Her Mother’s Death Was a Family Secret — Until She Broke the Silence

Summary

A Place of Yes | A Grief Podcast: Episode Summary

Episode Title: Her Mother’s Death Was a Family Secret — Until She Broke the Silence
Host: Bright Sighted (Heather)
Guest: Susan Liu, Vietnamese American Author, Playwright, and Performer
Release Date: December 26, 2024

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Introduction

In this poignant episode of "A Place of Yes," host Heather interviews Susan Liu, a Vietnamese American author and performer, who shares her deeply personal journey of grief following the sudden and tragic death of her mother. The conversation delves into themes of family secrets, cultural stigmas around grief, the quest for closure, and the transformative power of turning pain into art.

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Susan Liu’s Story of Loss

Susan Liu begins by recounting the traumatic circumstances surrounding her mother's death. At 11 years old ([00:31] Heather), a heated argument with her mother leads to Susan defying her mother's wishes to attend volleyball tryouts. Tragically, her mother suffers a fatal complication during a plastic surgery procedure:

Susan Liu ([01:11]): “I tell her I hate her, I slam the door, I saunter off to school... she flatlines after five days in a coma.”

The incident causes permanent brain damage to her mother, leading to her prolonged coma and eventual death. This heartbreaking event remains a family secret for two decades, with Susan becoming acutely aware of the absence of her mother as she approaches motherhood herself.

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The Impact of Silence on Grief

Heather probes into the difficulties Susan faced due to the family's reluctance to discuss her mother's death. Susan explains how this silence compounded her grief:

Susan Liu ([06:43]): “We never had grief counseling. In the book you read that after my mom passes, I don't cry at the funeral. The first time I can cry is at school...”

Susan highlights the cultural aspects of her Vietnamese-American family, where expressing emotions is often seen as a weakness, leading to an internalized sense of abandonment and guilt.

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Navigating Relationships and Emotional Isolation

The conversation shifts to Susan's relationship with her father and siblings. Her father, unable to cope with the loss effectively due to cultural stigmas, inadvertently distances himself emotionally:

Susan Liu ([09:33]): “He has an elementary understanding of English... I have a pretty fraught relationship with him because I never felt seen by him.”

Susan also touches on her involvement in a cult during her time at Harvard—a search for belonging that ultimately led her away from her dysfunctional family dynamics.

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Seeking Closure and the Quest for Revenge

Fueled by anger and the desire for justice, Susan embarks on a mission to hold her mother's plastic surgeon accountable. Her efforts include targeted Facebook ads and plans for a class-action lawsuit. However, the doctor's death leaves Susan grappling with unresolved emotions:

Susan Liu ([30:36]): “I realize at the end of the day, it's still about family.”

This realization shifts her focus from seeking revenge to addressing the lingering familial wounds and finding personal closure.

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Transformation Through Art and Performance

Susan channels her grief into artistic expression through her one-woman show, "140 Pounds: How Beauty Killed My Mother." She portrays multiple characters, illustrating her family's tragedy and the silence that prolonged their suffering:

Susan Liu ([13:55]): “My theater is therapeutic theater. I have shown you everything... it is a portal for you to look at your trauma and to also open up that possibility of your own healing.”

Her performances not only serve as a medium for her own healing but also resonate with audiences, encouraging collective grappling with grief.

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Evolving Relationships with Family

Over time, Susan's siblings begin to engage with her work, albeit cautiously. While they attend her shows and participate in discussions, deeper conversations about their shared loss remain elusive:

Susan Liu ([20:13]): “We still have not had the talk. We are not emotionally vulnerable.”

Despite these challenges, Susan collaborates with her sister on a chocolate company, symbolizing small steps towards reconciling their past.

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Embracing Continuous Grief and Personal Growth

Susan emphasizes that grief is not a finite process but a continuous aspect of life that shapes one's identity:

Susan Liu ([12:18]): “Grief is beautiful... it is around and it is a part of you.”

She discusses the importance of integrating grief into daily life, allowing oneself to feel joy alongside sorrow, and using grief as a catalyst for personal transformation.

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Motherhood and Legacy

Reflecting on her own journey into motherhood, Susan shares the renewed grief she experiences during postpartum moments, exacerbated by the absence of her mother:

Susan Liu ([29:33]): “...the grief is like the loss of the lineage around my mother tongue... our Vietnamese heritage...”

Susan navigates these emotions by fostering a connection with her cultural roots and striving to preserve her heritage for her children.

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Final Reflections and Moving Forward

In concluding the episode, Susan discusses her ongoing relationship with her mother's memory, balancing spiritual connections with practical healing. She underscores the necessity of self-reliance in the grief journey:

Susan Liu ([35:31]): “Only I can make myself feel whole. They can't do it for me.”

Heather and Susan affirm the importance of personal responsibility in healing, encouraging listeners to engage with their own grief authentically while respecting others' boundaries.

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Closing Thoughts

This episode of "A Place of Yes" offers a raw and insightful exploration of how grief can both isolate and transform individuals. Susan Liu's courageous sharing underscores the complexity of familial relationships, the impact of cultural stigmas on emotional expression, and the profound potential for art to heal and connect.

Notable Quotes:

• Susan Liu ([12:18]): "Grief is beautiful... it is around and it is a part of you."
• Susan Liu ([13:55]): "My theater is therapeutic theater... a portal for you to look at your trauma."
• Susan Liu ([35:31]): "Only I can make myself feel whole. They can't do it for me."

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For Further Engagement:

• Susan Liu’s Book: The Manicurist Daughter and her one-woman show, 140 Pounds: How Beauty Killed My Mother, offer deeper insights into her journey and artistic process.
• Support Resources: Jake’s Help From Heaven nonprofit continues to showcase stories of grief transformed into positive actions, fostering a community of healing and support.

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This summary encapsulates the heart-wrenching and inspiring dialogue between Heather and Susan Liu, providing a comprehensive overview for those who have not listened to the episode.

Transcript

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[Heather]

Welcome to A Place of Yes. A podcast about how I moved through my darkest hour. And for me, that was in channeling my grief into good. Welcome to the show. I'm today here with Susan Liu. She is a Vietnamese American author, playwright and performer. Author of the Manicurist Daughter, performer of a one woman show called 140 pounds how beauty killed My Mother. I'm so happy that you are here. We had a sort of pre interview chat. I loved it. I feel like you're a great match for our show. So welcome to A Place of Yes. Susan, can you start by just sharing a little bit of your story with my audience?

[Susan Liu]

Yeah. And again, thank you so much for having me. My story of grief starts when I'm 11 years old and I run into my mother in the kitchen. What I don't realize is she's going in for plastic surgery. And what she doesn't know is I'm not obeying her and I'm gonna go to volleyball tryouts and we get into a big kerfuffle. I tell her I hate her, I slam the door, I saunter off to school, and when I come home from school, I find out that she's in a coma and she had lost oxygen to her brain when she was going in for a tummy tuck, the narrowing of her nostrils and a chin implant. The doctor waited 14 minutes before he made the 911 call. After four minutes of no oxygen to your brain, that's when you have permanent brain damage. And after five days in a coma, she flatlines. And for the next two decades, my family has never spoken of her and how she died. When I am on the brink of motherhood in my 30s that I really realize I need to know her. Even if my family doesn't want to talk. I go on a big quest to track down the plastic surgeon who killed her, enlist the help of spirit channelers, read thousands of pages of depositions, and every time I learn something new, I put it on stage in a one woman show, which has now become my memoir.

[Heather]

I There's so much there and there's so much. I feel like this could be the longest podcast ever. For those of us who have not read your book, can you talk about how it was that you found out your mom died? Like, what that. What that conversation was, like, what that was like.

[Susan Liu]

So the morning of my mother's death, I told her I hated her. She didn't want me to go to volleyball practice or volleyball tryouts. I went anyways. I was like, I'm gonna make that team whether she likes it or not. And her whole big hang up was that we didn't have $20 to pay for the uniform and that it would distract me from school. And at the time, I was like, ma, I'm like the best student in the class. So I come back home, I tried out for volleyball. I did my best. I hope I'm going to make it on the team. And in the driveway in the garage is my brother's beat up Honda Civic. And I'm like, what is he doing home from college? Like, he, he usually comes home on the weekends and. And I think this was like a Friday. And then he just looks at me because I had come home late because of tryouts. He was like, go pack your shit. Mom's in a coma. And I'm like, coma? Where are we going? He's like, we're going to San Francisco. Ma's in a coma. And then I. I just like, run upstairs. I see my sister. She's been crying. She's got her black Adidas duffel bag for soccer practice. She's just like stuffing stuff in there. And I was like, how long are we going for? Like, how many pairs of underwear do I need? And she's like, figure it out. So I don't have a lot of information. The only time I've ever known anyone in a coma was actually just soap operas that we watch at the nail salon when me and my sister are helping out at the nail salon. With comas, you always have a one in a million chance of getting out. And after a few years, a person just wakes up, like, from a sleepy sleep, and then, like, they're alive again and they come back into a future season, you know, Like, I was like.

[Heather]

Days of our lives or something.

[Susan Liu]

Yeah, I was not worried. I throw some stuff in the bag, I pack my homework because I'm gonna do homework. And then we drive the hour to get to San Francisco. Then I go into the hospital, and it's a smell that I can never undo in my nose. That smell of like, when people pee in a pan. You know, and it sits there, my dad is looking super distraught. My other brother's there and he's like, come on, let's go visit Ma. I remember going down that long hallway, turning into the room and just that, that, that echoing, the beeping of the machines, the, the exhausting oxygen machine going up and down. And then I see her. This is not the woman I know. Her face seems like very flat and yet puffy. Her hands are ice cold. Her nails are still red, candy apple red. But there's all these tubes coming in and out of her, all these liquids. And I'm sitting there going like, who is this woman? Over the next few days we're there, my aunt is just like, go ask her, ask her to come back. Like, tell her to come back. She always said that she wanted, when you went to college, she would move in with you and she'd go to college with you. So you need to beg her back. Like, as if it was my responsibility. Like I was going to bring her. It just hung with me where I was like, maybe she's not going to come back because I'm such a bad daughter.

[Heather]

Oh God.

[Susan Liu]

Because I told her I hated her. Why would she come back to an ungrateful daughter?

[Heather]

That is so much to carry. That's so much to carry, period, let alone at 11. I just, I, I, so I think of mother daughter relationships. I think about, you know, what you said, right? That I hate you. Run out, slam the door. I don't think there's a daughter and mother that hasn't had that. And to have then what happened to you come on the cusp of that, that is its own struggle, right? Like that's its own coming to terms with moment. And then the biggest piece that I'd love to talk with you about is the 20 year period your mom goes to the hospital to have a surgery that should be home the next day, the next day and then doesn't. And then there's no discussing it as a family. In your book, in the Manicurist Daughter, you have a line that said avoiding her altogether. That's how she truly died. For me, that says it, that says a lot. Can you, I mean, can you talk about what it was like not talking about her?

