Termite TV - Life Stories

Hi, my name is Susan. This is the first time anybody’s ever asked me to document my life story. I was born on a dark and stormy night in Des Moines, Iowa, 1958, and I’m going to do the Reader’s Digest condensed version of this. Basically at the age of eighteen I moved to San Diego, fell in love with the ocean, fell in love with the beach, and I lived there for a number of years. Went to college, went to graduate school, fell in love, got married, moved up to northern California, and got away from the beach. Couldn’t stand it. Too damn cold. So, about three years ago through divine intervention, I swear, I was able to come here to the big island, here to Kona, and I went to a retreat center. And the reason why I went there is a friend of mine who knew me suggested that I would love Hawaii, love to live here, and I’d never thought about it before. So, I came to Kona, and it was even better than I had imagined, and pretty much at that point made the decision to move here to Hawaii. So, started working on it, started working, started saving my money, started looking into what would be involved in the move and made some really great progress, really great progress. Started saving money, started working on quarantine process for my animals to get here, passed all the licensing exams necessary in Hawaii to work in my career, and then in the middle of all my plans about a year ago January I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And that took a little time off from my move to Hawaii, but a month after my surgery I was coming over here taking a licensing exam and still working towards coming here. Well, I got here about two weeks ago, arrived in Oahu, stayed there for a few days, took my animals, and then came here. And I’ve been here for about two weeks, and I’m still walking around saying, ‘ I can’t believe I’m here. I really made it. I finally made it. I’m really here,’ and I’m really happy to be here. Planning on spending my life here, my career here. I’m a psychotherapist, I’ve been, I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist in California, as well as in Hawaii, and I’ve got a speciality in substance abuse. So, I will be able to find a niche here and looking forward to this.