a journey of self-disovery + belonging with elizabeth su
"The Adventure Tarot" is for anyone searching for belonging and who might have lost pieces of themselves along the way
Growing up as a third-generation mixed Asian in the Midwest, Elizabeth Su didn't know much about her Chinese heritage. And as one does in places where assimilation and erasure are the only way to fit in and be accepted, she rejected it.
Setting out on a path of achievement, she killed it: graduating at the top of her university class and making six figures at a startup in Silicon Valley.
This is the dream, right? But whose dream?
Despite all outward appearances of traditional success, Elizabeth was grappling with severe anxiety and an eating disorder and had no time to care for herself. And so, after a decade in corporate, she realized she needed to throw the whole thing away.
Leaving it all behind, she moved to New York City in 2018 to pursue a master's in Clinical Psychology, studying burnout and perfectionism in corporate women and the science of happiness. This research ultimately became the foundation for her original book proposal and got her an agent.
But that's not what she ended up publishing.
Because just one year before everything changed for Elizabeth—the world changed. It was 2020 in New York City, a city overwhelmed by the pandemic, and her mental health was struggling. So, she set out on a road trip with her husband to spend time outdoors and travel the country.
But then, in March 2021, everything changed. Again. After a staggering rise in anti-Asian hate, the Atlanta Spa shootings hit her particularly hard—and for the first time in her life, her identity as an Asian American felt important.
So, she set out on yet another new journey, turning her road trip into a search for belonging, ultimately inspiring The Adventure Tarot.
Elizabeth Su is a speaker, author, and the creator of The Adventure Tarot, a road trip-inspired deck about self-discovery, belonging, and celebrating Asian joy, available now.
And this is how Elizabeth Su created belonging for herself and others from nothing.
So, the Atlanta Spa shootings were a major turning point that sent you down the path to creating The Adventure Tarot, but it seems like you were already in the middle of a somewhat new journey before that.
In what way?
You were writing a different book, right?
Yeah, it was a painful process. I was in the final contract stages with a hybrid publisher because I needed to move on with my life. It was impacting my sense of self-worth to keep getting rejected by agents and trying to go the traditional publishing route.
I don't know if a different creative project would have felt the same, but the nature of the material for that book was not having to prove yourself. But it felt like that was all I was doing—it was demoralizing, especially with the industry being so White and performative around wanting to amplify underrepresented voices and racist ideas of what that looks like.
For example, I would get feedback on my theme of perfectionism. People would say, "You should weave more of your culture in it." And I knew they were trying to get me to talk about a tiger mom or something. And my mom's white—so many assumptions were made. And it was just really, really difficult.
At the last minute, I came across Margaret through Instagram. She had a post about Tarot, and I thought we would get along. So, I asked her to hop on a call and talk about the publishing industry and the process. I was pretty candid with her on our call, and at the end of it, she said, "Great. I'd love to offer you representation."
So, you've done all this work, got an agent, and then the Atlanta Spa Shootings happen. You look back on your book and realize you can't write this book anymore. Why? What changed?
I literally would have these nightmares where I would stand in front of these middle-aged white lady crowds and tell them how to overcome their perfectionism. And I thought: wait, that’s not how I want to spend my life.
The default person that I was speaking to was a white woman. I don't think I even mentioned that I was Asian anywhere in the book.
You realized you weren't centering your own experience, and your racial identity might not even be mentioned anywhere in this book. Do you think that was something you hadn't considered, or was it something else?
It was erasure. It was self-erasure. And it was only through that awakening that I made that connection, that's why it was so intense. I was looking back on my life backward, horrified that I had spent so long rejecting, literally not even seeing in the mirror, that I was Asian.
This experience also called my family out on it, which is a whole separate story. It became very apparent that this was actually deeply ingrained in my lineage that we were supposed to forget who we were.
So, no one understands why or sees that you might be deeply affected by this except for a few people like your agent, Margaret. What was that like, and how did you feel and move through that time?
Margaret was one of the only people to reach out to me to share her love and support, which was really impactful. Because the grief I felt after the Atlanta Spa shootings was so profound, it felt like a part of me was dying.
It was just sad and really eye-opening that as I’m on this self-love journey, I realize, no wonder it's hard for me to love myself when the people close to me can't even see who I am and aren't proud of who I am. Not in a superficial sense, but in a real visceral sense of seeing the whole person in front of you.
That really ruptured my sense of self—I did not know who I was. It was a very strange feeling to be mirrored back something that now feels unrecognizable, and it created a rupture in my family.
My husband is a first-generation Chinese born in Hong Kong, so I explained to my family that my kids will be more Asian than me. They will look Asian. So, when the community is impacted, I think about my dad, my grandparents, my husband, his family, and my future kids.
And then I think about me because somewhere in there, I also exist. But this really illuminated for me just how much of a different journey I was on—they can ignore it in the Midwest, but I can't, and I don't want to.
