On August 29, 2023 intrepid healer and magic maker Susan Gold and I discuss meditation, her involvement with Hollywood, abuse, addiction, viewing life challenges as occasions for transformation, trauma, Matt Kahn, lessons from being an endurance athlete, moments of truth, courage, gender stereotypes and programs, and various modes of healing like working with the inner child, visualization, body work, somatic experiencing, sensations, dissipation, and golden light.
Biography
Susan Gold was raised in a challenging and chaotic family system, the middle child of five. To fully thrive, she bravely chose to meet the demons of her upbringing that were continuing to repeat. Her book, “Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom” is about that journey.
Professionally, Susan became known for attaching celebrity talent to projects in NYC which led her to produce for television and film and on to Los Angeles. She convinced modern art legend Andy Warhol to do an on-camera commercial for Pontiac, a talent deal American TV personality Donny Deutsch still claims as one of his best, helped launch Fox News Channel at the request of Chair, Roger Ailes, and on behalf of Disney Channel persuaded A-list celebrities including Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Taylor Swift, David Beckham and more to be interviewed by cartoon characters…Phineas & Ferb.
Susan is a decorated endurance athlete competing in three marathons, and dozens of triathlons and has the distinction of finishing third in her age group at the treacherous Escape from Alcatraz event.
After living with force on both coasts of the United States, Susan heeded an intuitive call for a quieter life and now resides in the northwest corner of the mystical state of Montana with her beloved partner and their pets. Keen on leaving a legacy to help others heal from challenges she’s successfully met, Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom, is part of that quest. With the same magic Susan created in her entertainment career, she is now leading retreats, webinars, workshops and private sessions to help others drop outdated storylines and programming in exchange for living from the heart in authentic freedom as adults.
Supporting homeless animals, especially dogs, and cats, and helping others up the ladder are her joys. Her pride is her son, a political science major at the University of the Pacific.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susan.gold.988
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susangoldismagical
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sgoldconsulting
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susangoldconsulting
Book: Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom
Audio: Transforming Trauma With Susan Gold
The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
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homeless and welcome this is Josh to own of integrating presence and today I’ve got Susan Gold with me Susan how’s it
going hey I’m just loving Montana in this moment thank you
well that’s really cool I you talked a little bit before about fires I didn’t
even ask how close you were to that or how serious that was there yeah so a neighbor friend had to be evacuated and
I had a a family gathering back in North Carolina that I had to cancel out last
minute I woke up to go to the airport and sections of the road were definitely slowed like to a very slow
speed limit and it just felt way too dangerous to be driving the one Road in
and out um Through Fire areas so I’ve had enough of that in California
[Laughter] wow yeah so just for anybody that’s if
this is Audio Only They don’t see any metadata on this we’re at the end of August in 2023 and by the way who is
Susan Gold and what kind of work do you do well I’d like to to think that I’m a
kind-hearted human soul walking walking the Earth gently
um and I came from a background of matching celebrities to Brands and then
producing for television and film but I have been reassigned and redirected I
created a book it’s a memoir and on a taboo topic
um toxic family transforming childhood trauma into adult Freedom it wasn’t my title Josh my title
was magical illumination because that’s what I feel my journey has been
um but yeah I’d say I’m I’m a human being walking with as much presence as
possible well beautiful before we get into the topic of your book Let’s
explore a little bit but how you got from where you were to where you are now so then I want to jump into Hollywood I
mean you definitely seem to have a great personality for that industry tell me a
little bit about Hollywood you know what’s going on there uh is it really as
interesting as people say it is or is it just what can you say about that how did
you get into that whole scene and uh what’s worth mentioning about it just in
general and especially when it comes to your journey here well I always dreamed of it of being in
the entertainment industry and more the business side of it I used to watch Barbara Walters on my beanbag chair in
my basement on my belly and initially I wanted to go to New York City as quickly
