The Shadow Work Midlife Is Asking You to Do — with Suzanne Hanna

Have you hit the point in midlife where the old ways of coping… stop working? 

Where the busyness, the people-pleasing, the "just think positive" all quietly stop holding, and something underneath starts asking to be seen and felt?

In this soul-deep conversation, I sit down with my dear friend Suzanne Hanna — a licensed psychotherapist with 30+ years of experience, author of Navigating the Wilderness Within, and founder of The Wilderness Walk and the Shadow Coaching Institute. 

Suzanne has walked 1,000 miles across the country with her dog to face everything she'd spent a lifetime running from, and she's here to talk about what she found on the other side of fear: freedom.

We explore why midlife is the "universal two-by-four" that finally wakes us up, why your body keeps the score when your feelings go unheard, and what shadow work really is.

We talk about the difference between being authentic and being real, the misalignment that no amount of positive thinking can fix, and why true freedom comes from accepting all of you — the golden shadow and the dark.

If you're a woman feeling the pull to stop surviving and start truly living, this one will stay with you. Listen twice; your subconscious will thank you. Subscribe, share, and tap the heart in Apple Podcasts.

Links & Resources:

The Wilderness Walk

The Shadow Coaching Institute

Find Suzanne on IG

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is Elena Lipson, your intuitive coach and mentor. And I have a dear friend today. I'm so excited, like actually a friend that we've known each other for a long time. I'm so excited to welcome Suzanne Hanna, who is a licensed psychotherapist, author, and transformational guide with over 30 years of clinical experience specializing in trauma recovery, depth psychology, and embodied healing. She is the founder and creator of The Wilderness Walk, a high-end personal development platform offering immersive programs and life-changing journeys in the Shadow Coaching Institute, where she trains therapists, coaches, and helping professionals in therapeutic shadow coaching. Suzanne's work integrates trauma-informed care, shadow work, experiential practices, and nature-based wisdom to support profound personal and professional transformation. Her approach is grounded in decades of clinical practice and shaped by lived experience, including an amazing 1,000-mile solo walk across the country undertaken as a path of healing and self-reclamation. She is very well known for her depth, integrity, and commitments at facilitating meaningful, lasting change, and is one of the most talented transformational just um witnesses and coaches that I've gotten to luckily witness by her side as co-facilitator and the one and only retreat I chose to go to when I was dealing with walking the bridge of transformation from one season of life to another. I chose Suzanne because I trust her dearly with just all the intimate details of life, but also to hold the things that it's hard for us to hold sometimes when we're looking at our own shadow, because I walk in as like love and light, but that's not all there is. So and I'm learning that, learning that the intimate way myself right now. So welcome, Suzanne, to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Thank you so much, Elena. I am so excited to have this conversation with you because we've known each other for quite a while now, and we've been able to witness so much of each other's journey over the years. And so I'm excited to have this conversation. And I know the way both of us work is whatever needs to come through will come through. And and I'm excited to yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

