How do you learn to parent when your own childhood was marked by instability, war, or loss? What strengths – and vulnerabilities – do we pass on to our children without realizing it? And how can families rewrite those inherited scripts?
These are the questions at the heart of Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Dr. Suzan Song timely upcoming book WHY WE SUFFER AND HOW WE HEAL: Using Narrative, Ritual, and Purpose to Flourish Through Life’s Challenges (Feb 24, Harmony).
Dr. Song provides a powerful blend of neuroscience, psychology, and stories from her work with former child soldiers, frontline workers, grieving parents, and families in transition. As both a clinician and a mother, she uncovers something essential: healing is possible, and it can begin in the home.
In an interview, Dr. Song can speak to high-impact topics for parents, educators, and caregivers, including:
- Turning instability into resilience: How kids can thrive through school changes, moves, social conflict, and emotional turbulence.
- Practical tools for family transformation: Creating rituals, using narrative to make sense of change, and building purpose-driven habits at home.
- Breaking cultural scripts of “perfect” parenting: Why the myth of maternal martyrdom harms families – and how to redefine parenting on your own terms.
- Understanding inherited stress: What emerging research reveals about how trauma is passed down biologically and psychologically – and how parents can help reverse it.
- Re-parenting ourselves: Why unresolved childhood wounds quietly shape our parenting and partnerships, and how adults can create corrective emotional experiences.
- Raising secure, adaptable kids: How parents’ ability to understand their own stories predicts secure attachment more than perfection ever will.
- Ambiguous loss & letting go: Supporting families through separation, divorce, adolescence, and other transitions where children are physically or emotionally out of reach.
- It truly takes a village: the development of alloparenting and benefits of parenting in community
- Protective factors that heal across generations: Mindfulness, community care, narrative work, and the small daily practices that reset a family’s stress “thermostat.”
Growing up as a Korean American daughter of immigrants and mom of two, Dr. Song brings both cultural insight and scientific authority. Her previous talks – The Neurobiology of Tweens and Neurobiology of Stress & Trauma for Frontline Workers – have been widely praised for being practical, compassionate, and deeply resonant.
“This book is a gift of empathy and lived wisdom – rare, real, and deeply human.”
– Dr. Koen Sevenants, former global lead for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergencies for UNICEF’s Child Protection Area of Responsibility