Suzanne Dennice Guillette

We’re all just walking each other home. — Ram Dass

Tribute

Suzanne Dennice Guillette was born on February 13, 1976, in Attleboro, MA. She returned to the Universe on August 16, 2026, in Branford, CT, nearly two years after being diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. 

Her 50 years of life on this physical plane were not nearly enough. Suzie had so much more joy to share, love to give, and healing to offer this world. Her indescribable energy and boundless spirit cannot be contained in these words, but we honor all that she meant to so many in our collective remembering. There is comfort in Suzie’s strong beliefs: We are all connected and that Oneness is always available to us. 

From a young age, Suzie was a keen observer and used writing to explore her world. Her childhood journal was filled with everything from movie reviews to interviews with family members, chronicling their likes and dislikes. A voracious young reader, Suzie’s love of story fed her adventurous soul and gave her a taste for the many travels she would take as an adult. Her genuine curiosity about other people would grow along with her gift for writing.

A graduate of Attleboro High School, Class of 1994, Suzie was an excellent student, a member of the National Honor Society and co-captain of the field-hockey team. More than these achievements, she’s remembered for her loyalty, infectious laugh and kindness toward others that seemed beyond her years.

In 2000, Suzie earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy from George Washington University, where her studies included a semester in Florence, Italy. Her dearest college friends would become family for life. After college, Suzie landed in Cambridge, MA, finding work as a grant writer for a local non-profit and as a waitress. Friends remember her openness like a “clean, well-lit room.” She was as game for deep one-on-one conversation as she was for sharing the mic at karaoke.

Suzie moved to New York in 2003 where she completed a Master of Fine Arts in Non-Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. It was during a writer’s program in the Czech Republic that Suzie—wrestling with her master’s thesis topic—made her way to a boxing gym in Prague run by the country’s former lightweight champion. She was taken by the grit and humanity of her fellow fighters, undaunted as the sole woman among them. Back in the Bronx, she switched her thesis to a study of boxing and boxers by becoming one. Joining Morris Park Gym, she religiously sparred with former Golden Gloves champions and ex-pro fighters—pouring blood, sweat, tears and laughter into five essays. 

Suzie found joy, release and some of her closest friendships in motion—through dance, yoga, biking, running and walking. Living in New York City and buzzing with possibility, she cultivated a close-knit family of fellow artists and kindred spirits who collaborated and cheered each other on as they made their way in the world.

Suzie crafted a unique and successful career as a non-fiction writer and intuitive. She authored Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassment (Atria, 2009, link below) in which she collected strangers’ stories of embarrassment and slowly realized that in not acknowledging her own shame, she’d become a stranger to herself; and Battle Dress: What I Wore to Confront My Past (Kindle Single, 2017, link below), a long-form essay reckoning with decades-old sexual assault. 

Suzie’s writing appeared in publications like Tin House, O Magazine and The Rumpus, to name just a few. She also wrote a popular Substack—In (Higher) Self, We Trust—where she explored self-trust and its vital role in healing. 

As a professional ghostwriter and collaborator, Suzie guided her clients through the process of development, writing and editing of voice-driven narratives. Her work with psychologists, wellness experts, business founders, CEOs and artists covered a wide range of expertise, including psychology, astrology, memoir, grief and trauma. She traveled across the country, and as far as Japan, in service to these stories.

Suzie worked just as hard to find her own voice and to share her truth. In addition to writing about her experiences, she became an advocate for other survivors of sexual violence. In 2021, she bravely testified at legislative hearings in support of repealing Massachusetts’ statute of limitation laws on behalf of adult survivors of child sexual abuse and future generations. Suzie championed organizations like I Have The Right To, a survivor-led national non-profit that works to prevent sexual assault and support survivors in schools. She was vocal in her outrage on behalf of another’s pain. Her fiercely protective spirit, especially where children were concerned, was unequalled. 

A beloved aunt once dubbed her “the wise baby” and indeed, Suzie had an old soul from the start. She wrote about receiving intuitive messages of sight, sound and knowing since childhood, but it wasn’t until her 20s that she began consciously developing her gifts through the study of astrology and tarot. Suzie built a loyal following of clients who sought out her compassionate insight, helping them gain clarity and connect with their own intuition to make empowered choices. She generously offered her psychic guidance to loved ones—reframing challenges from the astrological perspective, offering to pull a card, or passing along spiritual signs from the road and songs she woke up singing. Suzie was an open channel and she used it for the highest good.