And and you know, I really I think for years I sort of looked at shadow work as that thing off to the side. And it's not to say that the work that I really was drawn to and have done in my communities and my clients didn't go deep and didn't go to places where it was very transformational for them. But I've also learned after decades of doing the work is you really can't take your clients to the depths that you yourself haven't gone to. So I have been learning that the very human way, which is the more comfortable I can be in that discomfort that, you know, I think the the retreat that I co-hosted with you was so blessed and lucky to join you. That was over a decade ago. And I remember being very, very comfortable because you were holding a really beautiful space. But I remember feeling this awe of how deep everyone was willing to go most of the time, the sadness and all of the emotions and the highs and the lows and everything it took to really walk through to come out lighter on the other side. So I've been witness, witness to your style, witness to your ability, which says to me that you've done the work for yourself and continue to do the work, which is what we all hopefully continue to do because there is no end point. So I'd love to start there. What drew you to shadow work and why is it important beyond the obvious we should all do our work? Why? What drew you to it and why is it so important?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Well, there could be a really long answer to this or a short answer to this, but I'll give you kind of the medium answer. So, you know, as you said earlier, you know, I've been a psychotherapist for 30 plus years now. And I remember when I first left graduate school, I was thrown into the deep end of the pool because I worked in crisis incident situations like school shootings and when 9-11 happened, and you know, intense amounts of sexual abuse and other types of really deep familial traumas. And I remember going into that thinking, oh my God, I am so over my head. I have no idea what I'm doing. And as I look back on it now, I am so grateful for that experience because that experience really taught me that um I had to work with my own nervous system and I had to work with my own uh traumas and my own unresolved issues in order for me to be able to show up in a way where I could hold space for the intensity of what was going on. So, over fast forward over the next, you know, 10 years from that, I did a lot, my personal life, as you had just said, doing it the human way, and I love that, because I think our personal life really brings us into places where we can't ignore our shadows. And um, and so for me, that culminated when I was in an emotionally abusive relationship and then decided to take this radical step and walk a thousand miles across the country with my dog and really face everything that I had spent a lifetime running from all my fear, my shame, my anger, my doubt, my insecurities. And I had never done that to that capacity, and that led me on a trajectory where I knew not from an intellectual standpoint, but from a fully embodied standpoint, that as long as we have something that we're running from, we're never really free. And that became my mission, hence the journey from fear to freedom. And that became my mission because I thought we're never gonna find freedom externally because it's not gonna exist in this world, but we can find freedom internally, and the only way to do that is to face the things that keep us from feeling that sense of freedom. And I became very passionate about working with the unconscious, which is what shadow work is. It's working with the part of ourselves that we've repressed, suppressed, denied, dismissed because it was either too uncomfortable or too painful or too difficult. Um and in doing that and working with thousands of people over the years, I have found that this is the one way that people have really basically unshackled themselves from years and years and years of um pain, suffering, uh doubt, um, fear. So for me, I have been trained in many different modalities, I've been parts of many different things, but most of it is still working with the conscious, consciousness. And to me, when you bring the unconscious to the conscious awareness, that's where real radical shifts happen. And that's, I feel that's what I've been placed on this planet to do. It's what I love. It's watching people break open in such a beautiful way, is what lights me up.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, I love that. What do you you mentioned people are sort of running from certain things? What do you see? Are there certain patterns that you see playing out over and over again where because you could be living a normal, sort of quote unquote normal life, but not really living at the depths of what's possible. What do you see they're running from? Yeah, and how does that show up in their lives when they by the time they come to work with you?