The secrets you keep hidden from the world are the exact ones running the script of your life from the shadows.
When you refuse to name your trauma, your shame, or your deepest struggles, you don't make them disappear—you give them permission to dictate your choices, your relationships, and your boundaries. Real authority begins when you stop hiding from your own truth and start speaking it out loud.
You are not alone.
In this episode of Keeping It Real on Purpose, I am joined by award-winning author and memoirist Sue William Silverman for a raw, unfiltered conversation about stripping away the silence, reclaiming your inner voice, and stepping out of the survival loop.
It’s time to own your narrative and stop letting the unsaid rule your world.
Most people don't need another self-help book.
They need to stop hiding from the story.
They've spent years trying to outrun
because what remains unspoken doesn't disappear.
It shows up in relationships.
It shows up in your choices.
It shows up in your addictions.
It shows up in your fears.
It shows up no matter what.
And until we tell ourselves the truth about what happened,
we're often living a life
that's being managed by experiences we never fully face.
I'm Edna White, and this is Keeping It Real On Purpose.
Today, I'm joined by Sue Williams-Silverman,
mem, I got this word, gotta get this word
right, mem, memoirist, right?
Memoirist.
Memoirist.
There you go, memoirist.
Poet.
Teacher and author of multiple books,
including Lovesick, Fearless Confessions,
The Pat Boone Fan Club,
and How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences.
I love that one.
Sue has spent decades helping people understand the power of story.
But more importantly, she's lived the reality of what happens
when we finally tell the truth about our own.
Before we talk about writing, publishing,
or memoirs, I want to start right here by
introducing her and welcome her to the show.
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
It's really nice to meet you.
Yeah, it's so great to have you on.
And I know if I'm excited, the audience has to be excited.
So before the books, before the teaching,
before becoming known for helping others,
Tell the story. Tell their story. What were you surviving?
So a lot. I grew up in an incestuous family.
So my father was abusing me.
So that was sort of my childhood and early adolescence.
And as a result of that,
then I went away and I went to college and everything.
But as a result of that childhood, I had a sexual addiction.
So which means, and that can be sort of misunderstood, but for me,
what it meant was that I was looking for a man to love me,
but I didn't know how to look in the correct way.
And I thought that if he wanted to have sex with me, that meant he
loved me because that was the message I learned from my father.
So for quite a long time,
I would have affairs with really inappropriate men.
You know, either they were like old enough to be my father,
they were married, or just
completely emotionally unavailable.
So if you, you know, you name it, and I found them. So it was
real, it was really bad. And then, so that went on for quite a while.
And then I really sort of
hit bottom. And that was so painful that it got my attention.
I realized, oh,
I need help. Everything I've been doing is not working.
It's not making me happy. I'm
not finding love, nothing. So I got into...
I'm going to...
I was, I found a therapist
and he specialized both in eating disorders, which I also was
anorexic to some extent.
And so that was his specialty was sex addiction and eating disorders.
And then, so I was in individual therapy with him
and then I was in group therapy and then I was
in rehab for 28 days.
And that book that you mentioned Love Sick is, is, uh, uh,
It's about the 28 days I spent in rehab.
Oh, wow.
So it's been sort of like a long journey.
Yeah, I got to get that one.
That one I got to get.
Yeah, thank you.
I want to tell you that we have similar backgrounds.
I, too, was sexually abused, childhood sexual abuse from age
of six all the way up to preteen, like 14, 15, up there.
Yeah.
And it was my stepfather.
Um, so yeah, um, I, I understand what you're talking about,
but I was a reverse of you and
that happens, and then that happens.
I didn't want to have nothing to do with it. Oh yeah. No, it's
like, it's like one extreme or the other. Right.
It's like, I didn't want to have nothing to do
with it. And I was like mad all the time.
You know, I was angry all the time and even going
through school, everybody says,
you're so mad all the time. Yeah. I'm mad. Yeah.
It's a good reason for you to be mad.
Yeah, I was mad.
I was really upset.
Yeah.
So I can relate to what you're saying.
