We were lucky to catch up with Susan Newell recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Susan, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience is not something that comes to you; it is a skill built through trial and failure. Failure is essential to building this skill, and my story begins with a great deal of it.
I grew up in a shag-carpeted suburban home west of Minneapolis. As the youngest of five kids, I was left to my own devices for much of my childhood, raised more by siblings and friends than by my parents. My parents were good people, but because we endured some terrible luck over time, life became complicated..
My father, a gregarious and attractive man who quit drinking when I was three, developed bone cancer of the jaw when I was nine. His two-year recovery defined my grade school years, leaving him disfigured but alive. When he returned to work, I was entering junior high, and my siblings were in high school or college. My mother, an erudite and beautiful woman, barely made it through this ordeal. The kids were acting out, drinking, or using drugs. This was our only way of handling stress, as we lacked other tools. As a family, we didn’t have deep conversations about our feelings, needs, or how to cope. By the time I started seventh grade, my mother had begun quietly drinking herself to sleep every night after coming home from her full-time job in the bookkeeping department of a local bank.
During this time, I was sent to live with my grandmother and later with cousins during the summers because I was too young to visit the ICU, where my father spent much of his time. My grandmother wasn’t one for discussing feelings, but she was all about action: “You have a problem, you fix it!” My aunt and uncle, kind-hearted and socially conscious, taught me the value of volunteerism and social justice. I spent every summer with them for the rest of my childhood, and I believe this exposure may have saved me.
In seventh grade, I learned to drink. In eighth grade, I watched my sister lying in a hospital bed after a catastrophic car accident during her freshman year of college. My mother, already frayed, did her best to navigate this new trial. Meanwhile, I developed anorexia and bulimia. Another sister, a high school senior, turned to drugs amidst the chaos. As one sister healed, both she and my mother began drinking more, reinforcing the belief that alcohol was the only way to cope.
When my father’s cancer returned, he passed away when I was 16. My mother never recovered, becoming a shell of her former self over the next three years. I hit a tailspin, drinking a liter and a half of vodka a day. Despite this, I had my grandmother’s example to draw from: I knew I had to fix myself. Against my mother’s wishes, I placed myself in treatment and began to free my mind.
This isn’t a story about my drinking; in fact, I’ve been sober for most of my life. It’s a story about resilience and how it develops over time. It is a story about the connection of mind, body, and spirit. Treatment was the first space where I learned about coping mechanisms. The goal isn’t to “overcome” but to learn how to go through a trial.
Unlike a Hallmark movie, everything didn’t suddenly come up roses after treatment. But, it was the beginning of learning how to cope. Having experienced so much trauma before the age of 17 could have defined me. Instead, it became my foundation of how to improve. My childhood wasn’t awful. It just was. I was luckier than some. My parents loved me and did their best. With each choice I made, I improved.
I graduated with a degree in Political Science, and in my senior year, I traveled to Guatemala. There, I met a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthesiologist (CRNA) volunteering in the mountains. She was the coolest person I’d ever met and inspired something in me. After some drifting post-graduation, I decided to return to school to pursue a CRNA degree. I married the wrong person, had a beautiful daughter, left that marriage, and fell apart again. I relapsed and nearly lost everything. But this time, I had a child depending on me.
Falling down the first time, I had the freedom to explore who I was. The second time, I thought I had it all figured out. Nothing brought me to my knees more than that period of my life. It forced me to realize that if you think you know everything, you can’t learn anything.
Over twenty years later, I live with the knowledge that my actions during that relapse could have harmed others. By some divine grace, I emerged without physically hurting anyone. This collapse was my wake-up call to start connecting how I felt with what was happening in my life.
A strange bonus exists when your go-to self-destruct mechanism is chemical. You really can’t ignore it. Your world falls apart pretty severely. It is an obvious culprit, and years later, I feel lucky to have it. People with substance use disorder must learn how to cope differently. They develop resilience over time. For me, I had to understand that I could not control every outcome. I had to let things happen. I also, and very importantly, had to bring my body along for the ride. I had to start connecting how I felt, with what was going on in my life. You see, I had become an automaton. I was functioning perfectly while quietly falling apart internally. If you had asked me how my body felt, I couldn’t have told you. I could have attended to my responsibilities without fail. I just didn’t allow for self-perception. With this collapse, I learned how to start to pay attention to my body.
I understood that movement was good for me. I worked out. I worked hard not to self-judge. I am strong but, I am not a runner. When I started running, I learned to be patient with myself. I hate running, but it doesn’t require scheduled time or a gym membership. I was a wife, a mom, and a CRNA. So, I ran. I sucked at it, but by running slowly, I finished marathons, obstacle course races, and other fun races. For the first time, I understood the chemical connection between my mental health and my physical health. This revelation led to a deeper understanding of my spiritual health.
Someone whose inclination is egotistical and all-knowing doesn’t have a lot of space for religions that are too easily disproven through simple means. This journey taught me that it doesn’t matter what I think I know, if I don’t open my mind, I will die. This connection to a spiritual or meditative path, chemical or not, is completely irrelevant to my personal understanding of faith. It is the enigma of faith. Your brain doesn’t care what you believe; it simply needs the connection of some kind of spiritual practice to endow you with a sense of contentment. I began to develop the saying, “I don’t care how you get there, just get there.” This particular piece of my journey is where I have learned to breathe, love fully, and become me.
This is how I developed resilience. This is how I learned that connecting the mind and body with something meditative or spiritual isn’t just a hippie trope but is founded in science. It is what drove me to doctoral studies focusing on the science behind coping mechanisms. It is the work I will never finish. It is the foundation of my resilience.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
COVID-19 arrived, and the world fell apart as I was finishing my doctorate, focusing on coping mechanisms. I enlisted out-of-work artists to help me publish my work. Together, we created a book outlining daily directives. We packaged this writing in a beautiful artistic hardcover book and released it to a struggling world. We sold a thousand copies. A few are left, but I haven’t considered reprinting, as my life has grown enormously since then. The Kindle version is still available.
Currently, I am serving on the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology board. I am teaching in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program at the University of Cincinnati, and I serve as chief of obstetric anesthesia for a labor and delivery unit. We founded the Society of Obstetric Nurse Anesthesiology and Research and currently have three active research projects.
I speak and teach on wellness, leadership, obstetric nurse anesthesiology, and advocacy from California to New York, and most states in-between. I have begun to really enjoy this work.
My next adventure is to write a science narrative on the conjuncture of women with anesthesia in the labor and delivery space. No time in a woman’s life is so vulnerable as when they face labor, or they face a cesarean section. I have built a twenty-year career meeting women in that space emotionally and professionally. I have some more to share!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Open your mind, truly. If you already “know,” you cannot learn. Understand that the instinct to say, “I know,” is fear-based. Always bring solid evidence to the table. Our experiences are limited.
2. Fail. Get back up. Fail again. Get back up again. Repeat.
3. Fear is the basis for all your poor choices or lack of choices, whether you realize it or not. Sometimes, that fear is FOMO. Sometimes, it is based on perception. Always it is the wrong choice to let fear stop you.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
I suppose having too many goals and projects; the product of a life well lived. I have slammed on some breaks in some areas, and spend a great deal of time prioritizing. Seeking counseling, and guidance are always the right choice, and I am doing both. My pattern is to drive into the wall before I seek help. So, with every better choice I hope I continue to improve.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thepath365.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepath365/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepath365
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzie-newell-10b34111/
Image Credits
Angela Fach did any of the photos around book process. (Manifest t-shirt)
The head shot with the blue background is from the AANA
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
