In the 40 years I have known Suze Allen she has inspired me as a mover, a shaker, and a creator. Since the conception of Manuscript Mentor in 2003 she’s shepherded folks to their inner truths through the power of heart-full, soul-full and purposeful writing. For those that step into her world of genius, Suze holds space for each student/client/aspirant as a curator of the soul’s message.

Whether the work is a client with a book to edit, or someone ready to birth their personal story—Suze guides each person with skill, compassion, and empathy.

She helps them uncover the heart of their stories, the power and medicine within,

bringing the truth/story forth for personal and community healing.

Now, more than ever, this is what the world needs: love, joy, truth, healing.

I reach out today to ask you to be a part of this important alchemy of healing and creativity by contributing to this GoFundMe to buoy Suze up so that she may get her work out to the world.

This I know about Suze Allen: she doesn't turn anyone away for lack of funds, she keeps her prices very low (even when I’ve badgered her to raise them) and she offers an extremely reasonable sliding scale. More times than not she goes above and beyond what is required including offering many students ongoing or lifetime scholarships as well as teaching free workshops for marginalized communities.

This is the beauty, grace and generosity of Suze Allen.

Her first memoir, Unconditional ~ a Grandmother’s Love and Last Days is written and ready to go. (see excerpt below)

With your donation you can be a part of her book birthing team!

GoFundMe proceeds will cover the $5,000 for line editing, book formatting, book submissions, and hybrid publishing for Unconditional ~ a Grandmother’s Love and Last Days, as well as support Suze in completing her current memoir, Exploding Heart, a courageous telling of reclamation. (see below)

With this additional support, Suze will have the space and time to fully devote herself to completing the first draft at a kind of self-imposed summer writer’s retreat in her homelands of Maine.

Suze has stood beside so many in their healing and creative journeys—now we have a chance to stand beside her.

In this balanced and sacred reciprocity, Suze is moved to offer these services:

For donations of $50 or more:

1) 30-minute one on one consultations for writing projects in any genre

https://manuscriptmentor.com

2) For donations of $150 or more:

A 3-hour Memoir Writing workshop https://manuscriptmentor.com/memoirs/

or

a 1-hour LivingWriteNow coaching session

https://manuscriptmentor.com/livingwritenow/

Thank you all so much for supporting my mentor, friend, colleague, collaborator and bestie as she is launched to the next level of her work in the world.

ABOUT SUZE:

Suze Allen wears many artistic hats, all of them cut from the cloth of shared stories. She is an author, poet, writing coach, editor, teacher, dramaturg, theatre professional, ghostwriter and life coach for LivingWriteNow, which offers life coaching through a writing modality.

Her classes and workshops include Memoir Writing, Writing Through Grief and Sorrow, Unearthing Story ~ Connecting to Nature, Self & Community with Darlene DeRose of ShadowPower Films, and Mining the Depths ~ Memoir & Monologue with master teacher Roland Tec. Suze is a storytelling and story board consultant at ShadowPower.

Introduction to Unconditional ~ a Grandmother’s Love and Last Days

When I was one year old, my Mom left my father. She was 19. We had nowhere to go so we moved into a large white house on Main Street in Ogunquit with my grandparents and great grandparents. My Aunt Elaine would come home from college in Boston on the weekends. My Uncle Kenny showed up at different times bringing the fun and the teasing. When Uncle Russell visited I would sit on his hand and he’d raise me high above his head, while he sat in the overstuffed chair. I loved the view from up there. It was a strange and wonderful universe, my extended family. I liked it. Six adults hanging on my every whim. And I had whims. Believe me. But some of the family insisted that I jump through some hoops. Great Grams and Great Gramps insisted I know my alphabet and learn every nursery rhyme in Mother Goose by heart. Grandpa wanted me to be well versed in everything. He read to me from the encyclopedia every day. I especially liked reading about prairie dogs. Aunt Elaine liked me to look pretty and sing her songs. Mom wanted me to mind her and take care of her. But my Grandmother, my Meme, didn’t seem to want anything from me. She just liked it when I sat on her lap. She sang French songs and read me books and we pretended things. That became my most favorite place in the world. Meme’s lap. When I no longer fit in her lap, I sat beside her on the yellow sofa and we did crossword puzzles and snuggled and talked about everything. We loved to grocery shop together and go out for seafood lunches at the Weathervane and early dinners at the Mei Le Wah. These ordinary times together filled me with extraordinary love.

Unconditional Love. This is the story of Meme and Me.

Exploding Heart

a memoir by Suze Allen

Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

-Joseph Campbell

There are no excuses but there are reasons. How an empath finds empathy for herself in the face of grief, loneliness & living inside a bottle.

Shame and regret are not verbs that heal. Nor are they states of grace. Shame and Regret are simply indicators that something is wrong; something needs to change. They are only the fuel for moving forward, not a place where you can live, where you can thrive.

This book is about who I was and how I got back to her after hurling myself into an incinerator. Rise Phoenix Rise

“Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths... I doubt that such pain makes us "better"; but I know it makes us more profound... In the end, lest what is most important remain unsaid: from such abysses, from such severe sickness, one returns newborn, having shed one's skin... with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche