Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Suzi Landolphi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Suzi , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

“Don’t be a Hypocrite!” was my first mental health practice and is foundational to my work as a mental health mentor and therapist. The word practice is integral to physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and financial wellness. We get good at what we practice. Sure, we can tell others what to do and not do it ourselves. Our advice can even help others. And yet, we have all had experiences of getting advice from someone, who we knew was not doing what they’re suggesting. As a licensed professional, I am allowed to tell others to quit smoking, quit drinking and lose 100 pounds and then, go home, and smoke a carton of cigarettes, drink a gallon of wine and eat a whole F’ing cheesecake myself. As a mentor, that’s not ok.
As humans, we have thoughts, feelings and actions. Of the three, actions are what helps us the most, to create the person we deserve to be and the life we deserve to live. Why? Because most of that we think about ourselves and feel about ourselves was either done to us or told to us, by people who struggled with their own self-worth and mental health. The most effective change comes from the wellness practices we do, consistently, and based on principles, not thoughts and feelings. Every minute, every hour, every day is a practice day. A day to practice my mental health principles and walk along side the courageous people I have the honor of working with and learning from.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I became a mental health mentor later in my life. After creating my own theater company, becoming a national speaker on safer sex, opening America’s first condom store and having my own call in radio show and later night TV talk show, I decided to run off to Montana and become. cowgirl. Growing up in apartments in Massachusetts wasn’t exactly the best training for that job, so I signed up for a weekend retreat to learn how to gentle wild mustangs. When the wild horse trusted me and allowed me to give him the first human touch, a burst into tears and experienced all my childhood trauma rise like a tsunami and then settle like a quiet pond on a summer’s evening.

After that experience, I was compelled to offer healing experiences to others through equine therapy. The path was clear. Become a licensed therapist and create my own equine therapy program. With the support of Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue (www.wildhorserescue.org), I created Horse Inspired Growth and Healing or as we affectionally call it, Come Get HIGH With Horses! HIGH offers experiences for change like no other. As a mental health mentor, I can DO these experiences “with” the people I mentor, instead of just talking “with.” I realized that the clinical and medical model focused on what was wrong with people, instead of, what happened to them and how their trauma created struggles AND strengths. I have brought several mentees to my boxing training. I have attended family reunions. I participated in co-parenting sessions and worked along side some, to help clean up their homes. I walked and hiked with many in the mountains and on beaches and invited them to my ranch home, to experience their own wild horse gentling and the gentling of their anxiety and depression.

We deserve a Mental Health Evolution! One that doesn’t pathologize people’s struggles from the effects of childhood and adulthood trauma. The most basic human needs, for physical, and emotional wellness, are: knowing you belong; being seen and heard; mentoring by those, who have gained wisdom from experience; and being valued, not for what you provide to others or accomplish, but for just being alive. We cannot live well without safe, kind and respectful connections with others. Our Clinical model has created a power differential, that supports hypocritical, judgmental care, when we know, through research, a more peer-to-peer, support model creates a non-hierarchical, wellness practice, strengthens our principles and purpose, and offers authentic, connection to those we serve.

As a life long disrupter, you should know I don’t have a brand. I have seen horses and other livestock get branded to show ownership. During genocides, people have been branded too, to mark their lower value. I have beliefs, purpose and principles and maybe that’s close to being a brand. At my age, I have wrinkles, I don’t need an “Fing” brand. lol What I do offer is a movement, based on the belief “there is nothing wrong with you, it’s more important to know what happened to you, how you tried to make sense of it, and what you get to practice, so you can create the person you deserve to be and the life you deserve to live.
BE CRAZY WELL (as close to a brand I can get)

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

My reputation can be described as a Disrupter. I am a disrupter by training and life long practice. I didn’t build this reputation for a marketing. I did what I believed was helpful to the principles I lived by. I was the second daughter of a father, who was the son of Italian immigrants and a mother, who was a direct descendent of those who came by way of the Mayflower. Even though she was born into privilege, my mother was a social justice warrior.

My bio-dad suffered parental abuse and bullying in school, which drove him, to work his ass off, and create a successful restaurant. We are at risk of doing to ourselves and others what was done to us, and my father was abusive to me and my siblings. However, his abuse didn’t blind me, from seeing how a person can work hard and disrupt a whole communities’ judgment, by doing what they didn’t expect of him. He was a disrupter.

Later, I became the daughter of a step-father, whose ancestry was African American, Native American and Italian. My beautiful, New England, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mother disrupted her family and an entire community with her kind, yet fierce dedication to civil rights for all. When she and my step-father started dating, Massachusetts still had a law, prohibiting Black and White to marry.
For those, who create a reputation with intention and conscious planning, I applaud you. I have never been able to choose my actions to support what I wanted my reputation to be. I don’t know if that is easier or more difficult. All I know is, I cannot make a choice or force my actions to support what I want others to see me as. As much as a disrupter I have been in my life, and still am, I thrive when I am on a team, doing my part to help a successful mission. You may even see me knitting in the corner, smiling as the younger generation plan their disruptions, as they should.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

I swear a lot, and never in anger. I’m from Massachusetts where I think swearing originated. We call ourselves Massholes as a term of endearment. I have been told that it’s fun and funny to experience a grandmother swearing. I have a “wicked pissah” sense of humor. It has been one of my superpowers. I believe it came from trying to make all the depressed people in my family laugh. That could make it a self-preservation tactic so I could get my needs met.

Having a quick wit and ability to be funny, doesn’t mean I’m not serious. On the contrary, my humor is very serious. I know how important laughing is to greater wellness. I know that being able to laugh at myself helps others see the strength in that practice. I know how much easier it is for people to relax their nervous system, lower their defenses, and open their hearts and minds when laughter is encouraged. My ability to find humor also helps me not take words or actions so personally.

To change Kiplings quote from: “If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. . . . The world will be yours and everything in it, what’s more, you’ll be a man, my son.”

“If you can keep your wit and humor about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you…The situation will be yours to create greater connection and anything in it, what’s more, you”ll be the funniest most likable person in the room, my friend.” BE CRAZY WELL!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.becrazywell.com
• Instagram: @becrazywell. @suzilandolphi
• Facebook: Suzi Landolphi
• Linkedin: Suzi Landolphi
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/@becrazywell
• Other: Blue Sky

  @suzililac.bsky.social