For the first time, I realized I didn't get a sense of community through generations of rejecting our culture. When tragedy happens, the community comes together, and in those sad times, you lean on the community. And I was like, "I don't have that," and it made me wonder what else I missed.
I've done a ton of work around this. Often, people think racial trauma is overt racism and overt violence, which it is, but it also is erasure and forced assimilation. And not knowing—I didn't get a choice, you know? You long. It's longing for something you never had but realized you should have had, right? I once took a class with Linda Thai, an amazing somatic practitioner, and she said it beautifully:
"Trauma is both what happened that shouldn't and also what should have but didn't."
So I've had to really grapple with my ancestors' decisions. I try to find a way to connect to the culture to make me feel more whole because it all comes back to everything I stand for and everything my work is about, which is self-love.
Being children of immigrants or being mixed often means losing language, culture, and connection to our relatives, history, and ancestors. Was “The Adventure Tarot” your way of building back what you didn't have?
Yes, that is everything that it is. And that's why every time I think about "The Adventure Tarot" being out in the world, it makes me wanna cry because I dedicated it to little E.
The first page reads, "To Little E: who never stopped trying to find where she belonged" because it is for her and everyone else who might have lost pieces of themselves along the way.
And that's what I hope The Adventure Tarot is—an acknowledgment that these things just happened and that there is grief and pain in immigrating. You make a decision to leave your country or maybe you don't. My grandparents will say they made the decision, but there is always loss.
Things are gained, but there is inevitably loss, too. And when you don't acknowledge that, it doesn't go away; it just keeps going from generation to generation until someone says, "That hurts."
Do you feel like you were writing a self-help book for the version of you that needed a book on perfectionism and happiness at that time? And you couldn’t write the book anymore because it was no longer what you needed?
That’s really astute because I don't think I've even mentioned this, but another part of the decision to pivot was that I no longer believed in trying to position myself as an “expert.”
I used to say I was a “perfectionism expert,” like an educator. I almost went and got my PhD—I grew up with a scientist and a doctor as parents, and my sister is an engineer. I grew up in academia and there was this clout to it, this prestige, this superiority to have an opinion on something.
And as part of my work, I was starting to realize that maybe there was no authority—no one gets to tell me who I am, so I don't want to do that to other people. The voice I wrote that first book with was so prescriptive. It was like, let me dispel this knowledge for you.
Some people are great at that, but during this reckoning, I dismantled all different types of hierarchies and systems of power.
And that's another reason why I wanted to create a tarot deck instead, because I wanted to help people listen to their own intuition and offer my insights. But from the perspective of a best friend way—equals walking this path together. Like, “Let me share what's happened to me and some things I've reflected on.”
In “The Adventure Tarot,” you changed the king of each suit from a king to a guide. Traditionally, the king represents the mastery of that suit's lesson, but a guide knows the path because they’ve been on it themselves and are there with you to help guide you through it. How conscious was this change for you?
I don't know how conscious it was. I wanted to neutralize the court cards from gender. I wanted them to line up with the outdoorsy theme and show an element of maturity as you go up through the cards. So, the scout is the youngest. Then we have the backpacker, which represents your twenties backpacking around Europe. The explorer is meant to feel like you're getting more expert at it, and the guide represents when you're now leading other people.
But I love that you picked up on that because that was a really big part of it, and I’m really grateful for this conversation because I think a lot of people question my decision. Books are so sexy. Memoirs are so sexy. Self-help is so sexy. And tarot feels very less than and not prestigious—even though I got a deal with a publisher distributed by Simon & Schuster.
And the funny thing is, I used to try to market my book as the “anti-self-help” book. But I had this come-to-Jesus moment when I realized that creating a tarot deck was the true embodiment of breaking out of perfectionism. There’s a slight difference between reading about something and practicing it yourself.
Was there any moment at this point where you felt you had failed or experienced such a setback that you weren't sure things were going to work out?
Something I've picked up on is that some people don't like the changes I made to the traditional tarot cards based on the reviews—which I know I’m not supposed to look at, but I have a sick obsession with external validation. And so I'm noticing some people are not jazzed about it.
I’m self-conscious of the fact that I am not a tarot reader. People think that all tarot creators or deck creators are tarot readers—that’s not me. I'm much more interested in the conversations around the inspiration for the different cards, the lessons I'm trying to share, and how they land for other people.
Someone on my team said, “Elizabeth, you have never been someone to follow the pack.” I'm always a pioneer, and so this is no different. The point was that it's different.
Sometimes, it's very lonely being different. And sometimes, I want to be accepted. But I keep telling myself that I know this is for my people, and I'm still trying to find them, and they will find me.
Learn more about The Adventure Tarot
Learn more about + Follow Elizabeth: Website / Instagram / TikTok
Thanks for reading! Please consider subscribing to support and stay updated!