Life, Love and Legacy

When people really value what you give, stepping back can feel difficult. Their well-intentioned encouragement comes from a place of care, but “we need you” can be hard to hear when you’re trying to understand what needs to change.

In my conversation with Michelle Taylor, she spoke about a time when she felt she was walking away from celebrancy. Friends and colleagues told her she couldn’t be done. They still needed her.

In this Insights episode, I reflect on the courage it takes to acknowledge where we really are, especially when other people want us to keep going and we still care deeply about the work and the people in our lives. Michelle’s story also got me thinking about permission: to let our colourfulness show, to keep evolving without forcing an answer, and to make room for quiet when we need it.

Sometimes we recognise that something no longer fits before we know what would feel right instead. How do we give yourself space to listen, especially when we're used to putting other people's needs first?

I explore:

• The courage to acknowledge where we really are.
• Listening when someone says they’re done.
• How being needed can complicate recognising our own needs.
• Giving ourselves permission to evolve.
• Wintering and caring for ourselves through fallow times..

Is there a part of your life you’re trying to keep going in a familiar way, when what you need from it has begun to change? If you’re trying to maintain a familiar pace or way of being while something in you is asking for change, there may be something here for you.

Listen to my full conversation with Celebrant Michelle Taylor in Episode 33.

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

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CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

Have you ever felt ready to walk away from something you’ve loved, then wondered whether there’s another way forward? Perhaps the work still matters to you, but the way you’re doing it no longer reflects who you’ve become.

This week, I’m joined by independent celebrant and celebrant trainer Michelle Taylor, who knows that feeling really well. When we first met at the Independent Celebrants’ Retreat, she was close to leaving celebrancy behind. Now, she’s finding a quieter, more deeply connected way forward through Oak and Thorn Ceremonies.

After 30 years in policing, Michelle brought her storytelling skills, straightforward approach and love of people into a very different setting. But giving herself permission to let her own colourfulness, beliefs and individuality come through has been an evolving journey.

We talk about what happens when we stop trying to fit an identity we’ve outgrown, how we decide what deserves our energy, and why some of life’s most meaningful moments deserve a celebration of their own.

Our conversation explores:

• Finding a new direction when you’ve begun to think you’re done.
• Allowing your work to reflect your changing beliefs and values.
• Letting go of anger and choosing what needs a response.
• Celebrating beginnings, endings and finding your birth family.
• Embracing your seasons and making space for rest.
• The memories we create and the difference we make in other people’s lives.

There’s laughter, honesty and plenty to recognise in Michelle’s story. If you’ve been wondering how to make more room for yourself in your own life, there’s something here for you.

To connect with Michelle:

Website: https://oakandthornceremonies.co.uk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michelle_oakandthorn/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelleoakandthorn

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelletaylorcelebrant/

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

Welcome to Season Three of Life, Love & Legacy!

How do we bring what we’ve learned into the way we live? How do we make choices that reflect who we are, make room for other people’s experiences, and recognise when something no longer fits?

In this opening episode, I introduce seven guests who’ll help us explore identity, belonging, ceremony, connection and what it means to have enough. There’ll be stories, laughter and questions to consider, alongside my own Insights episodes.

Meet this season’s guests:

• Michelle Taylor: Independent celebrant, trainer and podcast host.
• Kat Applewhite: Coach, entrepreneur and accidental tech leader.
• Dr Wendy White: NHS GP, writer, runner and introvert.
• Paul Sherwood: Leadership practitioner, coach and thoughtful change-maker.
• Jess May: Celebrant, grief coach and tireless cheerleader.
• Katie Brockhurst: Digital wellbeing specialist, speaker and author.
• Glenda Procter: Celebrant, trainer and Queen of Handfasting.

I’m also introducing two new ways to explore your own life, love and legacy:

Legacy Notes — free companion guides to Seasons One and Two, bringing together guests’ stories, my reflections and questions for you. Perfect for revisiting a conversation, or sharing with someone who doesn’t do podcasts.

Download your free guides here.

The Eulogy Gap — a personal coaching experience across two private sessions, with guided writing in between. Explore who and what matters most, and the choices that bring more of that into your life now.

Find out more here:

Follow the podcast to join us for Season Three. Live fully. Love deeply. BE your legacy.

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

Season Two of Life, Love & Legacy has taken us through recovery, mortality, ritual, changing relationships, identity, trauma, courage and the sometimes uncomfortable work of becoming more fully ourselves.

But looking back, I realised these conversations were never really separate stories. Together, they asked a much bigger question:

Who do we choose to be when life does not go to plan?

Season One invited us to think about identity, belonging and what it means to come home to ourselves. Season Two has taken that further, asking what happens when life changes shape and the old script no longer fits.

Across conversations with Tom Fitzsimons, Katie Costello, Lottie Moore, Monica Douglas, Penny Boycott, Jo Berry and Richard Tyler, several themes kept returning.

