Suzette Osei, MD, PhD

Before I share my professional background, I would like to summarize my journey thus far on the road less travelled. A road of healing through the wilderness of childhood trauma.

Born in 1963 in Ghana- West Africa, I am the second of 5 children. My father died when I was 3 years old leaving my mother who was a teacher, scrambling to provide financially for my siblings and I.  To make ends meet, Mom needed to financially rely on the good will of male friends and intimate partners.  Some of these men raped me when I was 11 years old.

Mom could not support me emotionally when I shared these horrific experiences with her. Her inability to hold the reality of my suffering led her to blame me for these happenings as she instructed me to pray to God for forgiveness. Laden with a deeply internalized shame, I labored through middle school, college, medical school, graduate school, marriage and motherhood. It was a few years after the birth of my daughter- my only child, that I embarked down the terrifying road of facing and healing my childhood trauma. The “Get it Done” zealot that I am said, the healing journey would last 1 year. I would get it over and done with and move on to a freer life. In reality, transcending victimhood took every bit of 26 years.  I share my story as a foundation and backdrop for what this website is about.

Despite carrying and perhaps because of the active wounds and scaring of my past, I pursued with ardent fervor a career I hoped would heal my shame.  I received my medical degree from the University of Ghana in 1988 after which I moved to the United States to pursue a four-year PhD degree in Pharmacology at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.  Following this, I did a three-year residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. I was trained in internal medicine.  I subsequently specialized in endocrinology at a three-year fellowship  program at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. It was during this fellowship that I began climbing my Everest. The Shame Mountain as I called it during those years. The subsequent years were spent doing the profound work of healing childhood trauma while simultaneously working as a clinician at the University of Pennsylvania and as a research physician at various pharmaceutical companies.

After 25+ years of professional life, I am now retired and look forward to sharing my stories and supporting others transcend victimhood.  I live in South West Colorado with my partner, two dogs and two horses.