Tag Archives: Susan Clarke

Connecting, Connection, Life Experiences, Valuing Differences

It Still Comes Back to the Waiting Room

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When Ben and Jock started Haven, it grew out of something they had discovered in their medical practices:

Healing was often happening more in the waiting room than in their offices.

Their patients were very different—elderly people and teenagers—and their backgrounds included acupuncture, emergency medicine and psychiatry. Yet it wasn’t necessarily their medical expertise that was making the most transformative difference in people’s lives.

It was what was happening relationally.

People were talking. Sharing stories. Seeing themselves in one another. Feeling less alone.

Ben and Jock wanted to take that further. Eventually, they let go of their medical licences to focus on group dynamics, relationships and embodiment.

By the time I arrived, relational programs had been happening for years, and the work had found a home on Gabriola Island at a place called The Haven.

Some of the core programs from those early years are still offered today—from Come Alive and Couples Alive to month-long programs devoted to personal development, relationships and leadership training.

The leadership month was called New Horizons. The name reflected its exploration of new and cutting-edge ideas in psychology, science, philosophy and medicine, alongside both Eastern and Western ways of understanding human experience.

What I remember most was the spirit of the program:

Touch on everything. Then blow up every theory and structure.

Not to dismiss what could be learned, but to crack the structure open. To help the mind grasp that there isn’t one right way.

There are pieces—fractals of truth—in all systems and theories. What makes them living is how they respond to the actual human being who walks, talks, breathes and relates out in the world.

What we believe matters. But it doesn’t have to become permanent. It doesn’t have to become “right.”

Of course, Ben and Jock had strong opinions, as did the many people who led and worked alongside them. But the highlight of New Horizons was when each participant pulled together and shared their own living model.

In some ways, each of us was being asked to create our own waiting room—a place where people could gather, experiment, discover and meet one another more honestly.

Then people would go back into their lives. Some returned to intern, assist, lead and contribute to the ongoing educational process. They brought what they were learning from their own lives back into the room.

Not every way of relating or working was agreeable to Ben and Jock. Some people found their feedback confronting. At times, I did too.

But there was also something deeply enlivening about it—and, for me, incredibly valuable.

No matter how often I got knocked for being a victim or acting entitled, I still wanted to come back.

I wanted to understand.

I wanted to throw my opinions into the room and hear what came back. I wanted to encounter different experiences and different ways of coping, loving and living in what often seemed to me to be a very harsh world.

Over time, I became less afraid of the bumps, the bullies, the righteous certainty and even the hate.

I began to recognize that much of what frightened or angered me was another person’s attempt—sometimes clumsy, defended or harmful—to be loved, accepted and to belong.

That didn’t make every behaviour okay. It didn’t mean there was no need for accountability, boundaries or repair.

It meant I became more interested in what was happening between us than in proving who was right.

I am so grateful I kept coming back, even when it seemed I wasn’t very good at empathy or at getting beyond my own pain and blame.

I kept coming back.

And slowly, I learned to lead more with my heart and with my best human self.

I made mistakes.

I learned.

I repaired.

And I kept weaving those experiences into becoming more human, more real and, actually, more loving.

Along the way, I gathered all sorts of skills and training—from family systems, somatics and emotional release work to psychotherapy, Satir Family Reconstructions, addiction work, business consulting, coaching and equus work.

There was mystical and spiritual work, too. So many programs, theories, books, teachers and resources.

I value all of it.

But for me, it still comes back to that waiting room and the relational tools.

Life isn’t fair. Horrible things happen. People hurt one another, sometimes knowingly and sometimes while believing they are doing the right thing. No amount of training can promise that we will never cause harm—or create a space in which nobody will ever feel hurt, unseen or misunderstood.

What we can learn is how to stay present.

How to listen.

How to speak honestly.

How to notice when certainty has closed our minds and hardened our hearts.

How to take responsibility for our impact, repair what we can and remain in relationship long enough for something new to become possible.

Expertise can inform us. Knowledge can expand us. Training can help us recognize what we have not yet learned to see.

