About Peony
Hi, I'm Peony.
I'm a Family Consultant and Integration Guide. I help families with young people and individuals dissolve the patterns that keep repeating, recalibrate their nervous system to its baseline, and return to their own inner knowing.
Some families know me as their child's English teacher. Others find me from the other side of the world.
About the name
Peony Joy is the name I was born with: 芍, the peony in bloom, and 怡, joy and harmony. For most of my life I answered to a different one, given to me when my family immigrated so that things would be easier. A few years ago I took my name back. More accurately, my ancestors returned it to me.
The flower carries its own inheritance. Its name honors Paeon, physician to the gods, and a peony opens the way I have come to understand healing: layer by layer, each petal in its own time, revealing what was already inside it.
17 years of walking besides young people
Since college, I have taught English, Literature, and the Humanities to young people ages 11 to young adults in their early twenties, from junior high through college.
I walked beside them through questions of identity, belonging, family, friendship, pressure and the uncertain passage into adulthood.
I lived for the goosebump moments: a student suddenly understanding something true about being human through a dystopian novel, a Brené Brown talk, or The Matrix.
Those years taught me something I would come to understand far more deeply: knowing what to do is not the same as being able to live it.
A young person can understand exactly why they react and still feel powerless to change it. A parent can know how they want to respond and still become anxious, controlling or withdrawn in the moment. An adult can spend years in therapy, coaching, or spiritual practice, and still return to the same loop or place.
Information matters. Insight matters. And beneath both, something deeper is asking to be met.
I know that wall from the inside. My own turning came when I stopped trying to fix or transcend what hurt, and began bringing the parts of me that had been at war back into relationship.
How I guide
I am not the source of anyone's wisdom. I listen deeply, notice what has been hard to see, ask the question beneath the question, and stay steady when something difficult surfaces.
Often I can see a possibility in someone before they can see it themselves. My work is not to pull them toward my vision of their life. It is to hold enough clarity and presence that they can recognize their own.
Not authority over you. Presence beside you, until you can stand more fully in your own.
Peony didn't tell me what to do or what I should want. Instead, she listened, asked me very specific questions, and took me through some processes that made me realize my own true thoughts.
— RM, San Diego State University, formerly Seattle Public Schools
The human in the room
An app can track a young person's mood. It cannot notice the moment their shoulders drop and they come back to themselves.
That is what I bring to every family I work with: presence, attunement, and a human who sees a person’s radiance beneath the struggle.
Training & Background
17 years teaching English, Literature, and Humanities to young people ages 11 to 22+ in Washington State and in Japan
MA in Education/Teaching and BA in Communication, Seattle University
Advanced Coach Certification, Lumia Coaching
Advanced Practitioner Certification, Rapid Rewire Method
My work draws on trauma-informed education, family systems, nervous-system work, coaching, psycho-emotional integration, polarity integration and energetic healing. But the modality is not the point. The person in front of me is the work.
Ways to work with me
The Family Integration. For teens, young adults, and parents ready to change what keeps repeating at home.
Personal Integration. One-to-one work for people who understand their pattern and still feel its pull.
If this is your threshold
Sometimes we simply need someone who can see clearly enough, listen deeply enough, and walk beside us long enough to help us find the way back.
If you are ready to shed what no longer fits, and to unfurl into a fuller expression of what was always there, I would be honored to walk beside you.