L.A. Musician Mom Suzanne Jamieson Embraces the Power of Love and Gratitude

Suzanne Jamieson’s journey to children’s music wasn’t part of the plan. The Racine, Wisconsin-born singer-songwriter, who originally hoped to chase her dreams to the big screen, spent much of her 20s and early 30s auditioning for movies and plays in New York and Los Angeles.

She had some initial success, too. In the decade after she earned her BFA in musical theater from Syracuse University, Jamieson landed handful of small, but notable, parts in Hollywood films like the slasher flick Boogeyman 2.

But her world shifted in 2012 when she became a mom. As she sung lullabies to her daughter, Jamieson, who lives in Los Angeles with her family, felt a growing urge to direct her creative energy toward making a positive impact on the next generation. She also realized that the hustle of an aspiring actor’s life in L.A. wasn’t sustainable.

“I just didn’t really want to keep chasing auditions during the day,” she tells Rockmommy.

So over the next few years, Jamieson, who also teaches yoga, set forth on a new direction, pouring her energies into writing and performing songs that would inspire kids and families with messages of love, hope, and optimism.

“The ideas of grit, resilience, positivity, gratitude, optimism … was all really helpful to me in my life,” says Jamieson. “So as my kids grew and I wanted to teach them these things … in a way that was fun and that wasn’t like a lecture, because nobody likes lectures … So that’s how I ended up with this idea to do it through the side door with some fun pop music, because they were listening to that stuff anyway.”

Jamieson’s music — especially her most recent albums, 2024’s Love is… and 2020’s Bounce (with The Pop-Ups) — embodies these ideas in an accessible way. But more than that, Jamieson’s positive outlook has given her the strength she needed to endure difficulties and challenges.

Just a few days after Rockmommy interviewed Jamieson in early January, the Los Angeles fires forced Jamieson and her family to evacuate their home.

“We are the lucky ones with the house still standing, [the fires] having missed us by less than a quarter mile,” she told us over email.

So what does 2025 hold for the mom and artist? And how does she continue to stay upbeat and hopeful, even during dark times?

The edited transcript is an excerpt of the full YouTube interview (below), between Jamieson and Rockmommy editor and founder Marisa Torrieri Bloom.  

Rockmommy: Thank you, Suzanne, for being here today. I want to start from the beginning. You’ve had such an interesting life — you grew up in Wisconsin, you were in a slasher film … and you had the theater bug early on. How did you get started in this direction with your art?

Suzanne Jamieson: I grew up in Wisconsin and did as much theater and choir and singing and dancing and acting as I could … at Syracuse University, I majored in musical theater, and then I was in New York for a short time before I moved to L.A. with my now husband. I was acting and singing here for in L.A. for a long time, and doing plays [and] some other stuff, like that slasher movie, but I had my daughter [in 2012] and I just didn’t really want to keep chasing auditions during the day.

So I sort of pivoted into children’s music. It was quite by accident. I was looking for a lullaby album for her that I loved, and I kind of had a specific thing of what I wanted, and I couldn’t find it, so I just decided to make it, and that was my first children’s album.

And then since then, I stayed in the children’s world, sort of as they grew up. I also have a background in yoga therapy and as a yoga teacher, so I infuse all this yoga philosophy and positive psychology tools for happiness into my music with my second album, Bounce, and then my last album [Love Is ...], which came out in July, sort of goes down that road, but with more of an emphasis on love, and what love is, all many forms and iterations.

Rockmommy: I love that. Did you just have this epiphany when you had your daughter? I gotta say, when I had my son in 2012, I wanted to start a metal band!

Suzanne Jamieson: That’s awesome! I love that. Yeah, I did have an epiphany moment, but it was after my son was born, and I was 35. On my birthday, we had rented a house in Wisconsin, and I was taking a long walk by myself, and I wasn’t … myself. I noticed that I was doing a lot of negative thinking, and that I was kind of angry and probably in a postpartum kind of place …. I had released an album I didn’t know if I was going to keep acting or what was next, really. And, but I had done all this yoga training and, and I was taking a walk on my birthday, and I thought, you know, when I noticed myself doing this snowball negative thinking, I’m just gonna say, “Oh, shanti om!”

And I thought, “you know, that’s a kid song!” Then, I was like, ‘that’s what I’ll do next!  

So I decided to sort of combine what I had learned, and that was my little passion project. And it took me five years to write those songs, and then I found the Pop-Ups who helped me arrange the songs and write the music!

Rockmommy: What kind of yoga do you practice? I know, you’re also a mindfulness coach, like, what does that mean?