[Susan Liu]

Yeah. I mean, I was the youngest of four and so I was 11 when she died. She was 38 at the time. And I remember, I would just be like, do you have any memories of her? Or like when you guys found out the news, what was going on for you? Or even just simple questions like Are you guys okay? I didn't realize that these were going to be emotional landmines. I didn't realize the, the, the spicy rebuttal that I would get back, which is, you're living in the past, Susan. You're too emotional. And at this point, I'm like 12. These are my siblings. This is my dad, this is my aunts. Like, this is. We were 13 people in a four bedroom house, right? Like, my mother was the pillar. We had two nail salons at this point. She came over from Vietnam. She was our matriarch, right? And we only had enough money to even attempt to escape Vietnam as boat people because she had an underground lottery operation and wins it three times and brings us all over. And then eventually sponsors over her parents and her sisters. Like, she is not in the background here, guys. She is the center. And so when she is gone, it's pretty obvious to me. But me poking the bear, they were just like, you are creating more suffering for us, you know, like, what is wrong with you? And we never had grief counseling. In the book you read that after my mom passes, I don't cry at the funeral. And the first time I can cry is when I get back to school at elementary school and. And the bully, Jessica goes, what's wrong with you? Your mom died or something? And then that's when I start burst out crying and I just dash for the yard duty lady, you know, And I like, bury my head in her chest and like, that's the first time I can cry because I am not hugging anyone at home. We are not holding each other in that grief. It's just like, all right, go to work, go to school, move on, right? Because no one has the tools or capacity to do that when you lose the biggest pillar in your life. And then, and then I'm blamed for asking about it. I start to believe them that I am a nuisance, that I am the problem, that it is my fault and why am I doing this? They must be right because no one else is asking. That really messed with my brain for a while because I was like, wow, I'm so sensitive. I'm so emotional. Instead of, yeah, let us validate your feelings.

[Heather]

Like, your mom is dead and their mom is dead. You know, I mean, that's the piece to me. It's, it's. It's so often in grief journeys, right, that people will say that, you know, leave it alone, it's time to move on. All of those things that we hear in grief journeys, but oftentimes those are people on the outside who don't know what to say. I think what is so hard and hurtful in all of the things is that it's, it's your people that should be there for you. I think about your relationship with your dad. So you, you talk about your mom, right? She is the pillar, she is the, she's the boss lady. Like, she is the one. Was he able to replace that as a kid?

[Susan Liu]

You're like, the adults know everything. The adults have the, the solutions, right? You don't ever think that the adults are also human and also vulnerable and confused and scared? Yeah, I, I think what was really devastating is that my father was a wonderful support person. And when my mom passed, he had to assume the position of taking care of the nail salons. But, but also in tandem. Eventually my aunts, my grandparents moved out and they also stopped working at the nail salons. So we sold off Today's Nails number two, and then eventually Today's Nails number one crumbles. And so we were emotionally bankrupt and then eventually nearly financially bankrupt. It was really hard for my dad. But for me as an adolescent, I received my dad as someone who was like, don't do student government. Don't do community service. Start. Stop wasting your time. Like you make bad decisions, like you don't know anything. And I took all that. But then I found a lot of warmth and I felt really seen and held by the adult mentors that ran all of these programs. Right. That would listen and watch me cry while I was trying to process the grief because we couldn't at home, you know, And I don't fault my dad looking back on it, because he grew up in post war Vietnam. Like when we look at Asian masculinity, we look at the fact that emotions and vulnerability are seen as weakness. Mental health is incredibly stigmatized in our community. And he did not have the tools or capacity to hold me or hold each other. And so I had a pretty fraught relationship with him because I never felt seen by him. And I felt like everything I did was always a mistake, including asking about my mother. You go on this journey as a reader with me and my father and over time, as I eventually become a mother, that dynamic starts to shift. But at the end of the day, he just didn't have the capacity.

[Heather]

It's so interesting, I think, because. So, you know, so my son Jake passed away when he was 4 and that was 14 years ago. Even in that 14 year period. And I always say the world has changed and I don't know that the world has changed or I have changed. You know, it's sometimes it's what came first a little bit. But even 14 years ago, when my son died, the amount of people who would tell me it's time to move on those same things, and even people in my family, the world wasn't as receptive to grief and to conversation, I feel. And this is where I'm not sure if it's, if it's just me or if it truly is more of the world. I feel like we have so much more ability tools, it's more normalized, it's less stigmatized. I think for everybody, right, to have these conversations. Grief is one of those things that once you start talking about it, it's like you don't want to shut up about it. I opened this like Pandora's box of grief on this podcast and just in stuff, and now I'm like, I talk about it all the time.

[Susan Liu]

I think grief is beautiful. Like, it's very confusing and scary, but also it is a way to intimately commune and connect with the human experience. It just is. And it makes it so much real and richer and authentic to deeply know someone and to deeply know the entire spectrum of emotions. You can feel sad and you can smile when you're going through grief. And grief is continuous and it is just another facet of you. It should not be a period of time. It's not like, oh, I went to Costco, I'm done with my savings. You know what I mean? No. All your Costco items are going to be there way too long and they're going to expire and you're not going to eat them all, you know, like, that is grief. It is around and it is a part of you. So to deny it or to figure that it is a perishable good, that it is a thing that expires, I think that is denying the fact that grief is actually enriching our lives.

[Heather]

I 1,000% agree. And I, and for me, I feel like once I started talking more about it, it's exactly that. It's the whole picture. It's that two things can be true. I can be devastated about the loss of my son, but I can still be happy. Like, you know, I mean, like two things can exist. And I, I do think like these conversations and these books and the way that we publicly work through our grief, and I want to talk a little bit about your one woman show because I'm just fascinated by that. I think sometimes when we work through our things for everybody to see it's scary because then everybody sees it, and you. You get feedback. But it's also freeing in some way.

