Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Becoming Who You’re Meant To Be In Your Later Years with Susanne Eden
What if aging isn’t decline but the door to becoming who you were meant to be? That’s the heart of our conversation with educator and author Suzanne Eden, who at 87 shares a candid, hard-won perspective on health, purpose, and wholeness. We unpack the critical difference between curing and healing, why trauma and lifelong pressure can show up as physical illness, and how a purely biomedical approach often misses the deeper work that restores integrity to the whole self.
Suzanne takes us through her turning point: years on prednisone, the toll it took on diabetes and cognition, and the brave, painstaking taper that followed. That season reshaped her understanding of health and opened her to practices once dismissed as “woo-woo”—energy work, plant wisdom, and contemplative tools that support the body while honoring the mind and spirit. We explore holism without hype, grounding big ideas in practical habits that actually move the needle.
We also reclaim aging as a gift. Suzanne explains how later life grants perspective, boundary-setting, and the freedom to stop performing roles that never fit. We talk about elders as keepers of stories, why culture needs their wisdom, and how to build on strengths instead of obsessing over flaws. Two tools stand out: a transformational journaling practice that turns reflection into insight, and meditation that restores calm, attention, and choice.
If you’re curious about reimagining health, healing from the inside, and living fully as you age, this conversation offers grounded hope and actionable practices. Dive in, then explore Suzanne’s book Healing From The Inside: Living Fully As You Age and her blog and newsletter at susanneeden.com. If this resonates, follow the show, share with a friend, and leave a review to help others find it.
Intro for podcast
information about subscriptions
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello, and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we have a very special guest. Her name is Suzanne Eden, and uh she spent her career providing leadership to educators across Canada as a teacher, an author, a consultant, and staff developer. Among her achievements, she's the past president of the Canadian Association for Young Children and her past chair of the Board of Governors, Seneca College, Toronto, Ontario. Now she's 87. Well, I never would have picked her 87. Beautiful. She shares her personal story of healing and personal transformation in her book, Healing from the Inside, Living Fully As You Age, published in December 2023. Suzanne, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_02:Well, thank you very much for having me, Joel. I'm delighted to uh to join you, and I am doing great.
SPEAKER_00:We've been actually having a nice little conversation here. And uh, you know, it's interesting. I've had lately in the last maybe six months a number of Canadian guests, and um, it seems that health is definitely uh uh uh an important topic up there in the Great White North.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think it's a universal topic, and um when I think about health and healing, um I I look at um the way we've been conditioned to believe about health. We need to reimagine what it is to be healthy. I think that's the essential thing, and it we just don't get it. Healing in Western medicine is all about physical healing, and healing that is lasting is not simply physical. It is body, it is mind, and it is spirit.
SPEAKER_00:100%. And in fact, I don't even think in Western medicine that they really so much focus on healing as they do on treating a condition and you know managing it rather than actually curing it. I don't see a whole lot of curing going on in Western medicine.
SPEAKER_02:No, I I look at one of the things that changed my life was when I understood the difference between finding a cure and healing. And they are not the same thing.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Indeed. Indeed. Well, I really um as as we began our discussion prior to recording, we have a whole lot in common. But one thing I really like to get to, I think it's important with all of my new guests, especially, is you know, to hear your story about how you came to this place. You know, you're you're in your 80s, which is you know remarkable for a lot of people, although more and more I as I I'm I'm hitting 60 this year, so I'm like, you know, 80 doesn't seem to be far fetched anymore. When I was 20, I didn't think I was gonna make it to 30. And when I was 30, I didn't make it, think I was gonna make it to 40. And here I am crawling up on 60, and I'm like, ah, I'll be here till 120 now.
SPEAKER_02:Well, this summer I was uh I spent 10 days in Italy on a photography and wellness um program, and all of the participants were much younger, they were 40s, 50s, and maybe 60s. And about the very first time we sat down together, there was a woman coming to her 60th birthday, and she was really convinced the world had ended. And I started to laugh, and I said, I don't even remember that long ago.
SPEAKER_00:I love it.
SPEAKER_02:So um uh yeah, age is age is a number, but it is more than that. And I one of the things in my book that I really um that is a central theme is that aging is a gift. Yes, it's not this, oh God, we're you know, it must be old age, I can't do this, and I can't, it is really a gift. And I come to that because of the many friends, the beautiful friends that I lost who never had the privilege of old age. And uh I I feel very strongly about that. Women who looked after themselves, who didn't uh, you know, who did exercises, who ate well, did all those things, and still did not have that privilege to become old. So happens so often.
