De-center colonial logic in “mental health.” Re-center liberation and resistance in healing. So that you can be in balanced relationships with yourself, your family, your communities, your ancestors, and the land.
Accompany and guide you on your journey back home to yourself. So that you can be your whole self with your child and offer yourself as a gift to the world.
Transcend the gender binary. Re-imagine liberation through poetry, incantation, movement, burlesque, and Traditional Thai Medicine.
Meet My Ancestors
I’m a descendant of Thai-Chinese ancestors who were healers, diviners, merchants, and royal chefs…
Along with those gifts also come generational cycles of gambling, addiction, emotional neglect, and dissociation that were a result of forced migration from Southern China to Thailand, abandonment of their spiritual practices to assimilate with Catholicism, losses in pregnancy and birth, class oppression, and racial discrimination.
The intergenerational family healing work and liberation work I’m doing with you at Come Back to care is a culmination of my ancestors’ hope and healing.
Meet my inner child
A child of the Cosmos who wrapped a towel on “his” head and pretended to be a mermaid princess,
Who listened to the Wind and enjoyed gathering jasmine blossoms with “his” grandmas for the altar,
Who had to erase herself, silence her songs to the Wind, mask the terror inside with a smile, and stop dancing to “man up.”
People pleasing, perfectionism, control, assimilation, and being invisible were the survival strategies I had to overlearn to protect myself.
Now I’m re-parenting myself and upgrading those outdated survival strategies.
I love myself…most of the time. And I’ve been re-learning to trust and honor myself again.
Now (when I’m not hangry), I see that life is a thousand joyful sorrows and sorrowful joys…to paraphrase a Buddhist teacher named Jack Kornfield.
So I practice living life as a ceremony…sacred, intentional, and awe-filled.
I bet parts of my journey resonate with you too:
Fashion shows in grandma’s room taught me what love felt like
The Safety, Privilege, and Invisibility I Found Living Stealth
How My Parents & I Are Breaking Our Family Cycles…after I slammed the door in their faces
"If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive."
- Audre Lorde, a self-described "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,"
Because I dance with oppression and stare into its eyes daily to survive, I know White, colonial, capitalist patriarchy all too well.
I also know healing and freedom intimately. That’s why I’m here with you in your healing journey and our collective liberation journey.
Meet My Support (Eco)System
They help me help you.
My ancestors
They teach me how to soften control, be still, and remember my dignity and divinity.
They pick me up from the kitchen floor when self-doubt takes over.
The squirrels I’m caring for
They teach me to delight in the extraordinary in the ordinary. And to be a humble steward to the land I’m a guest on.
They remind me to take breaks, recharge, and restore.
The families and children I’ve served
They teach me what radical love and fierce compassion look like, both of which spark change and healing in communities and across generations.
“As a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible.”
-Toni Cade Bambara
Serving Families & Young Children is My Highest Honor
Over a decade plus doing this work, I always find myself collaborating with parents to heal the wounds of rejection, abandonment, and unworthiness that they developed when they were little, even when we start our healing journey talking about their postpartum depression, anxiety, or other mental health diagnoses.
We keep putting “post traumatic stress disorder” in its historical and political context so that we can do the healing work our ancestors couldn’t and nurture intergenerational family resilience.
We keep connecting the dots between houselessness and white supremacy, or between food insecurity and capitalist patriarchy even when we start our work with finding food and housing.
No matter what brings families to my sessions, the throughline of the healing work is holding space for parents to heal their inner child wounds by re-parenting themselves in a community and heal their internalized oppression wounds by practicing social justice through their daily parenting. So that they break free from the “good parenting” scripts written by the outdated family patterns from previous generations and oppressive social norms to raise their children by their values (aka their own parenting playbook).
Let’s use political analysis & social justice action to sharpen your parenting strategies.
Learn with the Come Back to Care Podcast
Unlearn with Nat in free monthly community workshops
Practice with a community of social justice curious families
Surprise!
Nat's genuine passion for guiding families and nurturing relationships shines through in every episode. It is evident that the advice and wisdom shared on the podcast are rooted in profound experience and expertise, making it all the more impactful and relevant.
Nat's ability to connect with their audience on a profound level is reminiscent of Grace Lee Boggs, a visionary activist and philosopher who dedicated her life to civil rights and social justice. Like Boggs, Nat possesses a unique way of combining intellectual depth with heartfelt compassion, empowering parents, caregivers, and educators to create positive change in their communities.
— Can Foster
The Come Back to Care Podcast Review on Apple Podcast
Write your parenting playbook and re-parent your inner child in small steps with me in your inbox…
Bite-sized reflections and action plans for you to build your own practice of social justice parenting & inner child re-parenting. Written with love and sent with care every other week.