A tribute to my friend, Suzanne

On the night before we went on holiday last month, I saw an email linking to a Facebook status update.

I tapped through and read that my friend, Suzanne, had died. Of course I couldn’t believe it – we are the same age and she was SO full of life. How can this be? I kept asking myself.

Suzy’s mom and I are instagram friends so I sent her a direct voice note to check my understanding because the message was (typically) Suzanne and maybe (hopefully) I’d misinterpreted the odd message. But indeed, Suzy had died from the Delta variant of Covid-19.

Instead of wallowing in the sadness that is the enormous loss of her life, I thought I’d write about the Suzanne I knew.

1. Suzanne was one of my first real friends that I made on the internet in the good old days of blogging when we would actually reach out to strangers after commenting on each others’ blogs.
2. She was a veteran podcaster and her first podcast was called Let’s Talk Organizing (in the old days, we listened on our computers).
3. One day I sent her an email, announced that Dion and I would be visiting Scotland and if she was ready for her next visit, maybe we could spend a few days together. She crunched her numbers and we made it work. We met up in Stirling, Scotland for 3 wonderful days in 2008.
4. We wrote a free ebook together with Beth Dargis and Ariane Benefit, 100 Surefire ways to organize your busy life, and Suzy and I wrote a course together too, How to be a professional organizer.
5. My favourite piece of organising advice from Suzanne is “don’t put it down; put it away”. I wrote more in this post.
6. Four years ago, she interviewed me for her new podcast, So Suzy. Here’s the post. Fun fact – after I appeared on the podcast, she sent me a thank-you pack of so many pens and that is how I was introduced to Papermate Inkjoy gel pens 🙂 🙂 I still have a few of the pens from that original pack.
7. I also had the opportunity to give her some advice. Here’s her desk after she took up my challenge.

More than all that, I knew Suzanne to be a happy, optimistic and extremely fun person who always made me think I could do things and encouraged me when I wasn’t sure. She also taught me through her own life that changing your mind and moving onto new things don’t have to be scary but are often necessary actions for growth.

We had some hard conversations too but she always had a can-do attitude and was a great problem-solver.

I am so glad and honoured that I had the opportunity to meet and know Suzanne, and I’m thankful that I can still connect to her through her mama!

Thanks for reading, friends. Do any of you remember Suzanne from the good old days of blogging?