But no amount of expertise or knowledge means much without heart and connection.

That is what I believe Ben and Jock discovered in the waiting room.

And after all these years, it is still what I believe makes transformation and yes maybe healing possible.

Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Vulnerability

So Many Different Worlds

So many different worlds,
So many different suns,
And we have just one world,
But we live in different ones.

Those lines from Brothers in Arms — old words still not yet lived — echo with painful resonance today.

We are still at war.

Not the war of battlefields with clear lines — but a war of competing realities and a nation torn at its seams.

In Minneapolis this January, the killing of Renée Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen shot and killed by an ICE agent, sparked shock and outrage. Her death — now ruled a homicide with multiple gunshot wounds by medical authorities — has ignited protests, legal scrutiny, and national debate over use of force by federal immigration agents. 

And just this weekend, another person was fatally shot by federal agents in south Minneapolis — the second such deadly encounter in recent weeks — drawing tens of thousands into streets and fueling massive demonstrations. 

These are not distant battles. They are here, on our streets. They touch parents, neighbors, nurses, clergy, ordinary people who showed up to stand for peace — and now grieve a life lost. 

“Now the sun’s gone to hell, and
The moon’s riding high…”

I was profoundly moved by the moral courage I saw — people standing in the cold in Minnesota, clergy on their knees at the airport to block deportations, risking arrest, refusing to look away. 

And I was moved by the words of Mark Carney at Davos — proud to be Canadian, urging cooperation, common ground, shared humanity.

Yet even with all that heart and hope, someone was killed.

Again, there are many conflicting narratives about what happened, but murder is murder and should not be happening when people rise to protest and speak out. These deaths deepen the grief and fracture the fragile trust we have in each other and in our institutions.
“Every man has to die… But it’s written in the starlight…”

We are fools to make war — on our brothers in arms, on our own people — and it sure feels like our government is bent toward that very thing. 

I don’t understand the venom, the dehumanization, the hate that is so casually dished out — across media, across lines of ideology, across dinner tables.

I do believe we are being torn apart.
And I don’t know what will stop it —
But it won’t come from guns, bloodshed, and hate — I am certain of that.

Maybe — as Mark Carney suggested — if nations, if people, act together from the middle ground; if middle states find shared humanity rather than competition; if compassion becomes the law of the land… — perhaps then we will remember that might does not make right.

“We’re fools to make war
On our brothers in arms.”

Community, Connecting, Embracing Unknown

I Want It To Make Sense – It Isn’t Possible

Here’s the thing for me — I want to understand it.
I want it to make sense. I want to settle the fear.
But that isn’t possible anymore.

Every time something horrific happens, I get driven to the news, to the screen, trying to make sense.
9/11. January 6. George Floyd. The COVID outbreak.
And now ICE and the recent shootings and deaths — the one in Minnesota is another I want to understand — and I can’t.

Then comes the political spin — “all self-defense,” “they deserved it.”
That enrages me on so many levels.

Murder is never a solution — much less something that is good for anyone.

I have talked to enough people who have killed to know this:
none of them believe that was what they wanted.
None of them walk away untouched.

War veterans with PTSD carry this truth in their bodies.
The people sent to “protect” our country often return unable to metabolize what they have seen — or what they were required to do.
That is trauma. Not victory.

So when we say that someone — anyone — deserves to die or be shot, especially on our streets, we are denying what we already know to be true.

Law enforcement.
Citizens.
Undocumented immigrants.

No one needs to be gunned down.
And saying that it’s okay — saying it’s justified — only deepens the violence we claim to be trying to stop.

And still, it seems we need an enemy.
We make them because it is unbearable to say, I was wrong.
To feel the shame of actions born from misinformation or partial truth.
So we defend, protect, blame — and that reflex spreads everywhere.

I watched Wicked: Part II last night.
Did you know the original Wizard of Oz came out just before WWII?
I couldn’t watch that one — the monkeys terrified me.
But Wicked, especially Part II, speaks directly to this moment.