[Susan Liu]

I say this many times in my book. When we feel, we heal, and I think it's when we go through the messiness and the muck and all the different shapes and forms that feelings take place. When we can go through that darkness, we can then transform. And so when I'm on stage with 140 pounds, how Beauty killed my mother, I play 15 characters in 65 minutes, and I'm showing you this narrative arc of the devastation and the tragedy that my family went through and how that silence ate at us and how I was not able to find closure because I didn't have answers. And when they wouldn't talk, I went anyways for those answers. I went on my quest. And then you could see me finally change because I was able to acknowledge my feelings, give oxygen to my feelings, validate them, and then they could transform. And so what I often say is, my theater is therapeutic theater. I have shown you everything, and you've gone through this roller coaster. You've gone with the ups and downs about me, but it's actually a portal for you to look at your trauma and to also open up that possibility of your own healing.

[Heather]

And I think that was such a response, right? That, like, you were, like, this vehicle for people of which they're sitting there, they're going to your show, they're thinking it's about you. But the kind of kickback is. No, we all are kind of going through it in our own way.

[Susan Liu]

And I'm also a failed standup comic, so it's funny. I. I create moments of, like, come, you know, go put on your scuba gear. Go deep with me. Be. Be in this cathartic space with me, and then let me ease off and create a little space for some humor. You know, let's take a breather, and then let's keep going back in. Yeah, let's just go back in and. Because. Because then when we can get to that depth and we really see it, we can transform, because it is so much easier to deny. It is so much easier to protect yourself and be in that space of comfort, because no one wants to feel sad. But here's my guarantee to you. When you can go through, that's when you can change. That's when you can transform that pain, and that's when you can heal.

[Heather]

I love what you say about what you just said with the transform, because I think that's the piece where people, like, they don't go quite deep enough. Right. Like, people will be like, no, I'm sad. And they kind of will feel. And I'm not minimizing that, because I think people do feel sad, and they feel that I like your. Your expiration date. They want there to be like, okay, I have felt this, and now I can move on. Or now I compartmentalize it. The true freedom of being able to live with it is once you have gotten to that other piece of it, not stopped at that wall that we all sort of.

[Susan Liu]

Oh, have.

[Heather]

You know, and when we. You kind of knock it down a little bit. It's where you learn to live with both things. It's where you learn that there is joy and sadness existing together.

[Susan Liu]

Yeah. I mean, I never saw this as a gift, but one of my therapists was like, you know, Susan, you've gone through so much tragedy and grief and sadness, and that expanded your ability to feel deeper joy and love and light. And I was like, what, are you crazy? And. But. But it was true. It was true. Yes. An onion has many layers. And is there more? What else? My mother not being here. For me, it has made me feel extremely abandoned. And then I'm in relationships where they're done, but I'm still in them because I'm afraid that they're going to abandon me. So. So let me stay there. And it's like, oh, what is this really about? What else is this really about, Susan? Like, truly why? And when you think you're done, look around. What other dysfunction are you participating in? And where does that come back to in terms of the source of your pain?

[Heather]

You have clearly done the work, and now to bring it back a little bit to your family. Right. Like, it's not like you've done the work and it's over. Right. Like, it's kind of to your point. There's always. There's more and more, and you kind of sometimes think you've figured it out, and then there's, oh, wait, like you said, here's this dysfunction. Let's figure out what this is about. But for your siblings, who were less apt to go to it. And in the book, you kind of share about your relationship with your two brothers and with your sister, and it seems a little bit like they kind of end up coming along with you, but it was not easy. And how is it now? How do they feel about the book? How do they feel about you being on podcasts? Like, do they still feel like, ugh, you're bringing this stuff up? Stop it. Or are they like, oh, she's gonna bring up the stuff?

[Susan Liu]

Yeah. You know, I. I don't know if they listen to me on podcasts. And I remember when I first gave the book to my brother, he's like, susan, I don't read. And I was like, okay, well, don't you want to know what's, like, going to be nationally distributed in, like, every airport in America? And he's like, I guess, you know. So there's two siblings, my sister Wendy and my brother King. And over time, they started attending my shows. Initially, they did not want to. And then they would come to the post show discussions where I'd have a seat for them on stage. And then we talk about the fact that we haven't talked about mom, but they could only comment on my art and me doing it. They did not talk about them and their relationship to Ma, but that's still a shift. Right? And. And my sister and I have a chocolate company together. She's made a special edition series of, of the manicurist daughter chocolates. My brother helped. Yeah, he. He helps support, like, throw a book event party for me. Like, there are two siblings that we can kind of talk more about the legacy of my mother, about setting up an altar and having her picture up in the kitchen. Or my sister will be like, hey, I had a dream about Ma. You know, like, we don't talk about the death. We don't talk about the grief. She's alive for us again.

[Heather]

I was gonna say that's. That's nice. Right? Like, because I think in the beginning that was. That wasn't even there.

[Susan Liu]

Oh, no.

[Heather]

Yeah. You know, so the fact that that is, that's a step.

[Susan Liu]

It's like, it's like grief support light, you know, L, I, T, E, like, it's just a little bit, you know.

[Heather]

Like crystal light, dabbling in it.

[Susan Liu]

But privately, like, we can have public conversations on stage about what I'm doing. And they're like, is Susan unemployed? You know, like, does she have a job? But, like, privately, we, we still have not had the talk.

[Heather]

Okay.

