I operate from an education and harm reduction lens
I am not a clinician nor do I provide any diagnosis. I am happy to connect you to mental health resources including therapists!
My name is Howie Zuo and I use he/him pronouns. I am cisgender and heterosexual, and my background is culturally intersectional between Western (American) and Asian (Chinese). I continue to learn and grow like everybody, and a component of that is recognizing myself, where I come from, and how my way of thinking is formed, which includes filtering through what was formed through privilege, experience, struggle and oppression, patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism. That was a long run on sentence. From there, I can hold myself accountable and grow to be better and unlearn what doesn’t serve me and my community, and learn new ways to think and operate.
I wrote the above to give you a bit of context of where I come from and how I see the world. I recognize many, but not all of the privileges that I have, and express them so that I can present the most authentic version of myself to you. My goal is to do bridge building and community building; that life is better when we have communities that are diverse in backgrounds and ways of thinking.
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My story is a lot like many of your stories; I am a child of immigrant parents who moved from China to the United States with dreams of a better future for themselves and their children. My childhood had an emphasis on studying hard, getting into a good university, a good job, and so on.
Between choosing between a doctor, accountant, lawyer, or engineer, I ended up studying Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech (Go Yellowjackets!). It wasn’t something I was passionate about but it was supposed to guarantee success. I assumed my parents knew what was best for me and I was following all of the steps they said I needed to become financially secure and happy.
I knew the gig was up when I graduated from college. There was no sudden epiphany when I received my diploma. In fact, things got harder. Graduating into the Great Recession, employers weren’t interested in a new graduate with little experience. My then-girlfriend left me, with a hole in my heart and self-esteem damaged. Where was this so-called happiness I was promised?
Moving to California from New Jersey enabled a fresh start. It wasn’t easy but it was worth it, to build myself up and the life I wanted. Although things got better (a good job making decent money, a nice place to live, and a loving partner), I still felt like something was missing…
The conclusion that I came to was that I was living my life by every other terms except mine. Certainly, I was comfortable but not fulfilled. I wanted to be in the driver’s seat of my life. I kept depending on external factors to make me happy, but realized I can only be happy if I internalize being happy.
Seeing friends and others in the community struggle with the same issues, I decided to start Thriving Turtle. As a Life Coach and Emotional Intelligence Trainer, I want to be the resource that I wish I had when I was younger. To be clear, I don’t resent the fact that I learned so late, but I can see how much better me and my community can be if we learned sooner rather than later.
Thank you for reading my story. I would love to connect with others who want to support others in their personal happiness and emotional intelligence journey and open to collabs / networking / etc.
Thriving Turtle Facebook page