Candice Wu 0:00

Today’s episode is with special guests Suzi Tucker, where we look at how nuance requires courage, hoarding expression, and the questions around life and do we bother to take ourselves seriously? Can we look instead of not look, in order to honor our experiences? And do we let ourselves complete things so we can feel our own competence?

Candice Wu 0:25

Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, Embodied Healing and self-love.

Candice Wu 0:38

My name is Candice Wu, and I’m a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support, and having co-creative conversations with healers, and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Candice Wu 1:00

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Candice Wu 1:33

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Candice Wu 2:05

Welcome back, everyone. It’s great to have you here today. And it’s a really an honor to have Suzi Tucker on the show today.

Candice Wu 2:13

Suzi is one of my Family Constellations teachers. She facilitates Family Constellations beautifully, and she can just practically speak the language of anyone. She has this beautiful flair for tuning into the language set of you, and where you came from your ancestry, the things that you picked up along the way, to touch into the antidote and the missing pieces of what’s not been said, or the healing step that can be acknowledged.

Candice Wu 2:43

Whenever I talk to Suzi, I feel like we are working with life as a piece of artwork. And I just feel this artistry come through, where I can look at my life in a non-linear way, where I just feel the movements and the subtleties with more beauty.

Candice Wu 3:05

What I’ve experienced with Suzi, as a client, and as a student, is that, whatever words I’m bringing to the struggle of my situation, seem to just open up an entire field of what’s happened in my family ancestry, so that it can be honored and released and then I no longer have to carry it or be loyal to some pain or dynamic, and then I can be free or in my life now to step into the possibilities that I didn’t even know we’re there, to feel more ease and myself as I walk into any situation and just exist in this life now.

Candice Wu 3:45

Suzi’s also a writer, and it’s through writing that she became interested in the work of Bert Hellinger, who developed Family Constellations as the editor in chief of Zeig, Tucker, and Theisen publishers.

Candice Wu 3:57

While she was in her career in publishing, she co-founded the Bert Hellinger Institute and went on to study, teach, and facilitate Family Constellations on her own. She is incredibly gifted and quite magical. So here’s Suzi.

Candice Wu 4:13

Well, Suzi, I am so happy that you’re here with me today. And that we get to have this conversation. This is already a gift for me.

Candice Wu 4:21

Suzi, you’ve been my teacher and colleague. And that’s a little bit hard to say, because I see you in a different space. And we can talk about that a little bit. I just want to welcome you today.

Suzi Tucker 4:33

Thank you. It’s a gift for me as well, Candice. I enjoy these conversations in general, because, for me, they are just conversations. But, I wrote this too. I love how you’re showing up in the world. And it’s my great honor to join you for a little while today.

Suzi Tucker 4:55

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it’s funny, just as you’re talking, I’m thinking that one of the differences between my life now and, I always laugh, because I don’t know, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 20 years ago, is the kind of opening of portals of expression.

Candice Wu 4:55

Thank you. When you said that, that just meant so much to me, because it’s something I’ve been working on with you specifically. And I see how you show up in the world. And I read what you write. And, I just love how you’re sharing bits and pieces of your experience, and in a way that feels so humble and informative, and offering, and I appreciate that so much about you.

Suzi Tucker 5:27

I think that, when I think of how life has changed, can change, there is a place where there is so much inside of all of us. And there has been so much inside of me that at a certain point, the idea of not expressing it, became a really destructive feeling. And that simple expression, whether it’s to write or to, you know, I’m a crappy painter, but I love to paint. Or, I also do some drawing, which is worse than my painting. But I love that too. Or, walking or speaking to you.

Suzi Tucker 6:44

These portals of communication and expression alleviate sort of internal pressure there. I love the idea that I can bring something to somebody else. And that act of creativity is very, we try to avoid the word healing. But that’s the word that comes to me, a healing for me. So these moments are reciprocal.

Candice Wu 7:11

That’s lovely. Yeah, I can really resonate with that in a similar way. I was experiencing that I was hoarding, all the things I wanted to say. And that related so much to my family system, feeling like they didn’t have enough, and not being enough, and hoarding all of that. And it’s funny how that showed up in ways with objects in my family’s life, like objects in the home.

Suzi Tucker 7:40

Yeah.

Candice Wu 7:41

But then for me, it showed up in the way I was afraid to express myself, and still am, some days, but I’m just aware of the fact of letting that come through.

Suzi Tucker 7:54

I love that! I haven’t got to use that word before. But of course, I love words. So, I’m going to just, you know, very publicly here, listed from you.

Candice Wu 8:07

Feel free.

Suzi Tucker 8:09

But that idea of hoarding expression, I think, is a really useful idea. Because, again, you know, when you think about the, you know, this little hoarding, we collect so much, too much about it, topples over onto us and can actually suffocate us, right?

Candice Wu 8:31

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 8:31

So that idea of hoarding emotion, hoarding expression, with the assumption that we’re somehow not worthy. And of course, in a way, that’s a dual assumption, because there is the sense, you know, I think always from our systems, in one way or another, that we’re not allowed, where we don’t have enough, or what we say is not important to not.

Suzi Tucker 8:55

And at the same time, there is a request, an implicit request that the world comes toward us to validate us. And so, it’s a funny sort of insecure, difficult place that also has, I think, a very young expectation or wish that comes with it. And of course, the more we wish, in a way, the more passive we are. And the more passive we are, the more suffocated we are, so these ways of expression.

