César: Hello, welcome everyone to another episode of Calevers Club. Here I’m today with Suzie.

 

Suze: How are you doing Suzie? I am very well Cesar. I’m very happy to be here with you.

 

César: Me too, absolutely. We actually met yesterday because today and this week we’ve been at Nomad Base in Tarifa. Yes. And you had an amazing workshop talk. Can you tell us about your talk?

 

Suze: Yes, so my talk was all about trauma but not specifically trauma through an accident or through an event but developmental trauma which forms basically from conception all the way through 27 but usually through conception until seven and it doesn’t feel like something weird happened although it can but very often it feels like this is not what happened to me, this is who I am. So it defines a lot of our responses to the world and how we respond to each other and how we define ourselves, how we identify with ourselves.

 

César: Yeah, it was a lovely talk. Well, I should say workshop because there were some exercises. Yes. And I was also very taken away by your storytelling abilities and your speaking abilities and that’s also something that you do apart from being a trauma therapy coach. A lot of things is that you also are a speaking coach. Yes. How do you do so many things? What’s your secret?

 

Suze: Well, I am interested in almost everything. I couldn’t choose between English literature, astronomy and chip building when I went to university so I just did all of it because I wanted to know everything but actually I don’t do that many things. I have a lot of different angles to do only one thing and that one thing is to help people show up in this world from who they’re meant to be instead of through all the deformations of who we learned to be. So instead of fighting life, stepping into life with a deep sense of certainty and trust in who you are and I do that with speakers, I do that with entrepreneurs, with speakers how to share your story on stage in a way that all of your emotions are fine for you and nothing needs to happen so that everything can happen. I do that on stage, I help speakers with that, I help entrepreneurs trust themselves in their business and I help doctors and therapists to work on a very much deeper level in the therapy around trauma.

 

César: Wow, that’s amazing. You also mentioned chip building. Yes. I know that sailing has been a big part of your life. I don’t know if that should be considered a digital nomad or not, sailing around the world but I see some parallelisms.

 

Suze: When I was sailing there was not a lot of digital nomad on boats because we had no wifi. I’m 50. So when I was, I sailed four to five months a year and so I was nomading but there was no digital at that point. So if you got lost at sea, there was a radio signal and only along coastlines and we were listening to the radio for all the ships that got lost or people who got lost every single evening you would listen to the radio, this soothing voice would share what was going on in the world. If we went out to cross the ocean, nobody would know where you were for three weeks. That’s a world that digital nomads probably are not very familiar with but nobody knew where we were and that to me was a space where I felt extremely safe because I was on a ship, very simple, small incubator, cocoon almost where nobody would judge me and maybe they did but it would be totally fine to judge each other because you’re all stuck on that same boat. So it was a world where I could just be me and trust me and trust my abilities and trust who I was and trust that I would be accepted somehow and it was small enough to not have to deal with all the big things in the world and nobody could reach me, nobody knew where I was and that was actually really nice. So it was nomading but not digital.

 

César: During these months that you were sailing, can you tell us a bit about your adventures in the boats, strength in the sea, how was it?

 

Suze: What’s really so I sailed on big ships, on tall ships, so three mass sailing ships and I sailed on smaller sailing boats and all different kinds and for me the most important thing about those journeys is that you leave shore. So you have different types of sailing, you have day trips and you have ocean trips and what I like most is the ship has a certain rhythm and that rhythm creates a safety so certain things need to be done at certain times and for the rest it is very unpredictable because you can’t predict the weather, well you can but you really can’t and you don’t know what’s going to happen so you prepare to step into the unknown and you prepare to figure it out on the way because ultimately you really don’t know what’s going to happen, who’s going to get seasake, what the ship is, there’s no way to prepare for everything. It’s almost like life right? It’s a miniature version of the world and what I love about sailing is the simplicity of four hours on watch, eight hours off watch, four hours on watch, eight hours off watch. You have certain moments in the day where you have certain tasks and everybody does the same things, everybody needs to clean the toilet at a certain point, everybody needs to do certain things so it’s very much well actually like living in a van probably there’s certain things you do them and you do this is what I love most you take care of the environment that is supporting you together so you surrender to what the ship is requiring from you and that makes life easy and simple and predictable and I grew up in a very unpredictable surrounding so that simple rhythm of the ship gave me what I missed at home, a lot of predictability, a lot of knowing what’s going to be what, knowing how people will treat me, knowing if I just do what is required of me to do that I will be loved and accepted and what I absolutely love and this is probably the same in digital nomad-ing today is that when you step on board of a ship people understand who you are so there are very different people on board of ships like nomads are very different people so it’s nice to meet all these varieties but there’s something similar about them and we understand each other it’s almost like we we speak the same language so what you do is you step on board of a ship where you step into a harbor and you’re like oh I’m on that ship oh then I know who you are and I know where you are and I recognize that a lot in this week people are like oh I’m going to Bansko I’m going to Tariqah and then you know what they’re talking about it’s familiar and there’s a part of a tribe and even though you might be completely different than I am there is a common language that we all have

