Wake Up with Susan

Being Authentic

• Susan Sutherland

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What if you could embrace your playful side while walking a spiritual path, and find that it's not only possible but incredibly freeing? I needed the weekend away to realize that I don't have to compartmentalize who I am. Spirituality doesn't have to be all solemn and serious—it can be infused with laughter, fun, and authenticity.

This episode celebrates the joy of authentic self-expression and the importance of humor and silliness in spiritual spaces. Laughter opened up new connections and allowed me to embrace my emotions through movement and creativity. Inspired by the retreat's playful atmosphere, I realized that spirituality and joy are not mutually exclusive—childlike fun is an essential part of the journey.

I feel free to be me now, unapologetically me. I aim to inspire you to love out loud and find magic in the mundane.

Don't forget, if these stories resonate with you, show support by leaving a five-star rating—it helps keep the joy and wisdom flowing!

To find out about my upcoming workshop Happy for the Holidays or to book a one on one session, please visit my website.

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Speaker 1:

Rise and shine everybody. It's time to wake up with Susan. Spiritual awakening can be a beautiful, messy and sometimes lonely journey, so let's do it together. I'm your host, susan Sutherland. I'm an intuitive healer and spiritual mentor. We are all called to rise up above our conditioning and limiting beliefs and shine our light on ourselves and others. So let's get to it. Hi, beautiful family, I am so happy to be back with you this week because I want to talk to you about loving out loud, about being your authentic self and about kind of my journey to find out what that means for me. So I told you that I had so many gifts given to me at my weekend away in Indianapolis and beyond really expanding my tribe, finding my soul, family.

Speaker 1:

This is probably the most impactful for me in my particular journey. I laughed so much while we were away and I am a funny, silly person. I like to have a good time, I like to express myself and joke around, and what I have found, but probably didn't completely understand until I went away, is how much of that I hold back of who I am in this spiritual space, which I think that's probably why I have had trouble sharing is because I'm trying to share from a place that was not 100% authentic to me, meaning I was trying to tidy everything up. I was trying to tidy it up and make it look spiritual or feel how other people do it and do it like that, and that felt inauthentic and I didn't even realize that. But what I got to experience is what I get to be at home, or you know the silliness I can bring to non-spiritual places, the fun that I can have with my family joking around or with my friends who were not talking about this journey, and what the weekend allowed me to see is that they don't have to be separate. To see is that they don't have to be separate. I don't have to take away that part of myself that being spiritual and having fun should not be separate. So in this journey, as we go through the awakening process and the healing process, a lot of times things do feel heavy and they do feel, I don't know, serious. Maybe that's what they feel is serious and because of that I have found it inappropriate, I guess, for me to be the crazy, loud, vibrant person that I am. You know I have my serious moments. I love deep conversation, I love reflection. I am a quick cry. I can cry over anything, but I also have this side of me that just wants to be fun and embody laughter and just live a joyful, happy life. And I have been shoving that sister down, almost telling her that that's not part of the job.

Speaker 1:

And DG had a power hour a few weeks ago, kind of leading up to the conference, in which we were thinking about our alter ego, like what is the next version of you, so that you can start living as if, and so you kind of create this image and you think about how that person behaves, what are their habits, what do they eat, how do they move, and you really start questioning when you are struggling to make a decision, how would that person show up and making decisions from that place? And so I actually put a lot of heart and soul into that process and I had come up with my alter ego and I know that what I want to focus on in 2025 I really want to write more. I want to be a dedicated writer and show up like a writer not a quick post, but somebody who is has an intentional writing practice, that I am spending quality time writing, and so I really built out my alter ego on that, and so, from everything to buying a perfume and I'm not even really a perfume wearer, but I really like the idea to go to the store and have a scent. That is a trigger, a trigger to remind you like, oh, who, who the are you? That's who I am, you know. Like the scent says step into this place. And so I came up with this alter ego.