as I could and I did end up going there and eventually was invited to La for
what I thought was a great career move and it was But ultimately it was to meet one of my
greatest gurus um and by Guru I mean the word teacher
but um yeah Hollywood can be as nefarious as it’s
known to be um there are a lot of um intense personalities wanting to
climb upward and it was very difficult for me having come from New York City
where people are very straightforward I mean it’s to the point
of being brutal but you know where you stand a yes is a yes and a no is no and
La is like the expanding sandbox you’d imagine um with the earthquakes rumbling through
you just it’s very hard to get connected and feel grounded initially
um going to La and it back then was a one-trick town so people always wanted
to know what connections you could make on their behalf um even close in the Inner Circle it was
really a big surprise to me but I was very focused and I didn’t really fit the
norm I never really understood corporate systems
um and I didn’t know how to play that game I was too honest and outspoken and
it actually has served me well right on so let’s get started with
you know the topic of your book here um you know you connected with me about
meditation too and there’s quite a bit of Trauma from what I understand I mean
our significant amount to address and now you know what I know about trauma is
is quite little is especially when it comes to more the professional space I
mean one thing is we’re born into this human body no one I will say get through
their entire life without some form of trauma and then it just escalates from
there right people have all the way to very atrocious severe
debilitating uh trauma that should really only be oh I don’t know I mean
that that requires a certain type of professionality to address I mean my
spiritual I mentioned this several times before my spiritual karate moves they just don’t work on trauma the way they
do on other things especially you know more significant trauma I’m really
fascinated by this topic as well because it’s a really rich and complex topic
there’s a lot of things to to explore and say about it and I really don’t feel
confident in approaching it in so many manners other than to learn about it so that’s what I’m here to do as well so
from there take it away right
so grateful I was first introduced in the the 90s a therapist I was saying was a long time
meditator she practiced vipassana and I remember being in her studio apartment for half a day workshop and I thought I
was going to crawl out of my skin I thought it was the most ridiculous experience and process and why was this
important and what did it matter but in an intuitive piece of me knew that it
had Merit and it had value and I was still running on on overdrive a very
maxed out central nervous system from trauma and I too didn’t really
understand trauma um until really you know not even that
long ago maybe a decade ago that that it really started to to hit to the core of
my being and now it’s it you know it’s becoming a buzzword is a much like narcissism or the word mindset I truly
have come to believe Josh and and through meditation that I’m in a big fat School room here
that I volunteered for this learning experience
and I found that that what’s come into my path what I’ve been awake to and
aware of and what I’ve chosen to move through rather than sit down and become a victim
to has really all been a call for incredible Soul evolution
and so at this point um I am helping other people
see their trauma from a new point of view it’s not really for the faint of
heart it’s hard not to point the finger and shame and blame at the one who dot
dot dot fill in the blank um but for me I found that that’s just
sitting eating the rat poison and expecting my Challenger
to drop over and when I’ve come to understand that
this challenge or this Challenger is here for reason and Merit and purpose
to help transform my belief system and understanding
I’ve been able to go and do a whole new zip code and it’s been a literal new zip
code but it’s also been a figurative new zip code I’m I’m living a different
experience I mean I was trained as as a child it’s doggy
dog and no one is going to care for you you are going to have to fend for
yourself and I think it was Marianne Williamson it was back in the 80s she
was just teaching Course in Miracles she was bunking with my girlfriend Tara in the Upper West Side of New York and
giving lectures in this church on the upper west side and she talked about coming in from the airport
she had a horrible taxi driver who was just really
um combative and negative obviously was having a rough day and she got out of
the cab at the end of the ride and most people would have probably just slammed the door and gotten their Medallion
number and reported them but she tipped them double and she told us that
when people are combative they’re actually crying
out for love and that was the initial
teaching that really started to twist my heart open
um and to unwind that nervous system so that was the start of the journey
well this is beautiful and I saw on your Instagram page where you’re from what I
understand because I read it too right uh Matt Khan’s um the universe always has a plan so I
know I had to so I’m a little bit of a fanboy here I uh yeah especially a little bit less now but I had to go to
and then this is a humble brag Iceland before I met someone that actually being
in the midwest that’s where I’m from right Midwest of the United States before I bumped into a yoga teacher in
Iceland that had heard of Matt Khan but so yeah I know right it’s pretty
pretty um yeah but now he’s gaining a lot more popularity and really and he just some
beautiful wisdom teachings too and all about the heart and empathic
um sensitivity energetic sensitivity but the one thing from his teachings that
stick out now as you’re talking about this and I I do see all the wisdom and
the perceptional shift in the way uh viewing this at the same time he says
abuse is never okay right abuse is never okay so now how do we if you I see you
nodding here how do we balance that with abuse is never okay with the perceptual
shifts you’ve talked about now I could answer my own question here and say well that’s after the fact right this is
years down the road after boundaries have been established well you’re spot on I mean the red flags of the remnants
of my childhood surfaced early in my adulthood and by my early 20s I was
getting clean and sober and by my 30s I was dealing with clinical depression
because I had been suicidally depressed since I was I mean six years old was this the first ideation that I had
and later it became narcissistic abuse and unraveling the web around that type
of abuse issue and I did spend many many years in all
different types of therapeutic modalities to come to understand that
those involving my body more somatic modalities were what really helped me
shift on a cellular level but I also spent a great deal of time
reflecting and going through the rage and the anger and the blackness
that was cemented with Barb barbed wire going inward around my heart and for me
it did take me a lot of exploration and a lot of time to authentically get to a
place where I could stand on the other side and go
into the perpetrators being and understand where they’re coming from I
mean my oldest brother and I um we have some abuse between us and his
whole childhood is practically a blackout
that’s painful to me I have great compassion for my mother
who was saddled with five children before she was 30. she was equally as
genius as my astrophysicist father who was a Peter Pan an alcoholic and also
had a sexual addiction and narcissism and she soothed through overeating
and it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I came to understand oh well she
was overeating and the answer was diet pills which are speed
so I was being raised by an alcoholic and a speed freak who I
believe also had issues and a struggle with mental illness and her father my grandfather was beaten
almost to the point of death by a stepmother when he was very young and
never recovered and perpetrated that abuse onto my own mother and my father’s
side had their issues as well so this is years and it’s in the lineage it’s in the ancestry
it’s in the bloodline and that’s why I feel the need to create conversation
around it because honestly I was carrying around a bag of Shame and guilt
and blame that it was the wrong bag for me to be carrying and ultimately yes I I
have full forgiveness and I do engage with my family
um and I’m also checking in with myself yeah around that but yes I do have
engagement a very keyword you said there that I have found helpful my own journey and
that’s somewhat controversial among folks is forgiveness um
especially you know being raised in a Protestant background not really you know we just went to church on Sundays
and I went to a Christian day school but other than you know like a little bit of religion in the morning and then on the
sometimes on you know churches it was never discussed any of that stuff it definitely wasn’t told that I could
forgive myself though and so now this is the other end of this I mean
um well for once there’s three-way forgiveness I see I can forgive um another I can ask for forgiveness and
then I can forgive myself and what I found is that it can’t be forced right
we can’t force it especially if you wanted to have it authentic it has to come like at the right time what is some
of the wisdom you’ve gained around forgiveness and what kind of maybe advice could you offer people especially those struggling with that
so I was going through a very bloody divorce it was almost like Josh Perfect
Storm all the elements came together to get to this precipice and I held a
year of no contact with a man that I had loved in the same I won’t even say the
same home I’ll say it was a domicile and the rage around the Injustice would
come up within me and I would feel that rage like to the
core of my being I didn’t act it out but I allowed myself to feel it and then
I did what I needed to do to dislodge and dissipate it it could have been
going to the pool for a training session it could have been throwing kettlebells it could have been doing some of those
somatic healing exercises um that have worked for me