[Susan Liu]

We still cannot. We are not emotionally vulnerable. Like, I'll. I'll set it up and they'll be like, still hard. No, Susan. And I'm like, cool. And. And you know, that's about boundary setting. And it's also about me respecting their boundaries. Right. So I'm. But also, what's different now is I don't need them to go there for me to do my work and for me to do my healing. Right. That's the change is that I stopped pointing my finger at them, saying, you're withholding information from me. You're preventing me from moving on. When I finally pulled that finger and pulled it to myself and thought, what do I need to do? Given what their boundaries are, Indirect and direct boundaries, right. Like Susan, pick up on their cues. It's not going to happen. When I could finally refocus that energy on me, everyone else shifted around me because they changed the dynamic. Now there is one other brother hang who has not gone to the theater show, who has not read the book, and that's his boundary. Same thing with my father. When the book published in mid March, I did not call him. I just could not take on another thing. I was putting on the tour myself. I was just like, if it was going to be bad news, I couldn't handle it. And I called him on my birthday a month later, and I was like, did you get the book? He's like, yeah. I was like, are you going to read it? I don't read. Do you want the audiobook? No, I don't. So with my brother and my dad, it's this amazing charade that we continue on with, which is we pretend I don't do it. And we also don't have very deep conversations.

[Heather]

I love what you said about, like, turning. You know, grief can be this thing in the beginning, right? You feel like you need other people to get you through it. And the fact of the matter is, it's really you who are going to get yourself through it. And you've got to kind of figure out the relationship with other people. A lot of people get sort of stuck in that place. And I think for you, though, being 11 when your mom died and, you know, kind of being the youngest and losing your mom at that age, it's almost. It's. It's very natural that you would be asking everyone around you to help know her, help understand, help fill in these blanks.

[Susan Liu]

It's reasonable to you. But I'm saying, like, growing up in an Asian family, we don't use the F word. Feelings. We don't say, I feel sad, I feel disappointed, I feel resentful, I feel dismissed. It's like we just say, I feel like you're dumb. You know what I mean? Like, we don't. We don't.

[Heather]

You don't.

[Susan Liu]

That's not.

[Heather]

You're not. Yes. Yeah.

[Susan Liu]

And it's very individualistic, and it's seen as selfish. Like, it's very centering. Right? Like, in a way, it's very American and Western to be, like, to have feelings.

[Heather]

Feelings, Right.

[Susan Liu]

You're. Because if you have feelings, you know what you're doing? You're breaking the social harmony of the group. And if the group is to play this charade, and I have now just, like, disrupted the norms of it, I am risking what we know to be true and safe. And so I've always been a black sheep in my family that's been really lonely. So lonely, in fact, that when I go to Harvard, I join a cult.

[Heather]

I liked that chapter. I was like, wow. Like, as I was reading it, I was like, where is this really going here? And it.

[Susan Liu]

It did this sense of belonging, to belong. What a human need.

[Heather]

Yes.

[Susan Liu]

And within my family, because I was positioned as. You're breaking the harmony. Like, why are you bringing up the past? Like, move on. I finally was like, okay, I got to take matters in my own hands. I don't belong here. This is my default world. It sucks. Maybe I can go somewhere where the rules are more clear, where I know how to succeed, where I do belong. And that was a Korean Yoko cult.

[Heather]

I mean, you got out of it. You. You start to see it for what it was, you know? I mean, how do you balance that?

[Susan Liu]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I was vulnerable prey. Like, you know, that's why cults are great, right? It's because they're. They. They meet a market demand. They are preying on people. And I also found a maternal figure there that really, I felt like a spiritual guide to me. Michelle Neem. And. And I felt really seen and cared and listened for and heard. I didn't feel heard in my family. And it's actually so silly in a way, like how simple it is as humans. We just want to be seen, safe, and celebrated. Right? And I wasn't getting that from my family, so I. I found it somewhere else. And My big lesson, $14,000 later, is that I'm looking for me. I'm looking for to trust me and to trust my inner knowing. And for a long time, I was farming it out to someone else. Tell me what to know. Tell me what to trust. And it was when I quit several times from the cult, and I also changed my thesis topic, a public health topic, to studying the cult itself. Even all the times I realized I wasn't a cult, I kept going back. It was better than my default world. And even my family, when they were, like, trying to get me out of it, the way they tried to do it, was really just yelling at me and making me feel really Bad. And I was like, wow, this still doesn't work. That was kind of my big aha moment. How do I love and trust myself above all else? Right? We're looking for answers all the time. But when can I trust myself enough to though that I actually have the.

[Heather]

Answer and that you don't have to rely on other people to give you the answer? I hate that, like, grief comes in waves analogy. Like, I don't love that, but I also don't love it because it's sort of true, right? Like, I feel like you can be going in your life and then you can kind of. Or I know I can get, like, life is good. Here I am. And then I just get thrown. Like, I just get into. And it's not necessarily the, like, oh, my son died. But it'll be something like, my older son went to college, and my head did this trick on me that had Jake still been alive, he would have been home for a year by himself with me. It's those things, right? Like, it's not so much that I was still like, oh, my son died when he was 4. It's that, wait, this was supposed to be my year. And the way that I was making it wasn't actually ever real or going to happen or what it would have been like had he lived. But it's like, what we do, right? Like, you kind of figure out, I just recently, all of the kids who would have been who this year, Jake would have been a senior in high school had he lived. All of those kids who right now, like, their parents are posting their senior pictures on Facebook and stuff. And I was having this, like, very angry, like, visceral reaction, which wasn't making sense to me. I was like, why am I so pissed off at that? Like, I'm like, it's just a. It's just a high school senior. Like, we did them with Ethan. And then I realized it was that, like, Jake's not having a senior picture all these years later. The weirdest. It shows up in a different way, and you have to take that step and kind of, oh, hey, that's what that is.

[Susan Liu]

Absolutely. Like, for me, it was like Mother's Day and Mother's Day card and her death anniversary. But, boy, was I blindsided when it was, I'm about to have this baby. It's Covid now. Nobody's going to come visit me. No one's going to take care of me and cook all of these Vietnamese dishes that are supposed to heal the Vietnamese body, AKA my mom's. Not Here. And even though my mom and I had a fraught relationship growing up, and maybe she would have body shamed me anyways, I mourned that in a different way. And then that's when I really went through a new wave of grief with her. Right. It's the moments. They should have been there in this life cycle of the human experience where I'm like, that would have been an ordinary moment, right? To just be there postpartum. But now I'm denied that.

