149. Living Well is the Best Revenge with Susan Omilian JD, – The Author of “Living in the Thriver Zone”

We are happy to bring into our podcasts, great

leaders and authors and people who have navigated some form of

adversity in their own right and have something to teach us and

to lead us. And that is the case here today as we have Susan

Amelia with us. She is a lawyer and she is an expert in working

with folks who have experience, particularly women who've

experienced violence. She's a trainer in this area.

motivational speaker, she has spent many years helping people

reclaim their lives after trauma and violence and abuse. And she

is an author of a series of books called the thriver zone

series, which you can pick up and learn more about it thriver

zone.com, and related book of this series is living in the

thriver zone, which helps people to live well as the best

revenge. Susan, Welcome to Beyond adversity.

Thank you, bad, lovely to be here. Awesome.

Well, it is great to have you with us here today on the

podcast. And your work is in such an important area, which

has to do with helping women particularly to navigate and

deal with abuse, and trauma and drama and what we're all about

here in this podcast to help people to navigate adverse

conditions. And I found that most people have a story to tell

about how something has happened in their life. And I just would

like for you to share a little bit about how you come to focus

on this area of the helping people helping women

particularly who have experienced abuse, what happened

in your life, which was pivotal for you to focus in on this.

There were several pivotal moments. I have been doing this

the women's rights movement very interested in that I decided to

go to law school to pursue that to work on women's rights

issues. I also had been although I had no personal experience

with sexual assault, I started doing some sexual assault victim

advocacy. And I also as an attorney represented women in

domestic violence cases coming through divorce on this is in

the early 80s. I went to work for state government here in

Connecticut working in the governor's office and also the

governor's budget agency and child welfare. And right after I

left that job, something happened that although I was

interested in this work and had done it as an advocate that

something happened in my personal life that really

switched the kind of work I was doing. And that was mostly my

this month. My niece Maggie who was a 19 year old college

student at a very good school and Midwest. My family is rich,

I'm originally from Michigan, my family's from Michigan was

killed by her ex boyfriend he had she'd been had very short

term relationship with him, he refused to accept the end of the

relationship. She didn't know he had a gun he had never

physically assaulted her before he killed her and then killed

himself. Although I done this work before suddenly became my

personal mission very immediate. Because Maggie is now dead. And

we do something about this. And it really sort of changed the

course of the kind of work I would do. And I think it became

much deeper kind of work not only for me, because I was on my

own journey to move beyond this. And I wanted to do more than

survive it. I knew that this man had destroyed my niece, I felt

he wasn't going to destroy my life for my family. So how could

we get something good to come out of this? And that really is

where that pivotal moment almost 20 years ago, that really took

me to the work that I do now helping women who as Maggie

could not move on after abuse and take that journey. I call

that the journey from victim to survivor to thriver. Well, what

a what a drama what a trauma is certainly and you would probably

know more about the statistics on this than I would. But it is

a major problem, isn't it of abuse of women and violence,

including murder and so on. And it is just a huge problem.

Right. And I think somehow although I had done this work

for 20 years before Maggie was killed, I thought my family was

the exception we were going to be the other that we were not

going to be touched by this. And that was statistically if you

look at any any kind of data about the incidence of domestic

violence, sexual assault, child abuse, homicide, domestic

violence, homicide, the numbers are across all all generations,

all age groups, all cultures, all socio economic. I come from

a blue collar background so nobody is really and I think

that was one of the one of the more startling things I still

really can't believe that my niece is gone. Although it's

been 20 years, I guess at any kind of tragedy. It's like it

feels like it happened so long.

