:36)
Yes.

Susan Miele (40:36)
Like I could try and feel like I wasn't a failure when they didn't work, as opposed to feeling like I was putting everything into them. So and and now I I over that time I learned to trust that much more. Yes, no. Even just, you know, changing houses and changing life as we as our daughters launched and engaged and

Susan Miele (40:58)
all the things, it's like I trust that so much more now that I I know what's right. And it doesn't it's not about what I do, it's more about who I am and how I live how every day much more peacefully.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (41:15)
Beautifully said. Is is before we move on to the speed run, is there anything else that we haven't discussed today that you would love to share with our listeners?

Susan Miele (41:24)
No, I think we covered a lot, which is great. Thank you.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (41:28)
So I have something that I started. It's little love notes from one guest to the other. They don't know who they're leaving this love note for. It's just simply for my next guest. And yours comes from my last guest, who was Karen Richter. She's the founder of Confident by Nature. And Karen, she's a forest therapy guide who recently had a life-affirming experience walking the Camino. And she helps Okay, okay.

Susan Miele (41:49)
I I listened to that episode.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (41:52)
And she helps others reconnect with themselves through nature, but she left this little love note for you.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (41:58)
The woman you're hoping to become isn't somewhere out in the future. She's already here. Every time you choose rest instead of rushing, curiosity instead of judgment, or a walk outside instead of one more thing on your to-do list, you meet her again. Keep following,

Susan Miele (42:16)
Beautiful.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (42:18)
keep following what makes you feel most alive. That's your true nature calling you home. So what comes up for you when you hear that?

Susan Miele (42:26)
God, it's so beautiful. It's it feels exactly where I am right now in this chapter,

Tracy | a beautiful fix (42:32)
Yeah.

Susan Miele (42:33)
which is I've been listening to your guests

Tracy | a beautiful fix (42:36)
Yeah.

Susan Miele (42:36)
and I'm like, it feels like they always just hit just right. It's amazing.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (42:40)
It's

Tracy | a beautiful fix (42:40)
you can't make this stuff up. The universe is so amazing. It's every

Susan Miele (42:44)
Yes.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (42:44)
time it just seems to to match. But what makes you come alive?

Susan Miele (42:51)
My daily vinyasa practice is still the thing that I rely

Tracy | a beautiful fix (42:54)
Hm.

Susan Miele (42:55)
on for energy, for peace, for that time with myself every day. Like that's still my go-to.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:06)
And you said daily, that is

Susan Miele (43:08)
Mm-hmm.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:08)
that's admirable. There's nothing like going to the mat. I I can't put words to to what it does for you mentally, physically, spiritually, the whole thing. But what is a song that instantly shifts your energy or makes you feel something?

Susan Miele (43:22)
Brave by Sarah Barellus.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:24)
mm, absolutely.

Susan Miele (43:29)
If you're ready to like if you're gonna do a big event or something, you have something, play that first.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:35)
Absolut you

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:35)
could pretty much put on any of her songs and

Susan Miele (43:38)
True.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:38)
and get that. She is phenomenal.

Susan Miele (43:41)
True.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:41)
she her song She Used to Be Mine. Is that is that correct?

Susan Miele (43:46)
I think so.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:47)
She used to be mine from the waitress. It or something.

Susan Miele (43:49)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (43:50)
That brings me to tears every single time. so a book that cracked you open or stayed with you long after the last page.

Susan Miele (43:58)
I couldn't decide, so I have to tell tell you two, and one will be very familiar because it's The Nightingale by Kristen Hanna.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (44:05)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Miele (44:06)
And that one was years ago. But the most recent one was last year, which is The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb.

Susan Miele (44:16)
So Wally Lamb has had some real success books that stay with you, and then there was a couple in between, but the last book he wrote, 2025, The River is Waiting, was just

Susan Miele (44:27)
I think about it all the time.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (44:29)
Hmm. I'll have to check that out. I read another book by him, but it's been d decades, but I'll okay, I'll definitely have to look at that.

Susan Miele (44:37)
Yeah, I can't tell you much about it 'cause then that'll that'll give it away.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (44:40)
It'll Okay. What

Tracy | a beautiful fix (44:43)
is your favorite little indulgence or guilty pleasure?

Susan Miele (44:47)
Dark chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's. My husband and I are addicted to them.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (44:50)
Yes. Yes. Mm.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (44:57)
I mean you had me at dark chocolate and then you throw peanut butter in there. It's my gosh. Yes.

Susan Miele (44:59)
Ha ha ha.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (45:01)
What's one thing that always reminds you how beautiful life really is?

Susan Miele (45:07)
Sunrise.

Susan Miele (45:10)
We face south where we are. we live in Maine now and it's every morning the sun comes up and it's just it's just a good reminder. Every day's a new day, right? It's like every day you get on your mat, every day on your mat is different. And like

Tracy | a beautiful fix (45:25)
That's right. And you know, we've

Tracy | a beautiful fix (45:27)
just experienced the wildfires and the I'm I'm in Indiana right outside of Chicago and you know, for for a week we've had just gray skies and I thought I will never take a beautiful blue sky for granted again. Ever.

Susan Miele (45:42)
Yeah, I feel similarly about the ocean. So like living on the coast for me is like

Tracy | a beautiful fix (45:44)
Yes.

Susan Miele (45:46)
but sunrise every day if because it's like as the Buddha says, right? It's like every day is a new chance to start over.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (45:55)
Absolutely. And

Tracy | a beautiful fix (45:56)
a and a such a gift. So how can listeners stay connected with you?

Susan Miele (46:00)
I have a website which is susanmealy.com. I'm most active so on social media are on LinkedIn and Substack, which is also largely susanmealy.com is my Substack. And my book, of course, is available wherever you buy a book. so those are probably the best options.

Tracy | a beautiful fix (46:19)
Wonderful. We'll have all that in the show notes. Well, Susan, thank you for being here. And friends, you know, if you're wondering what's next, maybe don't start with the answer. Maybe just start with a pause. And until next time, keep getting high on life. One beautiful fix at a time. Thank you.

Susan Miele (46:37)
Thank you.