 

César: absolutely and I think I cannot stop drawing parallelisms with for example co-leavings taking care of the house living together same thing it’s not as extreme as sailing around the world for five months straight but I think yeah having a common vessel where everyone takes care and takes part of it it makes the connection deeper right

 

Suze: it’s exactly the same thing as co-living because 50 people on 50 meters that is co-living to the max right and what I always loved on board of a ship is that every time when you’re with a new crew you step on board you’re with 50 people and immediately all of us have this right certain people you like better than others and you have connections and you have bonds these change over time so during those maybe some people I would feel like oh I don’t like you

 

César: but you throw them overboard

 

Suze: exactly that’s what you do that’s how you clear it out so at a certain point because it’s a small space and because everybody needs to take care of the ship because the ship is carrying us everybody does have a level of responsibility and I hope that’s the same in co-living but in co-living what I found in co-living and I have lived in co-living projects is that it’s easier to abandon the ship a little bit because the world is closer yeah on board of a ship there is no world to go to so you take care of each other and you take care of the ship and you might not like each other that’s fine we don’t need to like each other as long as we take care of the ship yeah and then as long as we take care of the ship and we don’t have the idea that we need to become friends but we do what the ship is requiring us to do so if I asked you to do something it’s not because I need you to do it it’s because the ship is requiring that so there’s a higher order a higher god I would say right that is demanding this from all of us and if we listen to that then we can easily get to a place of you don’t have to like it you just have to do it and you don’t have to like me we just have to fix this thing together and that sense of no judgment actually leads to a place where you accept yourself and your own quirks more and you also accept other people and their quirks more and you need to figure it out and sort it out together this is one of the places where I learned most about trauma actually where I learned most about unconditional love and about acceptance

 

César: as well right yeah and you need to let go of things there’s no other option

 

Suze: exactly there’s no other option and I think if in co-living people could see it as a ship that is requiring us to do things and there is no option to go off this is just a commitment then it would actually be easier for everyone this is how my husband and I approached our marriage okay we should marriage is co-living also right yeah so we met when I was eight months pregnant and then we had another baby so in two years we had two babies and we moved across the country and he left his job and I changed everything so recipe for disaster and then we said okay but let’s close the door and say for the next year this is the ship and then we looked at what is this ship requiring from each of us and yet a year from now we’ll be in a harbor we can get off the ship so so there is a limit of time but during that limit of time we’re gonna face each and everything that we trigger in each other old wounds stuff from the past because that happens between people right of course I’m bored of a ship and there’s no place like co-living to trigger each other because it all sounds so beautiful and then it turns out that everybody had their own dream yeah of course

 

César: the smidge matches and projections yeah I also feel like when people are open to traveling they’re in this path of self-discovery and trying to get past their wounds perhaps or at least that’s the feeling that I get from from people that are not necessarily escaping but going through an internal voyage and

 

Suze: very often and maybe not for everyone but very often I see people trying to find the place where they won’t feel the wound anymore yeah

 

César: if everyone is wounded then you’re not alone exactly

 

Suze: now the question is can you be with your wounds and love them and that’s a very different thing because I see a lot of people trying to fix their wounds or trying to get away from them fix others fix others oh yes oh my goodness yes

 

César: yeah and so after sailing and having this super independent life motherhood locked on your door and you needed to change everything right so you sit together with your husband you came up with the plan of okay this is the vessel that we need to take care of what other changes came into your life through motherhood

 

Suze: so motherhood was the so when I was 23 I was suicidal and when I was 25 I decided okay if I am apparently not brave enough to kill myself then I need to choose to live because I can’t go on like this it’s either live or die and not I need to commit to one so I committed to life and that was a moment I can still remember I was on board of a ship I was standing on the front deck in the middle of the night you can see the entire Milky Way up there and I was all alone standing on watch and I felt the ocean underneath and I felt the ship and that and I was so in connection with what I call God and I felt like I just want to go home and I thought if I step overboard now my body will cool down and I won’t even notice that I’m drowning and I can just dissolve back into home and that was not a painful thing it would felt like a deep longing it felt like I want to go home the reason I couldn’t was because I knew the captain and he was a dear friend of mine would have to report to my parents that he didn’t know what happened and I couldn’t do that so I said okay if I can’t go home I need to find home in life so at 25 I decided I’m going to commit to this life even if it’s the last thing I do and I don’t know what that means but I’m going to say yes and I let you do an exercise yesterday right I didn’t share this story you could have shared this story but it was me saying yes to life without knowing what that required of me the first thing I did was say yes to saying okay I don’t need to figure out the next 80 years I can figure out today just today just if I can figure out today that’s fine now a period after that for the first five years I lived week by week and I thought you know what if I can figure out this week I’ll be fine and if I don’t know I’ll just go sailing now when I got pregnant there was an expected in the sense that I didn’t know the guy for a long time I thought I was infertile so me getting pregnant was like what what and I was absolutely loving it I wanted children but I didn’t plan for it because I thought I couldn’t have them so then I got pregnant and now two things changed because stepping out of life was impossible and sailing got impossible so the two things that made me feel at home it was almost like God was telling me okay you wanted to commit to life right

 

César: that’s very low stop

 

Suze: escaping no more sea no more death this is it this is life you wanted this you asked for it and then I got pregnant and I loved it but I couldn’t so the things I used to call self-care I couldn’t do anymore and it wasn’t self-care in hindsight in hindsight it was me escaping from life finding a pause and if I look back at it and didn’t feel like this but if I look back at it I was holding my breath fighting my way through people and then breathing out at sea kind of like okay I survived I will relax that’s all good and then I went back fighting or scared or or so when I had Benjamin which is my oldest son I was here he was here yes I realized that I needed to figure out how to feel safe how to feel certain all my childhood trauma appeared then I thought I had a perfect childhood and then I realized that it wasn’t perfect at all by any standards and I realized that I felt completely unsafe in life so I had to really reconnect with myself finish all the things that my parents started and couldn’t finish for me like creating a healthy functioning nervous system and the first thing that happened was that I had a husband and two children and now I felt like I need to take care of them I need to take care of them I need to make them feel safe right fixing other people well I was fixing it for my little family and I thought again that I was creating safety and what I didn’t understand at that point was that safety is not something we need to create it’s something that we can feel inside of us and if we feel safe inside then we can have an answer to anything in the world took me 20 years to get there not saying it needs to take 20 years but how

 

César: do we know if we’re escaping

 

Suze: good question so I didn’t know I thought I was living a very sensible life I thought it was freedom I thought it was the ultimate freedom I thought I had choice I thought I was using choice and maybe to a certain degree I was but not really because I couldn’t choose to stop sailing and I couldn’t choose to not do it so what I came to think of today in my life is that choice is very different choice is not me choosing to sail or me choosing not to sail to sail or me choosing not to sail choice is only a free choice it’s only freedom if we can choose both options and I couldn’t choose both options at that time in hindsight I couldn’t choose to not go to sea four to five months and I have this conversation a lot especially with entrepreneurs and with no man so say yeah but I’m choosing to travel the world okay but could you choose not to

 

César: and if

 

Suze: they can choose not to that’s fine you don’t need to be anywhere else where you’re not it’s just okay so if I cannot choose not to then it’s not really a choice to a certain degree it’s in need and it could be a million things underneath there but it’s not true freedom if you can’t choose to do the opposite

 

César: how do you go about your therapy sessions with your clients

 

Suze: so in my therapy sessions I basically what I do is I connect with them from a place of I connect from a place of I connect with your divine part and I make sure that I am so comfortable and so connected to myself that I can deal with whatever is coming up in me so that you don’t have to so if I feel uncertain I deal with it it’s I don’t tell you I can deal with it and you don’t have to I don’t use those words I do it so that your system will feel that you don’t have to take care of me and your system feels something that it might never have felt before because I am really taking care of myself so if I need a break or something happens or whatever I will do whatever it takes to deal with me I’m not holding space for the other person I’m holding space for me and for whatever shows up in me and then I am so nothing needs to happen I have no intention I don’t know what your life needs to look like I don’t know what your goals are I don’t know what your soul came to do in this planet so who am I to tell you what you need I don’t have any intention I don’t have the intention for anybody to heal I don’t have the intention for anything to happen I the only intention I have is to be completely curious to what’s going on for you what that looks like and to understand what’s happening and then maybe something can happen and maybe it won’t because it’s not for me to decide and in that space everything can show up and in that space two things happen one is that your nervous system will finally maybe for the first time feel what it is like to connect to a healthy nervous system your nervous system will start to pick up and start to regenerate not because it has to but because it does because if we have two vessels of water and one is level here one is level here it will start to settle now my level will stay here so I won’t balance below so what happens is that your nervous system will start to regenerate with mine but I’m not making anything happen that’s just physical law that’s what happens so that’s one and the other thing is that in a session people for the first time really get in touch with what their soul desires instead of what their mind thinks they want and that’s a very different thing and that sense of freedom of but what is it that I really want in this life is a very different thing we have this divine voice that is speaking to us but the world is so noisy and our survival patterns are so noisy that it’s very hard to listen to that in the whole hectic chaotic thing of especially in things like co-living yeah but he’s saying that and this is happening here and that’s happening here and if he says that then he’s making me feel this I’m sorry if I’m saying he too much maybe it’s she’s well right she is doing this and then if she says that then I feel that and we’re all caught up in fixing all the little things hoping that will create safety and what happens in sessions is that somebody starts to reconnect with an internal sense of safety I use ships a lot in my session in the way that I build an internal vessel inside of you that will help you feel safe in the journey in life so I create internal ships in people

 

César: so from shipbuilding to shipbuilding in some other way

 

Suze: I call myself a shipbuilder for your soul

 

César: that’s a great tagline you

 

Suze: should put it on LinkedIn it already is oh okay thank you yes

 

César: you mentioned that your level always stays up while taking care of others how do you take care of yourself and how can you do it on the go

 

Suze: so for me and I this is a weird term a lot of people have heard of co-regulation have you heard of that term okay so co-regulation is what happens when we step into a room and everybody can relate to this if you step into a room with angry people what happens in your nervous system you get tense so your nervous system responds to the other people now if you step into a room with peaceful people what happens now you relax you relax your nervous system is always tuning into other people that is not something a therapist does it is something that happens when two people enter a room co-regulation happens now as a good therapist we need to not try to use it we need to know that our nervous systems will start to co-regulate so that if my nervous system starts to co-regulate with yours then who is helping who here okay so what I do is something that might be a very weird term but I co-regulate with God okay and I don’t know how to explain it in every day in any different way I before a session but not just before a session in life I’ve trained myself to be connected to God and whatever God means right not everybody believes in God some people were hurt by the church or religion but I use a higher spiritual dimension that I am in connection with so deeply that I don’t that I am always in tune to that force inside of me and I don’t just do that in a session I do that in life I practice that a lot I journal a lot I live in the middle of nature and I have dear friends who can support me I have a family and a husband who can hold me when I need it I am my own therapist of course so that’s how I take care of me

 

César: you also mentioned that you do meditation and tai chi yes nice yes how do you meditate

 

Suze: so by now I have a lot of different meditation practices today I would say my life is one big meditation because I used to think meditation is on a meditation pillow and I still do that a lot I will sit and I will just so for me that kind of meditation is the ultimate holiday because nothing needs to happen I don’t need to relax I don’t need to make anything happen it’s just me sitting with everything that is happening outside inside so that’s one kind of meditation but I also have a very mindful way of living of being present in the thing that I am doing or in the emotion that’s happening and that is a kind of a meditation that is moving through life in a very mindful way without needing it to be what I call bullshit mindfulness of oh I’m just so peaceful I’m just so peaceful no if I’m angry I’m freaking angry so then that is the meditation it is can I fully be in this emotion with everything that’s happening trying to fix it