And then it feel like it happened yesterday. And it's

always cut. You know, there's always something that brings you

back to that tragedy, that trauma, my niece would have been

40 years old this this year, she and I have actually the same

birth date. In August, that kind of struck all of us as a family,

my God, she would have been 40. Look what she could have been

doing. She wanted to be a lawyer, she wanted to have

children and have a family. And that's really when you realize

the impact of trauma not only on people's lives, but all the

attendant people around Maggie, all of her friends, and family

members, and even people that never met her, but that

have been influenced by her life. I'm sure

her memory and her presence is a driving force in your work now,

and I'm interested in some of the terminology that you use

Susan, in your work. You have a series of workshops called the

avenging Angel workshops, and the new stage in your work that

living wills the best revenge. So how we respond to drama

tragedy is so important, people can get stuck in bitterness and

revenge and revenge of energy. So use that terminology in your

work. But I'm interested in how you come to terms with the idea,

it seems like you are trying to help people to respond a little

differently than revenge and avenging in terms of punishment.

So I want to unpack it for me a little bit. What's your What are

you trying to get out here, when you say you want to avenge

living well, is the best revenge.

So I think it started with me, because as a

trained attorney, although I never did criminal works. As

such, I mostly did work with women and family law and civil

cases. When I was practicing, as a practicing attorney, I guess

you would call it because he, this man killed himself, I had

the sense that the way the system is supposed to work is

that to get not revenge, but to do something about this. So it

will stop and and then there's

no there was there was no justice in this case was

there, there's no no. And in

some way, you know that he killed himself. We

didn't have to go through a trial. And I have talked to

people's homicide survivors, I now belong to a club that I

never wanted to belong to. But I have had some mentors in the pop

the homicide survivor community, and they told me it's really

hard to go for that kind of a trial goes on forever. It's not

really that healing, there really is no closure. So you

have to find your own closure. And when I started thinking

about revenge, I googled the word revenge. And I got that

that quote, living well is the best revenge. And having worked

with women in domestic violence, one of the things that I learned

about that, the dynamics of that relationship, because it's power

and control over one person over the other, the idea that the

women could come and live well, the one thing that this man who

had control them would not want them to do that feels that felt

really freeing and releasing so that it helped me to tell myself

that the thing that I want to do is do the best I can here, and

that's going to be my best revenge, and I'm going to live

well. And if I can help other women to see that as a goal,

then I think we have found something positive to come out

of all this.

Well, let's talk about how we could help women

and others who are having this situation because what we like

to talk about here on this podcast is help people can take

whatever trauma or drama that they have, or adversity, and to

get beyond it to find a way and one of the things that I believe

that is important is people need to take some action, people need

to do something they can get, you know, they can get lost in

your misery you can get get really bitter and just stay

stuck. What do you think are some actions? Let's just put

let's just take a perspective of someone who is listening to this

podcast who is experiencing some form of abuse and is looking for

some direction? What are some action? What are something that

they can do to respond to this?

Well, I think one of the things that in my

niece's situation she never really identified as a victim. I

mean, the warning signs were there the one sign that wasn't

there that he had physically assaulted her or had the

capacity to physically hurt her. But all the other warning signs

were there and and part of my guilt about that as I knew those

warning signs, but it seemed like Maggie was handling this.

Okay. He was she had left him I think she went back to the room

that night to see him one more time to tell him to leave her

alone. I think she thought she could solve the problem all by

herself. So I always tell women, whether you feel you know,

you've got every single warning sign on the list of physical,

mental, psychological, you know, financial abuse, go get help,

you have to go get help. That's the first thing and there and

programs, the hotline, the Domestic Violence Hotline, you

can Google it, you need to identify as a victim you need to

address the issue that you make, even if there's been no physical

abuse. In the marriage, or the relationship, any pushing,

shoving, you know, threats or whatever, or you know, guns or

however this person might show power and control, you need to

get help. So identifying is that and then the other thing that I

try to teach women, I tend not to work with women right now who

are in crisis. I found after my own trauma with Maggie's death

that I couldn't do that after Maggie. I every woman in the

shelter was Maggie and I emotionally couldn't do that. So

I really work with women who have gotten out on some level,

although I work with women who actually have been out for a

number of years, and they still don't feel like they're moving

forward identifying as a victim very, very important.