Love became less about comfort and more about courage, presence, truth, curiosity and the willingness to let life change us.

Change became less something to resist and more something to meet.

And legacy moved even more firmly into the present tense.

Because legacy is not simply what people say about us when we are gone. It is what people experience of us while we are here: the way we meet others, the choices we make, the conversations we are willing to have, the love we give and receive, and the person we choose to become in the life that is actually ours.

In this Season Two finale, I bring together the biggest lessons from the season and reflect on what these conversations have taught me about living fully, loving deeply and being our legacy.

Because perhaps the question is not whether life will rewrite the script.

Perhaps the question is who we choose to be when it does.

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

What happens when life changes unexpectedly and the future you imagined is no longer the future in front of you?

How do we move forward after loss, illness, disappointment or a major life transition, especially when simply “letting go” feels impossible?

My conversation with Richard Tyler left me with far more than I could fit into one Insights episode. There was grief and illness, identity and healing, nature, story, soul - and that extraordinary question at the heart of our conversation: how do we bear what feels unbearable?

But the idea I kept coming back to was something slightly different. Rich didn’t talk about simply letting go. He talked about loosening our grip.

Because sometimes the things we’re holding have mattered too much to simply release. The relationship. The person. The future we imagined. The version of ourselves we thought we would become.

And perhaps finding a way forward doesn’t begin with forcing ourselves to move on. Perhaps it begins by making just enough room for something new to emerge.

In this episode, I reflect on what that might mean: allowing a new story to take shape; learning to crouch down beside ourselves rather than constantly trying to fix ourselves; practising self-compassion when we feel stuck; loving ourselves back to life with patience and care; and occasionally choosing to be a little more owl than hummingbird.

Because when life rewrites the script without asking our permission, perhaps resilience isn’t always about becoming strong enough to carry more.

Perhaps sometimes it’s about changing the way we hold what we already have… and finding our way forward from there.

In this episode:

• Coping when life changes unexpectedly
• Moving forward when letting go feels impossible
• What happens when the life we expected collides with the life that arrives
• Making space for a new story after loss or change
• Self-compassion: learning to crouch down beside ourselves
• What it might mean to love ourselves back to life

Live fully. Love deeply. BE your legacy.

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

[A note before listening: This conversation includes frank discussion of cancer, a life-limiting prognosis, grief, serious illness and some of the physical realities of hospital treatment.]

What happens when life becomes almost unbearable? When the future you thought you were heading towards disappears? When there’s no neat resolution, no obvious lesson and no way of simply getting “back to normal”?

My guest this week is Richard Tyler, soul therapist, author, poet, former West End performer and co-founder of the Willow Tree Foundation.

Rich was given a cancer diagnosis that came with a prognosis of just four or five months. In this deeply open conversation, he talks about what happened when illness ambushed the story he thought he was living, and why his response wasn’t to fight cancer as an enemy, but to try to understand his relationship with it.

We talk about grief in its widest sense. The lives we imagined but may never live. The identities and roles we create to survive. The parts of ourselves we leave behind. And the very human desire to find resolution when sometimes there simply isn’t any.

Rich also introduces an idea that has stayed with me: perhaps we don’t always have to let go. Perhaps sometimes we simply need to loosen our grip.

There’s tenderness here too. We explore what it means to “crouch down next to” another human being with our full attention, and the much harder question of whether we can learn to offer that same presence to ourselves.

In this episode, we explore:

• How we bear what feels unbearable
• Living with the light and the shadow at the same time
• The many forms grief can take
• Loosening our grip on the stories we thought life would follow
• Nature, healing and learning to belong to the world rather than stand apart from it
• What it might mean to crouch down next to ourselves

To connect with Richard:

Website: https://richardtylertherapy.com

Website: https://thewillowtreefoundation.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtylerbtfi/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richardbtfi/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.tylerlake

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

None of us can resolve every conflict, repair every division or carry responsibility for the darkness of the whole world. But we can pay attention to the choices available to us in the next conversation, the next disagreement, the next difficult moment.

In this Insights episode, I return to my conversation with Jo Berry CBE, and to one of the ideas that struck me most strongly: the difference between condemning harmful actions and denying someone’s humanity.

Jo’s work does not offer an easy answer to conflict, division or trauma. Nor does she suggest that everyone should follow the path she has taken. What she does offer is a place to start.

What might change if, in difficult moments, we became a little less certain and a little more curious? What if we could hold on to our values without closing ourselves off completely to another person’s story? And what happens to us when hatred, judgment or righteousness begin to shape who we become?

Drawing on Jo’s work with Patrick Magee, young people in Belfast, and people affected by conflict in Ukraine and Kosovo, I reflect on the idea that rehumanising another person is not about excusing harm. It can also be about protecting and deepening our own humanity.