And I know that writing was my outlet.
Like you.
Exactly.
I tell a story.
I put everything on paper.
And I think by the time I was 30, I had 15 books written.
Never released them.
Yeah.
Never released them at all.
And then finally, when I became 43, I was like.
I got to tell my story.
And that's when it just started rolling from there.
So yeah, I get it.
I get it.
So tell me what parts of your story
felt impossible to talk about at first?
Well, to some extent, all of it.
I mean, like I spent probably 10 years writing fiction,
but the fiction was really bad.
So I was like sort of hiding behind.
And so I was, I was, the, the, the.
novels were, you know, pretty autobiographical.
There was incest and stuff like that in them.
But I was sort of hiding behind the guise of fiction.
So I spent about 10 years doing that. But then
My therapist actually said, you know,
Sue, why don't you tell your own story?
Right.
And I was real.
I thought, oh, God, I can't do that.
No, no, no.
But he convinced me to.
So then my first book is Because I Remember Terror,
Father, I Remember You.
So and then that book got published.
But in that book.
I did not even mention sexual addiction.
As it turns out, I mean, I had a lot more shame about
the sex addiction than I did about the incest.
I'm going
And really because, you know, when you're a little kid and somebody's
to go ahead
hurting you, that's not an active thing that you're doing.
It's being done to you.
So it was easier to sort of...
uh
I sort of convinced the reader in a way
started
that I wasn't like a bad person or anything.
But then with sex addiction, I mean,
in just
I'm an adult and I'm acting out and I'm having a
affairs with married men.
a moment.
And that's like, there's a lot of shame around that.
Absolutely.
I mean, sure, there's a reason why I was doing it,
but still, there was so much shame around
it.
So initially, I didn't think I'd ever be able to write about it.
But then that first book, I wrote that first book,
it got published and I realized, oh,
you know, the, and the response I got like
from readers sort of really thanking me for
telling their story, they didn't have a voice
and all of that really motivated me and empowered
me to think, oh, there really is power in the written word
and putting your voice out
there.
So then I thought, you know what?
I can write about sex addiction and if some people want to judge me.
I can't control that.
Right.
That's right.
So I still have to put my story out there.
So getting that first book published gave me sort
of courage to write about the sex addiction.
Absolutely. Yeah.
It puts a battery pack in you. It really does.
Yeah.
Yeah, there it is. The battery pack is right there.
Yes, it does. And it encourages you so much.
And then when you hear people saying, this really
helped me and, you know, you tell your story and they read it,
it's like, wow, it, you know,
I'm helping somebody, you know? Exactly.
And the inner, and as it turns out with Love Sick,
I got a lot of...
Emails and stuff from mainly from women who said, yeah, oh, you know,
I'm struggling with the same thing, but I didn't know it was a problem,
you know, like they were in denial and everything.
They really like thank me for like giving it a name, giving it a focus.
And so, you know, I was able to, you know,
help a lot of other women get into therapy and get into some rehab
and and sort of, you know, gain control over their lives.
Yeah.
When you weren't writing about it,
you kind of, like you said,
you were kind of hiding behind the fiction.
What did that silence cost you?
Well.
It cost me sort of emotionally in that I still felt
that it wasn't OK to tell your secrets like that message coming up.
And probably your stepfather sort of gave you
the same sort of message, like don't tell anybody.
Right, exactly. Everything was behind the door.
Right. Yeah, exactly. We keep these family secrets.
So I just was still sort of like buying
into my father's message that it's not OK.
to say what really happened to you yeah and
then finally you know with the help of therapy it was like
okay
I'm just, this is it. This is my real name.
This is my real story. And I'm just going to put it
out there. That's right. By the help of therapy.
And our stories are similar. I'm going to tell
you this is because I remember crying one day
and it came from my friend's house and I was crying
and I had my son early. I was 17. I was 17. Yeah.
I was about 18 and I was just so depressed and
And crying and, you know.
Um, and I went to go sit, I wanted to kill myself.
So I went to go sit on with my toddler.