Understanding that you will go beyond being a victim, you can

you will, you will some women come to me, I've always been a

victim, I'm a really good survivor, I can survive

anything. And I tell them that they're on a journey, that there

is a place where you will struggle, we all have a struggle

in our life, the question is, you're going to move beyond that

you're going to survive. And I want to see you do more than

that

are things are things like denial and

projection, a part of the issues here, you know, denial, pretend

like they're projecting saints, I did something to precipitate,

yeah, they blame themselves. But if only I

wouldn't have gotten this relationship, not only in terms

of myself, but their children have been exposed to all this.

One of the things I work with is just trying to get them into

positive energy, not to say that this, you know, didn't happen,

because it did. And not to say that it's not going to continue

to have some impact on your life. Men, the women I work

with, even after they have left the abusive relationship or

marriage, they get caught in custody battles, and child

support and, and all kinds of rigmarole that will pull them

back. But to keep moving forward. What I also have

learned for myself and in also for the women I work with, is

that there's this negative voice in your head, that will keep

telling you all this stuff. And in fact, if you've been in

abusive relationship, the person who abused you may, in fact,

have taken on that voice, you know, you're fat and stupid, and

no will ever love, you got to stay with me. And to understand

that's just one voice in your head, and to begin to get that

mind control, particularly for people who have been in

controlling relationships, where the manipulation is really

intense, and the belief that you're nothing and your self

esteem is really low. So to build that up, and to start to

say, okay, that's an action you can take to start to realize

that there's a part of you that is, is worthy and deserving of

all the good things and deserving of living well. And

then to begin, as she was saying, to start taking other

actions, to start to understand that they are desires and things

you can start moving forward with. Some of the women for

example, need to go if they have not been, they've been they have

not been working outside the home, need to get back to work,

maybe to get a better job, they can go back to school and pursue

some dreams, but they need to keep dealing with that

resistance in their head, that something is wrong with them

some overwhelming fear of rejection. And so I have put

together a motivational model that helps them find those those

guideposts and to realize that if you can realize some of these

dreams that I've had women in my groups come through my

workshops, and I have a continuing program so that they

can stay connected and start working on goals. They started

singing again, they started painting again, they've gone

back to school, they it's coming out of a different energy. And

do they fight with that negative voice every single day?

Absolutely. But to bring up that I call it the happy person

inside to bring that part of them up. I believe that part of

us. And you know, because you come from a spiritual religious,

I think it's a spiritual part of us.

Let's get it over. So you you mentioned the happy

person inside and I just believe there's a part of this Susan has

to do with we got have drawn resources you mentioned by

taking action and you know about, about reaching out for

help. One source of power to connect up with that happy

person inside can be understanding that there is

something greater than yourself that there is some spiritual

force, you can call it God, you can call it connecting with a

higher power, whatever you want to do. But what role does having

to do with some connection with some force greater than yourself

come into play in terms of this transformation to ripperger that

you're talking about connecting to that happy person inside?