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Yeah, I love that question. So, what I tell people is that we are born to survive. That's how we go through life. We we build what I call survival patterns, where we learn how to cope, we learn how to manage, we learn how to um deal with things that can be incredibly painful and incredibly challenging. But it comes a time in everybody's life where nobody wants to just survive anymore. We want to live, we want to thrive, we want to move beyond those survival patterns. And those survival patterns can be anything where we're avoiding rejection, we're avoiding abandonment, we're avoiding uh discomfort, we're avoiding pain, we're avoiding uh loss. There could be a zillion things that we're avoiding, but what most people don't understand is that those things are inevitable in this human journey. We're all going to experience loss, we're all going to experience pain. But how we navigate that is what the game changer is. And so to me, we need to move away from survival and we need to move into life. And you can't move into life as long as your unconscious is still driving the bus. Yeah. And that's a really big piece in all of this because, you know, we work, we go through life doing everything humanly possible to avoid pain. And one of the things that I say to people, I've I've coined a phrase called shadow traps. And what shadow traps are basically just maladaptive coping mechanisms. So we numb ourselves, we busy ourselves, we go into all different types of avoidance, we people please, we seek approval, we do all of these things just so we don't have to feel the discomfort or the pain. And I love there's a quote that Brene Brown said years ago, which is discomfort is the journey home. And I truly believe that with every fiber of my being, because again, your nervous system has been built in a way to function that's different from what we think cognitively. And so if we're not really looking at the patterns that the nervous system has been built to survive, then we never really get to the root of the problem. We're basically just, you know, coding it with different ways of um temporary um distraction.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, and sort of calling it your personality, right? That's just how I am. For years, I was sort of that person that made people everyone, everyone's comfortable. I could just be whoever I needed to be where I was. And I was really proud of that part of my personality until I realized wait a minute, there's times where I really don't care to make everyone comfortable. You start seeing the cost of it, right? So I'm sure there's many different versions of that. And I think it is really scary to be uncomfortable in that way. And I, and the discomfort piece is um it's this subtle buzz that happens in your body, right? And then, and then the discomfort, the fastest thing you want to do is just take the pressure off, take the pressure off. So whether it's acting too quickly or saying the thing or pleasing or all those things, I think it's it's such a embedded part of life now that I'm sort of looking at it through a different lens and noticing where you said it's it's the numbing, but it could be very socially acceptable numbing. So people sort of don't have any any any um resistance. There's no wall, right? Until sort of you hit the wall, which is you still have a choice then. Actually, I was talking to somebody the other day, someone very intimate in my life, and she's like, Oh, I always need to have something. If I stop listening to music or whatever, or YouTube, I hear my thoughts. And she sort of said it jokingly, but I think that's actually true. And so I know for me, one of my big tells is um when I'm scrolling a lot or when I'm like, I haven't listened to a podcast in weeks, and it's because I'm allowing myself to just be okay with the silence, and it feels very different than numbing it out with something else.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah, distraction is a very um powerful and potent survival pattern, right? So discomfort is just when the nervous system is dysregulated because it's not in its familiar state. So, you know, it's it's I think our thoughts about it and and the things that we imagine are far greater than the discomfort itself, right? So we we know that if there's discomfort, then it gets fueled by a lot of stories, which is why I use this concept of the storyteller, because the the stories really are what fuel all of those pieces of discomfort, whether it's all the what if or worst case scenarios, or um and I love what you said, you know, before around you know, it's easier to just scroll, it's easier to just numb, it's easier just to distract than it is to actually feel. And we are hardwired actually to avoid feeling, and yet it's interesting because then people at some point in their life, usually in midlife, where people start to say, I feel dead inside, I feel disconnected, I feel detached from myself, from others, from life. And a lot of that is because we're so disconnected from our own feelings, our own life force, our own energy. And a lot of that is just become so repressed and suppressed in the unconscious that we're all walking through life disconnected and detached. And um and a lot of people feel really alone in that.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yeah, and it's it is lonely because I think once you have that midlife, and let's focus on midlife a little bit because that's kind of where we are here in this intuitive life podcast. We're really looking at this phase of life where we do have this awakening, we do have this thing that you just really can't keep underwater anymore. Like you can't keep that beach ball down, and it just starts like little bubbles start coming up, and you're like, wait a minute, this is this doesn't feel the same anymore. Or you um, and I think that's a lot of you know what I've seen, and you've probably seen it as well, because this is the work you're doing, is like this is where a lot of the autoimmune stuff lives, too, in many cycles of life, but specifically in this one as well, where all of a sudden you're feeling out of body because your body's sort of doing things that you're you're not really understanding. And I'd love to just explore this a little bit with you. I don't think you and I have actually talked about this before. We've touched on it before as we were both interested in this midlife phase, but I think what I've been exploring lately