Dr. Stephanie Han, Honolulu, Oahu

“To be in the water like this is to be in movement to a musical note, it is to be one with color while painting, to be with a line while drawing.” From the upcoming, Break.

Dr. Stephanie Han, Korean-American author, educator, speaker and self-proclaimed “bad surfer” came to surfing with a dream - to stop the splintering of her family. Instead, the ocean exposed the jagged, reef-like edges, of her marriage, and herself. Though her relationship with water has been complex—the haunting of a childhood near-drowning, years of phobia, and a hella long learning curve to swim—the ocean finally called her home, becoming an integral part of her story, and her life. Through the sublime and the savage, surfing is teaching her to listen to her body, a place once ignored by her powerful mind. Steph’s writing, like her speaking, is ferocious, visceral, intentional, and empowering. As a producer for Hawaii Pubic Radio’s The Conversation, and writer of her Substack, Woman, Warrior, Writer, she showcases brilliant women who are authoring their lives. And for those who have not found their voice, she teaches. You can find her eviscerating, award-winning short stories Swimming In Hong Kong, on her website. And be on the lookout for her upcoming book, Break (excerpted above) where she shares her (surf-laced) divorce story, and teaches women to write their own. You will want to cheer for Steph, yourself, and all women after this episode!

 Website: drstephaniehan.com   IG @drstephaniehan 
Drstephaniehan.substack.com

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Transcript

[00:07] Sheila: Welcome to the Dropping Into Power podcast, where we'll be hearing stories about the transformational power of surfing from women surfers of all ages, all levels and all over. We'll hear about courage, commitment, struggles, frustration, epiphany, and of course, life transformations large and small. I'm your host, Sheila Gallion, and I am stoked to share these conversations with these amazing women full of so much passion with all of you. Aloha, and welcome to the dropping into Power podcast. I am so excited to be here today with Dr. Stephanie Hahn. I don't even know where to start. Steph has introduced me to multiple women. She is a Honolulu based powerhouse, journalist, woman warrior, writer actually. I think we connected directly when you sent me your magnificent book. Oh my God. I'll gush on about that. I'm going to read her official bio, but I just want to call out that this woman is such an incredible empowerer of women lifter of women on a mission that is so pure and so joyful and so powerful. So I'm super excited to finally be talking to the great connector and writer and author and educator, and I'm going to read a little bit more specifically of her bio so you can have some perspective. So Dr. Stephanie Hahn is an author, educator, and speaker. Her online workshops check them out. I will put the link in the bio, Drestephaniehan.com. Focus on women's Voices and narrative. She authored Swimming in Hong Kong, which is a book of the most gorgeous short stories I'm going to stop. I just have to blather on about it. In particular, I was overwhelmed by every woman needs to read the body politic, every woman ever and every woman young woman. Now that's going to college. So I'm just harp on that for 1 second. So Swimming in Hong Kong, which won the Patterson Fiction Prize and the Spokane Prize and was a finalist for AWP's. Grace Paley Prize and the Asian Books Blog Award. Individual stories. Won awards from the South China Morning Post, Nimron International Journal and Santa Fe Writers Project. A Pen and Vona Fellow. She received grants from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and was the inaugural English literature PhD of City University of Hong Kong. She's a producer for The Conversation on Hawai Public Radio and lives on Oahu, home of her family since 19 four. Steph actually interviewed me on Hawai public radio on the conversation along with Curvy surfer girl. That was just incredible. And I just can't say enough about what she's done to connect women. It's just so visceral and beautiful. And she has another place I know we connected is she started surfing during her divorce and we're going to talk more about that. Steph, I'll just say hi. Hi.

[03:11] Dr. Stephanie Han: So glad to connect and see you.

[03:16] Sheila: I could just literally read I just read your bio on your website. I just want to keep reading. I could literally read it all out, but I'm actually going to start with a quote from your so you're writing a new book. Let's just start with that. Tell us about the new book that you're writing.

[03:32] Dr. Stephanie Han: I'm writing a book. It's a self help book, so it's a bit of a pivot. And what it does is that it tells women how to write a divorce story, but it also gives women a chance to understand ideas of narrative and storytelling. Yeah, that's my current project.

[03:55] Sheila: So the surf chapter that you sent me, that's actually part of that book.

[03:59] Dr. Stephanie Han: Yeah, that's a short essay. That's a part of it.

[04:03] Sheila: So it has a wonderful title break a Surf Break. A surf break is a reef, rock, or land area where the water hits and causes a wave to form. And I don't know why, but just in the context of what we've just said, it's just such a powerful metaphor, and I never really thought about it before. That literally titled the book, oh, my gosh, I got it. It just comes right into it. And I'll definitely we'll come back to your story, but I want to read this part because as a writer myself and a surfer writer, in these places where we're trying to find I want to say find ourselves. That's the wrong word. Where we're trying to come through ourselves. I feel like you really wove this together beautifully. You said as a writer, I came to see what I was trying to experience. It's very similar to how and why I write or engage in any art making. And you're talking about surfing. To be in the water like this is to be in movement to a musical note. It is to be one with color while painting, to be with a line while drawing. At times, if I'm lucky, if everything aligns, I experience freedom, the sublime. I'm at the beginning of my surf journey and have been for a while, but I've come to see that the feeling of being with the water is very much like the flow state I enter when writing, when creating. So I so relate to that, and I think it's really I really am starting to wonder if this is why so many women are being drawn to the water right now. Because it is weird, right? How many women are being drawn to the water. So I just want to start in this place for you of your connection with writing and surfing and how it has evolved and erupted in a way.

[05:56] Dr. Stephanie Han: Well, I think first I was a writer. I've been writing for a long time, various kinds of forms and genres that I was interested in. And I think it's because I was bookish. I was a bookworm when I was little. And when you're a bookworm, when you're little, you often think about writing stories because it's something that you're used to. And I was a bookworm because I was very isolated. I was growing up in Iowa. I'm Korean American. At a time where there were very few Asian Americans in Iowa. It's still not a place you would run to if you're Asian American to.

[06:36] Sheila: Be really think of it as a hotspot.

[06:39] Dr. Stephanie Han: We moved a lot until I was about eight or nine, was very transient. And then we moved to Iowa. And I think because of the moving, I was a military Brett. And then where I ended up living, I was different and I was an outsider, and I had a hard time making friends. So my mom this is before the days of social emotional learning, my mom told me, instead of giving me ideas about how to make friends, because I said to her, Mom, I don't have any friends. My mom told me, well, if you read, you'll always have a friend in a book. And so read I did, and I did have friends in books. It meant hours and hours reading. And I think that's how I became a writer. My journey with surfing, I associate really with my relationship to the water, which was pretty complex because I almost drowned when I was six. When I was six, we were living for a year on the military base in Seoul. My dad got drafted after he got a US. Green card. My mom's from Hawaii, but my dad was from Korea. He got the US. Green card. He was drafted for the Vietnam War. They were drafting physicians then up to the age of 35, but he didn't serve in Vietnam. We went altogether to Korea, which was considered at the time, the second worst place in Asia to go. But he was returning back, obviously, to his home country. And we were in Seoul, and there was urban areas like that. And it's not on the water. I mean, there's a river in Seoul, but there wasn't a lot of chance to obviously swim. Okay. And I think I was five or six, and my uncles took me up to the mountains, and they were crossing this stream, and we were all like I was piggyback on one uncle, probably, who also didn't know how to swim, and they were hitting water that was probably to their chin. So it was my cousins and I, two uncles, another cousin, and then another was in an inner tube. And then they slipped. And then once they slipped, another person slipped, and we all went underwater, at which point, I guess I was grabbing my uncle's head, pulling it. And then I had a little older cousin. He was nine, and he was in an inner tube, and he actually saved me. He pulled me up. And then the uncles came above water, and then they put me on the shore, and they didn't make me go back in the water. And after that, what happened was I had a hard time washing my face. I could barely take a bath right, because I didn't want to be by a lot of running water. When my aunts or my mom would try by a swimming pool to put a coin in, I would reach with my arm as long as I could and refuse to put my head underwater. So I was really petrified, and it took years of swimming lessons for me to get over this. My mom was from Hawaii. That said she grew up on the plantation in Wai, Hawaii. It's a little bit landlocked. She wasn't really by the ocean all the time, but she always felt we had to swim. And so I had swimming lessons. But you know how there was always those kids, like, at the Y who would fail? That was me. So it'd be group lessons. I would fail. I was like a beginner forever. Oh, my God, this parallels my surface. Anyway, so I was a beginner for years, and finally, my mother at this point was like, oh, my God, you got to get private swim lessons. Like, what's going to happen? And all of a sudden, I remember this. And this is the first time I started thinking about dreams. It was the summer of fourth grade or fifth grade, summer of fourth grade. So I think it was nine and a half or ten. And this was years of swimming, like, five constantly. And I was failing. Nothing could go right. And I had a dream that I could swim, and I ran. And I told my swimming teacher I had a dream that I could swim. And that day, I did the elementary backstroke. I did swim. And then mom, being the mom she is, swimming lessons amped up because she's like, you have to be able to swim normally. And so by the time I left swimming class, I could do butterfly, backstroke, front stroke, crawl, but I was a really good swimmer. But then she told me, you have to be able to dive in the water. And I was like, what? What do you mean? You know? And again, they couldn't teach me. The lady would put out her arm. I would jump over her arm. I would jump, and I would make my hands in a diving there was nothing. And they were like, what's going oh, my God, this is so much like me surfing. Anyway, she hired the university diving coach, the University of Iowa diving coach. And I met the diving coach, and he said, okay, what do you weigh? I was like, 70 pounds. And then he said, okay, I'm going to take your feet. You're going to be upside down, and I'm going to walk to the edge of the diving board, and I'm going to drop you in, because the thing is, understanding that you're upside down and understanding that you have to cut the water. So he did this three times. I came back the next day. He did it two more times, and I could dive. And then my mother said, okay, it's all over. Swimming, diving, it's all over, it's all done. And I could do it.

[12:29] Sheila: And how old were you at that point?

[12:31] Dr. Stephanie Han: I think I was almost 1110 or eleven. So we're talking around five or six years of continuous failing.

[12:44] Sheila: I will give your mom credit for tenacity and give you credit for tenacity for sure, but also your mom, because I know there could have been a mom that was like this kid.

[12:55] Dr. Stephanie Han: Yeah, I mean, any normal person would have given up, but this is very similar to me surfing, because I keep going, but I can't really say I'm a good surfer. All these things happen, but I keep doing it. So that's just based on my personal record, because it seems like this is how I approach almost everything in life, from writing to swimming to almost everything that I've done in my life, I've done later than everyone should do it. Almost everyone has given up on me, and then I manage to do it, but it's simply because I get later, as time goes on, more focused, and I need a little more wins, and I want it enough, but it takes a long time. It's like, I remember I think I was seven and I wanted to do the splits. I didn't do them until I was 24 years old.

[13:56] Sheila: Wow.

[13:57] Dr. Stephanie Han: By that time, everyone's given up and I didn't even know that I wanted to do it anymore. And then I realized, wow, yeah, isn't that weird?

[14:07] Sheila: I still want to do the splits. Well, I think it's interesting. It's a slow cooker, and then it's like it needs to get this to sort of this ferocity level.

[14:17] Dr. Stephanie Han: Yeah.

[14:17] Sheila: And it seems like once you've got that in your teeth, you're not going to give up. But it seems like it has to build to that place.

[14:27] Dr. Stephanie Han: Yeah, it has to build to everybody. Like giving up on me, basically.

[14:32] Sheila: And maybe this, I don't know. Do you have a lot of things? Do you have things you want to do that you sort of decide and then these other ones just surface up? Like, do you have a whole bunch of things? Sound good?

[14:42] Dr. Stephanie Han: Yeah, that's the thing. I am an ADHD truth teller, so I do have ADHD, so I have a lot of different things that I try. Like, I'm game for anything, put something in front of me, somebody's like, hey, let's try that. I'm like, yeah, okay. I'll pretty much try anything a couple of times and then I gain more interest and then I invest personally and I do it. But that was writing to me too. My journey for my book was 20 years from inception to publication.

[15:16] Sheila: That's comforting because I'm on that train myself. Don't give up. That really is the thing I hear. I think it is. There's two things I hear from people who have succeeded at hard things. One is don't give up. And of course, there's a whole bunch of people running around there that never gave up, that never get there. That's just the truth. But the ones that do, they say, don't give up. And I got lucky. Finally. Yeah, it's those two things. And they do have to come together sometimes. All we have to do is look at poor old Vincent Mango. You know, sometimes it's just not your time, you know, and then just don't.

[16:00] Dr. Stephanie Han: Have somebody who also I think it's important, one or two people who believe in you at a certain point. Yeah, those people might not be there for the whole, like nine yards of the journey, but during the point, during the time, you have to get a little bit of encouragement. And that's how it's kind of been with me with surfing, I have to say.

[16:23] Sheila: And it could I think that's why.

[16:24] Dr. Stephanie Han: I haven't given up.

[16:32] Sheila: So I want to hear about your support. Let's talk about, you know, the surfing, you know, my own story, which I've told, you know, a few times on the podcast, but, you know, it came from life or death. You know, it really did. Like, it just was this thing that ceased hold of me. It was the thing that gave me life when I was suicidal, so it took hold of me. And then there were people that showed up. There was a friend who took me out a couple of times, gave me a board. There was me sniffing around the surf shop, just talking to people. Nobody showed up anytime soon as like a massive mentor. But people will. When you want something really badly, you do find people that support you, and maybe only for a minute. Maybe they just pass through. But eventually someone feels sorry for you, at least, and gives you I've talked before about my first bottom turn, where some guy finally like, I was at the North Jetty at Humboldt and some guy said, go and it was my wave, and it was the first clean face I ever got. And I did a big old swooping turn, and he just let me. And I don't know when it would have happened if that hadn't happened, it didn't happen again. Anyway, for women that I'm finding, for everybody that I've talked to for surfing, there is some ferocious thing that's called in some way. Sometimes it's felt soft, sometimes it's felt loud. But let's hear your surfing story.

[18:10] Dr. Stephanie Han: Okay, yeah, well, that's what I wrote a little bit about. So of course I would come here even though I grew up on the mainland, hawai was the place of summers, weddings, funerals, this kind of thing. And so, of course, I would see people surfing, but this was kind of a mythic thing that people did, and I never saw women do it. I just kind of watch. And so it always seemed really feminine and just a different way to have a relationship to the water, right? Because you're on top of the water. This is different than swimming in the water, right? And in my 20s later, I did scuba dive, but I don't scuba dive now, and I'm not into being like, that deep in the water. It's supposed to be all those contraptions all the time, whatever, but it's just like you're on top of the waters, right? So it always held some kind of, I guess, mystery to me. And it looks so free and fun, right? About five years ago, when my divorce was really kicking off, five, six years ago, I thought, okay, our family needs an activity. Which I don't know what that's about, but I was like, if we have a family activity, maybe it'll all hold up, right? We just need to have a hobby, and then somehow it all come together. I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, so this is what you start to think about, though. You're dog paddling when you're divorcing or at least divorce. And so I thought, okay, well, I'll book a surfing lessons. And at the time, my child and I were living here and my ex was living overseas because we had been living in Hong Kong. So we had been kind of, I guess, sort of commuting a little for a couple of years, which I came to see also was things weren't going well with the marriage, so it was a substitute for analysis of it, like distance. I wanted to come back to the US. I wanted my son to be in school in the US. Et cetera. But that idea of a distant separation like that is pretty severe, actually. So I booked a surfing lesson, and I was all excited. And me being the random person I am, I've always been sort of active, but I hadn't surf. But I've done a million of different kinds of physical activities, so I was like, okay. And I told my ex, who then was working out with a trainer to figure out the exact way that he could surf and stuff like that. He was kind of sporty, but this is the dramatic difference between us. So I show up, my kid shows up, my ex shows up, and it's in Waikiki, and I'm up first, and I get the little push and boom, I'm up. Oh, my gosh, I'm living my dream. I'm like, hooray at that moment. It's such a surreal feeling. I'll never forget it. It's like you're flying, but you're not flying. Or are you flying and you're in the water? And it's just magical. And then I get out, and then my son, he gets a little push and boom, he's up. And I was like, oh my gosh, we're going to be a surfing family, and this will hold it all together. I don't know why this is what you call lack of analytical and critical thinking being applied, but anyway, so I look in the little screen you know how they have all those little tourist screens where people can take their pictures and pay money for these things? So I look in the screen, I'm so cheerful, and I see my ex. He is on the board, and he is frowning, and there's a grimace, and I understand that.

[22:02] Sheila: Is he standing? Did he make it to his feet? Okay, so he did make it to.

[22:07] Dr. Stephanie Han: Riding in, because I'm riding in, my kid's riding in. He has to ride in. It's like that. So he's riding in. He has good balance, but he's not happy. He doesn't look happy. I'm aware that sometimes when you're surfing that you need to focus, right? It's like you want to smile and you're smiling inside, but you're like, okay, I got to focus at the same time. But this was a look that I was familiar with, and I was familiar with it because I had spent many years trying to placate and make somebody feel happy and make somebody try to quell the situation, try to make everything smooth. So it was like a response that I started having of like, oh, my gosh, this person is going to be mad, and I got to try to make it all right. And of course, the reprimand, the anger, it didn't arise because it didn't always because sometimes people are inconsistent, and sometimes they get really mad and sometimes they don't. But you, as a person who's on the receiving end of that, always learn to live with a kind of tension of trying to placate and make things better. So surf lesson over. Family did not stay together, and divorce happened despite very good surf lesson. So divorce started to kick off, and I thought, okay, I'm going to surf. I really want to do this. And so I signed up for another surfing lesson, but I couldn't. It was like I literally felt my heart hurting on the board when I was paddling out. I was like, my heart hurts, which was literal metaphorical and actual physical pain. And I thought, this is not right. It's not the time. I couldn't do it. Divorce took a long time. It was a high conflict divorce. And so that fall later, I thought, okay, we moved to Maui, my kid and I, for a year. I was teaching there, and I thought, okay, we're going to try this surfing thing again. And so I tried it. My kid could stand up, and I could not stand up.

[24:34] Sheila: Oh, wow.

[24:34] Dr. Stephanie Han: I was like, okay, I'm not really standing up by now. There's been a lot there's, like, considerable effort. I was like, the surf instructor was this really young guy, a student. He's like and I tried stand up paddleboarding. I really liked that. I was really good at that. That was awesome. Immediately, I took to it, and the kid looks at me and he's like, you know, my mom and I, we just stand up paddleboarding. Maybe you got to give up trying to stand up. And I looked at him, and I was like, I don't want to give up yet. I know. Again, it's that whole thing everyone's giving up right on me. And I know I could see probably my son's, like, cringing on the beach, like, oh, my God, mom, just give it up. But I refused. And so the next fall, came back to Honolulu, got a surf instructor, and he was a little older and a little more patient, and he hit it off with my son. He was the one who helped my son, and my son became one of those kids. He goes to Sandy. He's a body surfer, and I attribute a lot of the healing and a lot of the way that he kind of came of age to the ocean in that sense. But I was still not I mean, randomly, I could kind of get up, and then I thought, okay, this is like, I don't know what's going on. And so finally, the surf instructor I had a wavestorm, though, to what he said, and so finally, the surface instructor is like, okay, I think maybe you got to try stephanie tried a different board, and so I tried a different board, and of course it was a lot easier. I couldn't stand up on the wavestorm, right?

[26:15] Sheila: I think they're hard.

[26:16] Dr. Stephanie Han: They're really hard. I was like, what's going on? And then I'm saying, I was like, oh, no, it's not happening. And so I stood up on the board, and I thought, okay, I'm going to go buy a board. So I ended up buying a usurf. Board from a person from Mongolia, which is really interesting. So this totally landlocked Mongolian who had come to Hawai sold me the board, and that was sort of symbolic for a lot of reasons. Koreans like East Central Asian. Whatever. Anyway, so then I figured out I'm not sure how I figured it out that I was goofy foot.

[26:52] Sheila: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

[26:56] Dr. Stephanie Han: I was, like, backwards trying, and it wasn't right. And the thing is, I'm goofy foot, probably because when I was a kid, I skateboarded a little, right? So it was, like, imprinted in my body. Even though I'm right, I'm not goofy foot in real life. Anyway, I'm a goofy foot surfer, right? And so later, I encountered surfing surgeon. He's like, I was kind of wondering what was wrong with you? Because I said, hey, I figured out I'm goofy. Kind of laughed, right? Anyway, I stood up. But if I think about it, if I think about that time, about how long it took me to stand up and me being really persistent and then being on the wrong foot and not knowing and just being, like, doing random stuff and trying, that was a while, but I refused to quit. And so, like, as usual, Steph kind of just doing it her own way, but not quitting. And so then yeah, so I started and sort of during COVID I did it more because I'm here, and it was beautiful to be in the water here with no tourists. Oahu is pretty crowded. And I was in Waikiki or whatever. It gets really crowded. It's kind of like surfing in Times Square. Sometimes I'm like, oh, my God. Get me out. I like it. It's easy, though, but it's good. It feels good. But sometimes it is really crowded, which is also more I decided that that is almost more scary than actually anything else about it is that there's a lot of people and they don't always know what they're doing. And so that's kind of worse, right? Because they can crash into you.

[28:51] Sheila: Yes.

[28:54] Dr. Stephanie Han: So then I started surfing. I did start to meet people. It was fun, but I think I wasn't as focused. Right. I was just kind of like, okay, let me try it. Hi, I met you on Facebook. We'll all go out. And that has pluses because I have met friends that I surf with from that. But also, you do tend to meet people who are random. And I would go out by myself and there'd be people on the break and you kind of get to know them or whatever. But then I had a really bad accident. By now I was standing up. I can't really say I was really advanced. I was riding small green waves. I was doing it, but I got in an accident. And I think it was because I didn't listen to what my body was trying to tell me, which is important. Yeah, that's kind of a metaphor also for why I stayed in a marriage that was so unhappy. I wasn't listening to myself. And I think this is something I live in my head a lot. Being in my head a lot was how I escaped a lot of things through writing in words and hiding behind ideas and words. I'd overthink stuff, right? Like, overthinking, I'm going to drown. I can't swim or I can't dive. I'm going to jump over this hand 15 times in a row and drive the swimming instructor crazy. I live in my hand.

[30:28] Sheila: Well, and also just not having the tools even to settle in and find those feelings or know what to do with them. I sort of joke with my daughter, who's a gen z with all kinds of emotional words that they have. My mom was a great complex and interesting woman. But typically it would be like, why are you so hypersensitive? Nobody would say to you, like, how are you? How is you? How are you feeling about that? And then if you have siblings or different relationships, like, yeah, you just don't develop some people just intuitively do it, but so many of us, especially if you're a thinker, and I am too, you just don't develop that relationship with your body.

[31:11] Dr. Stephanie Han: You need.

[31:11] Sheila: To override it in some ways, or you would never try it more. But on the other hand, yeah, you're missing those signals because you're so busy shutting them down for all kinds of other reasons. So I didn't mean to totally jump in there, but, yeah, it's difficult. So, on the one hand, yes, you were short circuiting, jumping over those hands and doing whatever, but it's because you couldn't get into your body to heal that either. To deal with that, you're just like, I'm up.

[31:37] Dr. Stephanie Han: And that's a great lesson of surfing. Right? So I got a big accident. I know I should have known it wasn't the right weather. I wasn't careful looking at it. It was way too big for me. Even if I'm not doing anything big, it just wasn't right. But I was like, I have to go. Because in my mind, I was like, I need to go today. Because if I don't go today, I didn't go the last two days. Again, it's sort of overthinking and not really aligning myself with the weather, with how my body is feeling. What's? Right, right. And so I go in, this person I don't really know, and then some other guy shows up, and sometimes guys can really they change the vibe.

[32:19] Sheila: Oh, for sure.

[32:21] Dr. Stephanie Han: All of a sudden, I was like, Wait, am I crashing a date? I thought it was like, us too, going. And being that it was a guy, I feel okay. He was perfectly nice. I don't even remember what he looks like anyway. But all of a sudden, why am I paddling where he wants to go? I don't usually go here, you know what I mean? And I guess it was turned around. I knew the weather wasn't right. It was kind of overcast, and boom, I was pushed down. Whacked. My top of my instep. I mean, I still have this huge scars. You can see it right up here. It hit the bottom. And I could feel it, like, whacking on the rock, slash coral, dead coral, whatever. And I turned around. I looked. I said, I've been hit. It was like blood everywhere. You had your accident. And I was kind of farther out than I usually paddle out. It was like, a little farther. So it really wasn't something I normally would have done. The person who was supposed to be my surf buddy just, like, waved because I guess I found out later she had to do her social media feed or something, which yeah, anyway, so everyone surfs for a different reason. But what happened was the gods were smiling. The gods were, like, saying, hey, you weren't paying attention. And boom. That's why you are getting this big gash. But right then, I got two pushes. The waves, like, one pushed me halfway there, and I was just holding onto my board. And then another wave just as that stop pushed me almost all the way in. And it was a very good lesson because it was like I felt like there was a reason I was supposed to come out. It was good. It also was a reminder because I do see a lot of women on some of these surf sites saying, like, I don't swim and I'm going to surf. I'm like, lady, you got to learn how you got to be able to swim. I mean, now I'm a swimmer because I had all those swimming lessons. But if you cannot swim for a long period of time, you should not be surfing, period. I don't care. And I see a lot of people, they don't know how to swim, and they try to surf. It's so weird to me. Anyway, so I kind of got out. I'm bleeding everywhere. Person is like, where you're going? I was like, I'm not sure. And bandage me up.

[34:48] Sheila: Go.

[34:48] Dr. Stephanie Han: And I get ten stitches. They're like big Frankenstein stitches. Huge ones. And so I was on land for several months, but it made me reexamine why I surf, who I want to be around, what my relationship to nature and the water might be. Yeah. How I thought about my physicality and my body and listening to my gut. I should have listened to my gut. I never should have gone. As soon as I went there and there was that weird dynamic, I shouldn't have gone. And I did. So it was a really good I guess it was a hard lesson. And then after that, of course, I kind of got paranoid, right? No, it never occurred to me to quit. But at the same time, I was like, do I really want to surf again? But I didn't equate surfing with the accident somehow and not surfing. So I went in. But I did go back to the break. I took this other surfer, the surf instructor I met, and he's like and so he took me there just so I would feel better. So I went out once with him. And I don't really go to that break now. I was like, you know what? Why do I have to go to one that has, like, a bunch of rocks? I don't need to yeah. I was like, why don't I just go to one with sand? I mean, I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm not that good. Like, who the fuck cares? So I sort of got a better assessment of myself, but was so funny what he said to me goes said, Stephanie, what? He's like, you know, surfing is a lot about looking at your fear. And I said, what do you mean? He's like, Well I said, well, I don't really have to surf that well. What are you saying to me still? I was out there. He's like, I'm telling you to think about your fear. I was like, okay, I'm afraid. I'm afraid. Whatever. So I'm back out.

[36:55] Sheila: That is interesting, though, because I can hear you already. You're trying to think your way out of it rather than feel it in your body and face it.

[37:01] Dr. Stephanie Han: And that's what he said. He's like, you need to pay attention to what you're feeling. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you're right. Wisdom.

[37:14] Sheila: It really is. I haven't interviewed anybody that surfed their whole life to see what their relationship is, because that's not, as we discussed, a topic of this podcast. It's women whose lives have been transformed by surfing. So I don't think they have exactly the level of depth, of philosophical contemplative, spiritual growth that we have, but they might. I'll have to talk to oh, I want to talk to that big wave surfer, so I'll be really interested. But I know that for sure. You cannot help but be endlessly drinking metaphor in learning to surf as an adult, because it really is just this constant magnification of every possible human experience. Now, I didn't read all the gorgeous pieces of that chapter and how you wrote about your divorce and just the places you just have a I don't know. I wish I could describe what you do in your writing. Things just come to the surface, and I feel it. It pops. You just have a way of bringing everything almost to the point of pain, but delicious gorgeous, like you're eating something that's almost just a little too spicy or hot, but it's just right there. Everyone will need to read more about all of that, but I just think there is something so what's the word? It's a transformative. We're overusing that word. But I mean, it really is.

[38:48] Dr. Stephanie Han: No, it does, because surfing has taught me to think about my body differently. It's taught me to think about my body as moving in the natural world. And it's taught me also to think about it as a creative act, how we live. It also is an act of creativity. What choices we make, how beautiful we want to make our life, how we face fear, what are dangers, what does our body sense, what does it ignore? How do we enter that sublime, that moment in the water? What is it like to be in that blue, the color? It is something really highly it's funny if if we contemplate it, when I contemplate surfing or something, sometimes I'm using my head, right, to frame it, right? Frame it in the past or the act. But when you're in it, that's that generative, creative act of pushing and seeing your body and feeling, because creativity is ultimately ideas of feeling and making something beautiful from that feeling or making something strong or powerful. It doesn't have to be beautiful. It can be ugly, but it's still an act. Right? We can think about acting in that sense, performance.

[40:12] Sheila: And then there's all those pieces that push you. I think what makes it so immediate and constant is there's all those pieces that push you out of that act. There's all those pieces. Like, for me, a lot of people that are learning to surf now talk about these great communities, love having people around them. Honestly, I'm kind of the opposite. I have a really hard time surfing with people, and I finally realized it isn't I finally understood it's because it is kind of a spiritual, creative act to me. And I have never figured out how to handle other people's energy when I'm trying to do this. And then with surfing, you've got all the jockeying for position and all this stuff and there's rules and things that come into it that you didn't know were going to happen. But I finally realized it's not that I'm just such a loner or whatever, and I would like someday I hope to learn this. Like, how can I sit at a peak? And especially, oh, you touched on it. It isn't just a man. Somebody will come out and totally change the energy. It turns into like some weird voodoo thing, right? Like, you're sitting there in this flow and they're doing nothing. They're not sitting where you need to sit, they're doing absolutely nothing but existing. And suddenly there is no more flow. I mean, I've had it happen more times than I can even count. So I think that's what makes it even more intense is that imagine if we could actually achieve this level of sublimeness, is that it sublime subliminity while other human beings exist.

[41:48] Dr. Stephanie Han: Well, I think we are coexisting in that sense because even if somebody goes surfing, you're still by yourself. You might wave a little, but you're still by yourself. And that's part of it too, right? That you are alone. But that is the creative act. I mean, people don't write poems together. I mean, I'm sure there are people who do, but who the hell writes a poem with somebody?

[42:14] Sheila: No, but you don't have somebody bumping like, next to you writing the most brilliant poem ever while you look over their shoulder and you're like, oh, my God, I wish I could have written that poem. That was my poem. I was going to use that word.

[42:30] Dr. Stephanie Han: Because you're so much better. So for me, I'm just like, what's my little poem? Okay, I might not even get a poem at all, right? How people are like, oh, you took this wave and there was this I'm like, so out of it beginner that it doesn't occur to me I always yield. I'm never going to fight for it because I feel like a lot of everyone is so much better. And that's fine. I'm fine with that. I love that because I think I came to it late. I'm aware of how I am. And yeah, I didn't do it for that. Which is why I guess I don't know, I guess it would be helpful to actually have a picture and see myself do it.

[43:22] Sheila: I probably.

[43:26] Dr. Stephanie Han: See myself do it, but I was thinking it might be actually really helpful because I could look like a weirdo.

[43:35] Sheila: Well, I don't know. It's interesting. I've seen things. It depends on my attitude, of how sometimes I'm just like, oh, my God, look at me. And I can tell by, like, if I post a picture, I don't have very many surfing photos. I put up a couple of photos that they're not very good. I know it's not very good, but my non surfing friends are like, oh, God, you're surfing. Like, you're such a rad chick. That's so cool. And I love that because I just get that boost of, like, this is amazing. I mean, look at how incredible that I get to fall off a wave and tumble and, like, in the whitewater and bounce, and I'm so free. I'm actually aware now, I do love.

[44:10] Dr. Stephanie Han: It that you said it's, like, fun, and sometimes I do have to remember right. That there's that a little bit sometimes of fear. Right.

[44:20] Sheila: Yeah.

[44:21] Dr. Stephanie Han: You're kind of looking at it, and then I have to say it's fun stuff and smile, and then I'm like, okay, yeah, it's fun.

[44:28] Sheila: I mean, if you're clear of the board and you're clear of the rocks, there's just that moment where you're just like a little kid getting rag dolled and just how incredible, how many of us get to do that. So, yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, the brain is an interesting place, and I guess, yeah, I don't do that weird competitive place much when I'm by myself. And I don't do it all the.

[44:49] Dr. Stephanie Han: Time either, but some because you're, like, in the running to be competitive. But if you're not in the running to be competitive like myself, I don't like well.

[45:00] Sheila: I'm running to have that feeling of freedom. So I want that wave, the one that is going to be so beautiful. But my challenge is that I have to then not only stand up at the right time, but then try to surf it kind of okay. And that really only happens for me, like, one out of 100 waves.

[45:23] Dr. Stephanie Han: That's the thing that, for me, was kind of hard to really understand that I'm sitting there waiting and that it could be I only ride twice. Right. So then you have to think, okay, so you're out here maybe an hour, and you get a couple of rides. So what does that mean? So what are you doing? What are you absorbing? What's the meditative state you enter? What are you doing? And so that also helped me appreciate the sky or the water or, wow, look what diamond. Wow, it looks great, or, oh, I'm breathing this. And so I feel that that shifted my relationship and continues to that it's not just about the riding of the wave. It's about contemplating the ocean in the moment. Definitely that spot.

[46:26] Sheila: I think that is the cure to that. And times when I've gotten to really struggle. I'll just snorkel more, too, or swim. But what I find is we're so lucky to live in Hawai.

[46:36] Dr. Stephanie Han: Oh, my gosh.

[46:37] Sheila: The water is the color. Just the color itself can change my life. And so I'll just jump off my board for a minute, and then I open my eyes and I see that band of blue to gold to green, a boolea to green to gold, and I just hover there like a little turtle for just a few seconds, and then everything is fine. Everything is perfect. You just get that moment. And if you're in cold water, then there's the sky to look at or the current sort of watch how the tide moves, or if you've got beautiful mountains behind you, all of those things. It does. It takes it it brings you back again. It's back into your body, back into present and breath.

[47:20] Dr. Stephanie Han: It's something that and I have to say that it's highly unlikely I would surf in cold water. Like, I'm not enough of, I guess, a surfer in that way to push myself like that now. I'm just not because of when I started. When I started, it was for other kinds of, as you said, transformational reasons. And I know that people can transform if they try surfing in like 75 different places, but I'm okay just doing it in my backyard kind of thing.

[47:58] Sheila: Yeah, it's just your place.

[48:00] Dr. Stephanie Han: It's just a way now I think about it, it's just a way of life. It's always special, but it's not something that I anticipate myself quitting. And what inspired me, actually, was I would see, like, surfing grandma. I was like, man, it's so cool. These women, and they would have their grandchildren on the board.

[48:23] Sheila: Oh, my God, this is gray hair.

[48:25] Dr. Stephanie Han: And I was like, wow, I want to be a surfing grandma. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of reframed it. And so when I see older women, so this is what I look at now. It's funny, right? I see these older women and then they're using it. It's just a way of life.

[48:46] Sheila: It's just a way of life. Yeah, exactly.

[48:51] Dr. Stephanie Han: That's what makes me feel kind of okay, I'm in it for the long haul, and I'm going to get better, and I'll get good. I'll just be in it for a while. It's like everything else in my life, it just takes a long time.

[49:05] Sheila: It just takes slow learner. It does. I can definitely attest to deciding to be a crazy person and decide to shortboard in my 50s. I'm better. I'm better. I actually have gotten better. Wow. I don't know how much better I can get, but I was like, well, I've gotten better. I don't care. I don't need to be those other things. I just have gotten better. I just want to flow with the wave. That's all I want. I just want to be able to be in the pocket. I just want to go up and down in the pocket. That's all. I don't want to hack. I do want to get Barreled. It is my lifelong to get Barreled, and I'm going to definitely have to I think I might have mentioned this on some podcasts, but my friend Carl and I were supposed to go to Holly Beck's Barrel writing clinic in 2020, and then COVID came and it got canceled. That was in Nicaragua. And I haven't had a chance in my life to get that window again, but I know for sure I will need an instructor making me go, because you have to go on this very steep thing, and I'm going to fall 8 million. It may not happen, but there's no way it'll ever happen, I'm positive, unless somebody tries to teach me. So that's one of my so isn't.

[50:24] Dr. Stephanie Han: That amazing that you're continuing on this learning curve and it's despite what people might think of as age or whatever, you can still get better.

[50:36] Sheila: Sometimes I worry, and it's kind of a dumb worry because I have a lot of healthy people in my family at different ages, but you never know. And my accident definitely humbled me. You just don't know about life. My brother died last year. We just don't know about life. So we don't know. But I really want to go to Taffarua, and it's a lot of money, and I don't have that money right now, but I'm working on that. But mostly, yeah, I just want to get burled. And yeah, there's always something I mean, how incredible that there's always something to learn and learn and learn and learn and learn, and not just even in just so many things, like, yeah, I.

[51:12] Dr. Stephanie Han: Want to try is this or yeah.

[51:15] Sheila: How the tide works, how to read the buoys, how to use your rails. I mean, it's just endless. So it is. It's so delicious. Well, I want to shift to one subject before, because I know we are just we're just having so much fun talking about surfing, and I love it. But I really also want to talk a little. I want to come back to your writing for a minute and I want to read apart from your bio because part of what I know, you've talked about altogether, and it's a parallel for all the women I have talked to in surfing period number one, women did not see women of our age, did not see other women surfing. We just didn't see it. I saw it a little bit because I lived in Southern California a tiny bit, but it's that idea of when you don't see people like you do things you don't know that you exist in that realm. And so you spoken a lot about that and written about it as an Asian American writer. My daughter is mixed, and she's mixed Hawaiian, Chinese, and Howley. We don't get another word Caucasian. And so she encountered the same thing growing up, never seeing people, even Hawaii, it was still kind of difficult. But even if you're seeing people in your school, you're still not seeing people on TV. Even Disney, that got very they tried to be very diverse, but there was nobody that looked like her. And I literally didn't grasp this at all, being a person that grew up white. And even though I thought I had some concept, none, zero, zilt. So that there's an invisibility factor that is really jarring when you start to unravel it and hear about it. So I just want to read this piece about we kind of touched a little bit on your life growing up, but it'll make sense when I read it. So you say. Growing up, I was unable to see what I wanted to be in books or anywhere in popular media. I came to writing to write myself into being. I love that. To write myself into being. I did not see myself as existing because there was nothing to reflect who I was, what I believed, or any of the experiences that I had. The very nature of art and creativity is rebellion. I wrote because I had a desperate need to be seen and to believe that I existed. I didn't like the words that were there for me to follow. I had to write my own. I think that's so beautifully put that I'd ask you to expand on it a little more and even apply it to do you see this in surfing?

[53:57] Dr. Stephanie Han: I think in terms of writing and art, this is what I wrote, what is quite common, actually, for a lot of people of color, because we don't really see ourselves as much. When I was younger and I would come to Hawai, this was so exciting because I would see TV commercials and they would have an Asian face or a person with black hair. I just didn't even see this. So this is why those summers or those brief moments when we came here growing up were really important to a sense of identity and a sense of self. And so it really drove a lot of what I did because I wanted to exist. And I felt I needed to understand myself by seeing something reflected back. There was nothing reflected back that looked like I did, that had a similar background. And it was a real coming of age, I'd say, to reckon with my identity. In many ways, this was Hawai shifted it. And also I had key times in my life when I went back to Asia, when I was six, when I was twelve, I spent a couple of weeks there. My grandfather in Korea sent for me, and I went to a little Korean American summer camp and I stayed with family. And these moments were really important for me to see that I did exist and that there was a way that I was normal and a way that I could be invisible without being deflated, where everyone can like you, but it's not lesser.

[55:48] Sheila: Right. That's really interesting.

[55:51] Dr. Stephanie Han: And in terms of surfing, obviously, I didn't see any women surfing. I just didn't see it in my age growing up. And I think I heard about Gidget or something, but that was before my time, that TV show. Yeah. And so I didn't really see or hear about it. I just thought it was some kind of magical thing that people did in the water.

[56:16] Sheila: I mean, I guess those grandmas were surfing somewhere, but you weren't. Exactly.

[56:21] Dr. Stephanie Han: They must have been, right? Yeah, but I think now I don't really think about it. I know that there's not as many people my age who are starting, but I'm also used to kind of just trying stuff out and being comfortable with failing. So what life has shown me, or what has keeps me going, is I'm totally comfortable with trying things and failing. I don't really care. If I want to try it, I'll try it. And if I bomb, I'll bomb and I'll try it again if I like it enough, and that's fine. So things become something that I want to pursue internally. And I think that's really the big difference. That's kind of the magic of age, where you don't feel like you have to pursue something to get validated externally. Now almost everything I do is because I deeply want to do it inside. I want to beautifully interview this person or meet this person or say this thing or share this knowledge. It doesn't have a lot to do with certain kinds of external validation. Of course, we all need certain kinds. We all need to get paid.

[57:38] Sheila: Right?

[57:39] Dr. Stephanie Han: And this is like women who say, you don't need to get paid. That's just bullshit. We're underpaid. We need to get paid, and we should be paid more. Definitely everywhere across the board. We are 132 years from gender equity according to the World Economic Forum, and I say this until I'm blue in the face, but it's because we cannot even fathom as women what it would really be like to live in an equitable society that treated us with a level of dignity and respect. I cannot. No matter how I'm living, no matter how open I am, no matter how much I understand that all the narratives that are put before me spiritual, legal, whatever are written by men and for men's bodies, even though I know all this fact. And even though I have an imagination, I really cannot imagine what it would be like to live completely with equity as a woman.

[58:40] Sheila: Wow.

[58:41] Dr. Stephanie Han: I know in Iceland they're a little closer. Iceland, Sweden I'm very curious to visit those spaces because they're about 70 years behind. But I really don't know what it would be like to be so free, because the minute we step out the door as women, we are entering a world that does not center our bodies and we think, oh, we're free. We can wear this. That's nothing. Look it, we don't even have jurisdiction over our bodies for reproduction, right? So freedom is a dream, and freedom is a kind of an imaginary state that I aspire to without exactly knowing what it means. And I think that's part of the thing about surfing and the water, for me is that I can sort of feel it even if I don't know what it would look like on land. I feel that freedom.

[59:42] Sheila: I've just got chills. I mean, I'm going to replay that part of everything you just said over and over again. And there is a real I'm just going to say, don't get photographed, too. I'm sure you're beautiful where you're photographed. But that freedom of that lack of being observed, which is something women live with constantly, is the pressure of being observed. And that's the freedom I can't fathom, is the freedom of not being observed. Because even when you think you're not being observed, it's that time you're walking across the campus or somewhere, you're just in your thoughts. You're going along, and some disgusting ugly guy says, you'd be so much prettier if you smile.

[01:00:26] Dr. Stephanie Han: Right?

[01:00:28] Sheila: That's kind of a cliche. But it's a real thing we're just.

[01:00:32] Dr. Stephanie Han: Observed, and we're taught that, and there's much justify ourselves that way.

[01:00:38] Sheila: So there's always an observer outside of and you touched on much more, many more layers than that. I don't think I realized it. I mean, it's been sort of a shocker to me because even though my mom obviously fought, I remember her throwing her bra out the window of the St. Francis Hotel. I think I've told that story. There was a march coming by. We were staying in San Francisco. I must have been seven. It was just like 1971 or 72, and the women came marching by. My mom had been ferried off to be a housewife in suburban Los Angeles, and she had come from a political family and was a diehard Democrat liberal, kind of more than that. But anyways, these women came marching outside, and we're in this St. Francis Hotel, and here's my mother flinging her there was a burn the bra. So flinging her bra.

[01:01:30] Dr. Stephanie Han: I love that.

[01:01:32] Sheila: Oh, God. Yeah. I grew up I didn't know where I was. I didn't know. It was 1970, 119 70, 219 73. So she took me to see the Woodstock movie three times when I was like, wow, three years old, and it imprinted on me, this stuff. And she would watch the rallies on TV and have her mother's from peace button. But she had two little kids in suburban Los Angeles, so she couldn't go to the marches anyway. But I also just really thought we'd gone farther in so many ways, and because I always believed, oh, I'm capable of anything, and I haven't really put myself in an environment where I didn't try. To be a lawyer, a doctor, but without even knowing it. It's so internalized, so pervasive.

[01:02:24] Dr. Stephanie Han: So even if the bottom line is, even if we're thinking we are free, we can't even conceptualize the level to which we are beholden to certain rules and ideologies.

[01:02:39] Sheila: That's exactly.

[01:02:42] Dr. Stephanie Han: I remember actually that was the first time when I was in junior high, I wrote a speech about the Equal Rights Amendment. My mother told me about it and that let me win the state place in the state optimist club competition when I was in Iowa and all the kids it was so cool when I was in 8th grade to have an era now shirt the boys and the girls. I mean, there were some really cool boys. And it's funny because I think we don't necessarily think about how legislation will also enforce and help our social values. A lot of ideas that we think you got to change your mind. That's true. We got to move this way emotionally, but we need laws in place to help that.

[01:03:31] Sheila: Yeah, that's becoming clearer and clearer. Well, let's talk for a minute about Woman Warrior Writer and wrap up with that. I want to your mission, I mean, I wish I had more just brain cells available because you post these things and your newsletters, which I always love when I read and I save them, I save them like, oh, I'm going to go back and read that. And then I sometimes don't. And then I'm like, I got to go back and then I get too many and anyways, but I see your posts come up and I'm terrible at staying on social media. You interview the most amazing people and so you interview all these amazing people on Hawai Public Radio, but you have a whole other thing that you're doing with your substac.

[01:04:16] Dr. Stephanie Han: What happened was I don't know if I've said it before, but when my book came out, I put up a website and one of the things I started was this little section of the website Woman Warrior Writer, where I would ask women a series of questions. And it was a really interesting way for me to meet people. And it was so fun to hear what other women writers or women creatives at the time. It wasn't necessarily women who were book authors or authors. It was just women. Like some was a costume designer, different kinds of women. And I would just ask them questions and it proved to be quite popular. I was surprised. And it led to me, like commenting on Hong Kong television about stuff. I had no idea what they was about, which is why I don't really believe a lot of people who give commentary on television because they were maybe like me, read a bunch of articles and then were asked to comment on something like the Chinese economy, which I don't know anything about. I mean, it's just inane, right? So anyway, it's okay. It was fun. It was a good experience. But yeah. So then I started doing it again. So I did on my website initially. Then I started doing it again on social media during COVID because it was such a time during that period of time when I was reading more. I was listening to books for the first time. I was engaging a little differently, and I thought, oh, I want people to read this writer to know about this. And so I started posting like that. Unfortunately, I got hacked. So all my social media accounts from that time died. I had to restart them just about a year and a half ago, so I started putting them up again. And so every month, I have mostly a woman of color author almost entirely, and I ask only one question, which is, how did you come to author your life? And I do this because I feel like it gives women ideas about how to use writing conceptually and how to use techniques of writing and authorship to their own lives. Because sometimes we don't really have a direction. We don't know what we need to do. And we could be writers, or we could be somebody who knows after high school English what a protagonist needs to do right, or what an antagonist is. And I think if we think about some of these very basic English literature and writing lessons, we can use them to guide how we move in the world. We are the protagonist of our own story, and we don't let the antagonist get away with carrying the story. And there's always a Denuan and an ending. There's always a climax. We encounter different people along the way, and some stay with us, and some some only appear as supporting characters, but that's okay. And we change on our journey. And so I think these ideas of literature can be used to help us in real life, and it may be a way for women to find potentially, I think, a little bit more agency. If you think about the idea of writing and controlling a narrative and using that for your own life, I love it.

[01:08:03] Sheila: I think that's actually a perfect place to stop and reflect on how that echoes back with everything we've talked about with surfing and writing. And so thank you so much for spending all this time. It's been an absolute joy. So excited.

[01:08:19] Dr. Stephanie Han: It's been so much fun. I feel so honored that you had me on because I'm such a bad surfer, but be supportive of good surfers.

[01:08:29] Sheila: But it's not yeah, but this isn't a podcast about good surfers. This is a podcast about women.

[01:08:37] Dr. Stephanie Han: Yeah. Eventually, I'll get to be a good surfer.

[01:08:41] Sheila: You are. And I am positive that you have good waves, and that is all it really takes to be a good surfer. I think so. Thank you, Steph.

[01:08:52] Dr. Stephanie Han: Thank you so much.