Well, I my experiences is that many of the

women, particularly women who've been through not just a domestic

violence, abusive relationship as an adult they may have had,

and I think there's a word now that they've assigned to it in

the clinical world called poly victimization. That Yes, their

their presenting problem to a domestic violence hotline is

that I'm currently in an abusive relationship, but they probably

will also can would tell you that they've had a sexual

assault in the past, or that child abuse was deaf or they

witnessed domestic violence as children or They have had been

victims of street violence. So the idea that they think that

every part of them has been destroyed by all that's happened

to them, the way I describe it is a part of you, it's been

untouched. And I do agree. And some of them who have religious

backgrounds call it a divine call it God call it some sense

of it, some party that cannot be touched, it has been trounced

down and yelled at and screamed at. And maybe it's like a little

tiny Ember in their, in their psyche right now. But to bring

that part up, and to realize that you can rebuild that, or

you can nourish it again. And that blame, you know, that I

have destroyed everything. And there's nothing. One of the

exercises I do in my, in my workshops, and also my books is

a survey of what I call limiting beliefs about yourself, bad

things always happened to me, abuse has always been in my

life, I can't do anything about it. There, there's no way I can

create the life I want those kind of beliefs, which gets

stuck in our head. And for righteous reasons, there's lots

of stuff going on that would that would feed those thoughts,

but they really are limiting beliefs, and then trying to

transform them into and I use a lot of affirmations, you know, I

am strong I am I can do this beginning to get that part of

them.

So the inner the inner life has to be nurtured

and fed by something by interjecting something greater

than yourself. It might be reading a good book, a classic

book, or taking your workshop, or finding some input that can

help to bring about that inner voice

or as simple as going and sitting on the beach

for a few hours or taking a walk or you know, watching your

favorite movies. And those are the those are the little things

you can do to start building to. Okay, so now I want to go back

to school and look, I'm graduating and I you know, that

moment, I try to get them to see their goal as something they can

achieve. And the last thing they can do is that celebration, and

then how how to keep yourself motivated to go there. I think

the other thing that we're sort of touching on perhaps, that I

want to say more More specifically, I think you have

to find some life of purpose out of all this. I mean, I you know,

oddly enough, what happened to my niece in that moment of her

death and the horror of it. Some part of me said, Oh, my God,

everything I ever did came to this moment. And it really began

to define my purpose. And I think more and more, we're

finding people who have had terrible things happen to them,

and they found find something good some purpose to do it. I

was really struck by the high school students from Parkland,

Florida a couple of years ago, they almost immediately got it,

you know, okay, this terrible thing happened. And we know it's

terrible. And we're gonna have to deal with that, that terror,

but boy, we're gonna go out there and fix this and talk

about that and make people understand. And that

transformation was much clearer for them.

And they made it and they made an impact

immediately, didn't they? I mean,

and they knew it, they knew and they, they

changed some of those laws. And they got the school to do some

things. The school I mean, the school where they were, this

happened, they they tore down the building. I mean, they were

not going to put up with anything like they're not going

to put a patch over this. This is gonna be there's has to be

something I really thought about Maggie Steph is that this is a

huge thing that's happened. So what has to come from it is

huge. It can't just be this little thing.

But it also brings to mind that there was power in

the US in the Parkland students as an example that when tragedy

struck of terrible devastation of many, many murders, I forget

how many there was, some

of the kids were actually there, they saw their

friends get killed.

But what I'm trying to Pardo I'm getting at is then

they bound together one to another they had unity in their

own purpose, not only just individual purpose, but with

others. And so I want to go with you here this is a formatter to

is the power, the healing power of positive relationships,

especially relationships to have a healthy loving relationship

people have gone through abuse of have had often that term love

has often been, you know, skewed or messed up, you know, in such

a way, but the power of loving healthy relationships to fuel

transformation. And maybe you could say a word about that

about how people aren't abused need to seek out in healthy

relationships, and others can speak into their life as well.

It's

so the two things I'd say about that is I

said I do this workshop. It's a two day workshop. I decided from

the very beginning by some some idea in my head, some feeling I

guess that I didn't want to say to the women Oh, nice to meet

you. I'll see you later. I decided to have monthly follow

up. So I've created a community of women, where I never ask them

to tell their story. I make sure they're safe, but they don't

come to my workshop or my follow ups. Talk about what happened to

them. What they do come and talk about is what's happening now.

And what's positive, and they get, they get that feed from

each other. And they love to come when we help the thriver

community and hang out, because they know we're gonna do

positive things. And so so I agree that creating those

positive relationships, they don't have to be romantic or

even, but to then start working on the relationship with other

people, their children, particularly because they have

to heal some of that. And then I do have some women in the group

years, they have gotten into healthy, intimate partner

relationships. And they have met people, mostly men who have who

have given them a healthy relationship.