Now my little small baby, he was like eight, nine, eight, nine months.
And I went to sit on the train tracks
and the train track, the train never came.
And I was sobbing and crying, you know,
and I was like, I saw no way out.
And I believe the next day my son wanted to go.
He loves Spider-Man and he,
it was Christmas and he wanted Spider-Man was going to be at
this particular store.
So I was like, I got on the bus and taking,
mind you, I'm still crying though.
I'm sobbing all night, all day, like, you know, sobbing, it's just bad.
And I get on the bus and I'm still sobbing
and my son's sitting next to me.
I'm still sobbing and tears are rolling.
I didn't even, I don't think I even cared.
Who saw me?
I was just thinking about that.
And a woman said, she put her hand on me, she said, it'll be okay.
And she dropped.
A card. So I bothered to look at the card and I was like,
I didn't bother. And then later on, I'm at the store.
I was like, what does this card say? Because we're waiting in line.
And lo and behold, it was a counselor who specialized in sexual trauma.
And they live two blocks from my house.
I could not believe it.
It was amazing.
That's not a message from the universe.
Exactly.
That's what I said.
It was just such a message from the universe.
And therapy is what started for me.
Like, I was, like, you were dressed in shame.
I was, it was horrible.
I was, shame does a number to you, right?
Oh, it really does.
I mean, you just don't want anybody to know.
And it's really like you're living this double life.
And, you know, and then finally, you know,
something like cracks through that, the side,
like you sort of can't take it anymore.
Yes, absolutely.
And, um, and gosh, and I mean,
I'm just thinking that the train didn't come.
That's so the train never came.
That's also, and I sat there from morning to evening.
I sat there from morning to evening and it was getting dark.
And I was like, wait a minute.
I'm
Train didn't come.
I mean, so you had two messages from the universe.
starting
Yes.
The train didn't come and this woman dropped this card.
Yes.
And on to you.
Yes.
It was beautiful.
I mean, I think about it now and I'm just so thankful, you know.
to
speak
Yes, it was difficult, but.
I, I was able to turn it around like you, you were,
you were able to turn it around and make it useful, you know,
now.
take what happened and everything is not going to be,
you know, great in life. It's not right. Right.
And, but you took it and you, you made it something that was,
is wonderful and magical for other people. You're helping other people.
And as are you, I mean, through your writing
and through like this podcast, you know, I mean, that's what we have
to do is take bad things happen, you know, yeah, for a long time,
we're probably going to suffer and not do anything positive with it.
But then at some point, those of us, I guess,
who are strong enough, just do think, okay, it has to change.
Yes, it does.
So I want to pause for the audience right now.
I don't want you thinking that we're talking about just writing.
What I'm hearing from both stories,
I'm telling my story too, is about survival, you know?
And many people think healing starts
when we understand what happened, but it doesn't.
It starts when we stop pretending.
That's what both of us did.
We had to get to a place.
Yeah.
You know, you heard, you heard Sue say,
you know, she was hiding behind fiction, right?
Fiction.
She's writing fiction.
Yeah.
She was hiding behind it, right?
You were hiding behind that.
Totally.
Totally.
Yeah.
And before that, I was just hiding, period.
I mean, before I even started writing,
I was just like, just pretending that everything
was fine.
Yes.
And I don't think fine is a, is an emotion.
Oh, ----.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
You know, and we, then, you know, then, you know, we get into,
once we don't deal with it, we start to, you know,
the childhood trauma itself, it takes us into addiction, abuse.
I was cutting, and I wasn't eating either.
I wasn't eating either.
And my mother didn't know what it was.
And I, as you were talking, it clicked to me because I wouldn't eat.
I wouldn't eat.
I would, and I would section off my food if it was,
I wouldn't want food, like certain
food couldn't touch, nothing could touch.
That's right.
Yeah.
My plate was separate.
And my mother's like, I never, and I didn't,
you know, I, you know, I didn't develop normally.
My mother didn't know what it was.
They never took me to the doctors.
