Episode Summary

What does it mean to grow up inside a utopian experiment, and how do you find your voice afterwards?

In this episode of How You Find Your Voice, host Jessie Huth speaks with writer, essayist and clinical arts therapist Susanna Crossman about her memoir Home Is Where We Start and her novel, The Orange Notebooks.

Susanna grew up in a politically radical community in the late 1970s that set out to reinvent family, gender roles and society itself. In this conversation, she reflects on the reality of that upbringing, the gap between utopian ideals and lived experience, and how long it took to find the language for what it really was.

Together, they explore masking, people pleasing and the idea of the “false self”, and why growing up in a collective environment can make it difficult to know who you are. They also discuss silence, untold stories, and the power of language in expressing what often feels unspeakable.

The conversation also turns to The Orange Notebooks, a deeply moving novel about maternal grief, and the challenge of writing about the loss of a child, one of the most taboo and difficult subjects to give voice to.

This is a conversation about identity, grief, language, and the long, complex process of finding your voice.

Topics Covered

Growing up in a utopian community
Communes, cults and collective living
The impact of alternative childhoods on identity
The gap between ideology and lived experience
Family dynamics and the dismantling of the nuclear family
Masking, people pleasing and the false self
Learning a script and unlearning it
Silence, secrecy and untold stories
Writing memoir as a way of understanding the past
Finding your voice after a silenced childhood
The role of language and etymology in expression
Grief, motherhood and The Orange Notebooks
Writing about the loss of a child
Clinical arts therapy and working with patients
Helping others find their voice

About Susanna Crossman

Susanna Crossman is an award-winning Anglo-French fiction and non-fiction writer, published internationally in print and online. She’s author of the the acclaimed memoir Home is Where we Start, (Fig Tree/Penguin, 2024), about her childhood in a utopian commune, a Guardian 2024 “Book to Look Out For!” Her new novel, The Orange Notebooks was published by Bluemoose Books (UK) and Assembly Press (NA) in 2025. She has recent work in The Guardian, Aeon, Vogue, Paris Review, Electric Literature & elsewhere. A published novelist in France, she was a 2022 Hawthornden Fellow, and resident at Hosking Houses Trust in 2025. Winner of the 2019 LoveReading Short Story Award, she was nominated for Best of The Net Non-Fiction and is a member of the Dangerous Women project. Susanna grew up in an international commune. Alongside her writing, she works as clinical arts-therapist on three continents, teaches and mentors writers.

About the Podcast

How You Find Your Voice is the podcast that asks brilliant guests, mostly women, how they found or reclaimed their voices.

Through conversations with writers, artists, thinkers and entrepreneurs, we explore the work they have made, the lives they have lived and the inner transformations that made it possible.

We talk about turning points and resistance, silence and expression, creative risk and process, and the often messy journey of becoming.

Listen and Follow

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Keywords

finding your voice podcast, Susanna Crossman interview, Home Is Where We Start memoir, The Orange Notebooks novel, growing up in a commune, utopian community childhood, cult vs community, masking and people pleasing, false self psychology, silence and voice, grief and motherhood, writing trauma and memory, literary podcast, women writers, clinical arts therapy, identity and belonging, language and expression, untold stories