Susan Gabriel grew up in the
archetypal American South, playing in the shade of mimosa trees and
catching lightning bugs as the heat waned on long summer evenings. She
lived on banana popsicles and when not in school, spent most days
exploring the woods around her home or on her red Schwinn bicycle from
morning until night.
In
high school Susan began to focus on the arts. She wrote stories to amuse
her friends and became an accomplished flutist. In college she studied
music at the University of Tennessee, married a jazz saxophone player
and started a family. After her divorce, she raised her two daughters,
then one and three, completed an education degree and began working with
at-risk kids in the elementary schools. During this time she was also a
professional musician and went to graduate school at night. As a
musician, Susan played many venues in Charleston, South Carolina,
including Piccolo Spoleto and one job playing for a party on a 300 foot
sail boat while situated below in the hold. She still hasn’t quite
gotten her sea legs back.
Susan completed a degree in counseling, in part to understand the wide
array of characters in her Appalachian gene pool, and became a licensed
professional counselor, as well as a marriage & family therapist. She
was the founder of the Women’s Center in Charleston, South Carolina, which still provides services to women nearly twenty
years after its inception. While running her counseling practice in
Charleston, Susan also wrote professional articles for various
publications and book reviews for the Charleston Courier newspaper.
In her 30s, Susan began to experience a spiritual awakening and studied
the writings of the monk, Thomas Merton, as well as 12th century mystics
and the works of C.G. Jung. She attended and led groups at the Journey
into Wholeness Conference in the North Carolina Mountains.
In 1994, Susan answered the long-time call to writing, closed her
successful counseling practice, and moved with her daughters to
Asheville, North Carolina where she also did dream work with an Jungian analyst and began to write poetry and fiction as well as paint
with acrylics. Susan simplified her life and took part-time jobs in
order to focus the main portion of her day on writing. These part-time
jobs included running copies, cutting out and cooking gourmet dog
biscuits, cashiering at a home-improvement mega store, as well as being
a typist, personal assistant and freelance editor for author
Bud
Harris.
With her daughters launched into the world, Susan moved in 2006 to
Colorado with her partner, where she is exploring the wild mysticism of
the Rocky Mountain landscape and the archetypal American West.
Susan enjoys reading (of course), attending Broadway plays, traveling to
Tuscany, wandering in the woods (closer to home), visiting with her
grown daughters, who still live in the shade of mimosas, and playing
with her two dogs and three cats.
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