and then I could come back around to understand this lesson this divorce and this year
process that it took was the universe doing for me what I could not do for
myself I was codependent on male attention since second grade and Billy
Fritz and here I was as a full adult owning my own home and acting the same
scenario out so this man actually by taking me through this experience with
him of this horrendous circumstance of divorce actually taught
me my own self-worth and value as an
individual and that’s when I gained that real compassion I mean I’d been hip to inner
child work since my 20s and Alice Miller and drama of the gifted child that was
you know in all the movies and pop culture back then um I didn’t really want to do that work
it felt like ick and a waste of time and I don’t really want to go there and then I saw full circle
how important that is because I believe that inner child inside this heart is a
glowing piece of my soul that’s here on this journey with me to help me through
with compassion and with love beautiful and the thing I see with meditation when
it comes to this and you’re talking about rage and that’s the one place where it’s totally appropriate to just
feel absolute and murderous rage because ideally I’m alone well yeah it has to be
of course you have to be alone and in silence where you can’t act on that right and that it can be deeply felt in
the body and you know I’m sure you’re familiar with Peter Levine’s stuff the vine stuff I haven’t delved too much
into his stuff but you talked about the somatic practices for anyone not familiar with these the practicality of
this could you maybe walk the audience through what you did around these or just anything in general as far as
practical exercises as well maybe either from experience or just what you
understand from these different modalities and techniques yeah well specifically on some of the
somatic stuff I would go into a pocket of trauma and
locate it in my body I’m one who carries trauma within my body and I had years I
mean I probably had 25 years of talk therapy when it was all said and done but what I and it was important to lay
out that storyline it was important to connect with another individual and verbally express my story but ultimately
what I found was it served to re-traumatize me and I was Square back to where I was at the Starting Gate
through that work so by going into my body and feeling where is it it’s in my
solar plexus my solar plexus is at the top of my rib cage just below my heart
what color is it it’s orange with black spots and it’s stretching like an amoeba
and there’s no space and there’s constriction and I am going to be smothered I can feel it and there’s
Terror and then I I see is it current is it past is it ancient
does it belong to me and then I release it all I spr take it and spread it out
release it all Let It disseminate and then I put Golden Light
from the Divine in its place and that has really helped me so much shift on a
cellular level very cool just to plug my fiancee’s work
she’s big into the golden light and uh especially in viewing it there’s so many
different stages and processes and techniques to to involve that as well I’m kind of more of the sensation
feeling the sensations and whatnot so now you reading a little bit about you
beforehand um you mentioned asking you about a moment of truth and truth is a big part of my
journey early seeking it right or seeking Seeker after truth no so what do
you mean by uh finding a moment of truth well there have been many
um I think the first one came up when I took a slug from a wine jug at work to
ask for a raise and it reminded me of when my father would uncork the whiskey cabinet at 7 30
a.m and uncork the bottle and you’d hear and I was like
Susan something’s up this is not right you need some help there were other
things going on in my life too but paying attention to that red flag woke me up to a truth
now was I going to be brave enough to face it is another story entirely because at
that point it was terrifying to think of my vice and my what seemed like a friend
a crutch helping me through life to see that go away and evaporate I didn’t know
how I was going to live without it same thing with my husband I tried to hold that marriage together with duct
tape and Gorilla Glue long past the expiration date and I knew it I knew it
even more than intuitively I knew it in the physicality of my being
but it took him to cross his arms after I thought we were coming to an agreement
and say I’m hiring an attorney and filing for divorce and then me getting this huge intuitive
hit of this is the universe doing for you what you cannot absolutely do for yourself and knowing that and holding on
to that true to then be brave enough to walk through the scenario
regardless of the terror that ensued
so yeah these moments of Truth um like what they point to what I’m
getting from you is is that deep profound courage involved in that I mean the alcohol to begin with right that’s
the liquid courage to get us through so imagine that courage that it takes to yeah and get rid of that or that
artificial courage and then yeah with the the relationship thing that’s yeah
