Done Pretending

Most of us were taught that if you work hard enough and plan carefully enough, you'll end up with a life that feels like yours. But what happens when you check every box and it still feels quietly off? In this episode of Done Pretending, Susan sits down with Renee Maxine Haas — former tech industry leader turned solo traveler, author, and podcast host — who walked away from a secure, successfu...

For years, Mandy Balak's armor was one word: " fine ." Three-time founder, president of the Gathering Festival, and author of the new book Chasing Enough: The High Achiever's Guide to Sustainable Success, Mandy joins Susan to unpack what happens when "I'm fine" stops being true — and what it costs to keep saying it anyway. Mandy walks us through her own "enough...

Goosebumps as Guidance: Helen Gibson MBE on Encouragement, Change & Finding Your WayIn this episode of Done Pretending, I sit down with the incredible Helen Gibson MBE — someone I had the honor of meeting at my TEDx talk in Swansea, Wales. Helen is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, coach, and author whose career has taken her from working in her family's business alongside her father...

One Bad Day Is Not Who You Are | Done Pretending Podcast One bad day. One hard season. One moment that made you think, "Is this who I am now?" It's not. And it doesn't have to last. In this solo episode, I'm breaking down why we let single bad days define us — and the real, research-backed reasons it's so easy to stay stuck there. We'll get into the neuroscience of po...

Your money problems are not about money. They never were. In this powerful episode of Done Pretending, financial wellness expert Jennifer Edwards joins Susan Houston to reveal what's actually driving your financial habits — and it's not your spreadsheet. Jennifer is the creator of the 7 Layer Financial Wellness Framework and has helped over 600 individuals and couples transform their relat...

What if the moments you thought were small — a stepsibling sitting on dad's lap, a senior night photo, an offhand comment about child support — were the ones your child carried for the rest of their life? This episode stopped me in my tracks. And I think it will stop you too. I sat down with Shannon Darrow, a certified divorce coach and mediator who spent two decades in the golf industry after...

What if you've been using the Law of Attraction wrong this whole time — not because you weren't believing hard enough, but because you were focused on the wrong question? In this solo episode, Susan brings in fascinating new research from Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Srini Pillay and the Gan & Chen (2017) authenticity study to reframe everything you thought you knew about manifesting, iden...

If you've ever felt guilty for taking a walk while someone you love needed you — this episode is for you. This week on Done Pretending , I'm joined by Lani Almanza, wellness coach, author, and founder of Alakai Associates in Hawaii. Lani has spent decades helping caregivers, women, and midlife professionals rediscover themselves through simple, grounded self-care — not the bubble bath kind...

You did the math. You can afford to leave. So why does walking away from your career feel so terrifying? Because it was never really about the money. In this solo episode, Susan opens with the Tuesday she cried in her car — the day she got everything she'd asked for and realized she had no idea who she was. From there she names the four fears every high-achieving woman over 50 faces when she f...

Have you ever ghosted yourself ? In this powerful episode of Done Pretending , host Susan Houston sits down with Dr. Sarah Jefferis — poet, PhD, yoga instructor, and writing coach — for a conversation that will stop you mid-scroll and make you rethink everything about relationships, authenticity, and self-abandonment. Sarah shares why she believes writing is a full body sport , how yoga unlocks me...

After 43 years of marriage, life as she knew it disappeared in just 24 hours. Most people would tell you to get back to normal, to push through, to stay productive. Bridget Williams-Frazier will tell you that's exactly how you make it worse. In this conversation, she walks us through the moment she cried out to God in a church and felt fire move through her body. She talks about the danger of rush...

Your ego isn't trying to ruin your life. It's trying to save it. But somewhere along the way, it started protecting you from the wrong things: growth, risk, visibility, and the vulnerability required to become who you're meant to be. In this conversation, Allison Manzi, a certified Cognitive Behavioral Specialist and Polyvagal Therapy Practitioner, breaks down the biology behind self-sabotage, the...

