We recently connected with Susan Michel and have shared our conversation below.

Susan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

My life’s journey hit a major turning point, at the age of 20, when I tried to commit suicide twice. With 6 bottles of sleeping pills inside of me, I imagined my father lying over my dead body in tears. I wanted him to feel my pain. Then I realized that I didn’t really want to die, I just wanted to kill the pain. My joy was on the other side of all of that pain and I didn’t have the tools to process my repressed, unhealed emotions.
My journey towards true peace began with an “aha” moment during a Marianne Williamson lecture. She was interpreting the book entitled A Course in Miracles and everything she said made so much sense. As she spoke, I knew that I had found my path home.
As I continued to study A Course in Miracles light bulbs continued to go off in my mind on a regular basis. ACIM (A Course in Miracles) is a spiritual psychotherapy. This knowledge allowed me to process my repressed pain and access the peace, love, joy and happiness on the other side of it.
My journey toward love has been filled with incredible lows as well as amazing ups. I had to learn that it is not activities or accomplishments that make us whole. The only thing that really matters is the love, and that love must start from within. Now I rest in a spirit of peace and joy when I practice spiritual principals found in A Course in Miracles.

Susan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been studying and teaching the spiritual truth entitled A Course in Miracles for over 30 years. I help people identify and process emotional pain so transformation can occur and they can grow and open up to their innate brilliance. In today’s world, we are taught that to create a positive life, we must think positive thoughts. That is only partial truth. Without stepping into our pain first, joy is impossible. I initially learned this truth while struggling with clinical depression in 1985. As a young woman, I felt abandoned and betrayed by my dad and everyone else in my life.
My joy was on the other side of all that pain and I didn’t have the tools to process it. Once I found them, I found that the keys to true transformation are acceptance, forgiveness, and gratitude. These are core principles of A Course in Miracles.
Joy is found my surrendering to our inner essence, not by getting caught up in the madness of the external world. When we start connecting to our internal guidance system, life starts to flow more smoothly.
My mission is to show the world how to use our internal guidance system to shift from a fear-based thought system to compassion and unconditional love.
My brand is Trust Transformational Truth. My book is entitled Surrender to Joy: From Suicide to Serenity and is available on Amazon. This book was written to help others understand the transformational truth of A Course in Miracles and how daily application of these principles allows us to surrender to the joy that we all have within.
I speak, write, and teach the transformational truth of A Course in Miracles. I’m currently a regular host on Paltalk which goes live on YouTube on Mondays at 3pm EST and Fridays at 1pm EST. I have also been a guest speaker on numerous podcasts and radio shows including Chat with Charlie, Unleash Your Healing Potential, Faith on the Journey, Your Inner Brilliance, Unfiltered Stories and more. My writings have been featured on well-known media platforms including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and Yahoo Finance. My website is www.surrendertojoy.net.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I was taught that if I achieved my goals in the world I would feel satisfied and be happy. This turned out to be a lie. I worked really hard to achieve my goal of becoming a fashion model. After meeting this goal, I found that it did not quell my internal angst. I lost all hope and attempted suicide. At the age of 20, I felt very insecure and started looking for something that would give me the confidence I was lacking. I decided that if I could become pretty enough to become a model, then I would feel “good enough”. I felt that all I had to do was to change my external image and professional position in the world and my problems and inner turmoil would disappear.
To achieve this goal, I started with plastic surgery. First, I had my nose straightened and my breasts enhanced. Then, I convinced a top Boston photographer to help me get a portfolio of pictures together. Then I managed to get representation from the best modeling agency in Boston, Maggie, Inc.
For a short time I felt good, even great, but these feelings were fleeting. On the inside, I still felt extremely inadequate. I accomplished my goals, but because I looked to the world to give me the confidence that I believed I lacked, my efforts failed. Changing the outside could not bring me happiness or solve any of my inner turmoil. There was still an overwhelming amount of pain that I had not yet identified and processed which led to my imminent suicide attempts.
What I have learned in the years since then, during my ongoing studies of A Course in Miracles, is that happiness starts from within. We need to live from the inside out. We need to find our happiness internally first, because if we look for it in the world, we will always be disappointed.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

The book that has transformed my life is A Course in Miracles. It was first published in 1976 by the foundation for Inner Peace. It was a collaboration of Helen Schucman and William Thetford, Professors of Medical Psychology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Helen Schucman channeled the words of Jesus Christ. She was atheistic in belief. Part of the reason she was chosen was because He did not want religious dogma to interfere with His message. The preface of A Course in Miracles states, “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.” What this means is that the only thing that is real is the love. ACIM is a non-dualistic thought system. This contradicts traditional Christianity which teaches that an evil force, the Devil, is always trying to lure us away from God. I quote a few lines in The Invitation poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer frequently to convey the importance of owning our pain in order to access our joy. Oriah writes in the middle of her poem, “I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without trying to hide it or fade it or fix it.” The next lines are: “I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human.” The invitation to “sit with our pain” is a prelude. Do that and you’ve created the room to sit with joy, “mine or your own”.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.surrendertojoy.net
• Instagram: instagram.com/surrender_to_joy
• Facebook: facebook.com/susan.michel.73
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/susanjmichel/
• Twitter: twitter.com/susanjmichel
• Youtube: @susanmichel4814
• Email: [email protected]
• Other: Link to buy Surrender to Joy: From Suicide to Serenity on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=SurrendertoJoy+From+Suicide+to+Serenity&crid=11XBDB03S9ZGP&sprefix=surrendertojoy+from+suicide+to+serenity%2Caps%2C95&ref=nb_sb_noss

Image Credits
Photographer: Carol Evans Book Cover Design: Jay Pizer