is this idea that your body is having expected symptomology around perimenopause and menopause and this phase of life. Whereas in ancient cultures or other more wise, deeply rooted cultures, there's um there's um an initiation into this phase of life. There's a wisening that happens, there's an inner respect and cultural respect for women who are getting older and have this body of wisdom to share, whether it's you know, nature wisdom or mother wisdom or grandmother wisdom or family wisdom or just people mind, all the different ways women know, women know things. Whereas now we're supposed to outsource all of that to symptomology and pharmacology and and medication, like all this whole industry around this huge industry around midlife, problems, symptoms, and all of that. And that's saying, listen, like we just talked about before we hit record, I gained weight, I had all these symptoms, all these things going on. But thankfully, I also had this awareness that it's not just one thing, there's other things going on within myself that's causing me to need to understand this from a different lens as well. And no shade to anyone doing any HRT or hormones or all the things you you need to do, whatever. That's that's a personal, intimate decision. I think there's also another missing piece, which is um what you also do really well on your journeys, which is ritual initiation. There's there's calling forth, there's speaking, there's movement, there's all these different things where we start to, even if we're not labeling it midlife ritual milestones, or there is an initiation where you're like, oh, wait a minute. This this person at this stage of life is has something to share and also has been keeping things suppressed for a long time. Maybe that combination is also causing other things going on physically. I'd love to hear your thoughts on on this piece.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah, so this is one of the reasons you said it so beautifully of why I love the unconscious, because it's the body is very wise, very, very wise. And we spend a lifetime trying to figure things out through our intellect, through our thoughts, through our cognitions. And what ends up happening, and I think the brilliant part of midlife is that we get to this place where the body says no more. Right. And um and we almost get that that universal two by four that happens a little bit differently in midlife, where it's like becomes a greater sense of urgency to wake up. Because if you don't wake up, there's less years ahead of you than there are behind you. And it's really important more than ever to wake up. And the body has been trying to wake us up for years. And what ends up happening is that when the body is not heard and the body is not listened to, whether it is through ritual or ceremony or some form of honoring or listening, then what happens is the body's discomfort and that can show up in symptomology, that can show up in physical pain, it can show up in emotional pain, it can show up in in many, many different ways. But if we don't honor it, we don't listen to it, we don't respect it, it is going to get louder because that's what it's designed to do. You know, it's it's there's the old book, you know, that um that the body is really, you know, the body keeps the score by Bessel Vande Koek, right? It's the body is constantly tracking through its nervous system, through its endocrine system, through the organs, through every single cell in your body holds cellular memory. So every experience you've ever had, both difficult and good, lives in your body. And when we go to things like talk therapy, or we're doing things that are really just embracing um or just um in in getting engaged in the mind, we're not really listening to what's happening in the body. And it's not it's not creating change, it's not creating transformation, it's not creating, and I for you, someone who talks a lot about intuition, intuition doesn't live in the mind, it lives in the body, and so it's really getting very intimate with your body on every level of being, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It's it's every level of your being and getting to know your body in an intimate way. And that's what's going to create those changes. I mean, yes, the body goes through physiological changes around hormonal changes and things like that, but that's happening, that happens organically. It's all of the other things that are not addressed that are creating greater issues. And and so I I believe wholeheartedly that midlife is that space where it's like it's time for that reclamation and it's time for that, you know, going inward as opposed to continuing seeking outward, whether that's through work or relationships or all of those places where we might get some instant gratification. I I so love it when people come to me and they say enough, enough, you know, I'm ready, I'm ready to go there, I'm ready to go inward, I'm ready to look at what I've been unwilling to look at all of these years. That to me is the doorway to transformational change.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah, I love that. And I've seen it happen like in real time, which is beautiful with the work that you do. So let's change direction a little bit because I really do want to I want to lean into what you're working on these days. So, what are you most excited about? I know you're building this beautiful certification program, the Shadow Coaching Institute. Um, tell me a little bit about that. What excites you most about this? Because you've been doing this work for a long time and it is iterated. So this almost feels like a New phase, but also like a culmination in a beautiful way, too. So, what are you excited about?