SPEAKER_00:So tell me a little bit about you know what you consider to be health, you know. Um, there's so many elements that a lot of sort of mainstream people would classify as, you know, if you meet all these requirements and you're healthy. Yeah. Um and what's what's your picture of of health? I I know, you know, coming from where I just came from, you know, I went from I thought I was a healthy guy to all of a sudden, you know, you got stage four cancer, to I'm looking at things a whole different way now. And I'm curious where where your perspective is as far as, you know, what are the elements of health for you.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Um to just go back to where you asked me how I came to be into art. Oh, yeah, yeah, because that really defines how I look at health and what health means to me today. Um I was one of these people who did 10,000 things every day and thrived on being busy.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And uh I often say if I were to write my biography, it would be called madly off in all directions because I was for, you know, I just I've always been interested in many things.
SPEAKER_00:So I had enough birthday, by the way.
SPEAKER_02:When is my birthday? The 15th of October. I just turned 87 a couple a month ago, two months ago.
SPEAKER_00:Took me as maybe a Gemini, but not so much. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm a Libra. I'm all about balance.
SPEAKER_00:All right, fair enough.
SPEAKER_02:And that runs through all of my work. Anyway, so um to make a long story short, because I I tell the story in my book, and that was hard to do, um, to come public, to go public with who I am and who I have been and who I am becoming, um, and what had led me through all that journey. So, because of health concerns, and I knew I was burning myself out to use that phrase, but I don't even like that phrase, burn yourself out. Um, what I think it is, is that the traumas and the hurts and the wounds that we suffer over our lifetime build to a point where we can no longer tolerate that. And I really am convinced through my own experience of healing that there comes a point when it manifests when those deep um wounds and injuries manifest themselves as physical illness. And that's a very different thing than Western medicine that looks at, you know, a part fails like it's a car, you know. So your transmission goes, you get a new one, you stick it in, and away you go. Um the other thing that that um I when I when I was, you know, um I'm I'm kind of rambling here, but when when I was growing up and through my adult life, the doctor knew what what was to be done and you followed what the doctor said.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Um it was not a partnership. You were there to find out from the doctor what you should do. And of course, I had been to many doctors, nobody could seem to heal me. I had serious chronic disorders, I developed diabetes, um, and I managed diabetes until I was put on prednisone for what was initially diagnosed as lupus, and then the diagnosis was changed to polymyalgramatica. And I was put on prednisone and left on prednisone for 12 years, and it was killing me. It didn't do any good after a very short time, and it is one of the worst drugs that a diabetic can take. In fact, it probably is, um, and it affects everything. It isn't just physical, it affected my mind. My I had to take early retirement from um teaching at the university to um uh to focus on my health, and um that's when I came to a point where I had been requesting that I be taken off prednisone, and um they said if I did my body would shut down and that would be it, I would die. So I made up my mind. I talked to my husband, and he was very supportive of me, and I said, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to get off it. And I took myself off, and it was brutal. I spent over a year, I came down crumb by crumb, not a half a tablet or anything like that. Just and every time I dropped a little teeny bit more, I would go through what I came to call my prednisone days, which were um everything ached, even my eyeballs sometimes. And they would last from anywhere from two days to two weeks. But what I came to understand and to feel was that in time it's sorted out. So the long and short of it was it was going through all of that journey that sent me on the path to realize that what I was getting from our the medical community, and I had wonderful caring doctors, don't get me wrong. Um, but it wasn't it wasn't the answer, that there was something else that I needed, and that's when I started to investigate alternatives. And uh initially with a lot of skepticism, because that's what we were conditioned to believe, that this was all just kind of some bit of woo-woo. And that is still the message, and I'm interested in the many times in the television programs that people who look at energy healing or other alternatives are laughed at.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And and there's a very popular uh series recently on Netflix, uh Frankie and whatever her name is, and with Jane Fonda, where her partner Lily Tomlins is uh is into that stuff, and it's and it's the joke of the whole show, and that's wrong. Yeah, absolutely wrong.
SPEAKER_00:Um I couldn't agree more. I I've I've experienced too many things on an energetic level and a spiritual level and and and on a physical level, even with all those things, working with plant medicines and and alternative, you know, they call it alternative, but actually they it's not alternative, it's an it's another. Well, and it's it's actually the original medicine, you know. Yes. Everything was plant-based, everything was natural based, and it went all the way back to history when we sort of found our way to things that helped.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes, and and um that's that's where I what I came to eventually. And it was interesting to me in in oh around maybe 2010, in that time period when I started uh to to really begin to function and to come back to it. And what I was finding was I'd always believed in a holistic approach. I believe in holism very intensely within myself. I believe that the body is a whole, and I believe that the planet is a whole. We are part of something much larger than ourselves as individuals. So when I began to get into that, I found that even people who were looking at what they called either alternative or complementary treatments, they talked a lot about the mind, but almost never about the spirit. And with we leave that part out, we've left out the most beautiful and most fundamental part of what it is to be a human, is to have so true.
SPEAKER_00:It's like when the spirit leaves the body is when you die.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And nobody bothers to pay attention to that part. And I'm like, wait a minute, that's the thing that makes you be a human being that's alive.
SPEAKER_02:It is, it is indeed. It is indeed. So that's where I started to get into the idea of looking at the whole body and what what so so again, if we think about health, um, the health of the spirit, if you will, this um I call it the fractured self in my book. When we fracture ourselves into a body, a mind, and a spirit, if we even have a spirit, um, then the that that connection that is essential to making us who we are is lost. And it's the healing is really the restoring of the connection between all those three parts of who we are as a person. And who we who we were. The other thing that fascinates me is why am I why was I given the particular gifts of personality and quality and experience that I've been given? And why were you given that package of stuff that makes you Joe? And why was I given, you know, like what were you meant to be? What were you given those for? And and that is really so it's it's who we ought who we are ought to become. And I so then when I talk about aging as a gift, I say it can be the time when we have uh the opportunity, the final opportunity to become who we ought to be. And that's what it means to live fully is when we become who we were intended to be.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. And you know, it it just so happens that as you get a little bit older, oftentimes you have the time to share with others these things that you've learned and make kind of the way it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and that has again been lost. And and we look at our media, for example, the um older people are are often more uh ridiculed than they are respected. And um again, in in my book I talk about you know, it was a time and there are still cultures in which um the elderly are venerated.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:And they are looked to as the source of telling the stories, of bringing the stories forward. And uh so it in a way that was motivation for me writing the book was that I had gone through so much and found everything was, you know, so much in this field, people would write about one thing, very specific thing. And often it was physical. Um, and if if it wasn't, they might talk about the mind-body connection, but not the spirit. Am I jiggling too much? Sorry.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no, you're doing fine.
SPEAKER_02:I just put my coffee and it was I don't sit still and I No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00:You're just fine. That was all me. I I I was just being disruptive.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-oh. But uh anyway, I've lost my trade of thought here. But I think that um that we we need to come back to to some of that thinking about us being whole and that it's it's not it's a it is a whole long journey. We never get there. Right. We we are always on the on the getting there. And what I love and what I say in my book is, you know, instead of thinking of, gosh, I'm getting old, so I'm over the hill, we're looking at, hey, what possibilities are there still there for learning, for growing, for for living?
SPEAKER_00:It's so true. And and so um it's interesting because when you're a child, there are things you can do as a child that you can't do when you're old. Yeah. Then as you get to be a uh a teenager, there's things you can do as a teenager that you couldn't do as a child.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then as you get to be an elder, there's also things you can do as an elder that you couldn't do as any of the other times. So what what is it that you found are your superpowers now that you're able to do?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think one of them is to be myself. Uh-huh. Um, I'm not trying to fit into roles that everybody else created for me, but I didn't understand that until it is a very new understanding for me. Um and, you know, again, I tell this in my book about my own journey because of the some of the trauma experiences I went through as a child, I had no self-confidence. Um, I've always been social, but I I always felt that I didn't fit in, that I didn't belong. Uh, I look, I thought of myself as being very ugly, homely, um, not having any of that. And yet, even no matter how successful I became in my career, it never, it never reached deep within me to give me the satisfaction and the joy it should have. And so it's when I when I started to get into all of this, uh, what I call in in my work the transformate my transformational journal. That's what changed my life totally. And I'm I'm I'm happier, I'm more content with who I am. Uh, I know, I know what I'm not good at. I know when I can be a real bitch. Not too often anymore, but I certainly can be when I, you know, at times it doesn't bother me anymore. That's who I am.
SPEAKER_00:But you know, there's something about that that's important. It's not necessarily something that you want to wear on your sleeve and and be the first thing that people see, but it's it's a a protection mechanism and it's a place to lay boundaries. And, you know, um as people get older, a lot of times I think they get taken advantage of or they get tried to be taken advantage of. And I think that that's a tool that you have to lay the law down that says, well, not here, not now, not yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. And you know, to get back to that idea of what are the qualities that I are or what are the things that I have now to give. And and I think that the wisdom of the experience, the wisdom of of um taking, I think what what what I've been able to do is to really do that deep self-examining. We're often afraid of it. And I I'm amazed at how many times I will get an insight into something that I've thought about all my life and never understood, and suddenly it is as clear as can be. And that's the that's when I when I look at when I reread parts of my book, I will think, my gosh, why would I not have seen that 40 years ago?
SPEAKER_00:And I didn't is kind of an interesting tool that we don't really think about, you know. Like you were saying when you were younger, you were just going, going, going. And you know, I I think a lot of us are guilty of that. And when you're down in the trenches, you don't see where you are. And you know, that's why the the leaders, you know, tend to sit up on top of the hill and not do so much of the doing because they need to be able to watch and see the perspective of how's all these things fitting together. But when you get a little older, sometimes you get that ability to look back and and you know, I don't know about you, but I've always been pretty hard on myself and and always like, you know, you could do more. Why didn't you get that done? You know, and and and then you run into somebody that you haven't seen for a long time, and they go, Wow, look what you've done. And you're like, oh, always you see that, you know, and so sometimes that perspective I think is a a powerful tool to actually give you a taste of of the the holistic reality of you know, you people talk about God and and you know the ability to see the end from the beginning or the beginning from the end, and you know, that all has to do with perspective and the ability to you know look out across the whole thing. So I think it's kind of a cool, a cool bit.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you talk about um you know uh being hard on yourself. I mean, I don't know anybody who's happy with who they are. You talk to people and we always see all our faults. When I when I I've I've been working on a uh um a book on the transformational journal, and actually it will be a transformational journal that people can take and use um to go through the journey. And it it's it guides different things. And and one of the things I say in that is we don't build something, uh we don't go forward by looking backwards. And so instead of trying to look at, oh, what are all the things I need to change, we look at what are my strengths, what are the things that have given given me the successes I've had, and let me build on those. And when we when we build on those, we let go of a lot of the weaknesses, and and I just think that that is such a powerful idea, and so that's you know, that's that's work, that's the next piece of work that I'm I'm I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. So you you published this book just a couple of years ago.
SPEAKER_02:I actually did, I actually did it two years ago, the first edition, but I wasn't happy with the presentation of it, nor with the fact that it it um people seem to take from it more of the health than of the aging. And it's both, it is both, because I'm speaking as an 87-year-old, and I'm speaking to people who are coming into that last stage of life. So I reissued it just this uh past month. Oh nice, yeah, so it is it.
SPEAKER_00:So did you have a um a history of writing, or was this something new for you?
SPEAKER_02:No, I I've I worked in educational publishing when I was a young teacher. I worked full-time, I had many opportunities to go back to um to um working in the publishing industry. I've written a lot of stuff, but all of it was on education. Okay, dealing with health was a very different uh venture for me. And I I try and be very careful to say that uh often in my writing that I am not a medical doctor. I'm actually a doctor of education. And uh uh education was my passion. I uh when I did my doctoral studies late in my life, I started out as a practitioner, as a grade one teacher, and uh went uh, you know, I did the opposite of many academics who you know spend the first 25 years of their life studying. Uh I went out and did, and then I came back to understand it. And um, and um so uh, but this is my first attempt at um something to do with health. And I do a blog every two weeks, uh, which I've had me a lot of success with. It's on my website, and I do a newsletter. Uh, so I am quite busy, and um, I'm getting a lot of good feedback on on both of those.