Also, in those workshops, I'm sorry to

interrupt with the other workshops, are they? Are the

participants able to interact with one another as well as with

you? Yes. And has that been a helpful piece for them to have

community with with each other?

I just finished a workshop in October and the

women who've been in my workshop in my community for a while,

it's like, oh, you know, who's coming to the program? And how

do they do? And, you know, what are they working on, because

some of them have similar, you know, similar goals, like, at

the end of my workshops, and the end of the materials that I work

in my books, you haven't, you set a new goal for yourself. And

sometimes it's a goal that you've been working on for a

while, like I need to get a better job, but it comes out of

a different energy, it comes out of that thriver energy, so or go

back to school or start painting again. And you know, some of the

goals are just to get their energy going, and some of them

the positive energy going, and some or to move their life

forward, connecting around all of that. Then we have our

success stories. And we role model for each other. Oh, look

what she did. She passed that test. She's been working on

really hard to get to get her hurt her career going, Oh, look,

she's got back to school. Oh, look, she's got a new place to

live. Oh, look, she's been doing some painting now. So just the

idea that that's real money that was really important to me,

coming out of as a homicide survivor, I had role models of

people who were ahead of me in their grief and in in finding

purpose that I could say, Well, look, I can do what I can do a

build it or, or surely did, because that was what I think

was missing for lots of these women was a role model, not only

have helped not only have healthy relationships, but how

you keep your life moving.

Sounds like encouragement. And

accountability is a part of those the dynamic of those

relationships as well, which is part of what helps people to

move forward and not be stuck. I call it the blaze of mediocrity

where we just get stuck and doing what we've been doing.

Good, good, good. Let's talk about the process some of the

process here. Now I know you have a seven step process and

part of your system here that you use. And I'm a believer that

we need. In order to move through adversity, you have to

have some disciplines or habits or processes, things that we got

to do, you know, we got to work too. So help us with that a

little bit, unpack some of your process that you use are some of

the disciplines or things that people can do to move out to

move through this thriver stage that you speak of.

Yeah, and and although I work mainly with

women who've come through abuse, I've also started working with

men, male offenders, actually, who, who if you know anything

about the world that we live in many people and I've also worked

with female offenders, which is a smaller group, at least the

women who've been identified that their trauma histories are

incredible, so many ways, you know, we really have to address

that to solve it's

a systematic, it's a systematic thing. It's not

just bad men, good women, whatever it is a whole system

that's messed

I mean, you start to pull it apart, you're

like, Oh my god, no wonder why child abuse needs to be dressed

as children, or else they will live to be, or many of the men

I've worked with, I've done offender groups, intervention

groups with male offenders. And if you ask them about their

childhood, they will usually tell you about witnessing

domestic violence or being abused themselves made it just

it just perpetuates all the way through. So the seven steps that

I put together, I don't know exactly how I did this, I guess

you know, like you say the how the higher powers sometimes

guide you. So the seven steps are really to give the women an

idea that they're on a journey. That's the first step. And for

some of them when I put on victims to survivor to thriver

on the board. In the workshop, they're like, Oh, I didn't know

I was on a journey. I thought I was going to be a victim my

whole life. And then another step I have is quieting that

inner critic we talked about that bringing up the happy

person inside and then I have a motivational model after the

next steps are to understand what that positive energy you

need to focus desire. And your need to overcome any fear or

resistance. You have to get that desire like to go back to school

or to get a better job or to make some changes in your life

realizing that at the end of that, that will be I call it the

real you the divine the the thriver the power Have you in

for me, I realized a lot of what drove me throughout most of my

life, even before Maggie was killed is I need to do

meaningful work. I went to law school. And I was really clear,

I didn't understand at the time that I wasn't going to go do

corporate law or tax law, nice thing to do, but it just wasn't

going to make me happy that I've always wanted to help and heal

other people accomplish something. And if you can match

your your desire to that goal, like I've matched my desire to

run a workshop, I didn't know how to run a workshop, I was

like, I'm not a clinician, I don't know what I'm doing. But

something told me that that was gonna get me to my real you is

going to make me feel like I was, I was helping other people

that I was doing meaningful work, and laying out this

motivational model, which I think all of us follow.