The Wizard — someone who knows they are powerful will use anything and everything — and the look on his face when he realizes what he has destroyed.
That moment landed hard.

But what moved me most was the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda — and of course, the song.
A song about true forgiveness.
About being changed for good.

I so wish we could get that.

Even here, Elphaba leaves because people need someone to call wicked — as if goodness can only be embraced by casting someone out.

Do we really need that?

I know in myself how hard it can be not to want to destroy the perpetrator — or at least the one I believe is the perpetrator.
We can get so far down the road of right and wrong that it feels like there is no way back.

And yet — there is.

The way through may require feeling so deeply, and owning our part so fully, that it feels like sitting in the middle of a wildfire we ourselves set.

Yes — our bodies may burn.
Certainty may collapse.
Stories we tell about ourselves may turn to ash.

But real connection does not burn away.
What is true holds.
Even in the fire.

Our hearts keep beating — not despite connection, but because of it.

Maybe the flames don’t destroy connection at all.
Maybe they reveal it.

And maybe that is the only path to joy.

At some point, we have to risk that.

Can we?

Communication, Community, Connecting, Connection, Life Experiences, Vision, Vulnerability

Forgiveness

I’ve never been particularly comfortable with the word forgiveness.

Yet here I am considering it my word for 2026.

Here’s a popular definition of forgiveness:

Forgiveness is the conscious, voluntary decision to let go of resentment, anger, and vengeful thoughts toward someone who has wronged you, freeing yourself from the pain of the offense rather than condoning or excusing the act.

It sounds reasonable.
Even generous.

But I get stuck on one idea:
“toward someone who has wronged you.”

Because as long as forgiveness is organized around they wronged me, it stays trapped inside a courtroom.
Someone is right.
Someone is wrong.
And someone has to rise above it.

Real forgiveness—at least the kind that actually changes something—doesn’t live there.

For me, forgiveness begins when I’m willing to question my certainty.
Not erase my experience—but loosen my grip on the story I’m telling about it.

I don’t actually know what the other person intended.
I don’t know what they were seeing, hearing, or feeling in that moment.
I don’t know what shaped their choices or what fear, pain, or blindness might have been operating.

When I truly own that, something shifts.

The work of forgiveness stops being about them
and becomes about my willingness to step out of righteousness and victimhood.

What I’ve discovered is that suffering is real—but blame only hardens it.

Forgiveness happens when I stop insisting on being right
and start telling the truth about what I cannot know.

In those moments—when I land there in real presence—
my heart opens, but my spine doesn’t disappear.

There’s clarity.
There’s connection.
And there’s a surprising strength in not needing anyone to be the villain.

It doesn’t feel passive.
It feels liberating.

Which is why I don’t think forgiveness can be thought through or performed correctly.

Forgiveness is experiential.
It arrives in moments of curiosity rather than collapse,
innocence rather than innocence lost,
wisdom that comes from letting a rigid story soften into something truer.

And when it’s real,
the freedom moves both ways.

Communication, Community, Connecting, Connection, Life Experiences, Vision, writing

I Don’t Want a Platform—I Want a Campfire

Sometimes I get caught in spinning.

I want to do something—
move toward something purposeful, meaningful, alive.

But I don’t have a job like that.
I don’t work from an office or keep set hours.
I try to stay in service to our work, and sometimes that starts to feel like marketing or overselling, when really I just want to connect.
To share.
To see what might be offered—or received—in relationship.

Instead, I’m in my house in Montana.

I could go downtown and sit in a café and write.
Have a coffee. Maybe chat with people doing their thing.

I could go to the mountain—
ride the chairlift, talk about life and politics, take a few runs, eat curly fries.

I could walk the dogs and exchange small, human moments with people I pass in the woods.

I’d love to share more online.
But honestly, there’s so much noise there.
Ads. Rants. Performance.
So where do heartfelt words belong?
Who is really listening?

I’ve explored platforms—Substack, Mighty Networks, and the ever-growing list of “the next best thing.”
I’m not looking for big.
And I’m not looking for viral.

What I want is simpler—and maybe harder.

Camp Connection wants to become a small, human-scale space.
A place for stories, questions, and unfinished thoughts.
Not a funnel.
Not a brand.

More like a campfire—
where people wander in, sit down for a while, listen, speak when something feels true, and leave a little more connected than when they arrived.

As an Enneagram 5, I know I can get stuck in thinking and refining.
Coming close, then pulling back.
Wanting to share, then needing more quiet first.

Sometimes it’s hard being me.
And—this is me.

If you’d sit down at this campfire, let me know in the comments.
That’s enough to start.

Communication, Connecting, Connection, Leadership, Valuing Differences, Vulnerability

The Power — and Challenge — of Being Immediate in Community

When I’m in the middle of a rich, real community moment, I want to be all in. I want to name what’s happening, address it, and keep the connection alive right now.
That urgency can be a gift — and sometimes, a challenge.

I’m a very immediate person.
Sometimes that comes across as pressure or like it’s “all about me.”

At the recent Haven Faculty meeting — a deep, rich, and swirly experience — I threw myself into what I call a “pop-up community.” For me, the Haven is the best place to strengthen my skills in real, relational, and self-responsible living. It happens in programs, leadership, weekend meetings, and even online. But it takes intention — being present with what’s visible and invisible, owning mistakes, laughing, crying, and practicing patience.

That patience is my growth edge. In the moment, I often feel a strong urge to address issues right away, fearing they’ll grow if left alone. I’ve learned to speak my truth, then step back if others aren’t ready, leaving with clarity when I’ve invited full exchange.

Not everyone processes instantly. Sometimes insights or tensions surface later, away from the group. As a leader, I want to get better at supporting that — whether through a follow-up process, online sharing, or other ways to integrate after the fact. It’s one reason I’m developing Camp Connection.

I left the weekend with a few incompletes, so I’m reaching out, reflecting, and staying connected to that community energy as long as I can — to integrate, to strengthen both the branches and the heart of Haven, and to keep showing up real, relational, and self-responsible.

Communication, Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Leadership, Vulnerability

Coming Alive Is Questionable – Check With Yourself Before Entry

On a morning walk during our recent faculty weekend, I passed this small campground with a curious sign:

AREA QUESTIONABLE – See Supervisor Before Entry

It made me laugh—and then it made me think. Later in the day as we gathered as a faculty, I realized it was the perfect metaphor for our topic: The Haven’s Code of Ethics.

The intent of the code is good—to offer process and clarity, to provide a path for complaints, and to protect the Haven, its faculty, and participants. But here’s the challenge: our real purpose is to create a community where people can Come Alive and be fully themselves. And “protecting” that? I’m not sure it’s possible—or even helpful.

Which brings me back to that sign. Maybe, I thought, ours should read:

Coming Alive Is Questionable – Check With Yourself Before Entry

What if a code of ethics wasn’t a rigid set of right/wrong rules, but an invitation into dialogue? Legal language tends to close doors with absolutes. Coming alive is messier—it lives in the grey, the “questionable area.” And maybe that’s okay.

That campground, after all, was a beautiful, vibrant place for kids and adults. Yes, there were risks. But life—real, alive life—always carries risk.

I’ll admit, I’ve had a complicated history with codes of ethics. As a therapist, patient, healthcare provider, and business owner, I’ve mostly seen them as legal shields—documents crafted to prevent lawsuits rather than foster connection. So when I first heard The Haven was deep-diving into a new code, my walls went up. This place I love for its realness, mistakes, and growth suddenly sounded like it was drafting hospital paperwork.

But thanks to Jane K and the commitment of our faculty to wrestle with this, something shifted. I started to hear that this wasn’t about legal cover—it was about creating a shared path through conflict, a way to open dialogue before we ever head toward litigation.

It won’t be perfect. No document can guarantee safety or resolve every dispute. But if we keep it living, breathing, and grounded in relationship rather than bureaucracy, it can serve our purpose: to support people in the vulnerable, risky, beautiful work of Coming Alive.

The sign still says it best: safety not guaranteed—enter at your own risk. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the point.