Perhaps the work begins there: not with believing we can change the whole world, but with noticing what happens in us when we meet difference, conflict or pain — and what we choose to do next.

In this episode, I explore:

• why certainty can feel so seductive in an uncertain world
• the difference between disagreement and dehumanisation
• why curiosity does not require us to abandon our values
• how one conversation can create an opening for something different
• what Jo means by choosing responses that deepen rather than diminish our humanity
• how these choices connect with the way we live our legacy

The question I was left with was a simple one: when the next difficult moment comes, will the response I choose deepen my humanity or diminish it?

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

In 1984, Jo Berry’s father, Sir Anthony Berry MP, was killed in the IRA bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel. Sixteen years later, Jo met Patrick Magee, the man who planted the bomb. That first, unsupported three-hour conversation began an extraordinary relationship and more than 25 years of dialogue, reconciliation and peacebuilding.

Most of us will never face a choice on that scale. But what happens when certainty stops us listening? When we reduce someone to an enemy, a label or a position, how much of their humanity and their story do we stop seeing?

Jo is clear that recognising someone’s humanity doesn’t mean excusing the harm they have caused, and she never suggests that anyone else should follow her path. Instead, she invites us to remain curious, to look beyond the labels and to choose our own response, rather than allowing another person’s actions to determine who we become.

We talk about what happened when she first met Patrick, the inner work required to remain open-hearted and her belief that there is life after trauma. Jo also shares some of the meaningful moments that remind her that change is possible, even when we may never see the full ripple effect of the work we do.

In a divided world that makes it increasingly easy to dehumanise one another, Jo’s story is an extraordinary testament to the courage of choosing a different response.

In this episode:

• Why Jo chose understanding rather than revenge
• What happened when she first met Patrick Magee
• Why seeing someone’s humanity doesn’t mean excusing their actions
• How certainty can close us off from curiosity and connection
• What it takes to build a life after trauma
• Why we should honour the moments that show us our work matters

To connect with Jo:

Website: https://jo-berry.com/

Website: https://buildingbridgesforpeace.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jo__berry/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joberry9/

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

What part of yourself are you still editing for other people’s comfort?

The accent you soften. The opinion you swallow. The ambition you make sound smaller. The thing you want but can’t quite bring yourself to say aloud.

At the end of last week’s interview, celebrant Penny Boycott offered one final invitation: “Be unapologetically yourself.”

Not simply authentic. Unapologetic.

Authenticity allows the real you to be seen. Being unapologetic means resisting the urge to diminish, explain or rearrange yourself before anybody else gets the chance to disapprove.

In this episode, I explore what it takes to move from knowing who we are to giving ourselves permission to take up space. We often talk about fear of failure, but what if we also fear discovering that we actually have everything we need to fly?!

This isn’t a rallying cry to become louder, brasher or more certain. It’s an invitation to stop apologising for the space that is already yours.

In this episode:

• The difference between authentic and unapologetic
• Why recognising our own capacity can frighten us
• What changes when we answer, “What do I want?”
• Celebrating ourselves and those who helped us become
• Less performance. More presence. More you.

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.

Have you ever found yourself in a life or career that looked perfectly fine from the outside, but somewhere inside you knew it no longer quite fitted?

Penny Boycott remembers sitting in the registrar’s office she’d worked so hard to reach, looking at a window she couldn’t actually see out of and wondering whether she really wanted to spend the next 20 years there.

She loved the work. She loved people’s stories. But she also knew there had to be another way.

More than 20 years later, Penny is one of the original pioneers of independent celebrancy, Head of Learning at the Academy of Modern Celebrancy and a passionate advocate for a profession built around individuality, connection and giving people the freedom to mark life in ways that genuinely reflect who they are.

Our conversation explores what happens when you stop trying to fit beneath an awkward-shaped lid and start becoming more fully yourself.

We talk about taking up space, letting go of expectation, resisting comparison and why authenticity matters way more than perfection.

In this episode, we explore:

• Leaving something good when it no longer feels right
• Finding work that fits who you are
• Taking up space and using your voice
• Why authenticity creates connection
• Collaboration, community and raising standards
• How ceremony might evolve to honour more of modern life

Penny’s parting message is simple: be unapologetically yourself.

To connect with Penny:

Website: https://www.penelopejayne.co.uk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/penelopejayne.co.uk/

Academy of Modern Celebrancy: https://www.academyofmoderncelebrancy.com

Celebrant Guild: https://thecelebrantguild.com

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OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK WITH SUE:

Coaching and Self-affirmation ceremony: Celebrate YOU!

Legacy exploration and coaching: The Eulogy Gap

______

PODCAST RESOURCES:

Download your free copy of Legacy Notes - now available for Seasons One & Two!

______

CONNECT WITH SUE:

Website: https://www.suerevell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell

Substack: https://substack.com/@suerevell1

Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.

Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.