We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Suzette Mullen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Suzette below.
Suzette, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Before the biggest crisis of my life (to date!), I hadn’t considered myself to be particularly resilient. My parents raised me to play it safe, which led to a safe, comfortable life where I often didn’t feel like I was living at all.
In my mid-fifties I had a revelation about my sexuality that caused me to question everything I knew about myself. Ultimately I came out as queer, left a thirty-year marriage, and moved to a city where I knew exactly one person. I was tested to a degree that I couldn’t have imagined earlier in my life, and in that testing, I developed resilience. I learned that I could do hard things. I learned that I was more capable than I had believed myself to be. I learned that authenticity was worth the cost—and there certainly was a cost (as well as much joy).
So my resilience did not come from my upbringing but instead came from a strength inside me that I didn’t realize I had until I needed it.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My debut memoir, The Only Way Through Is Out, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024), was named one of February’s “most anticipated” releases by Lambda Literary. Foreword Reviews calls my memoir: “Candid, inspirational. . . . An emotive memoir that issues a stirring call to women to choose self-actualization.” The audiobook version of my memoir will be available in mid-June. I wrote my memoir for every human who is longing to live out loud but is afraid of the cost.
And exciting news! I am working on my next book, a memoir tentatively titled After the Leap.
Your Story Finder is the name of my book coaching business where I help LGBTQ+ writers and allies raise their voices, write their stories, and become published authors. As an LGBTQ+ author and advocate, I’m aware of the urgency to get more real-life LGBTQ+ stories out in the world in today’s political climate, and of the barriers that prevent those stories from being told. To address this issue, I’ve created an accessibly-priced group coaching mentorship program called Write Yourself Out exclusively for LGBTQ+ memoir and nonfiction writers. Inside that mentorship program, I provide a safe space and judgment-free zone where queer writers can be vulnerable in community and not have to explain themselves, in addition to providing editorial support and strategic guidance about publication.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
These three mindset shifts helped me greatly in both my professional and personal journeys: 1. Letting go of perfectionism and learning how to take risks and make mistakes.
2. Listening to myself and trusting what I was hearing instead of looking to others for the answers.
3. Acknowledging that fear and doubt are part of the journey but they don’t get to sit in the driver’s seat.
In the end, we each have one wild and precious life, as poet Mary Oliver so eloquently wrote. We discover who we are, what we were put on this earth to do, and how we are to live by trial and error. Life is messy … and it’s meant to be that way. Make mistakes, trust yourself, and don’t allow fear and doubt to stop you from taking the next right step.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed as an entrepreneur, as a writer, really as a human!
My favorite strategy to deal with overwhelm is to write down all the things that are swirling around in my head. Getting the worries out of my head and onto the page gives me something concrete to address and helps get me rid of that awful feeling of dread.
Then I break down my to-do list into small, manageable steps, and mark on my calendar when I’m going to tackle them. Having a specific plan, including the “when will I do this thing,” really helps with overwhelm. This is the same advice I give to the writers I work with. “Write a book” is overwhelming (and feels impossible). “Think about who you are writing for” (and schedule that “thinking time”) is a doable small step you can take to get clarity on the book you want to write.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yourstoryfinder.com/
- Instagram: @urstoryfinder
Image Credits
Heike Martin Photography (all photos except one with black leather jacket) Ashleigh Taylor (black leather jacket photo)