[Heather]

That's exactly it. It's the ordinary moments. Cause you hit on it. It's like, you know, to feel sad on the birthday or like Mother's Day for me is one too. Cause I'm like, I try to be happy cause of Ethan, but then I'm kind of like, you know, it's. It's the days, you know, they, they still suck. But you, you see them coming so you can prepare. It's the things you don't see coming that's sort of. And they are, they're just ordinary moments. How is motherhood for you? You know you talked about that, right? Like, you talked about like the postpartum. And I'm sure there's these experiences, right? Where do you wish they knew your mom? Like, I mean, there's so much, right? Like I. Like, there's so much.

[Susan Liu]

Oh my God, I gotta tell you this story. So my kid is like sick home one day and I'm like, he's really sick. So I'm like, fine, I'll let you stay. He's like, ma, I want to open a puppet shop in our front yard. And I was like, okay. And so he makes this sign. We bring out our puppets. Like, I don't know what's going to happen. This woman walks by us and he wants to make these puppets. I don't know how to sew. I'm just like, hey lady, can you sew us a puppet? So she's standing there and Art, my 4 year old son, looks at her and she goes, how old are you? He's like, I'm four. And then he goes, my grandmother is dead. And I'm sitting there going like, whoa. Like I have.

[Heather]

Where did that come from?

[Susan Liu]

Yes. Yeah. Like, and it's just like a, an initial greeting. My grandmother is dead. And I was like, wow, what is happening in this kid's brain? You know, like he's seen pictures of my mother and it's inside the book. And so he knows that my mother is not alive. So he has a grandmother who's not Alive. And I think for me, the grief is like the loss of the lineage around my mother tongue. I have a broken Vietnamese now, and I'm not like really speaking that much Vietnamese to him because it's not that good anyways. We only eat Vietnamese dishes when we go out to restaurants because I don't really cook it at home. Because actually growing up, I tried to learn and there was a lot of like, if it's not perfect, you should quit. And so that's where the grief is, is like really thinking about our Vietnamese heritage and how does that live on past me.

[Heather]

Kids say the weirdest things, and you don't know when it's gonna happen that. I feel like there's no preparing for that. Ethan used to say to me, he. So Jake would have like these therapists at home. Ethan would come down, he'd be like, mommy, is it time for coffee or margarita? It'd be like 8am I'd be like, okay, please be quiet. You know, you never know what they're gonna say. They just say things. No, kids are. Are wild. I want to circle back a little bit because I think this part of your story and your grief process and I think of my audience a little bit too. The whole piece of. Your mother went in for a surgery that. Yes, it was a tummy tuck and some plastic surgery, but she should have been home the next day. And then you find out that the doctor had malpractice suits against him, was uninsured.

[Susan Liu]

Yeah, yeah. And was on probation. On probation.

[Heather]

And continued after. After killing your mom. Continued to do surgeries and was sort of preying on. Not sort of preying on Vietnamese families.

[Susan Liu]

Yes.

[Heather]

That is its own sense, I would imagine, of anger and grief. And I know that you very much were trying to seek revenge. How did that help if it did? And how has that changed for you over the years? You know, when I think of my son's journey, there were some doctors that. There was one doctor in particular who made a really bad decision, and Jake was having seizures and having issues. We stopped at one hospital, A doctor treated him with propofol. He was 8 months old. When we finally got to Boston Children's, they were like, we would never, ever have used propofol on anyone younger than 3 and probably not even a 3 year old. I still live in that space of anger sometimes. And I. How do you handle that? Like, how do you. You went through the revenge, like, kind of seeking and then.

[Susan Liu]

Yeah, so I wanted to avenge my mother's death. You know, at this point Point. I had gone to Harvard. I was getting my MBA at Yale. I was thinking, I am so much more privileged than my. My dad was when he was trying to process what was going on. And he has an elementary understanding of English. And so much is happening in the hospital at the time. Like, I felt like as an adult, this is my time to, to help my father and to help my family. And so I was like, okay, I'm just gonna. I found out the. The doctor was still practicing. He was on probation. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to give him targeted Facebook ads and I'm going to creep him out and I'm going to have this billboard by his clinic. I'm going to get an expose. I'm going to do a class action lawsuit. Like, yes, like, this is what we are going to do. And at the time, it was grad school and I was trying to figure out, am I moving to Seattle? I'm about to graduate, I'm looking for a job. I'm like, okay, I'm going to hit pause on this until I can settle down my life. I moved to Seattle. I start this up again after I get a job. And then I found out he died. I was like, oh, my God, how do I have an enemy if my enemy is dead? And I. And I have to say, like, I. I mean, that totally just sent me into a tailspin. And I, I just kind of gave it up. And there's one line in the book I was like. And then I did what everyone does when they want to distract themselves. I got married. And it's when I get married and my aunt spirit channels my mom at my wedding. At the wedding, I was like, oh, I gotta, like, revive this. Like, she wants me to go find her. And so then I go write letters to the plastic surgeon's children. And that's not out of malice. That's really like, I need closure. Like, did your life suck after my life really sucked, you know, like, did you ever think about my mom ever again? Did she have any significance to anyone in this life besides me? Like, and that's what I wanted to understand because, remember, I don't have closure because my family won't talk. And then the daughter, the. His daughter calls me, leaves a voicemail, she wants to talk. I'm so excited. I text her back with some time, and then it's like the trail goes cold. And I'm like, oh, my God, did she get spooked by her brothers? Like, Like, I just, I was at this place where just Somebody give me closure. But then when she stops responding, that's when I realized, oh, you know what this is actually really about? It's not about avenging my mother's death. It's actually about resolving this with my living family. That's the first line of the book. Everyone knows the tragedy of the dead, but let's talk about the tragedy of the living. And so it redirected this work that I needed to do between me and my own family. How do I respect their boundaries but also find my own closure and do my own healing? So really, it's like the doctor was this, like, great target for me to go and maybe find some money for my dad. But then it all falls apart. And I realize at the end of the day, it's still about family.

