MY HEALING JOURNEY
Hi my name is Susan, my Korean name is Sue-Ah, and I’m honored to serve you on your healing journey. I know it well, I’ve been on a pretty intense healing journey myself for over 25 years. I started life with a variety of painful childhood traumas compounded by being separated from my land of birth, and coming to a vastly different culture to grow up in a low-income immigrant family. This reality brought many tribulations. In the US I grew up disconnected from my culture and the extended family I cherished back in South Korea, while dealing with a lot of stress and unsafe dysfunction at home.
Being an immigrant kid who didn’t speak English added to the difficult experience. On top of this I had a sort of spontaneous consciousness awakening in the 8th grade (a small 1st of many to come), which sparked an early interest in spirituality on one hand, but was in stark and confusing contrast to the emotional turmoil I was immersed in otherwise. Feelings of deep sadness, loneliness and paralyzing depression plagued me constantly. Interlaced in there was also a hunger to taste the extremes of human experience, which I recklessly dove into.
After a really low point in my mid-20s, I was presented with a clear intervention by higher powers to change my direction in life or likely face the end of my life. I made a sharp 180 degree turn, and threw myself into deep spiritual work as a result, which was incredible at the time. However, while I experienced magical transformations during my over 13 years as an initiate in 2 different spiritual traditions, unfortunately the driving force underneath was this unshakable feeling that I was broken at the core, and that I desperately needed to be fixed.
In addition to a spiritual path, my life journey also took me to a decade of visual art, ecological gardening & Earth regenerative practices, education for young children, and social & environmental justice activism. It was really when I came fully back to justice-based activism, grounded in the physical reality of the socio-political structures that we are all immersed in (whether new age adherents admit it or not), that I understood that while my metaphysical adventures had brought a big layer of transformation and otherworldly euphoria, it had done little to address much of the underlying root traumas driving the core pains that still kept me very stuck. That’s when I started seeking focused healing work that addresses more tangible layers of wounding.
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I soon came across several modalities that address childhood, intergenerational, ancestral and cultural/systemic traumas. I engaged with them both for my own healing as well as to gain new tools to assist others. During this time, losing both of my parents within a short period also served as a harsh teacher of the necessary human experience of profound grief. Bittersweetly though, these losses served as a major driving force in helping me connect deeply and intimately to ancestral and cultural healing work.
Today, I’m still a work-in-progress of course! I can’t say that I’m some positive happy person with a picturesque life, but I can very proudly say that I’m much wiser, more integrated, more aligned, and more RESILIENT than ever. And best of all, I finally possess an abundance of tools and skills to support other precious souls on their own healing journeys here on Earth. I would be honored to hold space for and partner with you!
EPILOGUE: Life certainly throws you many surprise curve balls. My most recent came in the form of a cancer diagnosis and a subsequent healing journey around that. While I’m still on that journey, I feel the experience has offered an even deeper opportunity for healing and, in turn, further insights to share with those I serve. 🙏🙏🙏