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If you want to look her up, it is Sechat. She is the goddess of writing and knowledge. Well, I really love that, because the goddess of writing is going to sit down and write. You know, no excuses, she's not going to write. No, she's not going to write. She's not going to not write. How's that for a double negative? Maybe she needs to go to English class. Okay, the goddess is going to write, she's gonna write, and you know what else she's gonna do. She's gonna know that what she has written has value and should be shared. She's not gonna question like, should I share this, should I not share this? Of course she's gonna share it. She is the goddess of writing and knowledge. Duh, you know. Not to mention, I found like this really beautiful Egyptian goddess picture to save as my screensaver. That just kind of lights me up. When I look at it. It's like, yes, I want to be that so. So I did that. And when I was at the beach with my daughter, she's like I want to get a new scent. So I allowed her to get a new scent and then I made her watch the video of the power hour and then do the assignment before she was allowed to have it. So she also has her alter ego programmed for next year, which we are already starting. We are embracing this now.

Speaker 1:

But we also came up, you know, with the habits, the non-negotiables, everything for this alter ego. And so I had decided that my motto was going to be love deserves a voice, like right now, goodness gracious, there is no shortage of hate. There's no shortage of hate. There's no shortage of darkness. The political rhetoric, the war and fighting. It is out there, right. And so a lot of times I know on this podcast I've said a hundred times that our job is to be peace and to be love, and so, as I was working on this alter ego, what came to me is that I can be peace and I can be love, but also we need to put a voice to that. It needs to be expressed out into the world. Goodness gracious, the hate is being expressed, isn't it? And so it's really given myself permission to give love a voice, to know that that my, my words matter, my words can be shared and have value, and it's really, you know, creating that worthiness inside, that what you have to share with the world matters, and so that's the healing journey, is to find that worthiness in order to feel comfortable sharing it. But also creating this alter ego really helps with that. Of course she would share it. She's the goddess of writing, right.

Speaker 1:

So I've been doing that practice, and what I found over this weekend I mean I had a blast. It was childlike fun that I usually only get to have with my children, which is probably why I like being silly with them so much is because that part of me wants to be expressed. So I told you I would tell you the running story, and then I totally forgot about it. But we were in the conference room the whole day and at the end of the day, derek was going to sign his new book about healing, and so I thought that I had left it in my room and a couple of the other girls had left their books in their room too. And so we started, you know, kind of running sillily down the hallway to get it. And what they don't maybe what they don't know about me is, a how competitive I am and b the universe has my back.

Speaker 1:

So we went up to our our rooms and I was on the third floor and I think they were on the sixth floor and they're they're racing me, but I kind of thought it was a joke. So when I got to the room and I couldn't find my book because it was in the bag that was back propped up against the table where Derek is signing books, and I was kind of laughing about it went to the bathroom and then, when I came back, the elevator door opens and there they are, and and Sam is admonishing Julie because instead of hitting one she hit three. So instead of going straight to the bottom, she accidentally picked me up and when we got to the bottom, she's like race you. And started taking off and I was like is this for real? Are we really racing? Because I've told you like I'm very competitive, so off I go running.

Speaker 1:

And we laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and it was so fun and we passed the other conference of grown-ass adults in the in the hotel conference room as we're blazing down the hallway. But it was just so fun and so we do those kind of things and I need that like it lights me up. To just be silly. Now my husband would have been like under the table, totally embarrassed, and I get it like there's times and places. But this was pretty quiet hotel and we were most of the people in it, so it just felt okay to run, run the run back to my book that I had left exactly where I was returning to, but anyway. So throughout the whole weekend we just had opportunities to laugh and to be funny and to have a good time.

Speaker 1:

And these girls it was like they empowered me to believe that that is part of our spiritual journey, part of our spiritual journey, it can be part of us that it's safe to express humor in these spiritual fields. Because a lot of times I guess I have felt in this space that so many people are doing the work and they're really struggling, that humor is inappropriate and so I stifle it back and then I feel like I'm not expressing truly and I'm not saying that every day is glory and that we don't, you know, end up on our knees bawling. I can do that right before I'm laughing or right after I'm laughing. Like it is, it is all part of the journey. But where I have struggled is trying to hide a part of me that really does want to be expressed, and not just expressed in my home or being silly at the gym. Like it is, it is part of what I want to express on this podcast and on social media is you know that that we should be loving out loud. That love doesn't just deserve a voice, it deserves laughter, it deserves for other people who are in the weeds to know that you can also move through that pain to a place that is genuinely fun, that is exciting and it doesn't take away the seriousness of it.