Actually, the question I asked the women is, at what step Are

you stuck, maybe you don't have enough positive energy to get

going, maybe your desire isn't focused enough, maybe your fear

is overwhelming you that resistance and, and limiting

belief, or maybe you've lost touch with the real you when you

can do all that. And the last step is to set a goal for

yourself. And maybe it's a small goal to get the process going

get your energy moving. Because once you get one of them done,

that might feel you back. So what they like about it is they

like this idea that Yeah, they've been stuck in that I

have a way to kind of extricate them to get them to see that no,

that's just a place that you have been that your your body,

mind and spirit has thought you were stopped. But in fact,

there's ways to get through it. The last book I put together,

because I really wanted to the living in the thrivers zone is I

wanted for these women to describe to me how this worked

for them. And to really show that from the beginning where

they came in the workshop, and where they are and how they

define Living Well, well,

let's let's go there for a second, you have a

progression in your three books. Here, you've got a number of

books that you've written, both non nonfiction and fiction looks

like. The first one is entering the thriver zone, the second one

staying in the thriver zone and wants just release recently,

living in the thriver zone. And I think you've got some stories

to tell there are people who have basically gone through your

work together. And I would like you to speak to the woman who

may be listening to our podcast episode today who may be going

through her problems or issues with abuse of some sort, by

helping us to understand the story of maybe a person or two

that that you have, have worked with. And so tell us a story

about a person who has had some transformation out of your, who

you've encountered here.

One of them that's really very, very clear

to me, is a woman young woman who came into my workshop, one

of my first workshops almost 20 years ago, who wasn't singing

what I met her. She was probably in her 20s she wasn't singing, I

asked her why she stopped singing. And she the she was she

was in a dating relationship that had moved from verbal to

physical. And he was her musical partner. She didn't play the

guitar at the time, her background was more than piano.

And she stopped singing. I remembered my niece, Maggie when

she was a kid. And she used to ask me about the cases that I

was doing on those litigating. And I tell her the story. And

she's like, well answers. And that's so unfair, we have to do

something about that. And so it reminded me of this woman

situation and like, that'd be so unfair. She'd never sing again,

watching her start to invite her to come and bring her guitar to

one of our events and play a little bit and sing for us. I

had never heard her sing, she had beautiful voice. And she

wasn't good at guitar. But she started and she naturally start

singing again. But she also started writing songs about her

journey beyond abuse. So that was a really kind of clear

example of a block that she had, that she thought she'd never get

through. And then how we began the community around her began

to manage that for her and to or to give her a way to see it that

that that she could get through that block. And that gave her a

purpose that she started singing with a purpose in mind not just

singing again,

what have you what a beautiful metaphor to go from

a place of basically no voice and no song, sharing literally

her voice.

And that's what I get. I mean, I give women back

their voice. There's another woman who came in who had had a

brace on her leg because she had had a physical altercation with

her, her husband and and her voice was so tiny. And she has a

very tiny women very petite woman. And I had to keep asking

her to, to speak louder during the workshop and over the years

that I've known her. She has now this big voice and she's I'm a

woman of power. And the idea that and to inspire other women.

Well, if she can do that, look what I could do my little thing.