Suzi Tucker 9:32

And when I see you do the interviews, and I see you do the podcasts in it, I haven’t seen the photographs that you post and the statements that you make, they’re like throwing pebbles into the water, and you don’t know where those circles are going to extend to you. You’re only, you know, it’s an act of faith to throw the pebble. And then there’s this beautiful thing of those circles reach some of us and we look back at you Candice and we say, “Yes, this has meaning to me.”

Suzi Tucker 10:06

And other people, perhaps the circles don’t reach, but you don’t even know it, because you’re tossing the next pebble. And they got that kind of consistent tossing of the pebbles, is where it’s at, on some level. And that’s humble, I suppose. And it has a certain audacity too. A kind of beautiful audacity.

Candice Wu 10:38

That’s a lovely image. I actually was having something similar the other day thinking about how I want to act and be, and the experience of how do I connect with anything that I’m doing, maybe it’s writing a bill for taxes and how can I feel into this, for whatever it is, and feel that it’s something that might be interesting or joyful or helpful to me, and let that be a bit of like, sprinkling of joy into my life, and just let each act contain that, as it goes out, and then it’s done. So I can feel the fullness of it. And because I think I can feel the dark side of things a lot easier now in my life, because I’ve worked so hard at it, but to feel the light of the joy in it, and how good something might be, as well in the fullness of a moment, then it feels just like a complete act.

Suzi Tucker 11:47

Sorry, as you’re talking, I got a picture of quite literally of, you know, pressing shut or licking the envelope and others are acts of completion. And I think actually something that we can take the opportunity if we are so absurdist to do that to, kind of, let ourselves complete things and let ourselves feel that kind of competence of completion. You know, I think that there is, you know, for me — of course, I go through phases of, you know, what I’m interested in as I’m teaching.

Suzi Tucker 12:27

And, you know, one of the things I’m really interested in is people feeling their own competence. And, of course, that’s because I feel more competent than I did, you know, three weeks ago and it’s a great relief because that’s a big space — competence is a big space. And I think competence is filled with these moments of small completions that’s related to integration as well, that if we don’t have these moments of small completions, then every next thing that we do has a little bit of residue that we feel and no longer attend to. And as we move on, you know, that residue builds. And, you know, we feel that drag of it even though our minds have forgotten what it’s related to. So, I love the idea of the moments of small completion.

Suzi Tucker 13:31

And the other thing that comes to mind is you’re paying your taxes. It is so big that I actually find very helpful to me when I’m in moments of anxiety that it has to do with taxes or doctors. Or you know, I interact it badly with somebody and I can feel that. And I’m not quite sure what to do about it at anybody.

Suzi Tucker 13:54

One of the things that was really helpful to me is kind of feeling myself close with all the people who are paying their taxes or going to the doctor, or who have interacted badly today. And it’s a funny thing, right? But, I think so much of the price we pay is because we feel isolated in whatever anxiety we’re experiencing.

Suzi Tucker 14:24

So, you know, in addition to graphs and all those good things that the mindfulness teachers teach us, I also have this sense of being shoulder to shoulder with others and not in isolation.

Candice Wu 14:38

That’s extremely helpful. I mean, I can just feel it. It’s like an easing up in my body that just lets it move a little easier. Like we don’t need to punish ourselves by being alone in it.

Suzi Tucker 14:57

Right. And then that’s — I think that’s a good, you know, another good word that’s kind of a self-punitive behavior. It’s very isolated. It’s very private. Other people don’t even know what we’re talking about.

Candice Wu 15:14

Yeah, thank you. Well, we just jumped right in Suzi. But I want to backtrack a little bit and offer some space for you to share who you are today. You’ve been doing Constellations work for a long time and would you introduce yourself to the audience listening?

Suzi Tucker 15:33

Of course, yeah. Haven’t done it.

Suzi Tucker 15:37

I’m Suzi Tucker and yeah, I’ve been doing Constellation work in one way or another since 1998, actually. Beginning in the book world where I met Constellation work and I met Bert Hellinger, Hunter Beaumont, Günter Weber who really were the pillars of Constellation work way back then.

Suzi Tucker 16:08

And so I started as a publisher literally publishing Bert’s first books, and working as an editor to sort of translate from the translation into what I thought, you know, it’s like a therapeutic audience might understand or find useful.

Suzi Tucker 16:33

So that was, you know, my first steps whereas the translator and I would say in a way, that’s where I feel my strength now as well. That I look to the core observations of the work and I attempt to translate them not protectively but translate that kind of essential piece that brought to the world. That itself is an assimilation of many, many things, and integration of many, many ways of thinking, and many thinkers. So I still see myself, sort of, as a translator in away. I started organizing for Bert in, I think, around 2000, and I started working with a man named Harald Hohnen, who was the main teacher then and a truly magnificent teacher. And we organized, on the East Coast, the first courses that actually taught, trained many of the people who are working in the field today still. And I am so proud when I see these different people. And then in my mind site, I see them in this circle at the New York Core Center on 23rd Street in Manhattan, learning from Hamiltonian and eventually that held, went back to Germany. And he kind of what I say is, he kind of kicked me in the butt frankly and it hurt.