There's a text message women send late at night when everyone else is asleep. It usually starts with "I should feel fine, but I don't." The promotion came through. The kids are launched. The marriage is stable. So why does it feel like nothing? I call it what it is: not a breakdown, but a breakthrough. Midlife doesn't take things away from you. It asks you to stop pretending that the things that w...

Amanda Wais thought she had it figured out. Marriage, motherhood, a career as a travel writer. Then her son was born with Down syndrome, and the doctor's words landed like a crack in the foundation of everything she'd been performing. What followed wasn't inspiration. It was survival, then reckoning, then something closer to freedom. This conversation goes to the places most people edit out. The d...

Every time you stay silent to keep the peace, you teach people how to treat you. And somewhere along the way, between being a good wife, a devoted mother, and a reliable employee, you stopped recognizing yourself in the mirror. Irina Shehovsov, founder of Reclaim Your Life and author of “The Gift Inside,” knows this pattern intimately. She's built her work around helping women who've spent years m...

A man-child in a coffee shop told me I was past my prime for launching a podcast. He cited "data" about brain elasticity and suggested I move fast before it's too late. I didn't slap him. But I didn't shrink either. This episode is for every woman who has been handed someone else's ceiling and told it was her floor. I unpack the myth of decline, the science of crystallized intelligence, and the au...

Sally Morgan couldn't make a sound in her recurring childhood nightmare. She screamed and screamed inside, but no voice came out. Years later, as an award-winning singer-songwriter and voice coach, she discovered that dream was a map to something most of us are still living: the suppression of our truest, brightest selves. This conversation isn't about finding your voice in the motivationa...

After years of studying how people make and fail to make life-changing decisions, I discovered something startling: self-doubt isn't a personality trait or evidence of your capabilities, but a governance problem. There's a meeting happening inside your head right now, and you've never questioned who's running it. When I walked away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with Lori Greiner (before Sh...

Kristina Campos thought she was doing everything right as a mother and educator until her divorce forced her into her closet to cry and confront a devastating truth: she had completely disappeared. After 20 years of teaching and raising four kids, she couldn't even answer what she wanted for dinner without filtering it through everyone else's needs. The wake-up call led her to quit her teaching ca...

Jan Raeder returns with a conversation that will shift how you see every setback in your life. When a trusted advisor's bad counsel nearly cost her business $289,000, Jan discovered something profound: failure isn't the opposite of success, but data waiting to be decoded. This isn't about positive thinking your way through hard times, but the raw truth that your formative years planted limiting be...

Jan Raeder spent three decades teaching martial arts before discovering that most people have self-care completely backwards. The woman who calls herself the "Self-Care Sensei" isn't talking about wine nights and bubble baths; she's talking about the kind of deep work that makes you show up better everywhere you go. After losing herself for nearly a decade during perimenopause, Jan dove into posit...

Perfectionism has become the most socially rewarded dysfunction in business culture. We brag about it in job interviews, managers secretly reward it, and leaders call it "higher standards." But I cut through the lie we've been sold: perfectionism is fear dressed up to look like success and it kills productivity.  In this episode, I reveal why companies like Amazon built their leadership principles...

Parents think they're protecting their children by avoiding difficult conversations about sexuality and growing up. But this silence creates the perfect breeding ground for shame and leaves kids vulnerable to the very dangers parents fear most. Jennifer Elledge has spent 20 years helping families break through the awkwardness and fear that keeps parents from having the conversations their children...

After 24 years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Tammy Ward knows the cost of silence. She's responded to tragic calls, lost colleagues to suicide, and witnessed firsthand how "I'm fine" has become society's most dangerous lie. Now she's on a mission to replace superficial pleasantries with what she calls "brave conversations." In a world where two people can sit at dinner both staring at th...

There's a particular kind of guilt that follows caregivers around. It doesn't announce itself loudly, but hums in the background, showing up every time you sit down for five minutes because you think you should be doing more. Most caregivers aren't struggling because they don't care enough, but rather they're struggling because they care so much in a situation that gives them very little room to b...