So yeah, I think it's giving giving back a voice. It's also

giving when I do this when I asked him what's important to

them. Like I said, meaningful works important to me. One of

the things that I I find women are not socialized to want power

and status in our society, maybe it's changing. But I said that

maybe you want to empower yourself. And so they like that

they like that idea of empowering themselves that they

can now particularly if they've been in a controlling

relationship, whether it was an adult in the domestic violence

or as a child that they want to empower themselves. So to find

that thing that really gets them moving,

yep, you're helping them to develop their own sense

of purpose or mission, right? So

or to find what they love, you know, if it's

painting, or if it's if it's art, or I have women who stopped

painting, because, you know, the, the art teacher in high

school, sexually assaulted them, and they stopped painting it at

age 16. And they suddenly said, I'm gonna do that again. So just

trying to find that spark, again, we were talking about

that little flame, the part of them it's been on touch the part

of the Divine, the spiritual part, to see if they could start

to rebuild that Ember, and then they take off and do these

amazing things that I don't even know that I didn't even know

they could do.

Well, that's the thriving, right? That's the

thriving, so is as opposed to reaching out for revenge by, you

know, violence of your own sword going to get drunk or whatever

it would be, you know, people have find all kinds of ways to

respond to try to numb the pain, but to have revenge by thriving.

Right.

And and I think I have I have a what I call it a

working definition of thriver that I have in all my books. I

think it's working because I don't think we've made it big

enough yet. I don't think we to really put we'll put people out

there not just women, but to put people out there and say, like

the Parkland kids, I mean, you know, they got it really fast.

in their 60s and 70s, who are just learning that there's a

part of them that's been untouched and and all the things

that have happened to them cannot be wiped out. But they

can be overcome, I

guess. Well, let's

hear your definition of a thriving.

Okay, sure. So it's in my book. So, A thriver

is a happy, self confident and productive individual who

believes she has a prosperous life ahead of her. She's primed

to follow her dreams, go back to school, find a new job, start

her own business or writer story. She believes in herself

in the future so much that she will not return to an abusive

relationship, living well as her best revenge, she's not stuck in

her anger or need for revenge, she's found a network of women

who understand and share her desire to move forward after

abuse.

Well, that's a great thing. And I'm a big

believer in building things like mission and purpose statements

and goals and so on. And that seems to me like you're giving

women particularly anyone an opportunity to connect up with

that as a starting point for themselves, so they can develop

their own their own process.

Yeah, and like I said, they do things that I sort

of, like, I always feel like they're, um, they come to my

workshop, they're like, on the edge of a cliff. And they're

ready to there, they think that they can jump off, you know, and

metaphorically, without a parachute and land on their feet

at the bottom of the canyon. And they, they act like they come

into the workshop, like they're really in a bad place, but they

really are on the edge of that cliff. All I have to do is put

my little finger on their back end, they're over. And they're,

and they're going for it. And sometimes it's like, you know,

within 10 minutes of the workshop ending, they're sending

me stuff on the email and the writing the bones. And, you

know, it's just the energy. I

mean, I literally can

watch some of the women transform before my

eyes during the workshop. And there's

nothing there's nothing better than life

transformation when you see it. Oh, yeah, that process. I'm a

junkie for that. You know, me. Me, too. That's helping people

get through adverse conditions, they get stuck, including things

like divorce and abuse, and help them to come to the place. I

like to call it peace, prosperity and purpose. So it's

been it's been awesome to have you on with us here today,

Susan, just a lot of great stuff here, a trilogy of books, called

the thriver zone, and you can connect with that at thriver

zone.com. That's the best place to get Yeah,

everything's there and some of the, the

women's stories too, so that'd be great.

Well, it's been good, good to be with you today.

And the key point here is just reclaim your life. If you're a

woman and abuse, reclaim your life, find a way that you can

not be absolved into remorse and to revenge it's based on abuse

to yourself and hurting yourself and hurting others, but to live

well and to thrive. And so, it's been a pleasure to have as our

guest today, Susan a million, the author of the living and the

thriver zone series, her latest book, living in the thrivers

zone, a celebration, living well as the best revenge. Our guest

today on beyond adversity has been Susan a million