In this Sacred Space conversation, host Dr Mel Baker sits down with musician and community arts facilitator Susannah B for an intimate exploration of creativity, healing, and the lifelong practice of self-compassion. Together, they trace the inner landscape behind Susannah's music, the emotional honesty of her songwriting, and the deep wisdom she's gathered from decades of working with marginalised communities.

What unfolds is more than a conversation about music. It's a reflection on the courage required to face the negative inner voice, the tenderness of motherhood, the longing for validation, and the quiet truth that external success can never fill internal voids. Susannah's story is one of service, stillness, and learning to step into "far more" than we believe we are.

She grew up in Manhattan during the 1970s and 80s surrounded by creativity and grit. Her father was a fashion photographer, and her mother, Carol Hall, was a celebrated composer-lyricist. That artistic household shaped Susannah B deeply but it also cast a long shadow.

For Susannah B, songwriting isn't about fame or performance, it's deeply personal. Her songs function as anthems to herself, tools for processing grief, anger, confusion, and hope. Music became her way of encouraging herself when no one else could. One of her earliest examples is Talkin' to Myself to address the negative inner voice. The song became a kind of spell she could sing to herself, a practice in self-love.

Susannah B's work extends beyond music. For years, she's led acappella singing sessions with formerly incarcerated men at a sober living facility in LA. "Their mood had changed," she recalls. Her approach was simple: "It's not about how it sounds, it's about how it feels." Singing together lifts spirits and built community and belonging. She has also worked with teen mothers in LA public high schools, helping them write and perform plays. She's watched kids transform.

We talked about motherhood and the lesson in letting go. And from there the conversation drifts into the need for validation out of her childhood experience. She saw firsthand, even a hit Broadway show lasting five year, couldn't fill her mother's internal voids. "It just became really small after a while," Susannah B reflects. That's a lesson she carries with her: no amount of external achievement can substitute for internal healing.

Susannah B believes that self-compassion often comes later in life for people who've spent years serving others. Both she and Mel identify as highly sensitive people who prioritised everyone else first. "We sometimes overlook ourselves," Mel notes. For Susannah B, learning to love herself didn't happen until she forced to reckon with that negative inner voice - again and again.

Her closing message is simple by profound: the answer is always within. It comes from stillness, from silence, from listening. This truth inspired one of her songs, Far More, which came out of a spiritual experience.

You can listen to Susannah B's music on Spotify and all major streaming platforms.

*Susannah B photo by Jen Rosenstein.

**Special thanks to the artists of Pixabay for their royalty-free music.