Suzanne Jamieson: Yeah, so, um, so I originally became a yoga teacher just sort of as supplemental income when I was acting. I thought ‘I’ll learn more about it’ and ‘I’m doing it anyway’ kind of thing. And I had, had helped me rehab a back injury. Then I was at a physical therapy studio for this back injury, and a studio owner said, ‘Hey, would you want to come and teach?’

I thought, ‘you know, I really can’t do that responsibly with people who are just coming out of acute injury, unless I do some more training.’ So I went to Loyola Marymount, and I became certified as a yoga therapist, and I loved it.

And the first year is sort of all about the body and injuries and things like that. But then the second and third year … many years beyond that was really about yoga philosophy, which was so interesting to me and, and so this sort of ancient wisdom traditions all have, you know, great nuggets of value in them.

A of mine named Robert Bernberg had pointed out to me how similar yoga philosophy was to positive psychology. So these ideas of grit, resilience, positivity, gratitude, optimism, thought, spinning, you know, some kind of devotional practice, even if that’s not to a certain God, it was all really helpful to me in my life.

And so as my kids grew and I wanted to teach them these things … in a way that was fun and that wasn’t like a lecture, because nobody likes lectures, and I don’t like lecturing. So that’s how I ended up with this idea to sort of do it through the side door with some fun pop music, because they were listening to that stuff anyway.

Rockmommy: I remember when your album Bounce came out in 2020. You have been producing it up to the point the pandemic happened, because it was released that August. Did you originally plan to release it earlier? Like, how did were you? How did that go?

Suzanne Jamieson: I think we were always planning on a summer release. And then it was like, do we or don’t we because we were in the middle of pandemic? And ultimately, I was like, ‘this is five, six years in the making.’ Like, I [didn’t] want to wait another year. And I also thought, ‘people need a little positivity right now. Families need a little positivity right now.’ So, I did decide to release it [in August 2020] but the downside of that choice was I didn’t get to tour it.

Rockmommy In July 2024 you released the album Love is …You didn’t release it knowing what the future would hold … can you take us back to the beginning of when you sort of had the inspiration for, like, the theme of that body of work?

Suzanne Jamieson: Absolutely. remember it well. Actually, this was, I think 2021 … and there were some Nazi flags flown over the 405 freeway, and this was just speaking to this sort of bubbling up of hate in our country. Hate used to at least be shamed, and people weren’t … confident to express it. Something was changing that was that was making people more vocal about their hate.

And I read this book by a friend of mine — her name is Valerie Kaur — called See No Stranger. And the idea of this book is the only way forward is love — to as to see each other as our brothers and sisters and come and come to each other with curiosity and try to learn about each other with an ethic of love.

Rockmommy: I love what you’re saying, because my uncle and I feel different politically. I tend to be unapologetically very liberal and accepting, and we voted in very different ways. And it is hard to come to those conversations where he’s critical of some of the ideals, but at the end of the day, I love him so much, I’m not going to engage with him on these conversation topics, because it’s just not going to be positive.

Suzanne Jamieson: In my family, I try to talk about the gray. Most things live in the gray. And so there are many reasons why someone may have voted the way they did. And for us, we’re voting because of certain things, because we value that more than anything else, right? Other people may not feel that way, and we have similar situation in my own family.

Rockmommy: Have your kids seen that slasher film you were in, Boogeyman 2?

Suzanne Jamieson: I was actually just asking them about this last night, because we were talking somehow with my my good friend, we went to see a theater show the theater last night, yesterday, and we’re talking about prosthetics for some reason. I can’t remember why, but I told them this story about how I got this prosthetic butcher knife put on my throat, and it took hours, and then we broke for lunch shooting this thing. So I, I went and had lunch with the cast and crew with this big knife in my throat. And I, you know, just thought it was funny. And, and my daughter said, ‘oh, you know, I saw it.; My daughter’s 12. And I was like, ‘you did?’ And she was like, ‘Well, I saw the stills.’

So as she must have Googled it or something something, and seen a couple of still folks, certainly I don’t think that it’s a great idea for them to see their mom in that position! I did another one called Atticus Institute, which is sort of like a mockumentary, scary, nothing slashery, but kind of creepy. And I don’t, I don’t think they’ve seen that either.

Rockmommy: So what are your plans this year for music, for motherhood, all the things?

Suzanne Jamieson: I have a book coming out in, I believe, October. It’s with Cottage Door Press, and it’s a teen mindfulness journal, teen/tween mindfulness journal. And then I’m going to be working on a show, a children’s TV show, which may end up on YouTube or maybe a network, we’ll see, but that’s also in the works. We’re very early stages of that. So those are sort of my big two projects of 2025 but I have a feeling another album or some singles or something, we’ll start brewing pretty soon, because the energy is coming. I can feel it!

And then, obviously, now that we’re out in the world, and I’ve got a few children’s albums out, I’m trying to perform it live more!  

Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy..