Wings Across Borders: Flying, Living, and Healing Through Cultures

Wings Across Borders: Flying, Living, and Healing Through Cultures

By: Su The Flying Psychotherapist

There’s a certain magic that comes from slipping the bonds of one country and touching down in another. For over two decades, my life was measured not in years, but in flight hours, crew schedules, and the glow of distant city lights.

As a flight attendant, I flew across continents with Tower Air and then Jetblue Airways, working international routes that painted my passport with stamps from places I never dreamed I’d see. I lived for a time in Saudi Arabia, a chapter that taught me more than any textbook could have about culture, resilience, and the quiet ways people everywhere find connection and hope.

It’s often said that travel broadens the mind. For me, it did much more than that—it helped me become both a citizen of the world and a student of the human heart.

Living Between Cultures

When I moved to Saudi Arabia, it was both thrilling and intimidating. I arrived eager to see the world but also unsure how I’d fit into a culture so different from my own.

I remember the desert winds, dry and warm, carrying scents of spices and distant sea salt from the Gulf. I remember the rhythmic call to prayer echoing over the city, grounding me in a sense of time and place I’d never known before.

I learned to navigate bustling souks and quiet neighborhoods. I learned to cover my hair in public and found beauty in traditions I’d never witnessed growing up. I shared meals sitting on carpets, eating with my hands, and realized how connection often transcends language.

I learned to listen—not just to words, but to gestures, silences, and the stories that live between cultural lines.

These lessons stayed with me long after I stepped off the airplane for the final time.

From Galley to Therapy Room

When people ask how I went from flight attendant to psychotherapist, my answer is simple: both jobs are about people.

Onboard, I wasn’t just serving coffee or repeating safety briefings. I was reading faces. Calming anxieties. Mediating conflicts. Holding space for grief when someone flew home for a funeral. Celebrating joy when passengers traveled for weddings, births, reunions.

I learned how to sense when someone needed silence, a soft word, or a listening ear.

Now, in my therapy practice, I use those same instincts daily. I listen deeply. I watch for subtle shifts in body language. I hold space for emotions people feel afraid to name.

But there’s another layer, too.

Travel—and especially living internationally—taught me how culture shapes us. It taught me how identity, beliefs, family structures, and even how we define “home” vary across the world. It taught me that mental health cannot be separated from cultural context.

So I became the Flying Psychotherapist—a bridge between worlds.

Lessons From 35,000 Feet

From my years in the sky, I carry with me countless lessons.

I learned that:

• People everywhere want to be seen and heard. Whether in Saudi Arabia, Paris, Manila, or New York, human beings crave connection.

• Curiosity is stronger than fear. Traveling into the unknown repeatedly taught me that wonder can coexist with uncertainty.

• Culture matters. In therapy and in life, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Respecting someone’s cultural lens can be the key to truly helping them heal.

• The world is smaller than we think. We’re more alike than different, even if we speak different languages or follow different customs.

Bringing the Sky Into My Practice

When clients sit across from me, I bring my wings into the room.

I bring stories of distant cities and the quiet hush above the clouds. I bring the understanding that life sometimes feels turbulent but that turbulence doesn’t mean danger—it just means we’re moving through change.

I bring my belief that we’re all capable of rising, even when life grounds us.

Flying taught me how to hold people in moments of fear—and how to help them find their way back to hope.

Always Looking Up

Sometimes, I still catch myself standing on the street, eyes lifted as a plane streaks across the sky. I feel that old pull, that reminder that the world is wide and full of places left to explore.

Whether in the galley, the desert, or the therapy office, my life has always been about looking up. About chasing possibility. About believing there’s always another horizon.

And that’s what I hope to give to every client, every reader, every fellow traveler:

The courage to keep looking up.

Because no matter where we’re from, no matter how many miles we’ve flown or how many obstacles we’ve faced…

There’s a sky within us all.