Suzi Tucker 18:24

To facilitate and teach, I think, the way he saw it was what he had taught me. And I, you know, referred back to this site — You know, we started out talking about this idea of insecurity and how there’s a certain kind of conceit in that sometimes. And obviously, I speak from direct wherein I both felt very insecure and shy about the idea of teaching. And I think what he reacted to was — I was sort of asking for him to validate me and what his perspective was, was, “I gave you a gift, are you giving it back?” And it was the first time I started really kind of thinking about how a certain kind of insecurity asks too much of the world. And I started just going out there. Well, before I felt ready because, you know, I would still not be doing it. And I suppose if I waited to feel ready, and I started facilitating very small workshops in the early 2000s. And I started teaching and I just kept showing up. I was amazed by my own behavior. I was amazed that I was being tenacious about something. I would say, prior to these moments — the teaching — my great power was that if it didn’t succeed immediately, I would simply withdraw from whatever it was.

Suzi Tucker 20:11

I was experiencing myself differently without knowing why beforehand. I think I was engaged back then, in the beginnings of a real creative life. A sort of artist’s life, which is how I see facilitation to this day. You know, the idea of, “Who am I now?” Well, I don’t know because as soon as I articulate it, it will be passed. I know that my job is to show up, learn languages very quickly. You know, my kind of artist’s way here is to invite people in and enter into brief collaborations in which I offer a way of seeing that inspires them to a new way of seeing. And the way that I can do that, or the reason I can do that, is because I’m not caught in the self self-limiting beliefs or vista that they’re caught in. And so I get to join people in these moments of soft or brilliant, and sometimes they’re very subtle, and sometimes they’re dramatic collaborations. And that I keep showing up for because it’s like choreography or being in a symphony, or putting paint to canvas or words to a page, and getting to work with others and doing that. And learning how to integrate and learning how to keep going toward more.

Suzi Tucker 22:13

And you talked before about this idea of darkness. And I think, yeah, we all have that darkness, right? And what creativity does is it allows for an imbalance to happen so that largeness or lightness, or expansiveness, any of those words, becomes the bigger thing for a moment. And in that moment, it can encompass or envelop or integrate the darkness. And then the darkness can have a place and become a part of creativity, not separate from it.

Candice Wu 22:51

I can see that as you’re saying it. And you said, putting paint to canvas or words to a page, in my experience of working with you as a client and as a student, I experienced also this crossover of that, of like, words to the paint.

Suzi Tucker 23:11

That’s beautiful because —

Candice Wu 23:12

And that just leads me to — Yeah, go ahead.

Suzi Tucker 23:16

Well, I was just gonna say, I want to hear this leads me to, but just as you say — I have to say, that is actually my mother and my father. So, they just came and said —

Candice Wu 23:35

How do you want to say a little more on how you see that?

Suzi Tucker 23:37

Yeah. Well, I, you know, it’s something that is funny. I see it in increments, right? So in this moment, I saw thought so clearly. And I began to see it in a probably more formal way years ago, because it occurred to me to try to see it, right? To try to kind of create or feel into what it was that I was bringing forward.

Suzi Tucker 24:06

Now, it comes upon me in moments of surprise. It’s not formal anymore. So, my mother was all about language and she was actually a brilliant editor. And a very, very strong writer, although it’s something that she — I think, was always more comfortable — not happier, but more comfortable facilitating others. And my father was an artist and was a good drawer, could really render likenesses in a very, very good way. He drew. He was a fashion artist. So long time ago, you know, they would use fashion illustration in the New York Times or in the fashion magazines. And he did that before I knew him. And I have little, tiny, I guess, what were ads slipped out of magazines in a box that he did and, you know, very gestural and evocative drawings. And so I feel that words have that movement, have that possibility of gesture and movement, and cadence. And I think of him and I think, yeah, he was a poet with his lines on the page. And in a way through as an artist with her words so somehow they come together in me, at least in my interests.

Candice Wu 25:47

Yeah. That gives me chills. Yeah. I experience you as doing that, as using words. It’s almost like tuning right into the place where words either were silenced or what the experience of something really demands to be seen and experienced. And that you place that somehow the words seem to just come right out of your mouth.

Suzi Tucker 26:21

Yeah, that’s interesting. They, you know, some — No, no, what some? What I, you know — that it is also a collaborative experience. And that the words that come out of my mouth are in this sort of words that float or perhaps actually are underneath, maybe they’re not above, they’re actually underneath. Both my lineage, my system, and the lineage and system of the person with whom I’m working. And so it’s almost like they are the drops that when you scratch at the root of something, and liquid comes out, the liquid that feeds the flower or the plant, or the tree, that those words are underneath the systems. And that their silence not only for the client, but the client’s silence or experience of being quieted, or being directed to express in a certain way, is always nested in other people’s quiet, right?

Suzi Tucker 27:46

So the mother or the father who is heavy-handed in their expectation of a child, what he or she can say, right, is always nested in a previous experience of that. It doesn’t come from the mother or the father, it comes through the mother or father.

Suzi Tucker 28:11

And so my sense of what’s being expressed in those moments where it does resonate, where it’s not just me, sort of, imposing my will which sometimes happens as well, you know, I so much want somebody to get whatever it is that I see. That my voice gets high in my chest and has a kind of quality of untruth in it. But when I’m at my best, when I am most attuned, I’m actually hearing what is in the depths or the ground in the other person’s system. And it is always about in a way where the force of love got either circumvented, somehow, right?

Suzi Tucker 29:03

Almost cut off. Not cut off, but almost cut off and distorted somehow because I think, you know, the work that we do is all about love. But love is not necessarily a positive thing. Love is the force like the wind, right? So sometimes the wind blows too hard and topples us over, right? Or sometimes we feel that we can’t get a breath. We can’t — The wind is not blowing enough. There’s no breeze, we can’t move.

