Hi, I’m Hannah. I am so many things:
I move through the world in a mixed race Chinese & white, light skinned, currently able body. I am queer and use she/they pronouns.
In my work, I am a small business owner, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Level 2 Internal Family Systems (IFS) trained therapist.
In my family, I am the oldest daughter. My mom is the child of immigrants and a third culture kid, my dad is a pastor’s kid and child of an alcoholic. Growing up, I filled the position of the golden child who seemed to have it all together even though I was crumbling on the inside.
about me.
In social settings, I am slow to warm but deeply loyal and show up hard for my loved ones. I am often most comfortable as a wall flower, and hate the spotlight.
My creativity comes out most with clay, gardening, and baking - all things I do with an incredible amount of mess.
I am a dancer and a builder and a traveler.
I love food: eating things I grow is a way I practice anti-capitalism abundance, cooking family recipes is a way I feel connected to my culture and ancestors, baking bread for friends is a way I foster community and mutual aid.
My life’s work is helping people reconnect to the power within, in service to collective liberation and an end to systemic oppression. I position individual healing as inextricable from collective healing and envision a world where all that is alive is free.
These are aspects of who I am today. And very different from who I was.
Growing up, I was painfully shy. I would shrink myself and try to disappear - I wanted nothing more than to pass unnoticed. When I couldn’t avoid being seen, I pressured myself to be perfect to avoid judgment and criticism. When I was inevitably not perfect, I judged and criticized myself.
I feared rejection and abandonment, so learned to people please and caregive for others in an attempt to be so likeable that I would never get left. Spending time alone sent me into a pit where I felt condemned to loneliness. I didn’t know myself enough to know my wants and needs, so could never set a boundary. I bounced from friend group to friend group, chasing the Best Friend promised by YA novels & lost myself in relationships, contorting around whoever I was dating, desperate to feel special - to feel chosen.
I was constantly at war with myself over how I ‘should’ act. I scanned for what others were doing, code switching and contorting myself into norms I saw being valued around me: straight & white. This kept me chasing a thing I could never be, while hating who I was and feeling deeply insecure. I was depressed, though at the time I would have told you (and maybe believed) that I was happy.
I struggled with being mixed and never felt like I fit in, though the flavor of this shifted over the years. When I was 5, I wanted to be blonde. When I was 12, I saved for months and tried to pull off highlights. I idolized my white friends and their families and felt embarrassed by my Gong Gong and Bubu’s (grandfather and grandmother’s) accents. As I grew older, I leaned into my Chinese heritage and distanced myself from whiteness. While this brought me back into closeness with my Chinese lineage, it left me avoiding the work of holding my light skinned privilege & proximity to whiteness well.
My journey was (and is) messy, emotional, and at times filled with pain & rawness & vulnerability. Decolonial IFS changed my life, allowing me to shed boxes and protective layers I clung to, radically shifting how I relate to myself and opening up how I connect with others.
Today, I feel more me than I ever have. I hold the past versions of me with love and so much understanding, while being so grateful to know myself & move through the world in the way I do now.
My invitation is to help you do the same: transform your life through transforming your relationship with yourself.
my bio.
I learned lessons about who I want to be in this work (and many about who I do not want to be) through the experiences listed below:
training
BA in Anthropology & BS in Psychology from Fordham
Masters in Social Work and Masters in Social Policy from Washington University in STL
therapy training:
IFS Level 1 & Level 2 with IFSI
IFIO Level 2
IFS Healing Circles training for groups with Chris Burris
IFS consultation with Kamakanoe Ornellas - ongoing
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) for Couples trained
EMDR trained
Program Assistant for multiple IFSI Level 1 trainings, including the first QTPGM (queer, trans, people of global majority) Level 1 training
work
10 years working with youth
Teen trauma therapist in St Louis
Co-founder of youth arts programs for refugees in Greece & Tijuana
5 years in private practice therapy
3 years community organizing around IFS for liberation
3 years working in international humanitarian aid
1 year working in systems change policy spaces (I quickly learned my energy is with micro work - but this chapter was fundamental in approaching healing from a systemic lens)
teachers
My peers - fellow liberation-oriented healers who help me unlearn supremacy in the world & therapy room.
My clients, past present future, who are my biggest teachers & inspiration.
Indigenous healers who have long known the wisdom of parts work, before this wisdom was methodologized by IFSI
The therapists, healers, coaches, consultants who hold me in my own work
My ancestors - ever present and reminding me of who I am and where I come from whenever I remember to listen for them.
Nature. Trees, plants, dirt, water, rocks hold me through my darkest moments and teach me about aliveness and ways of relating with abundance