Meet Dr. Susan
A Psychologist. A Poet. On Fire for Women.
Dr. Susan Allison, Ph.D., has spent more than three decades helping people put themselves back together. Today she is doing something bigger: telling women — out loud, and without apology — that nothing in them was ever broken, and building the book, the music and the tools to prove it.
30Years in practice
5Published books
40Original songs
25Years since Conscious Divorce™
Her mission
Done Being Polite About It.
Decades ago, on a vision quest, she was told her purpose in this life was to be “a healer of women, young and old.” For most of her career, she worked quietly, one person at a time, and worried about whose feelings her success might bruise.
Not anymore. Her focus and dedication has always been women, and now she is saying what she used to swallow, for the women who are tired of competing, performing and shrinking.
Her work
Safe Self. True Self.
Every woman built a “safe self” to survive — usually in childhood. It isn’t a lie. It’s a survival strategy. But underneath it, Dr. Susan says, nothing was ever actually lost.
“She has been in here all along. And she just needs to be coaxed.”
Dr. Susan Allison, Ph.D.
The turning point
When The Universe Said Stop
After a string of physical and personal crises she now reads as one continuous message, she heard a single word from her own connection to God: stop. Stop performing. Start listening.
She returned to a meditation practice she has kept for fifty years, started walking to the ocean every day, and stepped beyond her individual therapy practice to bring her work to women in a bigger way, through groups, retreats, speaking and writing. Everything she is building now comes from that decision.
Ahead of her time
She Wrote The Book Twenty-Five Years Ago.
In 2001, Random House published Conscious Divorce™. The idea that a marriage could end with integrity instead of war was radical enough that people told her it would never sell. It sold. More importantly, it worked.
Today, women everywhere are talking openly about divorce and about starting over, and the culture has a new name for it: badass divorce. The name is new. The idea is the one Dr. Susan put in print in 2001, and the book turns twenty-five in 2026.
2001
Conscious Divorce™
Ending a marriage with integrity, instead of war.
Today
Badass Divorce™
Women owning their divorce, and rising from it.
Different name. Same truth: a divorce can be the beginning of her becoming.
Conscious Divorce™: Ending a Marriage with Integrity
Random House, 2001
Her path
A Seeker Who Refused to Choose.
Dr. Susan has always been a spiritual seeker. Rather than choose between the mystical and the clinical, she has spent her life weaving them together, pairing an esoteric path with the rigor of transpersonal psychology.
She earned a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology in 1990, then kept learning: process therapy, clinical hypnotherapy (certified in 1994), the Plains Indian vision quest tradition and Hawaiian shamanism, and later Reiki mastery and Reconnective Healing. Those threads became the four-part healing method in Empowered Healer. She went on to earn her doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology and was honored as a California “Woman of the Year” for her work with adolescents.
Her view of the whole woman comes from an ancient Hawaiian teaching: that we have three souls — a body soul, a mental soul and a spiritual soul — each of which can be listened to, and which can come into sync for ultimate wholeness.
A love story
Twin Flames, Nineteen Years of Poems.
Her husband, Thomas Hickenbottom — a Buddhist, poet, novelist and historian — taught her to write haiku and prose poetry, to use image rather than adjective, and to write from her gut instead of her head. They fell in love at first sight and recognized one another at once: twin flames, connected even when apart.
Our Spirits Dance: Poetry of Soul Mates tells their story in poems, in the order they happened, over nineteen years. Thomas passed away in 2013, and Dr. Susan honored his wish to finish and publish their book of love poems. It is a tribute to him, and to anyone who wants to know what profound connection feels like.
The poet
Poetry Is How She Tells the Truth.
From childhood, Dr. Susan has written poetry, short stories and plays, and she has never stopped writing poems and songs. She holds degrees in English and history and has taught creative writing.
“Writing non-fiction is a very linear and intellectual process for me, whereas poetry and songs come from a deeper or more intuitive place, perhaps from a muse or my heart and gut.”
Dr. Susan Allison, Ph.D.
Now she is bringing it all together in The Blossoming™: Becoming Your True Self, an interactive guide that uses poetry to help you write your own. Across its three parts — Understanding Your Past, Creating Your Future, Being Fully Present — every chapter follows the same practice:
Read · Recognize · Interact · Create
Her next universe
Welcome to The Blossoming Zone™.
The book is the doorway. Beyond it is a whole world, built on one belief: nothing in you is broken. What changes a woman’s life is the conditions — the soil, not the seed.
ROOT™
Four ways of tending where you stand today: Recognition, Opportunities, Ownership and Traction.
GROWTH™
Six qualities that deepen each time you look again: Grace, Resilience, Optimism, Wisdom, Transformation and Heart.
They work together like a garden’s roots and canopy — not a checklist, but a spiral you return to, a little higher each time.
The Blossoming™ Archetypes
8∞ Ways She Shows Up for You.
Each of The Blossoming™ Archetypes arrives at the exact moment a woman needs her. Hover over each one to meet her.
Arrives when the ground has gone hard with silence and perfectionism, and turns it over so the buried truth can finally breathe.
Listens past the wreckage for the dream she was told was “too much,” and hands back the blueprint she never actually lost.
Meets shame and regret and calls them what they actually are underneath: nutrient-dense fuel for what comes next.
Wields the loving, necessary cut, and teaches the sacred art of the word “no.”
Breaks the long drought of suppressed feeling and lets the storm finally, mercifully fall.
Shields the new, tender thing until it’s structurally strong enough to face the wind.
Locks roots between women so that when the storm comes, no one stands in it alone.
Arrives once the underground healing is complete, and commands the green shoot to finally break the surface, into the sun.
01 / 8∞
And at the center, The True Self Survey™: a guided self-assessment that shows you where you are in your own becoming.
The clinician
Psychologist
A doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology and thirty years of clinical practice.
The author
Five Books
Non-fiction and poetry, including the Random House title Conscious Divorce™.
The healer
Reiki Master & Shamanic Practitioner
An ordained minister trained in A Course in Miracles, with a lifelong spiritual practice.
What she’s building
And This Is Just the Beginning.
Coming soon
The Blossoming™
An interactive guide of original poetry and prompts for becoming your true self.
Coming soon
Divine Downloads
Forty original songs, written over seventeen years, that she says arrived like transmissions.
Coming soon
The Show
A new show bringing Dr. Susan’s voice to women everywhere.
What she’s here to give
“Deep self-love and acceptance of who they are, and living as the truest, highest self they can be this lifetime.”
Dr. Susan Allison, Ph.D.