Connecting, Connection, Embracing Unknown, Life Experiences

Launching Camp Connection

I am moving into new territory. Not only with my mother’s passing and all the changes and shifts that brings, but also in my relationship to Haven.

Haven itself is evolving, finding its own way forward. I hadn’t fully considered how much that would influence my own life and choices. But as I’ve gone through this time of loss and reflection, I realized how intertwined Haven has been in my journey of becoming.

When I first came to the Haven, I arrived with my sister, Penny. I had cancer and was told I likely had only six months to live. It was a way for us to be together in the time I thought I had left. That first Come Alive changed the trajectory of my life.

In many ways, I grew up there. I trained there. I learned, healed, and received so much. And as best I could, I tried to give back. Without Haven, I don’t believe I would have repaired the fractures in my family or created the meaningful relationships—like the one I have with CrisMarie—that sustain me.

And yet, everything is shifting.

The funny thing about Haven is that, in many ways, it felt like re-living camp. I lived on an island. We were adults instead of children, gathered around charismatic leaders—brilliant, imperfect, and human. I loved them, and at times I wanted to knock them off their pedestals.

Now, so many of the people who shaped my experience are gone. I still find myself wrestling with how to keep the core of what I loved alive. But I’m beginning to see that this is no longer my role—or my desire.

I want to let those cords dissolve. I want to allow myself to be re-created and Haven as well.

So, I find myself called to launch something new:

✨ Camp Connection

For now, Camp Connection will be an online community. A space—not a place—where we can come together to connect, grow, and remember who we are beneath the stories and the armor.

Here is the vision I hold:

Vision Statement for Camp Connection
Camp Connection is not a place—it is a space we create together.

It is a space where we set aside the walls that keep us apart and step into the aliveness of authentic connection. Where the elements that shape us—our stories, our experiences, our differences, and our dreams—are honored and welcomed.

Camp Connection can arise anywhere: around a campfire, in a boardroom, or across a circle of chairs. Wherever we gather with courage and curiosity, we discover the possibility that lives within and between us.

Here, we are invited to listen deeply, to share openly, and to remember that belonging is not given to us—it is something we co-create.

Camp Connection is a call to come together in wonder, to awaken what is dormant, and to build community grounded in respect, empathy, and shared purpose.

It starts with a Mighty Network—already set up (complete with a few misspellings!). But ready to begin.

If you feel curious or called to join me, here’s an invitation: Camp Connection on Mighty Netorks.

Connecting, Embracing Unknown, Life Experiences, Uncategorized

Living Untethered After Good Bye

Me and my sisters Melissa and Penny

Home

My friend Paula kept gently telling me that at some point, I’d feel the shift.

Maybe it would come with exhaustion. Maybe with freedom.

But it would come.

I thought the riptide I felt in my mother’s final days was that shift.

Then came another wave — a vortex of emotion — as I worked on the memorial videos and prepared to travel to Seattle to celebrate her life.

Again, it was Paula who reminded me to stay present. To feel my way through the day.

And I did my best. It was a beautiful day — full of tears, joy, connection, and letting go.

Now I’m home. And the energy has shifted again.

I’m exhausted — and also floating a bit, untethered.

Some of the stories and memories I’ve always held so clearly… don’t quite hold the same meaning anymore.

Something’s rearranging.

As I tried to explain this new feeling — and wrestled with what I should do next — my friend Robin gently interrupted.

She said, “You keep talking about what you need to do. But what do you want to do?”

That stopped me.

I realize now: I need time.

I’m so wired to be productive. To get back on track, to plan, to accomplish.

But maybe that’s not what’s needed. Maybe it’s not what I need.

What do I want?

What if time isn’t meant to serve productivity, or safety, or even health?

What if it’s here to hold space for evolution?

We’re trained to use time to chase success — build strong bodies, stable careers, meaningful relationships, likes, money, recognition.

But what if that’s not the point?

What if the real invitation is to evolve out of separation?

Maybe that’s too much.

But maybe the purpose of this life is to learn to love. To collaborate. To connect. To live in peace.

I know — that sounds like “crazy talk.”

But every time my life has cracked open — during crisis, loss, or fear — that’s the truth that becomes crystal clear.

That really is what matters.

During COVID, people found extraordinary ways to connect.

When the floods hit Texas camps, strangers stepped in, walls came down, and people helped.

Same with wildfires, disasters — these moments break through the illusion of separateness. They stir something in us.

Then the crisis passes, and we try to go back to “normal.”

Why?

What if we didn’t?

What if we refused to return to the programming of separation, competition, and fear?

What if we chose something else?

I remember a moment — years ago — when I thought I was dying. I had just begun to drop some of my walls.

Someone said to me, “You might be better off dying.”

It sounds harsh. But I think I understood what they meant.

Living — really living — with an open heart, with love instead of fear — isn’t easy in this culture.

But I wanted to live. I still do.

Some days I’m not sure. Some days I fall back into blame and self-protection.

But I’m grateful. Because I keep getting another moment.

Another chance to be present.

To choose love.

My mother was someone, I believe, who chose that — again and again.

She lived it.

And now I get to ask myself:

What do I want, really?

And how can I live from that place?

Connection, Embracing Unknown, Faith, Family

Finding The Fractals In The Fractures

In today’s world of division and polarization, it’s easy to see only what’s broken.

I get it.

But what if we’re not separate at all—what if we’re deeply, inherently connected?

What if the fractures we see are not wounds, but fractals—patterns that echo deeper truths?

Our senses show us only the visible strains, the surface tension of energy and vibration.

We miss the harmonics beneath, the subtle frequencies resonating between and within us.

So we attack, we defend—in the absence of a felt sense of the fractal rhythm always weaving us together.

But in the space of stillness, of nothingness, there is a rich, invisible pulse.

An infinite energy moves in fractals, silently connecting, endlessly creating a tapestry of possibility.

Our knowledge—our consciousness—is limited.

We crave story, structure, a sheet of music to follow.

And in seeking to understand, we often reduce the infinite into forms we can control:

Religion. Art. Science. Education.

None of these are wrong.

But each, when held too tightly, can become rigid.

Each can close the door to the fractal.

So how do we make space for what can’t be controlled?

How do we allow the fractal?

Breathe and trust.

Express and show up.

Listen and be curious.

When I do that, I tap into the infinite.

Just recently, I sat by my mother’s bedside, bearing witness to her transition—from form to energy, from Bernie to spirit.

In those final moments, something in the air shifted.

The barriers between us dissolved.

That’s why I needed to be there.

To sit beside her. To be with my sisters.

Somewhere in those quiet exchanges, I could feel the emerging fractal of our family—unfolding, rearranging, expanding.

Some might call this strange.

But it felt familiar to me—like the way I work with horses.

With horses, there’s no pretense.

No reliance on words, manners, or the learned rules of communication.

They feel everything.

They don’t dwell in stories. They live in the moment.

It’s all about the energy.

Beside my mother, it was the same.

Our past was absent.

Separation vanished.

It was a sweet, sacred space.

Her anxiety and agitation had eased.

Yes, she was still working to stay—but something else was also there.

Something softer, wiser.

I didn’t try to explain it. I just trusted it.

Music and words drifted through the room.

But more present to me was the soundless symphony from beyond.

Call it mist. Call it music. Call it the song of souls.

She was more tuned in than I was—already on her next adventure.

I was still unraveling the fabric of our shared life.

Soon, it would be just a fractal, dancing in the room.

It was a beautiful moment—beyond the veil.

That feeling has lasted.

It lingers, because it’s not energy bound by time.

It doesn’t need understanding.

It asks not to be named or narrated.

It simply is.

And in it, I remember:

We are fractals of interconnected energy.

I don’t need to fear or worry.

My work is to be creative. Curious. Open to the unknown and the infinite.

Not to conquer or control—but to live in the joy of our shared energy and our singular spirit.

We are dancers—

Not just humans—

When we remember the fractal that connects us all.