Suzi Tucker 29:40

So those words, those resonant words are in accord with just the right wind. You know, love, just the right love, just the right kind of sweet love that can keep us going. So, I feel all my language, when it’s at its best, is collaborative. I don’t have that language by myself. I only have it with you, or with whomever I’m sitting beside.

Candice Wu 30:14

That’s really powerful. It feels like it acknowledges so much. And that’s something I continue to learn from you is how do we embrace more in the picture and more behind us, and more that’s embedded or nested, as you said, in the experience.

Candice Wu 30:34

And I’m wondering about, if this is part of what you might speak about with, you have a program called, “The Right to Write.” And, you know, we’ve talked about — I think it was the first time that I wanted to facilitate, and you asked me, “Do I have a right to?” And I had — I didn’t know what it really meant. And I sat with it and thought about it, and felt it. And then somehow I came up with, “Yes, I do.” That I don’t even know, you know, what that was, but can you say more about this? And is this part of the “Right to Write” that you experience is collaborating? And that’s a very generalized question.

Suzi Tucker 31:27

No. It’s a great question. I just think it’s, I really get that if you’d sit back. And first of all, say, “What the hell is she asking me?”

Candice Wu 31:35

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 31:36

And then, kind of, sit back and think. Well, also, I wonder like, you know, what is being asked? And I wonder, right?

Candice Wu 31:46

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 31:47

And then the answer, you know, I feel that internal “yes” is exactly what allows one to kind of throw that first pebble because that’s really just really what it is. You know, do I have that kind of bandwidth to throw that first pebble? Because once I do that, something is going to come back to me and I’m prepared in a way to catch it and work with that and say, “Okay, again. Yes. Again.”

Suzi Tucker 31:47

So, you know, the “Right to Write”, I think is — this sense of, if we have to be perfect, and I always, you know, I always argue with the word “perfection” because I think people forget how idiosyncratic is that. Even that idea is — You know, people say, “I realized I didn’t have to be perfect.” But perfect is a completely fluid concept. One person’s perfection is absolutely not the other person’s perfection, right?

Candice Wu 32:59

Yeah. Right.

Suzi Tucker 33:01

But it is this sense of — You know, if I can allow for my own flaws to be fluid so that at some point that if I keep going those very things that are flaws that I detect as vulnerabilities, flaws, difficulties, outright things that I hate about myself, if I can stay fluid with them, actually they become strengths elsewhere, right?

Suzi Tucker 33:34

So what I have to be convinced of the right to write is the right to keep going.

Suzi Tucker 33:42

Now, we can say we wake up every day and we keep going. But that’s not what I mean, right?

Suzi Tucker 33:48

I mean, this sense that the parameters are — So the parameters which feel to me as limitations when I look back, they’re only limitations because I try to live within them, right? So, I must keep going. I have to actually allow myself to move outside of the limitations that are behind me right? In order to feel, you know, going back to this idea of competence, in order to feel my own permission to do so.

Suzi Tucker 34:33

In other words, you know, Bert Hellinger said many years ago in one of his many aphorisms, and you know, he has so many aphorisms. I don’t think he knows which are actually his, but he chooses deliberately what to quote anyway.

Candice Wu 34:51

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 34:52

But one of the things that he said is that people are under the impression that insight leads to action and truthfully, action leads to insight. And others have said this, and I have said it a million times to myself. That when I sit back and think, that only gets me so far. I need to sit back and rest, and then stand up again and take a step. And then thought comes to me — New thought comes to me, and with each actual step that I take outside of the limitations of the past, which are only limitations for me, they’re not limitations for you know, I look back and I look at my mother and my father. And I look at their lineages, right? And for me, those are limitations going deeper into my life. But as I look back, I see for them, they were parameters, right?

Suzi Tucker 36:01

So in other words, forging the new path is exactly how I move out and exactly how I convince myself of my own right to do so. Because with each step that I take out of their limitations, out of those parameters that are not my parameters, my love grows for them, my respect grows for them, my gratitude groves, but I have to take this step for that to happen. Does that make any sense?

Candice Wu 36:40

Yes, it makes complete sense. I’m touching into the movement and the whole body moving for more to come. And for the response of inner and outer to arise, as well as what the parameters for your parents, or who’s behind you, become limitations or could have seemed to have been limitations for you, if you followed the same parameters and parameter and limitation if I’m getting you right, Suzi. And parameter and limitations sound so different. What sounds to me like, well, it relates to something that I experienced too, which is where I’m touching in is the parameters that my grandmother lived by, if I’m living by the same ones, they become limitation, but I can see an honor how actually, that was expansion for her.

Suzi Tucker 37:40

Absolutely. That’s beautifully said.

Candice Wu 37:44

And then it’s not for me anymore. It’s not an expansion for me. It was what I lived in, and what came through.

Suzi Tucker 37:51

Right.

Candice Wu 37:51

Minus a new expansion.

Suzi Tucker 37:53

That’s right. And that’s so perfectly said, because, you know, in your new expansion, there, you know, sort of like at your back, you can feel the warmth, and it’s fun to go back to the beginning of our conversation, at your back you could feel the warmth of completion. And in your body, you can feel the competence of movement. And at your front, we feel the lightness and possibility.