And let me just say, you kind of like,
after all these years, I had an eating disorder
and never knew it.
And the fork had to be a certain type of fork.
I had all these rituals.
Exactly.
She just went along with them because she thought it was me.
She didn't know anything about me.
That's what an addiction is.
It's very ritualistic.
Yeah.
And I had a ritual.
I couldn't sit on a certain side of the table.
I couldn't sit, you know, definitely couldn't sit next to him.
But, you know, I couldn't sit on a certain side of the table.
It was just like I had all these rituals and never knew it.
And I had, you know, I had that eating disorder, you know,
so we all can get into those things when they're not addressed,
you know, whether it be by our caretaker
or when we get old enough that we don't take care of it, you know.
That's right.
You know, so we have to take, be aware of it, just be aware and then
do something because functioning would hurt only does what, Sue?
We hurt, what does it do?
Just like, you're not going to get better.
You're just going to stay in that dark place and you're just going to,
it's a spiral too. You know,
you just keep going sort of down and down and down. Yes. Yes. Yes.
So let's talk about lovesick. Sure. Let's talk about that.
Maybe people understand addiction when it involves substances. Yeah,
I know. Yeah. You talk about sexual addiction. Let's talk about that.
Tell us a story about that. Yeah. I mean, that's,
You know, an addiction is an addiction. It's all a drug.
And it's sort of like, what is your drug of choice?
And it can be alcohol, it can be drugs, it can be food,
or it can be sex or, you know, any number of things.
And so with me, I mean,
pretty much as soon as I went away to college,
I had an affair with this man. He lived across
the street from my dorm. He was old enough to be my father.
He was married. And, you know,
and I tried to believe that, oh, he loved me.
He was going to leave his wife for me.
And of course, I was underage.
I mean, I was just a freshman in college. And so he, of course,
completely was using me.
And but, you know, I, I pretended that it was love. Yeah.
And I kept doing that sort of same pattern,
like I would find these men and, you know,
addicts have like sex addicts have these really good antenna.
Like if I'm in a room with, say, like 30 men,
I can I would be able to say, OK,
he's the one who I'd be able to seduce or who's a who I would.
Wow. I mean, I could just tell it was it's such
a good pull out of a pattern that is so good.
Yeah, good in a scary way, but so I,
you know, so I just, I really was like a
Serial, you know, adulterer in many ways.
I mean, well, they weren't all married,
but even if they weren't married,
they weren't emotionally available.
Right, they weren't available, yeah.
They were emotionally dangerous.
Like, they were just going to use me.
They were going to have sex with me and then leave me.
And I just kept telling myself,
oh, next time will be different.
This one's really going to fall in love with me.
This man is really going to stay with me.
And, of course, none of them did, you know.
And, um...
It was just, so it was just like this pattern of, you know,
obviously hurting myself, but also, you know, if they were married,
I feel, yeah, but I do feel really bad about, you know, their wives.
I mean, now I do, I didn't at the time.
I mean, I just couldn't even really.
I couldn't even really think about that.
It was just an addict wants what they want when they want it.
Like, and I wanted, you know,
we have no impulse control, which is really sad.
That's a good one.
Impulse control.
That's very good.
Yeah, I had none.
And so I just kept, yeah, so then finally I had
this affair with this man who was so cruel.
He basically, I mean, it was just, he was just so emotionally cruel
that I, that, and I, and of course, it was also just over time,
there'd been so many, so I was ready, I think, to sort of hit bottom.
But, but he was like, he sort of,
they sort of broke the mold of Dangerous Men when they made him.
And it was so, and I was in so much pain.
That had got my attention.
Like addicts have a high tolerance for pain.
Yeah.
And so finally I had just hit that,
that,
you know,
limit.
Yeah.
And I thought there's gotta be a different way.
It just has to be a different way.
And I was seeing a therapist at that time,
but he didn't specialize in anything
and he didn't know what was wrong with me at all.
And then finally he got some brochure
or something about sex addiction.
He said, Sue, you know,
this is what I think you're struggling with.