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Yeah, it does feel new and different because I mean, I am, you know, I'm moving into the end of it midlife. You know, I'm close to 60, I'm 59. And so for me, it's more about impact than it is about creating the systems that allow people to change. Now it's like I've been doing that for 30 years and I've loved every second of it. But I also know that I don't want this work to die with me, right? I want this to have more of a ripple effect and to put this, these tools in the hands of other people who now can go out and create change in their own way. So, really, what I'm most excited about now is taking 30 years of frameworks and intellectual property and ideas and just taking that now and putting it into the hands of very capable people who can go out and do this in their own way and their own form. And and that really excites me because it's it's it's more about giving the work the voice than giving me the voice. Right? I have been the the voice of this for a long time, and it's time for the work to have its own voice.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

I love that. It's very much a legacy kind of building that bridge forward.

unknown 23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah. So so you have been doing this work for a long time, and shadow work has been sort of around for a long time. But why is it critical now that more people are doing it?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

I'm really glad you asked that question. Because I think, you know, when shadow work was first created by Carl Jung, it had a it had a purpose. It was really about depth psychology. And then it got hijacked for many, many years. And part of my work in the world is helping to re-educate people about not only the origin of shadow work, but also modernizing it in a way that people can understand it now. When it got hijacked, people started becoming very afraid of the shadow. You know, it was all about darkness and it was all about, you know, elements, it even started getting into the world of witchcraft and all of this other kind of thing, which isn't what the purpose of shadow work has ever been about. It's really been about working with the unconscious, and that's what I want to bring it back to. And it's more important now because all you have to look at is the collective shadow. You know, look at the world we live in right now. And a lot of people want to create change externally, but they're not willing to create change internally. And I say to people all the time, if you want to create X change externally, you've got to start with creating change internally. And enough people create change internally, it's gonna have an impact of creating change externally. And we're seeing a collective shadow in a way I think we've never fully seen it before. It's it's showing up in the environment, it's showing up in politics, it's showing up in relationships, it's showing up in uh religious wars, it's showing up in so many different ways. There's so much divisiveness, and yet I think people are feeling more motivated because as the pain gets greater, the motivation gets greater. And I think people are really motivated to create change. And I'm I'm excited that people I'm actually doing a journey right now and with 12 amazing humans who are going into the depths of the depths within their soul, within their body, within their, you know, um traumas, all of that. And what's getting unleashed is nothing short of magical. And I think when more people do that, and just knowing you all these years, and knowing you to go into some of these places yourself, and and the places that I've gone into, and seeing the realness that comes from that. I have never been more connected to my mind, my body, my spirit than I ever have after going through this work and also going through my own shadows. Um and it creates this realness that most people don't experience. We all want to be in rooms where people are real, where people are authentic, where people are um, but as you said before, we're walking into rooms where there's so many personas and and personalities, and yet everybody's craving true connection. I want to be able to look at you. I want you to see me, and I want to see you, and I want it to be real. I don't want to feel like I have to be something I'm not just to make you like me, just to make you approve of me, just so I can fit in. And I think we are in a in an era right now in this world where there is a call for real more than ever. I don't even like to use the word, I don't like to use the word authenticity so much because even that to me is different than being real.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

I love I love this. And I I ironically, I think AI has helped us actually quite a bit. Like I think it's been such a huge um mirror for people to be like, yeah, no, weird. We we want to actually go to the concert and like be with people. Um, the word that comes to mind, what you were just describing is this performative era, right? Where we're we're trying to be something, we're trying to sell something, we're trying to offer something. And we think we have to be something other than the thing that we just are, naturally. And it's funny because I remember when I was very young and watching, I was very much into watching dance, as anyone who knows me for a minute knows I'm obsessed with dance and all of it, but I remember just even not even just dance, art or actress or anyone who's doing a thing, I would just get so emotional. I would be sitting, you know, on watching a show, Broadway off bread or whatever. If I saw someone doing their thing, so honestly, I would just get so emotional. And it didn't really occur to me why that was, except for just that I was watching something really beautiful and beauty is this emotional thing. But I realized looking back, I just watched someone who was so expressed, so fully expressed as themselves, and not even though they are technically performing, there's still there's nothing in between them and the performance. There's no trying to do something, it's raw, it's just it could be ugly, it could be beautiful, it's just so them. And I think now we're seeing that more. There's people who are extremely popular on the internet. And there's a couple of camps, some are very, very much performative, and we can just smell it a mile away. And we're like, uh, just not for me anymore. I just can't even watch that. And others are just like, and record and talk and I just want to kind of like lean in. I just want to lean in. I want to know this person. I just want to, it's reflecting a part of us that it feels the authenticity, but the non-performance of it. It's just there. And it, I think that's it takes, I think that actually takes the most work because we have to take off all those masks and we have to take off all of the performance uh rituals that we do, or even the we have to take off our survival, yeah, the survival, yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

And I think you know, one of the things that moves me, and it's kind of what you're describing, is you know, you know the the term namaste, the spirit in me honors the spirit in you. And I like to say the messy in me honors the messy in you, right? Because it's time we stop trying to not be messy, yeah. It's time that we stop trying to not feel, it's time that we stop trying to um perform or to fit in. And I know that when people get in rooms where they're witnessing other people being messy, it gives them permission to be messy, and that's why people find that so moving is because there's a resonance, you know. I I'm seeing something in this that's mirroring something within me, and that rawness and that truth and that realness is I think what we're all called to do and to be. And I find more and more people are drawn to that than they are drawn to the performative, they're drawn to um just something that's achievement-based or success-focused, or because you know, and you know this even through movement and through dance, it's like I find that people become their most successful, their most expressed, their most alive when they are in fully in the truth of who they are. And truth doesn't come from collecting information and collecting wisdom. Truth comes from unveiling your soul.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Yeah, I love that. I love it. And I think you what you said too is really important because I'm not saying all of those things like being performative. I'm not, it's not an insult to people, right? But I do think it's an awareness that I've done it for years. I think we all we all do it in some, at least in part of our lives, we all do it in some way. But if we can really wrap ourselves in the knowledge that it's really our nervous system trying to survive in whatever we were taught was supposed to be the right way to be or do or whatever. But I think also the shadow piece is it can be a little scary. I'll speak personally, how I looked at it before. And I think I looked at it that way because I was so proud of and focused on always being able to pursue the positive perspective, the other side. I can see all sides of the thing and and the positive piece and the whole manifestation culture, and and make sure you think positive thoughts, or else the thing, you know, anvil is gonna fall on your head. There's that subtle, like the secret, think good thoughts, put it all up there. Don't ever let the negative thoughts creep in. But where does it all go? It just gets suppressed in your body, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, none of this feels good anymore.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

But see, what you're saying, Elena, is so important because what what you're describing so beautifully beautifully is misalignment. So when you're when your consciousness is focused on one thing and your unconscious is focused on another, there's a misalignment that happens in your body. So it doesn't matter how many good thoughts you think, there's a there's a misalignment, there's a lack of resonance that's happening. And there's nothing wrong. I honor all the parts of me that have been built to survive. Because there was a time in my life that I probably wouldn't have been here without them. And there's aspects of my success that are part of those parts of me, you know, the workaholic, the busy, the busy part of me, the this the seeker in me, all of those parts. I really honor them. So there's no judgment about any of that. It's just that I got to a point in my life where I just wanted to be who I was. I just wanted to be real. I just wanted to say, you know what, this doesn't feel good, this doesn't feel right, or this frightens me, or this scares me, or this makes me uncomfortable. Um and so, and I think that's the midlife journey. The mid, you know, the it's the unraveling. It's the it's the taking off the layers, it's getting back to that that that part of us that came into this world, you know, um honest. And so it's not at all about discounting all the ways we've all learned to survive. And I and I still have those parts of me that show up all the time. And I keep having to remind myself that it's this stage of my life at the age of 59, what's most important to me is to be me. And all of its many facets, and some of that can be messy, and some of that can be raw, and some of that can be real, and some of it is beautiful and magical and light. And see, this is what most people don't understand. There's two sides of that coin. You don't have light without shadow, and you don't have shadow without light. And so people who want to live in a world that's just about light, they're not living in the duality of what life is really about. And the people who only live in the dark are not living in the duality of what life is really about either. And so, to me, you know, in the Jungian world, we call it the dark shadow and the golden shadow. And both of those are equally important. And so it's not about dismissing any of it, it's about embracing all of it, shadow and light. And I and I hope that whoever's listening to this and whatever peace resonates with anyone who's who's listening in this moment, it's it's it's about true self-acceptance comes from I accept all of me. All of me. And that's my grief, my shame, my anger, it's it's my my my power, my wisdom, my force. It's all of it, and all of it has a place in this body, this human experience that I'm having. And when people get to that place, that's where true freedom lives. Because then I don't have to run from my power and I don't have to run from my shame. I can be with all of it, and all of it has a purpose, and all of it is beautiful, and that to me is the greatest gift of the midlife journey. Because if we can get to that place in midlife, then we get to go into our golden years, you know, our crone years with a sense of peace. You know, I'll share one last little story before I know we get to end. But the one of the greatest gifts, and I write about this in my book, um, was watching my mother die. And the beautiful thing about that is my mother lived her whole entire life in fear. She was just a very fear-based person and always worried and had a very colorful storyteller. And my mother got to a place in her dying process in her you know, in her death journey, where she got to this real beautiful place of acceptance. And and for both shadow and light, and I saw it in her and I saw the change and the transformation. And those last days of her life were the most beautiful days of her life because she was so at peace and she didn't die in fear, she didn't die in a place of resistance or a place of holding on. She was not in fear, she was in a place of just pure acceptance. And and if people could get to that place years before they die, that's a beautiful thing. Because the external world, there's always gonna be death, there's gonna be loss, there's gonna be hardship, there's gonna be traumas, there's going to be all of those things. And we're not gonna change that, but we can change how we respond to it. And that's my why. That's my thing in life where I want people to be able to go through life in a place where we're not worried about the shoe dropping, because the shoe is gonna drop. But we're in a place where we are in a deep place of knowing that no matter what happens, that we can still remain internally free.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

I love that. What a beautiful place to land. And I think if you can tell just by listening to Suzanne, it just it's a really um, I don't know, it's peaceful just to listen to you, but also so illuminating because I do think a lot of people are living in a waiting for the shoe to drop. And that's by no small engineering of just how our society functions right now. So I think wherever you are listening, there is some shadow work, some somatic work, some in-depth work that is calling. And I think that's why we listen. I think that's why we turn on the podcast. We're looking for something where like we want the answer. So if someone were to want to lean into this and has curiosity, where is a good place for them? I have my own idea, but like where do you start?