[Heather]

It all comes back to that. And I think you just said something so important. And when you talk about, like, living with what you need, but then living within the boundaries of what other people need. For some of us who kind of want to live our grief more loudly, right? Like, who want to sort of be like, hey, we're here and we're living it, and this is what we want to talk about. You kind of just want to be all in, and it's hard when you're with people who don't want to also be all in with you. How can. How can we gently push? Because I think it's good if you kind of face it a little, but also respect of where you're just not willing to go further.

[Susan Liu]

Like I said earlier when I. When I changed, I'm now changing the dynamic. Everyone inevitably will change. The personal growth development lesson that I did not anticipate is at the end of the day, only I can make myself feel whole. They can't do it for me.

[Heather]

And it's not just grief that that's true for, right? Like, that's just. That's just life lesson, right? Like, if we can figure out our own baggage, whatever that is, then we can put better stuff out. Then we can be more forthcoming. Like, so it's grief, I think, is the main topic of it. But really, in all things, we can only. We can only be responsible for our own individual journey.

[Susan Liu]

But grief is this forcing function to accelerate all of that because it keeps rearing its beautiful, ugly head at you. And you're like, I'm still not done with that.

[Heather]

Okay, So I asked this of a lot of my guests. It's something that in the last couple years of my sort of, like, grief journey that I have been thinking about more. And it's something that I used to do that I thought I was the only one. So, like, I talk to Jake, right? Like, I talk to him out loud in my kitchen. I talk to him, you know, while I'm folding laundry. Do you talk to your mom?

[Susan Liu]

You know, that was a common question I got, which is like, do you feel closer to your mother now that you've done all this stuff around it? And. And I will tell you the times when I wanted to give up with this artsy, fartsy stuff of like, should I keep putting on these shows? She came to me that one night, and she came to me and she was like, like, you gotta keep going. Like, don't cover up the story, Susan. Don't cover up the story. And I'm like, I needed that reassurance. I needed her to be so explicitly hit. Hit over the head on the. Yeah. You know, like. And also she came through, through psychic Cindy. There's also another spiritual channeler named Uncle Number nine. But, like, my mother has come through with messages when I wanted to give up after I wrote the book. And I was like, anticipating publish date. And like, the last seven months since it's been published, I go through massive periods of dou. And a mentor was like, that is when you need to talk to her. But talk to her every day.

[Heather]

Talk to.

[Susan Liu]

Make it a practice. Like, talk to her. She's there for you. But the mind is a funny place. The mind for me, because of, I felt abandoned from my mother. I do go to this default place of I'm alone, I'm alone, and nobody's going to come for me. So lately, when I'm out driving and I'm like, I'm at a fork in the road, I go, ma, make yourself known, baby. Like, here's a situation. Or sometimes I do talk to her right before I go to sleep, you know, And I don't want to make it a practice that I only talk to her when I'm in trouble, when I need something from her. As much as I've interfaced with the spiritual dimension, I still doubt it because the inner child still has such deep wounds. Like, I want to tell you that I talk to her all the time and we're like the closest we've ever been. But that's not true.

[Heather]

Yep.

[Susan Liu]

My truth is, it's a practice that I am working on, but it is not my. My safe space that I go to.

[Heather]

It's interesting. And I don't know that this is true or not, because it's your mother. And for me, it's my son. So it's different, right? Like, it's just. It's a different dynamic. So for me, it really is just, like, I feel like I talk to my one son all the time on the phone, so then I'm like, oh, hey. Like, I just talk half the time. My husband's probably like, are you nuts? Like, who are you talking to now? You know? So it's interesting. I think that dynamic is. It makes sense a little bit, right? Like, that it's not quite there yet.

[Susan Liu]

You need to do what serves you. And the question is, what do you need to do to be the best version of you? And if that's talking to Jake while you folding laundry, you talking to Jake.

[Heather]

Amen. Yeah. No, you're right. I want to do this one part that we do at the end of the show all the time, and I don't often give people a heads up. So here it is. It is called Ask Heather Anything. So you got anything for me? Some people go funny, some people go serious, some people go inappropriate. You know, we've covered all the gamuts.

[Susan Liu]

After Jake passed away, did you want to have another kid?

[Heather]

Ooh, that's a topic for me, right? I did not. And we were not planning already, so we had Ethan. Fifteen months later, we had Jake. They were both born healthy. We ended up leaving Boston, moving to New York, and that was our journey, you know, we were, like, not having any more kids. We were really happy. We had two healthy boys. And after Jake died, that was probably the number one question people asked. It was just this thing. It was like, oh, so you're gonna have another kid? And I. For me, it became this, like, really hard question because all I heard, like, people were saying, like, are you gonna have another kid? And all I heard is, are you replacing Jake? Like, it was one of those moments, right, where, like, I couldn't. I couldn't differentiate that. So, no. The answer was no, because it wasn't what we were going to do, and I didn't want to change it. People weren't asking me if they were gonna replace Jake, but that was how I heard it, and I couldn't work through that. Like, it took me a really long time to separate those things. Like, like, we couldn't even get it. Like a goldfish. I just was very much, like, I had to put all my energy in keeping, like, Ethan alive because I was so. As a mom, right? Like, when your kid dies, it's like, you have done the thing that. That you, like, that's your job. And I feel like there was part of me that was like, I couldn't keep him alive. Why would I even. Like, I literally didn't even have fish for a long time. Now we have a cat. In all these years later, I still. Sometimes I'm like, okay, is the cat going to be okay? Like, when we travel, I get like, I have someone move into the house to take care of the cat. Like, I'm like a lunatic, but because I think it all comes from this place.