One transformative message came while traveling in Indonesia when Suzie learned of a local child who had cried for days after the September 11 attacks. An instant and visceral knowing took over in that moment: This child on the other side of the world had helped shoulder her own burden of complicated grief for a dear childhood friend who died in the tragedy. Inspired by this experience and wanting to give back, Suzie started work on an improvisational movement-based film celebrating the power of empathy and human connection. She carefully collected stories of personal sorrow and trauma, but the project wouldn’t be fully realized until after a major loss in Suzie’s own life. 

That ground shaking experience for Suzie was the death of her cousin and dear friend, Karen Walsh Rullman, at age 41 from colon cancer. In Suzie’s own words, Karen was “a powerhouse in every way.” And though losing her felt utterly impossible, Suzie supported Karen and her family through her entire illness with presence, dedication, joy and love. 

In 2017, Suzie produced and performed in “Moving, for You: A Tribute to Empathy” (link below) in collaboration with Austin Wideman’s direction, filming and editing. The rawness of Suzie’s pain allowed her to connect even more deeply with that at the heart of the stories, to move through it, and find healing in the universality of grief.

Anyone who enjoyed even a passing conversation with Suzie would likely have learned about the two most important people in her life: Zoe and Tate, the children of Karen and her husband, Todd. When it was time to leave New York City, the driving force behind Suzie’s new choice of home was proximity to the kids so she could continue to be a regular part of their lives—at theater shows and soccer games, at movie nights and sleepovers, at birthday parties and so very much more. Suzie celebrated alongside the kids when Todd and Tanya married, and was welcomed into their expanded family, including brothers Max and later, little Don. 

In Connecticut, Suzie found community and calm by the sea. Daily sunrise walks and kind neighbors would soon become more important than she ever imagined. When she discovered a lump in her breast in 2024, she was grateful to be so close to excellent care at Smilow Cancer Hospital in Waterford and New Haven. The strongest advocate for her own health, Suzie pursued every available avenue for treatment—chemo and immunotherapy, surgery, radiation, even an experimental trial at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. 

She met this grueling schedule with a truly “athletic optimism,” a term Suzie coined for the strength needed to choose joy and hope amidst fear and uncertainty. It was easy to imagine Suzie, upbeat and radiating health, beating the steep odds of triple negative breast cancer. She quite literally tap-danced her way out of her last infusion, celebrating a new cancer-free chapter. Just a few months later, during which she underwent two unexpected surgeries, it became clear the disease had returned. Suzie faced it head on with everything modern medicine has to offer—more chemo, more tests, more hospital stays and procedures. At the same time, she focused her incredible will to live on holistic healing—meditation, deep rest, energy work, healthy foods, gentle movement, fresh air and prayers from every corner of her world. Suzie expressed endless gratitude for the many aides, nurses, doctors, social workers and other healers who fought alongside her through her 21-month cancer journey. And in her final days, the staff at the Connecticut Hospice made sure her every need for comfort was met with expert and loving care. 

Suzie made the world a bigger and brighter place. She created space for magic, possibility, joy and wonder. She filled time with her presence, insight, empathy and hilarity. Always the first to raucously laugh at herself and her own misadventures, she was humble and human, allowing anyone in her orbit the same ease of authenticity. Suzie’s physical beauty was obvious and luminous, but not nearly the most important aspect of her vibrancy. She was an exceptional listener, an empathetic friend and a ready partner in all things fun. She said “Yes!” more often and more enthusiastically than most. She was a regular on the dance floor and a true karaoke queen. She had a prodigious memory, retaining endless detail of her loved ones’ lives. She was an exquisite and entertaining storyteller. She was a magnet for children of all ages and dogs—all the dogs. She found solace by the ocean, often sharing the gift of a beautiful sunrise via text. She could close a chasm of miles with a voice note. She delighted in long conversation, both high and low, over a delicious meal. Suzie was, in every possible sense of the word, good company.     
    
For each step you walked together with Suzie in this life, may you feel only gratitude all around.

In addition to her cousin Karen, Suzie rejoins a large circle of loving grandparents, aunts and uncles, as well as her dear cousin-in-law, Michael Forbes. 

Publications

Links to Suzie’s significant publications are below.

Videos

Memory Wall