SPEAKER_00 40:38

I kind of like your ideas better. Um I think, you know, it's it's to me, you always start with the personal, right? Because, you know, that really helps to illuminate where you want to move professionally. Um, but if people want to do a journey, you know, they can go to the wildernesswalk.com and look at the journeys. If people are really feeling called to support other people on this type of journey, then go to the shadow coaching, shadow coachinginstitute.com. Um, and I think either of those places, whether people land somewhere personally or they land somewhere professionally, I think will speak to them. There's also my book that I wrote, Navigating the Wilderness Within, which is part part memoir of my own personal journey, but has a lot of deep wisdom in that book around um the shadow and and ways of navigating that. And uh yeah, so those are the places that I would say to be.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

I agree. I think the journeys are like if you have a chance to do a journey with Suzanne while she's still offering a few more in the next couple of years, because there will be others that will be prepared to do this. But if you have a chance to check it out with Suzanne in some beautiful locations, I will have all the links below. Um, and also your book is really beautiful. Like I sat with it, you know, in my little meditation hours where I did my writing, and I was surprised at how like the way you balanced out the memoir piece plus each sort of trailhead and how you move through it. Like I had to stop. Like that's how you wrote it. Like it's you can just read it, but you can also like really use it as that entry point into your own wilderness within and just start really reflecting on the questions that you're asking and how you invite people to go within. And I think that's a beautiful place to start. But I'll have all the links at the bottom. And you know, just I think it's important to tell people how we talk about them behind their backs. Um, so I'm always sharing just how how incredibly deep you are, but also you you manage to do both. Like you're very playful, you're very fun, you're very just lovely to be around. And you're also like you call forth the depth. You call it just it, just you can't not because, like you said, we resonate in the way that we live. And because you live so honestly, you just call it forth. So just being in your energy, you know, listening to your words, going into the website and just listening to the video with you and grace and just all the beauty, the beauty that's there right now, I think will, if you're listening, invite you into a deeper connection with yourself and a deeper connection with your family or those around you, because you can't help but to ask yourself better questions when you're witnessed to better, more deep information and more deep transformative content. So that's where I would lead everyone. And also I've shared the story so many times, like of just witnessing there's one specific story that I'm not going to share specific details, but like watching the depth that someone will go to in one of your experiences, and specifically a retreat in the shadow retreat, where it looks so painful, it looks so hard. And then on the other side, there's like delight and laughter, and like all within minutes, I'm like, oh my God, like mind blown. This is amazing. And such healing happens. And it doesn't, I mean, we're all on a healing journey. I think it takes a lifetime to know ourselves because we're we're always like meeting ourselves in new ages, in new experiences. We we've never been this person before. Um, and I think that kind of transformation can happen very quickly in the right container, held by the right person, surrounded by the right people, and you're ready. You're like, okay, it's time. And that's how quickly that inner shift can happen and just influence everything else. Like I've seen people enter your world on retreats and like become teachers and like guides, and like they just want to be, they want to facilitate this process because it is so deep and so transformative, and it is anything but like the la la coaching world where things, you know, whatever, like let's not even go there. But um, there is a place on the internet and in the coaching world that does have this beautiful depth. And Suzanne, you you host that beautiful space. So thank you for our friendship and for being here and sharing and all you're creating. And I can't wait to see what's what's evolving in the next several years.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Well, like watching. I am I'm very grateful and honored to have this conversation and just to be a witness to each other's journeys. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

You're so welcome. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you paused and wrote some down. If not, listen to it again because sometimes you hear something and your subconscious just like doesn't want you to really, really hear it. So I like to listen to those kind of things twice sometimes, just to let my other sides are like, oh, I thought I heard something interesting there. I distracted myself. Let me make sure I listen. And then there's lots of links at the bottom where you can start with the book or check out a journey. And just I know you have other things coming on your website as well, like smaller byte things that people can start with as well. So thank you, thank you. And everyone, we'll see you on the next episode of an intuitive life.