that takes a lot of strength and and courage as well bravery I can imagine
so the the other thing I wanted to ask about is you’re an endurance athlete now
this is um kind of far from where I’m from years ago I was starting to do CrossFit and
then I did a complete 180 where I’m just doing meditation I did yoga for years too and yeah and fairly in decent shape
but there’s no way I haven’t run in years so what what do you do as an endurance athlete and tell me about that
journey and how that informs the rest of your life well I started running out of college
and that turned in a marathon running in New York City and then I found after about 10 to 12 years my body was really
hurting so here was here was the strategy Josh I’d spread it out over
three Sports so I wouldn’t have to just always be running I could be swimming and biking as well
and ultimately that caught up with me so I turned the focus strictly to swimming
and I was training like an nc2a athlete and I sought out Olympians and world
champions to train me even though I had not been a swimmer and within four years
I had a national ranking as a master’s swimmer and then Josh I couldn’t walk
around my block and I had to have a whole nother false
construct drop for me to understand that again I was garnering self-worth from
the outside in rather than the inside out and I’m glad you caught the lesson
early and and easily because what I had to have is to be incapacitated with an
impingement before I became ultimately willing to surrender
and now I do what feels good if I want to go on a hike I go on a hike if I want
to train kettlebells I do it because it’s fun if I want to sit and do Yen
Yoga in peace I do that and that’s okay and that’s
enough if I don’t want to do anything and I want to sit and binge watch something I do it and it’s okay well
beautiful lovely and wonderful yeah I will Pat myself on the back for that one because yeah you hear these stories all
the time of these people that identify most of their life with like um sport or something and then one day comes along
and they can’t do it anymore uh the deeper thing this points to me too is maybe if I might go out maybe on a limb
here and say a feminine program of or worthiness and I know the masculine has
the challenges with honor and respect and you’re welcome to go into what you see around the masculine too
um would you like to say anything about this this worthiness thing because I I see it time and time again in the
feminine and yeah like I just want to say that the masculine has lots of
challenges uh as well so you’re welcome to go into those two not to start a gender divide here or anything and maybe
we might Garner some the audience might Garner some wisdom you might have around the extra wisdom because you shared some
yeah I think that I
really tended more towards the masculine to achieve no matter what I mean I
remember shutting down my emotions I know when I did it I was a pre-teen and it was too painful to feel and to have
to come in to understand my emotions later I give me a list and let me check
them off as I go I barely knew happy sad glad mad because the desire to achieve
was so strong so I I’ve had to to work with that and
then the yin the feminine energy has been really tough for me to surrender to
and in my relationships I took on the masculine role and Drug the masculine
you know male behind me and I’ve had to look at that late in my adulthood
and open to my femininity and it’s it’s terrifying to feel any kind of
vulnerability you know this is a really good point and at the same time as you probably know
this frightening vulnerability is also how we open the heart and how people can
connect with us on deeper and deeper levels and yes I see the same thing very successful women a lot of times they
have to take on this masculine role they want to be successful in the way things have been I know it’s changing a lot now
but yeah That’s the Way It Is Well Susan I think we should ought to start
wrapping this up it was such a joy and a pleasure talking to you about this so
why don’t you leave folks with um anything you’ve got going on how they
can get in touch with you online if you want to draw anything uh attention to
anything else and then what message would you like to leave with listeners
so if you want to know more about me you feel drawn whatever I’m making it really simple just go to
susungold.us it’s all there the free stuff we can have a conversation it’s
all there Susan gold.us and then as far as what I’d like to
leave you with listeners thank you for tuning in thank you for
listening to what Josh has to say it it takes tremendous energy
and finance and creativity to create a
podcast and most of them don’t even last six episodes so he’s killing it
um and he’s also offering incredible takeaways so hats off to Josh and my
message my personal message to you from my heart
is that you are worthy you have value
and you matter
beautiful Susan thanks again for joining us and may all beings everywhere realize
Awakening and be free thanks for listening check out
integratingpresence.com for show notes and similar material
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