Seedfolks, Paul Fleishman novel study: Sae Young reflections

Key notes for Sae Young: Sae Young is a Korean immigrant and dry clean owner. Listening to her, we can see that she is a gentle soul and kind lady. She wants to be maternal (to love and care for a child) but was unsuccessful with pregnancy. She has experienced 2 negative events: the sudden death of her young husband (leaving her lonely) and a robbery/assault at her business (leaving her emotionally scarred). As a result, she was traumatized and lived in seclusion, anxious and fearful; it took her a long time to leave her apartment and face the world again. The garden helped her build her self-confidence and trust others again; by offering water funnels to the gardeners and seeing others use them, Sae Young began to feel happy and connected once again to her community. Lesson: we need to live in relationship with others to feel a sense of belonging and to feel valued; these relationships need to be positive and encouraging to feed our soul. As social beings, we all need to live in positive relationship with others; everyone needs emotional and spiritual connections to feel accepted, included, welcomed, valued; the garden enabled her to come out of seclusion, begin to get over her traumatic experience, learn to trust others again, feel validated (use of her funnel). The garden offers a traumatized Sae Young therapy, comfort, a sense of belonging, a connection to others - something that was missing because of lack of trust.