Susan Herman, LCSW, is a veteran clinical social worker with over three decades of experience spanning child welfare, residential treatment, military social work, and international healing initiatives in Vietnam. In this episode of If You’ve Come This Far, Susan joins Chris and Shaun to discuss her book, Breaking Up with the Patriarchy, and why true personal fulfillment requires deconstructing our relationship with dominant cultural norms.
Rather than framing patriarchy solely as male dominance, Susan defines it as a 10,000-year-old "dominator worldview"—a framework built on fear, hyper-individualism, competition, and consumption. Drawing on Indigenous wisdom, clinical practice, and her own transformative life experiences, Susan offers a practical, pragmatic roadmap toward a kinship-centered worldview grounded in radical presence, bodily intuition, reciprocity, and long-term stewardship for future generations.
Read more
Key Takeaways:
- The Abusive Relationship with Our Worldview: Why the 10,000-year-old dominator paradigm traps us in a cycle of compliance, consumption, and empty achievement.
- Early Roots of Empathy: How childhood encounters with Holocaust survivors and early callings shaped Susan’s lifelong dedication to healing.
- Sovereignty Over Authority: Moving away from outsourcing authority to institutions, and stepping into personal sovereignty paired with relational accountability.
- Reimagining Needs: Comparing Maslow’s hierarchy with the Blackfoot Nation’s framework of self-actualization, community actualization, and 7th-generation perpetuity.
- Fear vs. Intuition: Why most fears are socially programmed to maintain the status quo, and how body-centered practices (Tai Chi, Qigong, Yoga) release stored trauma.
- Duty to Purpose: Shifting daily existence from "have to" (duty/obligation) to "get to" (purpose/meaning).
- Musical Closing: Susan shares a live, heartfelt rendition of the Prayer of St. Francis.
Resources Mentioned:
- Susan's book: Breaking Up with the Patriarchy
- The Hope Effect by Dr. Stephen Trzeciak
- Making Peace with Vietnam (Documentary film by Stephen Emanuel)
- Research by Four Arrows (Don Trent Jacobs) & Darcia Narvaez on Indigenous Worldviews
- Mental App (getmental.com)