Love From the Inside Out: Personal Growth & Life Changes for Women

Can you actually learn how to be happier and raise the level of happiness you naturally return to?

Happiness strategist Monique Rhodes believes you can. After more than 30 years studying happiness, meditation and the mind, she teaches that happiness is not something we have to wait for or find outside ourselves. It is a skill we can practice.

In this conversation, we talk about self-abandonment, why we run from discomfort, the storie...

I’m popping in on a Tuesday with a few things I’m excited to share!

First, today is the official launch of the new Love From the Inside Out Substack. I’ve heard from many of you that you’d like more ways to interact with me and with Love From the Inside Out beyond the weekly podcast, and I heard you.

The Substack gives us another place to connect through writing, bonus audio and video, live Q&As, subscribe...

What happens when more money, more clients and more growth start creating more stress instead of more success?

In this episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan talks with entrepreneur, media executive and marketing consultant Cynthia Sassi about business growth, entrepreneurship, scaling, self-doubt, perfectionism and how our definition of success can change over time.

Cynthia has spent nearly 20 years in digital media and marketin...

How do you build a better relationship with yourself?

Acclaimed meditation and mindfulness teacher with more than 30 years of experience and bestselling Hay House author Sarah McLean joins Susan for a deeply personal conversation about self-love, self-trust, relationships, meditation, and learning how to stay connected to yourself through change. Sarah has been teaching meditation for more than three decades and has led retreats, tr...

Something doesn’t have to be broken for you to realize it may be time to do things differently. What happens when your career, routines, or life still work — but you’ve changed?

We get comfortable with our careers, routines, relationships, and even the way we see ourselves. But when was the last time you stopped to ask whether the decisions you made years ago still make sense for who you are today?

Twenty-four years...

When someone dies, what happens to the life they lived?

My Aunt Essie passed away recently, and her death brought me back to something I’ve felt deeply since losing my parents: I don’t want the people I love to simply become part of the past. Their stories, personalities, beliefs, humor, music, relationships and the ways they shaped us still matter.

In this episode, I talk about grief, memory and what it means to keep a l...

What do you already know inside that you keep looking outside yourself to confirm?

In this episode, Susan explores why we can know exactly what we want and still wait for more proof, permission or certainty before we act. Inspired by Cathy Heller’s idea of “main character energy,” this conversation is about what it means to participate fully in your own life instead of waiting on the sidelines for something else to...

What if your personal style — and even the way you think about fashion — has less to do with clothes and more to do with confidence, identity and how fully you're allowing yourself to be seen?

In this deeply personal conversation, style and self-expression coach Maren Swenson shares how her own journey of questioning expectations, rebuilding self-trust and learning to express herself more freely completely changed the wa...

Do you ever feel like you’re not doing enough — even when you’re doing a lot? Or like you should be further along by now in your career, health, relationships, finances or life?

In this episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan explores the connection between enoughness, perfectionism, self-worth and self-compassion — and asks a question that may change the way you think about all of it:

When did you start be...

What if you’re not “uncreative” at all? What if you’ve simply gotten disconnected from that part of yourself?

In this episode of Love From the Inside Out, I’m talking with expressive artist and creativity empowerment guide Kristen Fagan and intuitive mentor and yoga teacher Kerry Burki about creativity as something much bigger than being able to paint, draw, or make something beautiful.

We talk about why...

Have you ever pushed down something you were feeling because you didn’t have the time, energy, or emotional bandwidth to deal with it?

Maybe you told yourself it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe you knew that facing it would require a difficult conversation, a boundary, or a decision you weren’t ready to make. So you kept going and hoped the feeling would eventually disappear.

But what happens when it doesn’t?

In this ...

How do you know when it’s time to let go of something you still love?

After an arborist told Susan and her husband that the enormous ficus tree outside their home could no longer be safely preserved, Susan’s emotional response caught her completely off guard. The tree was still standing, but suddenly she was seeing it differently and imagining what their home, and her life inside it, would feel like without it.

In this de...

Your home may look beautiful, but does it still support the life you’re living now—and the person you’re becoming?

In the first conversation episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan sits down with Kim Costa, a Top 5% REALTOR®, author, speaker and creator of the Wheel House Method™, to explore the often-overlooked connection between our homes, our identities and the changes we experience in midlife.

Years ago, Kim ...

One year ago, on International Self-Care Day, I launched Love From the Inside Out with one simple promise: to release one episode every week for an entire year.

In this one-year anniversary episode, I'm reflecting on what a year of showing up has taught me about self-trust, consistency, perfectionism, confidence, and why so many women in midlife struggle to recognize how far they've come.

I had no idea where that commitment would lea...

What do you do when you know what helps you feel better, but motivation is nowhere to be found?

In this solo episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan explores the idea of mental fitness as one of the most important muscles women in midlife can build. Inspired by a moment during a Peloton class, she reflects on why motivation is unreliable and why mental fitness is what helps us keep choosing what supports us, even on the days we d...

If choosing yourself makes you feel guilty, selfish, or wrong, this episode will help you understand why that discomfort may not mean you’re doing anything wrong.

In this episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan explores why choosing yourself can feel so uncomfortable, especially when you’ve spent years being the dependable one, the helpful one, the person who figures it out, or the one who says “it’s fine&...

Music has a way of taking us right back to ourselves.

In this holiday weekend replay of The Soundtrack of Your Life, we’re revisiting one of my favorite episodes about music, memory, mood, nostalgia, and the songs that remind us who we were, who we are, and who we’re still becoming.

In this episode, I share stories from my own life soundtrack, from childhood car rides and teenage freedom to dance floors, concerts, friends...

If you've been overthinking a situation you can't control, replaying conversations in your head, worrying about what might happen next, or feeling stuck in uncertainty, this episode is for you.

In this episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan shares a personal story about catching herself in a spiral of overthinking and anxiety during a workout, and how an unexpected song brought her back to a deeper truth about self-trust, identi...

Why trying harder isn’t helping and backing off isn’t giving up.

In this episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan explores midlife burnout, the addiction to effort, and why pushing through, doing more, and overriding your body can stop working at a certain point in life.

For many women in midlife, effort has been the thing that worked. It helped us build careers, care for others, move through hard seasons, stay responsi...