Candice Wu 38:23

Yes.

Suzi Tucker 38:25

And that becomes the warmth of completion for your children, for your students, Candice, for your clients, for your future. I can be that kind of warmth of completion for the future. And still, for me, it’s the lightness of what’s to come, those things.

Candice Wu 38:51

It just feels magical. Thank you, like I’m tingling inside. Thank you for that. Thank you for the words.

Suzi Tucker 39:01

Oh, you’re welcome. Yeah, I was laughing. You didn’t think I was so cynical.

Candice Wu 39:11

Why is that?

Suzi Tucker 39:14

I don’t know, in my mind, I think of myself as a deeply cynical —

Candice Wu 39:18

Oh, that’s funny!

Suzi Tucker 39:20

When I hear my words come out of my mouth, and I think well, I believe that was the parameters of my mother and father, it’s important to me because, you know, it’s sort of where humor comes from, but it actually is not fully mine at least not in that same way.

Candice Wu 39:45

Yeah. Well, the last time we spoke, we talked about the sentences that aren’t spoken in the family lineage. Those are the words that get passed down, or that we hold connection with, that want to be spoken. And I felt like that was just so helpful. Something about that completed or felt at the time, it completed a piece of understanding trauma to me.

Candice Wu 40:17

It’s like, how do we receive words about ourselves and the world that we may or may not have connection within our personal life, except then we’ve created connection with it or lived in it. But that really gave me a new understanding of words.

Suzi Tucker 40:36

I love that.

Candice Wu 40:37

Also, I’m just recalling back to when I first learned with you about the sentence, and I’m just wondering how that’s evolving for you? And what I’m referring to is, I don’t think I’ll say it as I learned it from you, but the aspect of a sentence and that association to a death sentence. Is that a death sentence, a sentence or speaking that sends us to that destructive place? Or, what kind of sentence are you saying to yourself or to the world?

Suzi Tucker 41:11

Right. And it’s funny, I would put it the opposite in a way because I think that in this case, the opposite actually includes what you’re saying, right? So it’s fun. It’s a funny, and maybe it goes back to the light and dark, right, that the madness can hold the dark, where the darkness tends to snuff out the light.

Suzi Tucker 41:35

The way I see it is as a life sentence, right? So a life sentence is either one of two things, it is either the sentence that we live with, for our life, right. And that tends to be driven by the generational experience. And it tends to be fear-driven sentence, whether it’s mean or it’s overly increasing, or it’s, you know, too much or too little, the reason it lacks nuances because it’s fear-driven and nuance requires courage in a way, to say I’m responsible and I love you and I have power and I feel vulnerable.

Suzi Tucker 42:23

Those are nuances that require a certain, very deep level of confidence to experience let alone say. So those kind of difficult life sentences are fear-driven messages that come through the generations, right?

Suzi Tucker 42:44

And they come from visceral reactions to things so you know in constellations one looks for the event often not so much to redress the event, for God’s sakes, who would I be to redress slavery or the Holocaust? Or, you know somebody’s home burning down when they were 2 years old, that to me is ridiculous, and that is a terrible conceit.

Suzi Tucker 43:17

However, to see that certain messages came through the direct reactions to those events, which are fear-driven people run away, you know, all the fight, flight, freeze things that we talked about in ourselves, of course, we’re nested in them too, right?

Suzi Tucker 43:38

The sentence that comes from freeze, so this sentence that comes from flight is, feels like they’re really big one or the sentence that comes from fight, those messages that come down through the generations and inform our bodies, often not our minds, not, we don’t know it, but we know it, right? Our gut says, “Be Afraid.” Our gut says, “Take out a knife.” Our gut says, “Reject before rejected.” Right?

Suzi Tucker 44:14

Whatever our gut says, in those instances, it’s not necessarily and I think often not an accurate read of what’s going on before us, but rather, a felt read of what went on behind us.

Suzi Tucker 44:33

So the good life sentences or the life sentences that are affirmations of life, are the sentences that Hellinger introduce this stem sentences. And I call them seed sentences. Because, I just like the idea of planting seeds, but there are sentences that are actually really in this system that are not, you know, they’re outside of, in addition to often forgotten sentences that are not fear-driven.

Suzi Tucker 45:11

They go back to the intrinsic faith of moving forward. So, there is an intrinsic part of every system that moves forward. And trauma gives us the impression that the system started in that place. But in fact, there was a time long before that. And the sense that we can kind of tap into the deepest parts of the system, the heartbeat, where the heart is still beating gives us the sentence that is not fear-driven, the message that is not fear-driven. And that message is always about, go into the future, live deep into your life. That’s the gift for us that reorganizes the past.

Candice Wu 46:15

I’m just laughing at myself because I guess I must have had so many death sentences to look at!

Candice Wu 46:23

Because now as you’re saying that, I remember this being about a life sentence.

Suzi Tucker 46:30

That is funny!

Suzi Tucker 46:31

Well, when you think about prisons, right? And you think, it’s saying a funny thing, or an interesting thing, you give somebody a death sentence, you take away all possibility, even the slightest time.

Candice Wu 46:49

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 46:50

And you give somebody a life sentence. And not to say, that’s not going to be a very challenging life. But the one thing you don’t do is snuff out all possibility. So yeah, you know, I’m really interested, I think it is interesting for you, and you’ll think about it. I think the language that we speak to ourselves with is incredibly profound. And this phrase, self-talk, I said, “It’s like a — Yeah, it is self-talk.” But it’s also something deeper or more primal than self-talk. It is the way we hold ourselves, the way we understand ourselves. And I think we often do quite a job in entrancing ourselves in the past that we don’t even know in our mind. But we know so well, in our body.