Speaker 1:

So I will say there was one day that we decided, or someone else decided, they were going to do a dance class at 6 30 in the morning in the hotel. Now we have a member of our community who teaches dance at the broadway center in new york. He has taught dance in 39 countries or something ridiculous like. I'm not talking about a small D dance instructor, it's like the big D dance instructor. So when I heard about that, we switched our walking plans, because you know, if the Broadway teacher is going to teach some dance, let me go see what he's got, because I love to dance. And when I say I love to dance, I hear music and I do a little hip shake. That's my dancing, and I don't go out dancing. It's just if I hear music in the grocery store, I'm going to add some steps to it. And so I'm thinking we're doing exercise class to some music. It's going to be like maybe not Zumba, but like a little bit like Zumba, like stepping to the music for exercise. And so we get down there. And I was totally wrong. Right, we are doing like contemporary dance.

Speaker 1:

None of us are dancers, none of us are dancers, but this beautiful, beautiful, brilliant creature named Jermaine Brown was able to bring the dancer out of us by creating the safe space where nothing's wrong, like you can't screw it up, you're just moving. And so he ended up giving us five words, and we had put together a two-step movement that goes with that word. So, like, one of the words is sunshine. What does sunshine make you feel, and how would you express that in movement? And so we had different words for that. And then an affirmation and um that we expressed with movement as well, and what I had decided, in all of this laughter and the permission that these girls gave me to just be authentic and that be spiritual, be funny and that be spiritual, be silly and that be spiritual, and it was just like I want to love out loud. I want to give permission to get out of the heaviness of this journey. When you start moving through it, we can see that it's also fun, it's glorious, it's beautiful, it's happy, it's joyful's beautiful, it's happy, it's joyful. And that is also a spiritual experience. It's not just finding your wounds, so, anyway.

Speaker 1:

So we did this dance and I mean we are dancing before seven in a hotel hallway, all dancing around, and we go from laughing because we're not dancers and we're choosing an animal. So I'm an elephant, I'm swinging my trunk and we've got a dolphin and we've got a leopard going through in movement in a hotel room and somehow we all end up crying because this permission to express was something we hadn't done before. Like, movement is important for me. It's essential for me. Dance is fun for me. I hear music and I just want to move my body, but it has never been a release for me of just giving myself permission to allow whatever comes through to come up in that moment and be expressed and be vulnerable. Be so vulnerable that you're freaking dancing in a hotel hallway. Now I am.

Speaker 1:

When I was telling my husband about that, I was like, can you believe this? We were out there. You know it was really hard for some people to to be dancing in the hallway. He was like not you, which fair enough, cause I'll dance anywhere. But I wasn't talking about like shaking my hips Cause the song's on. We're like I would. We are like I can't say contemporary. I mean, we were doing our version of dance, but he gave us this secure place to just be and express, and that felt so spiritual too that there was nothing withheld, that we weren't trying to put something on or fit it into how it's supposed to look.

Speaker 1:

And I think I had the realization that that's what I've been doing and that's why I haven't felt really comfortable putting myself out there on social media. Is is maybe I wasn't feeling comfortable in my skin and so this weekend really felt like permission to start over and and try that in a new way, and so I've had this my beautiful book club that I record all the time they have been trying. It's like you get the call and you haven't answered, so you get it again. Um, they've been trying to free me up a little for a while. I was doing the daily lessons and re-recording them and, you know, trying to make it right to where I'm not stumbling over it or you know whatever. And they were like, if you're struggling to read it, we're probably struggling when we're listening to it, so just roll with it. And and they really freed me up to add my commentary and be myself and be like hey, jesus, there were 14 comments in that sentence. That's too much. But, um, they've been trying to get me there. But that's my little safe space. My book club is my, my safe space to kind of express freely what I want to say.

Speaker 1:

But I have felt like everything has to be polished up and cleaned up to be put out there for other people. And you know I, I needed, I needed someone else's permission, I guess, but I needed it from these, these spiritual people, to say, hey, it's okay to be you, you are what we like, you are doing you very well. We need you to be you and not to try to polish it up, to be somebody else. This is who I am. I'm silly and I joke a lot, and that doesn't make me less spiritual. And when I really had the time to contemplate all of this, I started understanding that maybe that is what we need, because I know I have felt like the spiritual path is this hard, heavy journey that you're always in contemplation and thought and that we have to be, you know, heading out with a magnifying glass searching for the wounds.

Speaker 1:

Now I did stop doing that. If something needs to come up, it will get my attention, but I don't go picking scabs Like I am in a good place with heightened awareness to where, if my feelings do not feel in alignment, I know that there's a lesson. I no longer need the whole door to come down before it gets my attention, which is a great place to be like hey, something's, something's going on, let me tap into this, but maybe me saying that maybe, instead of acting like everything is heavy all the time, maybe I can say you know it's, it's also fun, it's also exciting, I'm also really happy. And that's really hard to do when there's a lot bad going on in the world, but we need reminders that there's also a lot of good going on in the world, and so I had, like I posted on social a couple weeks ago because it had been kind of this, this rocky, weird time for me where it was like a dip and I wanted to share with others how I get through it, and I did.

Speaker 1:

I mean, how I get through hard times is by doing the things that I do during good times, like that's, that's the foundation I have laid, and so I have that to rest on. It's meditation, prayer, movement and journaling, like those. Those are my the pillars holding the roof on for me, boy. If it's not my foundation, if it's the pillars holding the roof on for me, boy, if it's not my foundation, if it's the pillars, you can tell who doesn't build houses. I hired that shit out. Okay, you know what I'm saying, though, like I have to have those in place, and so then I do have hard times, but it's like riding the wave instead of getting pulled under it, and the amount of feedback like oh, you know, I'm so sorry, and it's like no, I want you to be inspired by it, because I can move through those things. But I feel somehow it is easier to say I'm struggling, yeah, than to say I'm freaking happy, like I'm really happy and I'm doing well, and I want y'all to do well. I want you to use these pillars because when you have a bad day or a bad week, it doesn't make a bad life. It doesn't have to make a bad month, it means like whoa, that was wild, let me move through it and then resume having joy and having fun. And so now, in addition to my beautiful goddess having a writing practice, which she's going to do, and I've actually been committed to it you know what I did? I told Christina, my coach. She said you're going to write 30 minutes a day. And I'm like done.

Speaker 1:

And one day I went to order myself a little something, something on tv not on tv, can you imagine? Like qvc, I don't even watch tv. I was gonna order myself something off, okay, I'll keep it real an ad on instagram. And now that I clicked on it, I get all the ads on Instagram about this thing. And this thing is called house plants, it's called easy plant, y'all, and it has a pot and you put water in it once a month and that's all you have to do, right? So the plant is put in the pot that will give just enough water for this plant for the whole month, the whole month.

Speaker 1:

And I wanted this because I put a plant up all by myself well, not all by myself. I got my very tall son to screw this hook into the ceiling in my playroom and I hung this drapey plant and it has these leaves and I you can tell how good I must be at plants if I'm calling it the drapey plant and it has these leaves, and you can tell how good I must be at plants if I'm calling it the drapey plant and I need a pot that waters it once a month. But I'm telling you, this plant has brought me so much joy. It's hanging there and it's purple and it's green and I love it very much. And so I was in in my little is the playroom, but it's my healing room because I kicked the kids out. So I was in there and I was admiring this purple plant and I was like I need more of this in my life.