SPEAKER_00:And so the book um you've just re-re-released it, and you you've modified your message a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:Um yes, I extended it to include more about the relationship between health and aging. Oh the re the reimagining of both. Reimagining what it is to age and reimagining what health is. I think that those those are the two kind of underpinnings of the whole uh book.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. Well, as I suspected, our conversation was going to take the edge of the time. And unfortunately, people just have the attention span of a gnat these days. So I I try to keep these shows down to you know a consumable amount, but I would certainly, as we talked about before, um, welcome you to come back and and share more of your thoughts and your wisdom. Um, and I just realized I have a copy of your book that was that I was given. So I'm gonna be reading that shortly, and um, I'm looking forward to uh to to looking through your eyes in this. Do you think that of all these elements that you've been sharing, that you have sort of a central message that you want to share with our listeners?
SPEAKER_02:Uh yes, and and that's a hard thing to do. Um, I guess what I say is uh there's more to getting old, more to aging than getting old. And take it what we have to do is take responsibility for uh our our health and our the way that we live. And by taking responsibility and healing the whole self, um, we can become who we are meant to be. And that is fulfillment. That we talk, I I just did a blog recently, I think it'll be out in some of some magazine within the next month. And I I'm sorry, I forget which one, but um, I talk about what it means to live fully, and to live fully is to really become who you are meant to be, to use those gifts and talents that make up your life and experiences to become the person that you were intended to be, and that's fulfillment. It's not about having things or doing things, it's about being.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. That's a beautiful message. Well, I always like to give our guests an opportunity to share with the listeners how they can be reached and all how they can find all your all your information and your book and everything. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how we can find you and and and your work?
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Um, this is my book, Healing from the Inside, um, Living Fully as You Age. And um, it's available uh on Amazon. Um and it's also uh I I believe uh it will it is also available through Barnes and Noble and and other distributors uh in Canada through Indigo. Um my website is uh uh Suzanne Eden, S-U-S-A-N-N-E, E-D-E-N. So there's two S two N's and two E's dot com. And if you go to my website, you will find a gallery. I've just uh I was telling uh you Joe earlier, I've just this morning um uploaded onto the gallery um a video that I've done with a very close friend of mine who is has stage four cancer. Um, and she talks about the journey of healing and what it has meant to her and what death and dying means to her and how she is prepared. She is she meets it with such dignity and grace. It is it is a beautiful video. So those are on my website. Uh it's suzanneden.com. Uh, and so you can get it on Amazon.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. Well, I'm looking forward to uh uh experiencing that. As I told you, I've we share so a lot of things in common, and and uh I always like to hear other people's point of view when they go through a similar experience. And uh, you know, there's like you said, uh grace and dignity in the face of adversity is something that is really powerful, and uh it's definitely inspiring. And you know, hopefully our listeners will find inspiration in the words and the ideas that you bring to us.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, also I should say if you're interested in the blog, if you go to my website, the link is there to sign up for both the newsletter and the blog. And I take the different um aspects and different themes from healing, uh, from the inside, uh, living fully as you age. Um, I take the different themes for the blog and I expand on different points that I make in the book into my blogs. And uh the feedback has been really, really great from well, I'm looking forward to uh experiencing it for myself.
SPEAKER_00:And uh, Suzanne, it's just been a pleasure uh sharing this conversation with you. And again, I would like to invite you to come back and and continue this one day whenever you're up for it. I just want to thank you for being here with us today.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I would love to come back. I would love to talk more about the transformational journal because I think that's um again uh a little different idea of journaling and the importance that that is probably the that and meditation um are the two tools that change my life. And I am in better health physically, mentally, and spiritually today than I was 30 years ago.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. I would love to have that conversation. I speak often about uh journaling as a as a powerful tool. I I don't always do shows with guests. Sometimes I just go and ramble on myself, but a lot of the things that I do talk about is the value of journaling. And I I've journaled all my life, and um it's I I very seldom go back and read what I wrote, but it doesn't matter because the act of writing it embeds it into your head in a way that typing doesn't do, talking about it doesn't do. There's a a certain magic about writing, putting pen to paper. So I I would love to continue the conversation and get into that.
SPEAKER_02:My my thought is writing my book is about that part of my book is about writing for understanding. It's how we come to understand what's happening. I would love to come back, Joe. You just let me know when you want me. And I thank you very much for a wonderful discussion this morning. And I I welcome all of your readers to join me in my journey and uh and uh find that inner sense of well-being and peace and and um confidence in yourself. Let's let's let's have let's hope, let's have confidence in ourselves.
SPEAKER_00:I couldn't agree more. Well, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I want to thank all of the guests who make this show possible, and we will see you next time.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, Joe.