[Susan Liu]

I remember for me, when I was pregnant, I didn't have a relationship with the fetus. I didn't talk to my baby because I was. I had two classmates who had stillbirths. And I was like, I want the grief to be less if my baby does die. So I'm not going to be attached to it.

[Heather]

So don't get. So I'm not going to have build a relationship. Yeah.

[Susan Liu]

It's like, you know, like, yeah, grief does some funny stuff to you. Where I'm like, oh, I'm going to minimize pain.

[Heather]

It goes back to the control thing. Right. Like, you think you can control some of this?

[Susan Liu]

Yeah. Second question. I encourage people to live like they're mortal. Because we live like we're immortal. We put things off, you know, we. We don't deal with stuff. And I'm so curious. What is one thing that you want to do before you die? Like, what's the thing that you'd be like, feeling regret? Like, oh, my God. I didn't. For me, it was do standup comedy. And then so I went to go do it. Cause it was terrifying. But I wanted to make sure I tried before I died. What's that thing for you?

[Heather]

So that's a really good question. And I feel like I'm kind of in that right now. When I was in college, I went to school for, like, print journalism. I wanted to write. I wanted to do all of these things. And then my life sort of pivoted. And, you know, I didn't. I didn't move out of Boston. I wanted to, like, move to LA or move to New York. I wanted to, like, do all these big things. And I just didn't. Like, I found a. Like, I stayed pretty comfortable. Like, I. I had a boyfriend, and I sort of stayed for him. And then I got a job. Like, just life kind of played out in this one way. There's part of me that would not change anything because I ended up where I am. Right. I ended up with my husband and Ethan And Jake. But there was always that, like, path not taken. There was always that I worked in publishing. Then I became a teacher. Like, I did all these other things, and now I have this nonprofit. But through this podcast, I have sort of reconnected with the part of me that is, like, wanted to be the journalist that wanted to figure out the stories, that wanted to write. And I've started writing again a little bit, and I've, you know, write some articles, and I'm trying to get to the space where I write more. Like, I write these letters to Jake. And my big regret would be if I don't do anything with that, if I. And I'm not sure if it's a book or if it's just, like, I want to be a writer. Here at 50, I'm sort of finally, like, I was closer at 17, 18, 19, and then I had this whole period where I wasn't. And now, finally, at 50, I feel like I'm coming full circle, and I just want to figure it out and get it done. I'm gonna act like I'm mortal. I may not have forever. Like, get it done, Heather.

[Susan Liu]

So, okay, so, like, if we were to just, like, really just, like, manifest this. Is this, like, a memoir of letters? Is this, like, a badass sub stack with 10,000 subscribers and doing weekly stuff? Like, what. What it. Like, tell me. So what is it?

[Heather]

Originally? It's so funny that you said both of the things you said originally. It was like, I want my letters published. I want to keep writing them. I want, like, the letters to Jakey to be a thing. I want it to be a source for people. I wanted to entertain. I wanted to make people cry. They're raw. They're all of the things. This world is so crazy to me now, and I feel like I'm an old lady when I say this, but, like, I've just entered the substack world, and I'm obsessed. Like, I have, like, I have a page that has my name, and that's it. Like, there's nothing on it yet. Like, that's. But I'm just going down the rabbit hole of what people are putting out there and just this ability to share all of these things and have it be out there. So. So my answer is both, because I only sort of understand the publishing world in terms of, like, you do a book. But I'm starting to figure out this. Like, I just saw, like, Tina Brown is now just doing a weekly instead of, like, she's doing her diary on substack. I Gotta figure it out, but I gotta just do it. Like, I'm in my head and I want to bring it out.

[Susan Liu]

Yeah. No, I mean, the publishing world has gone through its own evolution and some people can say, like, parts of it is broken or like traditional media is. Is forced to change. And so Substack is. It seems like one of those answers there where the power and the money is going back to the creator. I'm also curious about Substack, and I am starting to look at it too. You know, it's different than Medium and it also holds space for podcasts, too. More power to the people there. And I wish you all the best and thank you.

[Heather]

How great is it to have an actual tangible book though, right? Like, I don't read on a Kindle. I don't read anything. Like, I love to sit with a book. So there is that piece of me that's like, I love all these other opportunities, but there is that piece that was like, oh, I just want a book.

[Susan Liu]

It is a trip, girl. When I go into Barnes and Noble and I'm like, let me sign some stock. And then they don't even check my id. You know what I mean? I'm like, I could be a fake. It is beautiful to also see outside of the world of the Internets and the clicky clicks. For me, my love letter to my mother exists independently of me. Hand selling it to each person. So that's how I avenged my mother's death, everybody.

[Heather]

Boom. Susan, thank you so much. Thank you for being a part of A Place of yes, thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for writing your book. I have enjoyed talking to you so much and your paperback comes out April 29th. April 29th.

[Susan Liu]

If my story resonates with you, please read the book or listen to the audiobook. And you can always watch £140 off my website if you want to stream it for a good cry. I'll say yes to you anytime.

[Heather]

Thank you for listening to A Place of Yes. Please follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you really like this episode, please share it with a friend. It would make a world of difference if we could just reach more people and share the work that we do and the stories we want to tell. Thank you so much for watching.