Suzi Tucker 47:18

The idea of moving from death sentence to life sentence, and then from life sentence to life sentence, right? Life sentence, that’s really moving out like a trance.

Candice Wu 48:04

Absolutely. And it gives back the dimensions of “self-talk.” It brings back that depth of where it came from, and what it might refer to, and what clues we have from that of who we believe we are, how we’re holding ourselves.

Suzi Tucker 48:24

Yeah, beautiful.

Suzi Tucker 48:27

And it’s the movement, you know, I talked to people sometimes about this idea of moving from dynamic which has to do again, with, you know, the parameters being limitations for us, and simply being parameters for the people who came before us. So, that is moving out of a dynamic, into moving into relationship, right. And dynamic and relationship are two different things. The dynamic is a structure that we keep returning to and relationship is evolving by definition.

Suzi Tucker 49:03

So what you just said, I kind of hadn’t thought of it that before in terms of itself. Now, we are often in a dynamic with ourself, a habit. And moving into that more fluid, more surprising relationship with ourselves is, first and foremost, how we’re going to experience ourselves in the world differently. And the world in us differently.

Candice Wu 49:36

Yeah, that changes completely, the feel of it, and what we’re doing here, and I mean, what we’re doing here in terms of being human.

Suzi Tucker 49:46

Yeah, no. I do.

Candice Wu 49:48

Yeah, I think you got me. Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 49:51

I’ve heard that.

Candice Wu 49:52

Right. Like, what? What? We’re even here. Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 49:57

Right. I know, it’s like people, we talk about the search for meaning. It’s like, I don’t think it’s a search exactly. You know, I think the meaning is implicit. It is the sort of allowance for meaning, the bother to take it seriously.

Candice Wu 50:17

Yeah. Oh, I feel that one, the bother to take it seriously.

Suzi Tucker 50:24

Me too. That’s why it’s such enthusiasm because I know what it takes me to remind myself, I get into such a habit of a lethargic soul, you know.

Candice Wu 50:40

Yeah, well, what about it? I was curious to ask you, you know, what challenges you find for yourself now, as a person or facilitator teacher in any place?

Suzi Tucker 50:55

Well, it’s a little bit like, anything else that has to do, I think, with taking care of our internal and external selves, you know, it’s funny. It’s like, there are moments where I forget to care, and that’s both the inward and outward. And that’s a little bit like, it almost feels like a really young rebellion. And it feels like a very childish power. Well, I could not care.

Candice Wu 51:34

Yeah, because it sounds like the adult words are, “I forget to care.” But the younger part says something else, like, “I don’t want to care.”

Suzi Tucker 51:44

Stomp my feet, and, you know, put my hands across my chest and pretend that something, but I think that is, again, sort of a habit of not, you know, sometimes I say to people, and I say it to myself, most of all, I know very well that the world will go on without me, and it will do just fine. But it doesn’t have to.

Candice Wu 52:14

Beautiful.

Suzi Tucker 52:15

I can make a contribution, and that will give something and in that extending of my hand, I receive something before anything, or anyone even gives back.

Candice Wu 52:35

Yeah, that’s beautiful. That seems to go right back to where we started as well, in pebbles.

Suzi Tucker 52:46

Then, Candice, once I was sitting around, and a bunch of people were talking about enlightenment, and I get very quiet during these conversations, don’t know what the hell enlightenment is, really.

Suzi Tucker 53:01

And, so of course, you know, sometimes silence is very loud.

Suzi Tucker 53:08

So, one of the people at the table, who was the one person I didn’t know, turned to me and said, “You know, well, so what do you think it is, Suzi?”

Suzi Tucker 53:20

And the word that came out of my mouth was creativity. That is my belief system. And it’s my entire belief system, really.

Candice Wu 53:30

Wow. And you were earlier saying to me, creativity, learning is creativity.

Suzi Tucker 53:36

Right.

Candice Wu 53:36

One and the same. And that makes even more to the picture for me when you say that.

Suzi Tucker 53:41

That’s cool. You know, that’s funny. Because when you asked before, and I think I glossed over about the idea of, you know, what it takes to teach, and I think I’ve been through some shit, you know?

Candice Wu 53:56

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 53:57

And I don’t wear this badge. But to say, there is something I know, in other people’s experience, because I’ve been through some stuff. And I will say, I come out the other side. I don’t know that I’ve come out anywhere. But I will say, that I continue to want to create. I continue to feel the revelation in that. And it keeps me happy. It keeps me joyful. It keeps me flexible. And I think when people come into a room where I’m teaching, they may dislike the way I teach, or not understand what the hell I’m talking about. Or, think what I’m saying is tried or not deep enough or too deep or whatever it is basically.

Suzi Tucker 54:55

But I think there is the feeling that somehow, she has been through some stuff, and she has retained joy. I want some of that.

Candice Wu 55:11

Yeah. Thank you. It makes a difference to me as well.

Candice Wu 55:17

And it’s something, what you’re saying now, is something that I really look to you to remember. It’s not always easy for me, I can get lost in some mind stuff, like talking about things that I may not know. Or, when I say no, like no in my body. And what I experience you doing, which feels so embodied is that you speak to what you experience, and you might go into realms beyond your experience and explore, this is just my perception. I don’t experience that you speak to things that you don’t know in your bones somehow, or that if you do, you’re acknowledging that in some way, to me, that feels really grounded.