I don't know anything about it,
but I'll find you somebody who does.
And he did.
And then, you know,
then it was just a matter of time and, you know,
a lot of work.
And sure, I had a couple of relapses because.
All addicts do.
Yes.
But finally, yeah, I got on, you know, the right path.
So, and then I wrote Love Sick.
And also, if I could put a little plug in,
it was made into a Lifetime TV movie, which is really exciting.
Oh, awesome.
I know.
I know.
Awesome.
And I have a celebrity on.
That's right.
What do you mean, celebrity?
Thank you.
Thank you.
And I had this tiny little cameo in the movie.
So, that was fun.
But yeah, but it, you know, it took a long time to get there.
And, but as I say, I am so relieved.
I'm not sure what the word is, relieved, please,
that I was able to write that book because it really does speak to so,
you know, even, you know, even for women, I got emails,
even for women who did not have a sex addiction,
still so many women get involved with emotionally dangerous men.
Yes, yes.
And so it just really helped kind of shed a light
on sort of that impulse towards a dangerous man
and why that is not going to work
and just, you know, run as fast as you can away from them.
Yeah, yeah.
Looking back, what were you really searching for?
Love, really love and acceptance.
I mean, it's just, I just wanted somebody to love me
and to know that I was lovable.
And I just kept.
Fine. But I kept searching for it through sex
and you're not going to find it through sex.
You know, in a healthy relationship,
you build a friendship and you get to know each other and all of that.
And I just man, I just cut right to sex.
Yep. And that's what you learned.
I mean, that's exactly what you learned.
Right. That is what I learned. That's right.
Yeah. So what do you think people misunderstand about sexual addiction
and even the emotional dependency?
What do you think they misunderstand?
Well, I think, I mean, our society as a whole, you know, the way.
Men in particular, but society treats women who are,
quote, promiscuous.
I mean, what we're called like sluts
or homewreckers or just these really ugly terms.
Whereas like, so it's really about the misunderstanding with women
because men are called, oh, well, that's, you know, just a man.
That's a guy thing.
Yeah.
It's a guy thing.
Or, you know, he's a stud.
He's really cool.
He gets all these women.
So men are sort of glamorized for it.
And women are made to feel just enormous amount of shame.
So I think there's a lot of misconception about that.
And I think that the biggest misconception in some ways
is that people think it's really about sex and it's not.
It's about, you know, when you have an addiction,
it means you're empty inside.
You're spiritually empty and you're looking for something to fill it.
And some people fill it with alcohol, some people fill it with drugs,
some people fill it with food, some people fill it with starvation,
which is sort of weird, but they do.
I mean, I did.
That's controlled.
That's right.
Right, you can only control that.
Exactly.
And I tried to fill it, you know, with these with these dangerous men.
So people think it's about sex and it's it's not as it's trying
to fill loneliness, alienation, a sense of loss, you know, a need for.
For love is all of those anything that you can think of that causes you
to feel empty and addiction is seeking something to take that away.
And so sex was just.
It could have been, it was just the same as alcohol, really.
It was just my drug of choice.
And so people think that a sex addiction is just what,
they think it's like liking sex and wanting to have sex.
I didn't care about the sex at all.
I mean, I didn't particularly enjoy it or not enjoy it.
It was just like, I just want this man to love me.
And if he'll love me by having sex, man, I'm going to have sex.
And so, yeah, it's just not about sex.
It's about a need for.
For acceptance, love, all of that.
Mm-hmm.
How did your understanding of yourself begin to change?
It was really, the therapy helped,
but I'll tell you what helped even more was the group therapy.
Because I was in a group with these other women,
all struggling with eating disorders and sex addiction.
Mm-hmm.
And
And so, you know, you start getting close to these women.
So I could see, let's say, I'll make up a name,
my friend Helen, let's say.
I could see, okay, Helen is talking about going to meet this man
and she's going to have sex with him.
And I can look at this and listen to her
and think, Helen, if you do that,
you're going to feel terrible after it.
So I can look at her
and see the truth.
