A Note From The Founder

សួស្តី suostei (Hello),

If you’re considering starting your healing journey with me, I think it is essential that you know who I am because I don’t agree with the notion of therapists being a “blank slate.” Real talk, how are you expected to connect and be vulnerable with a “blank slate?”

You can’t…so if you’re interested in learning more about me stay a while!

My own complex trauma-healing journey began when I recognized wounds showing up in my present life from a childhood weaved with playful and difficult memories and experiences. My father’s stories as a Khmae resistance fighter and refugee unfolded a narrative of resilience and generational war trauma. The feelings of love and abandonment weaved through my childhood and adolescence as a first-generation American trying to survive in two competing cultures. 

Without a safe space and refuge to acknowledge and process this experience, I learned to navigate the world through behaviors of protection often stuck in a sympathetic, fight-or-flight state, not trusting the support and help around me. I found myself in patterns of perfectionism, rigidity, and unhealthy relationships navigating the world with rigid boundaries and a hardened shell for years. After experiencing a relationship loss thousands of miles away from home during my active duty military service in England, I realized that being “the independent one and the rock” was not sustainable and something had to change. I reached out to my best friend and shared something I never did before, my heartache and vulnerability. This was the catalyst to start repairing my insecure attachments and relational wounds before learning about attachment.

Through this newfound vulnerability, I gave people a chance to support and care for me leading to feelings of safety to build and trust my ecosystem of support and care resulting in an integration of a sense of self and community. This ongoing experience of building collective care and community sparked a deeper exploration of Interpersonal Neurobiology (Dr. Daniel Siegel) and Polyvagal Theory ( Dr. Stephen Porges) and eventually integrating it into the healing space with clients and their healing journey.

My somatic and spiritual healing deepened with experiencing my first reiki healing session in 2016 as a new postpartum mother which uncovered hidden traumas that I didn’t realize were affecting my present life. Reiki introduced depth to my transformative journey weaving spirituality and science to my personal healing and professional identity. My lens continued to widen as I witnessed the echoes of colonization and imperialism on Guam which led to a deeper exploration of my family’s history of displacement, living in the Khmae diaspora, and the trauma of war perpetuated by the US and its recognizing the effects.

I now channel these experiences to guide others towards liberation, relational healing to self, land, others, and radical self-care. I help individuals divest from the hooks of capitalism, perfectionism, and colonial thinking through somatic and spiritual resourcing, empowerment, and agency, strengthening their intuition, inner wisdom/guidance, and community building.

The collective interconnectedness, empathy, compassion, and overall collective well-being is accomplished through our own individual healing. My vision is to cultivate a space for individual and collective healing where we all can embody love, joy, and compassion.

In liberation and community,

Mao