Susan Nemcek was born in 1960 in southern Minnesota to parents who had recently emigrated from Europe. Her father was Hungarian and her mother German. Even as a child, she envisioned a life of travel and of helping others. At 16, she began working at a home for developmentally disabled children where the “institutional” conditions and the unfortunate death of a dearly-loved resident led her to become active in the fight for the rights of the underprivileged and the “de-institutionalization” movement of the 1980s. At the age of 20, she traveled to Switzerland, where she spent six months studying under a student of Maria Montessori and working in a school for emotionally disturbed and autistic children. Upon returning to Minnesota, she became the co-director and behavioral program specialist for a group home for severely disturbed and autistic children.

In 1983, after graduating with a degree in social work from the University of Minnesota, Susan moved to Colorado. That same year she became the director of the Parenting Program at the Driekurs Relationship Center where her primary responsibility was to teach a “Positive Discipline Program” in schools around the nation. In the late 1980s she supervised the staffs of several group homes serving developmentally disabled adults in Boulder, Colorado. In 1990, she began working as a case manager for adolescents living in therapeutic foster care, and in 1993 she became the Residential Director of the “Inn Between,” a transitional housing facility serving the homeless.

Around the same time, Susan opened her own import business, Small Circle Imports, to buy and sell craft items from around the world and promote fair trade opportunities in third world countries. The driving principle behind this effort is that “the circle” is indeed small and that the more we can do to promote local and global community, the better off we all are. This vision has led her to places such as Turkey, Morocco, Sri Lanka and Venezuela. Susan has established working relationships with women’s craft cooperatives and organic and fair Trade coffee companies. She also learned about and practiced the healing and spiritual modalities of the places she has visited.

Susan has further actualized her passion for helping people through her practice of homeopathy. Since she studied and received her certification at the Colorado Institute of Classical Homeopathy in 2003, she has pursued an active and successful practice. In 2005 she began teaching homeopathy as a member of the faculty of The Institute of Life Energy Medicine in Tucson (specializing in miasmatic treatment and case management) and was soon promoted to Assistant Principal. In 2007 she became the director of Willow Farm Healing Arts, a facility with a vision of providing community access to a full spectrum of alternative health care and wellness services. Her responsibilities at Willow Farm include providing affordable homeopathic treatment, overseeing the ongoing educational workshop series (involving experts on herbal medicine, nutritional education, family organic food options, permaculture and emotional healing, among others) and overseeing the on-site community garden.

As the Farm vision evolved, Susan felt the need to complete her study in chaplaincy at Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe and was ordained in 2014. Her thesis focused on the denial of death in America and how the vision of Willow Farm meets our end time as a sacred transition rather than a medical condition.

Susan sees contemplative practice as a process “giving no fear” to life and our experience. Making a discipline out of “watching one’s own thought” and being as sensitive as possible to what is being communicated by the symptoms and descriptions of human suffering.