And if I can see the truth about her,
then I have to say, okay, well, Sue,
if you do that, you're going to feel terrible.
I've seen the truth about myself, yeah.
Exactly.
And that's why, to a large extent,
the 12-step groups work.
I mean, just being in a group
with other people who are struggling
and same as you are,
Helps a lot.
One thing I find fascinating about your work
is that you didn't just write your story.
You examined it, you challenged it, you learned from it.
And what role did writing play in your healing process?
Yeah, it helped me find myself.
Gotcha.
I mean, because all of my books,
it's not just like this happened to me
and then this happened to me
and then this thing happened to me.
That's just saying on the surface of the event.
But when you're really writing like literary creative nonfiction,
then it's a search for truth.
It's a search for the self.
It's a search for understanding.
It's a search sort of for the metaphors that control your life.
And so it is, it's going below the surface.
You write the surface of the event, of course,
but then it's also going deep inside the event
so that you can make sense of it.
Yes.
Okay, audience, this is for you.
Put your listening ears on and get what you need to keep it real.
What we're talking about today, Sue, is giving you the real,
giving you the real, because
this conversation isn't just for writers now.
This is for anyone carrying a story that don't know what to do with it.
The pattern I'm hearing is that people overspend.
years trying to escape their pain without ever understanding it.
Some people escape it through
work, some through relationships, right, Sue?
Some through achievements. Oh, we've heard that one,
right? Some through addiction and some through busyness,
but avoidance doesn't heal the wounds.
That's right. It simply postpones the conversation.
Sue, what would you say to someone who knows
They're carrying unresolved pain, but is terrified to open the door.
What I would say is that I understand that fear of opening the door
because you don't know what
you're going to find, but you know, it's going to hurt.
But the thing of it is the pain is you've
already survived the pain, whatever happened to you,
you know, you survived that. Now you're
carrying it with you, but the event itself,
like I was carrying the pain long after my father was
It was out of the picture.
So the pain, you've already survived it.
Now, if you...
Open up and let go and talk about it with a therapist or therapy
or whatever means you find a religious counselor, whoever.
If you just start telling your story, the pain,
you're taking the pain from inside and you're putting it out there.
And so while it may hurt in the in the moment.
Ultimately, you're going to feel so much lighter and freer.
The pain, just once you start writing or speaking,
sharing it with somebody else, you just are going to feel a lot better.
So you have to kind of trust that while you may hurt in the moment,
ultimately, you're going to feel so much better.
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Let's jump on over to fearless confessions.
Thank you for your questions.
Let's talk about fear.
Your book, Fearless Confession, teaches people how to write memoir.
That's right.
But fear shows up long before that.
So why are people so afraid of telling the truth?
It really is because you're going to be vulnerable
and people are scared to be vulnerable, right?
It's like, if I show you who I really am, might you judge me?
Might you think less of me?
And so there's a lot.
And then there's the fear of what we were just talking about of just.
You know, within yourself, just, you know, having to really look at it,
like, like, if I'm not looking at it, I can pretend to
Oh, I'm fine. Everything's good.
And so it means that you a first of all, you have to look at it.
But then, secondly, you are opening yourself to vulnerability.
But let me say that
By opening myself to vulnerability, I've gotten so much more rewards
from it than anything else because I've reached so many people.
And by getting emails and, you know,
texts and everything from other people who thank me for my story
and my book, you know, it's empowering.
It really is.
And then you're also sort of making this, like right now,
you and I are making this connection with each other.
And so there's a lot of power in that.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
So telling your story is just,
there's so many positive things that come from it.
Absolutely.
Years ago, I went to an event and I was with other trauma survivors.
And I always wanted to write my book in a way that it was helpful,
that there was a result.
I'm a results. I'm a why person. Why are you doing this?
You know, and so I could help someone else.
And I remember sitting next to a nurse,
a registered nurse, and she wrote about her trauma.
And it was I remember distinctly it was the blue bicycle.
That was the name of her story.
And I remember buying the book from her and it was so traumatizing.