Candice Wu 56:12

Do you perceive yourself that way? Is that landing somewhere for you?

Suzi Tucker 56:16

Yes. When you said, I recognize it. And I think that, sometimes people use the word humility, you know, there are words that people use, like humility, your intuition or certain words that people use that I’m not sure what’s meant by them in a certain way. But I think that actually, what folks are referring to is exactly that there is a kind of compass that each of us has, right. And I really try to respect my compass, even when I’m not for like, I don’t get ahead of it, I think.

Candice Wu 57:03

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 57:03

I look to it. And I really try not to get ahead of it. And my body, you know, you talk so much about being Embodied, my body tells me so much, you know, I can feel when I am in a place that I have no business being, because I get immediately nauseous.

Suzi Tucker 57:28

And I don’t power through that. I don’t muscle through it. I stop and I look and I say, why is that? But I say that as I’m withdrawing from that space, and I go back to my compass, because if I don’t do that, and I power through that physical response mechanism in my body, then I’m left with such a narrow vocabulary where I have to blame the client for something, right?

Suzi Tucker 58:01

Or I have to become insecure and shy and somehow withdraw, right?

Suzi Tucker 58:09

But if I can go back to my compass and check-in and say, “Okay, you know, you were in a space you had no business being in.”

Suzi Tucker 58:20

How can you both return and not return in the same way? And it’s often through making contact with the person who actually is in that space, asking a question.

Suzi Tucker 58:34

Being, you know, that idea of “I see you.”

Suzi Tucker 58:38

Well, boy, sometimes, I think facilitators me is the facilitator. We really got to have that sentence, “I see you.” Not just offer it, we got to live it.

Candice Wu 58:52

Yeah. And that it is extremely powerful in itself. And it’s enough sometimes. Well, maybe it’s enough always.

Suzi Tucker 59:04

That’s a big little sentence, right?

Candice Wu 59:09

Right. Yeah. Well, Suzi, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation with you and learn so much. Is there anything else that feels alive now or that you want to share?

Suzi Tucker 59:25

Well, first of all, I learned so much as well. And as a living example of a collaboration, you know, I heard myself say things I’ve never heard myself say. And I love that. It’s like new colors on the palate.

Candice Wu 59:45

Yeah.

Suzi Tucker 59:46

And I really invite people to explore in themselves, this sense of competence and the ability to integrate so that their feet irresistibly want to move down that road toward more.

Candice Wu 1:00:11

Thank you. I’ll receive that for myself as well.

Suzi Tucker 1:00:16

Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:00:17

Yeah, me too.

Suzi Tucker 1:00:21

Thank you so much. And whoever listens, thank you so much for listening. And yeah, let’s toss the pebble, okay?

Candice Wu 1:00:29

Yes. Thank you so much, Suzi.

Suzi Tucker 1:00:33

You’re welcome.

Candice Wu 1:00:34

Thank you. It’s been fabulous. And for all of the people listening, Suzi is going to be offering a guided experience. It’ll be a surprise, right? We’ll see.

Suzi Tucker 1:00:47

Me too.

Candice Wu 1:00:49

It’s only truly alive that way.

Suzi Tucker 1:00:52

Yes.

Candice Wu 1:00:52

Yes. So thank you so much. And you can look out for that if you’re listening in and until next time, Suzi

Suzi Tucker 1:01:01

Looking forward.

Candice Wu 1:01:04

Thank you all for tuning into our conversation today. And thank you, Suzi, so much for being on the show. It’s a huge honor and I feel just so invigorated and excited about moving into my life differently. Even by just the words that we brought to light today.

Candice Wu 1:01:22

If you found her resonance or words exciting to you interesting or intriguing, I’d encourage you to check out her work at suzitucker.com. She also is the writer of her book, Gather Enough Fireflies, which is available on Amazon.

Candice Wu 1:01:45

I appreciate her book very much because it’s small in size, but jam-packed with seeds of insight from her very personal experience.

Candice Wu 1:01:55

Suzi is also co-editor and contributing author to Messengers of Healing and the contributing author to For Couples: Ten Commandments for Every Aspect of Your Relationship Journey.

Candice Wu 1:02:07

Also, stay tuned this week because she will be offering a lovely guided experience around competency. If you don’t want to miss this, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you get the download straight to your device. And consider subscribing to my newsletter, which will give you all the information as well as other healing experiences and self-love tips. You can find all that at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:02:34

Thank you all again, and as we go, I want to send you off with some of Suzi’s thoughts, which I don’t know if I’ll get exactly right. But it goes something like this, “Well, the world would carry on without you. It is enriched by your presence.”

Candice Wu 1:02:50

Thank you all so much for being out there and listening in and for your existence. And with that, see you next time on The Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the podcast this week, you are listening to a special offering from Suzi Tucker, who was the guest this week, you can listen to her full episode at CandiceWu.com/suzi.

If you listen to the full episode, you might be coming in thinking that this episode is about competence. Well, you will be a little bit surprised but this just shows just how it is to be present to what is now. So sit back and enjoy this lovely reading by Suzi.

Suzi Tucker 0:35

Hello everyone, this is Suzi Tucker. Several weeks ago, I had the great good fortune to be interviewed by Candice Wu for the Embody Podcast and in our conversation, we spoke of many things, of our personal work and our work in the larger community, and it was so easy and lovely and wide-ranging.

