Decide Happy: Susan Hall on Chordoma, Adversity, and Using Pain as Rocket Fuel

Susan Hall describes herself as an optimist. A city girl who hugs trees. A corporate performance consultant who has spent thirty years helping organizations and their people thrive.

And then 2016 happened.

Susan was diagnosed with chordoma - an exceptionally rare bone cancer, one in a million - and the year just kept coming. Her husband had a life-saving heart procedure. A freak accident six months after her surgery shattered her shoulder. Her dad ended up paralyzed. She calls it "the year that shall not be named." And it cracked open something she had never experienced before: anxiety, despair, the feeling that everything was completely out of control.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Susan shares how she got through it  and how CaringBridge became a lifeline not because it connected her to others, but because it gave her back control of when and how she engaged with her own story. She talks about the four pillars of happiness she's identified through thirty years of working with human beings: love and connection, a sense of progress, calm, and contribution, and why you can practice all four from a hospital bed.

She also shares what her mom said when the pathology came back clear: "You have work to do." And what she's done with that since.

Susan is a speaker, a peer guide for newly diagnosed chordoma patients, and the author of Decide Happy - a research-backed, story-driven guide to choosing happiness even when life gives you every reason not to. For more information, please visit: https://www.caringbridge.org/resources/decide-happy

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