 

César: trying to fix it just feeling it exactly except and

 

Suze: I pray so every morning but I pray in a very weird way to certain people because I write letters to God every morning and that is a way of praying that is really me sharing all my frustrations and all my questions and and and all my gratitude and all the things that are happening for me all the questions I have and God always writes back I don’t care if it’s God or my or self or or some part of my mind it works

 

César: if you give the space for this spirituality to develop exactly talking about the future you’ve mentioned to me that one of your dreams is to build a kind of retreat in a castle yes what do you envision in this future so

 

Suze: my big vision for my life is to have a castle in the middle of nature where people fly in and out and they already do that so right now I have a farmhouse and it’s very close to the dream but there are certain parts missing so I my big dream is a castle where people fly in and out to nourish again in the safe space of where they can fully be who they are rewire themselves reconnect to God to their true self so that they can fly out back into the world and really spread of who they are because I don’t believe that there is one person who’s going to lead us into freedom I believe that we need people with healthy functioning nervous systems and we need to see them and when we see them something happens inside of us so I am creating an what I call an army of divine warriors where people’s nervous system starts to function so well that they become a safe space for the rest of the world as well and they fly in and out to my castle for retreats for their own retreats and to to really expand and unfold in a bigger way and bring that into the world.

 

César: This castle idea reminded me totally of Chateau Calivi that I served with you. Perhaps it could be a collaboration.

 

Suze: I can totally see that yes.

 

César: So Katja if you see this contact Suze.

 

Suze: I would very much like that.

 

César: Because I feel like in the co-living sphere there’s a lot of collaboration a lot of healthy nervous systems actually. Even right now we are in a co-living that La Cocotera here in Tarifa who has given us this space to have this conversation and to me going to these events makes me even more marvel more about the idea of the ita nomad san. Being in these kind of events makes me feel like everything is about sharing everything is about connection. Yes. And it’s something that whenever I go back to my home base or whenever I remember going back to my old job or everything that then suddenly I felt like super disconnected and it’s like and that’s how I chose or I think I chose this life.

 

Suze: I can imagine.

 

César: I need to think about that. So yeah I want to keep feeling this connection.

 

Suze: Well the big question is how dependent is the connection on the community or can you feel connected to life? Can you feel connected because you’re here? Can you feel connected to yourself?

 

César: I think I do and I think that started to develop more and more when when I did meditation. Yes. That’s something that creating space for myself allows for me to connect. Yes. And yeah I also wanted to ask you about what is it you do with speakers as a speaking coach?

 

Suze: So as a speaking coach what I do is I help speakers not just share their story or share their content so a lot of speakers are trying to drive their message across to the audience. That’s great and it’s important. But if we want to really get our message across we can’t just tell it or share it. We need to become it and we need to not just share a story with the emotions because that is certainly a part of it we need to be the emotion while we’re sharing it but we need to fully allow ourselves to be the story that we’re sharing in a way that we are so comfortable with every aspect of ourselves that we don’t need the audience to respond in a certain way. Any speaker will know that one crazy person can can upset your entire talk or you’re dependent on if the audience will follow you or not but if they don’t need to then they won’t start to want to. So it’s the same as I just shared about in in therapy sessions if you are just completely comfortable with who you are and everything can happen in the audience because whether that scares you or not you can take care of that then the audience will go a lot deeper and then your story will actually come across. I believe that if speakers are able to really not just connect with the audience but make the audience connect to themselves that people will never forget that talk. I have people who’ve been following me for seven years or who’ve been coming up to me saying I saw you speak there for five minutes and they can still remember that. That’s not because I’m so special that’s because I made them feel so special and if we can trigger an emotion in the other person that makes them feel better about who they are then we’re creating change and also they will come up to you because they will want to know more of you. That’s why we’re here right? That’s why we’re here right?

 

César: Part of it, part of it.

 

Suze: Yes and so well also if you’re speaking hoping to sell that’s the way. Of course you can also sometimes sell from the stage and there’s nothing wrong with that but that could be tiring as well right?

 

César: Yeah you see that the objective is something material. Exactly, exactly.

 

Suze: Can you invite, can you share to serve and if you share to serve people will want to be served.

 

César: And then they want to pay right?

 

Suze: Absolutely, yeah because people want to do something back. We always do. Well and a lot of people think nobody wants to pay for that. Well if they don’t want to pay for it then maybe they didn’t want it in the first place but if you do something for me that I truly want of course I will want to do something back because otherwise there is a kind of debt between us then there’s unfinished business and that feels yucky.

 

César: And it takes away your energy right? Yes. You feel like okay.

 

Suze: Yes.

 

César: During your workshop yesterday here at Nomad base a big part of it was sharing your story about how you lost everything. Yes. Not only one, not only twice but three times.

 

Suze: Yes some people need to learn a lesson three times.

 

César: What can you tell us about your learning during this period of your life?

 

Suze: So first of all I didn’t value myself very much. You don’t become suicidal because you love yourself right? And I didn’t value myself very much and I didn’t feel like I belonged in the world and I didn’t care too much about myself. So I was taking care of other people hoping that if I took really good care of them that then they would love me. That’s not love. That’s not giving. That is a kind of me trying to get love by loving you hoping that if I can take care of you really well then maybe you will kind of tolerate me. That is pretty much I either did not connect or I connected from a place of okay you know what I’ll make everything happen. I was very controlling in a sense that kind of feels nice but it kind of doesn’t. I’m not sure if you can relate to that. It wasn’t nice for the people around me either. So at a certain point if people tried to and I was terrified of people. So if somebody would love me I was like yeah I wanted love but if they would actually love me I would be terrified. So it would close all doors. I moved 14 times in my life because every time people would actually start to love me even though I thought I wanted it I got so scared that I just ran away and I closed all doors. Now at a certain point what happens then is that you don’t take care of yourself in the right manner and you actually reject people. Now if you reject people you reject a lot more than just people. You also reject money, you reject love, you reject opportunities because that’s the lens I was looking through. So I was doing all right but then at a certain point I would sabotage everything in a weird way. And the interesting thing is that the first time that happened I was divorcing from my first husband and we didn’t have kids together. And so it was and we were really close friends but we shouldn’t have been married. So I was divorcing, I walked away from that home, I lost all my stuff and then I got a call from the person who gave me all my work and as of that call I could never call him again and he had private things. His wife was jealous and he could not talk to me anymore. So overnight I lost all my business, I lost everything and all I had was one bicycle. That was all. Well that was not everything because one bicycle was not losing everything but I had a bicycle so I started to cycle thinking okay so how do I live? I don’t understand life. So I was completely feeling terrified of how does anybody understand anything in this world and I didn’t value myself at all and I just started cycling and cycling and cycling and the one thing that happened on that first time and actually happened in the second and third time as well was that I realized I don’t need anything. I don’t need proof, I don’t need stuff, all I need is just me following that god voice inside of me. And if I can be comfortable with just following that step it’s actually fine to lose everything. What that gave me was the biggest insight and I could not have learned it in any other way that ultimately if I follow that god force everything that I need will come back to me. Everything I need always. That gave me the courage to do really weird things like sell my home and move to the countryside in the middle of Covid when my entire business got killed and just think you know what I don’t need to have all the answers and I don’t need to have all this external certainty because I don’t know what’s gonna come next anyway so it gave me a lot of courage to step back into life all the time. Does this helpful answer?

 

César: It is very… Wow thank you so much. Where can we find you? To this camera. Yes. It doesn’t know your socials or your website.

 

Suze: So my name is Susan McLean-Pont which is a very complicated name but my website is susemccleanpont.com. My LinkedIn is susemccleanpont. My Instagram is at susemccleanpont and so that’s where you can find me and I’m pretty sure that’s Sisar. We’ll spell it underneath this somewhere in a show and out. Yes.

 

César: Thanks again to Matt Mellon for sponsoring this podcast. It’s been a pleasure sitting here talking to you. I have a lot of lessons, a lot of reflection to do so thank you for that. This has been another episode of CODiverse Club. Thank you so much, Susan.

 

Suze: Thank you so much, Sisar.

 

César: Bye.