And Candice further made an offer to me to create an independent piece and we were thinking perhaps a meditation or a guided imagery session. And when I thought about it, I thought, you know, when I was a kid, I loved it when people read to me. And even now, one of my favorite things in the world is to listen to the New Yorker short stories as I go to sleep. I often have to listen to the same one, several nights in a row because I don’t get through to the end or I don’t remember.

At any rate, I thought, you know what I’m going to read to you. So I invite you to sit back or sit up or lie down, keep your eyes open or closed, find the position that is comfortable for you.

I’m going to read to you from Gather Enough Fireflies, which is the book I wrote, well, way back in 2014. Amazing how time passes. And I opened randomly and then it seemed to connect with the conversation that Candice and I had about capacity. So I’m going to read to you Brevities #9. And I hope you find something in it that’s intriguing or inspiring, or relaxing.

Brevities #9: Living in the confusion between past and present. Everyday decisions sometimes feel overwhelming and we think we’re crazy and being overwhelmed by the common questions, which then adds to the discontinuity between what we desire and what we feel capable of. But in constellations, we open to a larger landscape and sometimes we see that the systemic dynamics that affect us were initiated further back than even our parents.

When we think about what prevents us from quitting, or following through, or initiating or anything else that might logically make life better, sometimes the feeling in the body is what we can really locate. The words that describe that feeling, the thoughts in our head, are already second hand, something we superimpose, a feeling of breathlessness or trembling, or paralysis. What is that feeling where you feel in the face of decision? What is on the other side of it? Perhaps it’s something really farfetched. I’ll disappear. I’ll be killed. I cannot bear being alone. Perhaps you can take a moment right now. Allow the problem or decision that’s right before you, let it enter your mind. I can’t stand my job. My marriage is horrible. I want to stop drinking. Why am I always so insecure? Whatever it is named, let it in then feel the words in your body. What comes up? How would you describe the feeling? I can’t breathe. My head hurts. Everything goes blank. It clusters behind my eyes and presses against my temples. It gathers in my chest and pushes me down. A little time travel.

These dramatic feelings around everyday problems make us feel crazy, or peculiar, or lazy or stupid or any of a number of other things. The drama queen, the crybaby, the raging bitch, the little mouse, the mean names we call ourselves and sometimes are called by others. But when we go back a generation, or two or three, we may find exactly where the feelings make absolute sense. Our right-sized responses, as opposed to insane reactions.

Let’s imagine. Where in your history was the price of speaking up too high, even death? Where was the complaint or condition received without compassion? Where did success, intelligent talent and knack for something, actually endanger life? Where are there perpetrators who could not face their own guilt or despair? Where are their victims who could not face their own anger or sense of defeat? Where did it benefit happen on the backs of others? Where did some abandoned others in order to go on? For whom do we get home, fight, punish the men, the women, the children, put aside our dreams, destroy our reality, belittle possibility, stay behind.

What has not ended in our hearts, in our deep and visceral life, the life that teams with hidden energy not sanctioned or even seen by our own awareness, events to which we connect concern life and death? Actions that caused the family system to lose its traction, perhaps for a long time, or even just momentarily and then head in another direction. Or, for example, changes the course of thousands of systems, victims, and perpetrators so that new survival, vocabularies evolve, and with them, new depths of grief, anger, distrust. More personally, a young boy loses his father when he’s three years old, his course is in execrable shifted.

In either case, the next generations will be navigating life and death, even as they are moving across the simpler plane of daily living. The original belonging to our family of origin is where we receive the information that has the greatest impact of any other information we ever receive. We don’t have the ability to resist those deep messages. Some of the messages have been carried through many generations, landing in us inadvertently. Events of the past can fragment the family leaving people to clamor for balance, visibility, justice, peace. The events that happened so long ago, even beyond our memory can affect us powerfully. Free-floating anxiety, or endless grief, or misunderstood terror may travel down to us and we take it on without deliberation, without the were withall or time to deliberate.

Now the feelings are without context, or they appear to be inconsistent with context with the one that is visible. And yet to our great frustration or worse, our hearts are captured and we seem bound and gagged when it comes to the present. Uncovering in events such as this can have positive repercussions. It may take just a split second to connect to that crazy reaction and understand it within the context of a certain life movement. Once we see it, we can bring it to light.

We can gather moreover data though the long, obscured information that comes through the body, through dreams, through the multigenerational sub-panel, can be reflected back to its original owners. Oh, I see. I share this with you. I don’t need to carry it all. Certainly, none of our ancestors close or far, prisoner or guard, will be brought back or brought peace through our suffering.

If anything, our doing well, is the bomb for those who stand behind us. They paid a price and still through us, life goes on. Perhaps it will be in a good way. We cannot relieve them of the burden of their suffering. But we can relieve them of the burden of ours.

We have received difficult messages from the past. We can send beautiful messages back. The message is in our joy, our fulfillment, our greater ease with the present and with finding pleasure in creating greater continuity between what we reach for and the felt permission to actually take it into our hands and hold it as our own.

Our forebears’ sacrifices gain greater meaning as we take life in and feel able and welcomed to contribute something more to it. Our contribution will, by definition, include something of them, of our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, ancestors as far back as time itself.

In this way, with this expanding image, we can honor the past rather than join with it.

Thank you so much for listening.