Speaker 1:

So I go to order plants from this place and y'all, they ain't giving it away. But also, if you kill plants a lot, that's a waste of money. So I was going to give it a try. And I had it in my cart and and, like a toddler, I decided, no girl, you're not going to do this. You're was going to give it a try. And I had it in my cart and and, like a toddler, I decided, no girl, you're not going to do this, you're not going to treat yourself. You are going to have a chart up in your mind and when you have 21 stars, you can order the plants that you want. And so I'm so close to ordering those plants and I'm very excited about it.

Speaker 1:

But I made it where. I am going to be consistent and I work on reward system. Don't admonish me for bad behavior. Reward me for good behavior. That's how I operate. So, uh, it's sitting in my cart and hadn't been ordered, but I'm super excited about it. So that is part of my process. For, for the goddess, she is going to write every single day. She's got beautiful plants surrounding her to do it.

Speaker 1:

But now another part of my process is going to be being comfortable, just being authentic, like this is who I am, and it's okay if I don't resonate with people. It's okay if you don't like my jokes. It's okay if you, if you think that I should be more polished or whatever, but I no longer think that I think we need somebody who says that spirituality is also fun and happy and self-deprecating and whatever. Like once you have kind of grown the awareness that everything has happened to us or us, so that we may know ourselves better. I mean, that's a whole lot lighter anyway, and so I've done the heavy lifting to get the boulders off my shoulder and I want to encourage people to know like I'm. I don't want it to be where it's like well, the healing work is never done. Oh, you know the darkness. Da, da, da, da y'all.

Speaker 1:

Who's gonna continue if we think we just continue to suffer our whole life because we're on this plan? Bullshit. Let's be happy, like happiness is raising your vibration to the point of accepting yourself, loving yourself, being joyful, being excited, and being excited because who knows what the day will bring? Who knows what's around the corner? Who knows that you might end up thinking you're going to Zumba and end up doing creative dance in the hallway of a hotel, like who? Who knows what is going to happen in the day? But we have to be open for magic and we can't do that if we're balled up in the fetal position trying to to lick more wounds. So I'm just telling you I I'm I'm gonna be honest with you when I'm going through it and when I'm feeling it.

Speaker 1:

But I also want to encourage you that we can be freaking joyful, we can be silly and we can be happy, and that doesn't make us less on this journey. It doesn't make us. Maybe it makes us more on this journey. Have you ever thought about that? Maybe it's like hey, I'm no longer sitting in shame, I'm no longer sitting in guilt. I have moved up to the place I want to create from love, I want to express from love, I want to be passionate and have so much fun, and that's the space I want to be in. So you are now on my new journey of loving out loud, and I hope it gives you permission to do things that maybe make you feel vulnerable, but who knows what it unlocks in you? Do you know what I did?

Speaker 1:

I put on the song it's called the Feels that we did that dance to, and I danced in my bathroom. I sure did, and there were two mirrors in there and I just closed my eyes and pretend like they weren't there because I didn't need to see it, but I did need to feel it and I just cried and I danced and that felt beautiful. And then I laughed at myself because I was in my dance, my bathroom, dancing, you know, to a song on my phone, with my eyes closed, and it felt wonderful. And I'm so grateful to have shared that time with people, to have shared those moments of us being what we thought was silly and vulnerable as we're creating our animals, and then ended up being really beautiful and fun and healing and brought us close together. And I'm just saying I'm taking the gloves off we can, we can, we can have it all. We don't have to just have the sadness and the healing and the depth and the conversations that take us to new levels of our wounds. We can have conversations that take us to the brightest places of our imagination, of creation, of excitement, of what can be, and I want to live in all those worlds and I want to share it with you. So thanks for listening to my soul sisters, thank you for allowing me to be a little bit crazy, a little bit wild and a lot bit silly. I appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

All right, everybody, have a great week. Hey, friends, it only takes a second to leave a five-star rating. Don't have time to write a review. That's okay, because clicking five stars takes no longer than clicking one star. So if you listened, you enjoyed it and you found this at all helpful. Take a moment and leave me a rating on your favorite podcast app. Have a great week.

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Susan Sutherland

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