I was shaking like, and so she was, I could,
I looked at her and I could tell that she was still experiencing,
experiencing everything. And I was like,
I don't want my book to be this way.
So, you know, I started getting nervous,
but the question came up as you were telling the story,
how do people distinguish between telling the truth?
And reliving the pain, because I think her book was reliving the pain,
and it was triggering everybody else.
You know, how does, how does, how do we distinguish that?
I think it is to know that you have to do more than just give
the surface story. I mean, that's what it is.
Because when you're in therapy, you're talking to your best friend,
you just tell the surface story, and that is painful.
But when you, but now here you are, you're an adult, you're a writer.
And now my job is to search for meaning.
And if you're searching for meaning,
then the work, sure, I can't say it's not going
to be triggering for people who knows what it is,
but it's elevating it.
It's really turning your life into art.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah. And so by doing that.
Then people are going to be able to sort
of relate not to the event itself so much,
but to the underlying meaning like, oh, Sue felt alienation.
I have felt alienation as well.
So it's like becomes sort of like that learning experience.
Right.
And by doing that, then you're
not just re-traumatizing either yourself or anybody else.
Absolutely.
That's great. So let's bring this into everyday life, audience.
For the person listening today,
here's some questions for you.
How do you know when an old story is still controlling
your life in the present? What are the signs?
What questions should people ask themselves?
What's one step someone can take toward healing before they're ready
to tell their entire story?
Well, if you listen to Sue, she's telling you.
She's telling you this, all right?
So now we know what to do.
Now, this is a part of this session that we call Flash,
the Flash Round.
And so, Sue, we're going to give you questions.
You answer as quickly and as succinctly as possible.
All right.
I'll do my best.
Audience.
For the audience.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
Okay.
What's one truth that changed your life?
Knowing that I had more to offer men or the world than just sex.
Oh, that's good.
What's one belief you had to let go of?
That I was only good for sex.
Oh, that's good.
What is healing really?
Healing is really is being honest and open
and vulnerable that if I'm you know,
because a lot of people go to therapy
and lie to their therapist and make stuff up.
I mean, I did that for a while myself.
And but really trusting that I can going to tell this person my truth
and they will still care about me anyway.
That's good. So what does courage look like for you today?
It's really...
Speaking my truth and continuing to write and trusting that, you know,
yeah, I've published some books, some creative nonfiction books,
but I still have more stories that I can just keep writing.
And, yeah, just it's really the courage to keep going, to keep writing.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's good.
What does living on purpose mean to you?
So it's both writing and teaching.
So I also teach.
I teach in this low residency MFA program
at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
And being able to connect with students and help my students find
their voices and their stories is really important to me.
So it's really writing and teaching are very meaningful to me.
That's great.
That's great.
So, audience, you heard Sue's story.
Now let's not just talk about it.
Let's do something with it.
The pattern that surfaced today wasn't writing,
it wasn't publishing, it wasn't a memoir,
it was avoidance.
Many people are trying to create a better future
while refusing to acknowledge what
shaped their past.
And that creates a problem, as you heard Sue say,
because what remains unhealed often becomes
repeated.
It does. Yes, it repeats and repeats, right?
I know. We know. The story you won't tell doesn't
disappear. It simply changes form.
It shows up in your relationships. It shows up in your
self-sabotage. It shows up in your fear.
It shows up in the way you see yourself. The lesson today
isn't that everyone needs to write a memoir.
The lesson is everyone needs to become honest.
Honest about what happened, honest about what it cost,
honest about what still needs healing.
So before you leave today, ask yourself, what did I hear?
What patterns did I recognize?
And what stories have I been avoiding?
And what do I do next?
Because awareness without action changes nothing.
If today's conversation helped you recognize
a pattern you've been carrying, click the
link below and schedule your next move or find Sue.
Under this video, find her.
Let's not just talk about it.
Let's do something with it.
This is Edna White, and I am your host
of Keeping It Real on Purpose, and my esteemed
guest today, Sue William Silverman.
We're going to say goodbye for now.
Bye.
Thank you.