GRACEPILLED with Hanna Williams

soul repair, ancestral reclamation & the art of the invisible [w/ Yumi Sakugawa]

Episode Summary

In this episode, Yumi Sakugawa shares the winding path of their spiritual life—from depression and disconnection to ancestral reclamation, intuitive art-making, and profound healing after a traumatic psychedelic experience. We talk about Okinawa, creative discipline as ritual, soul fragmentation, and what it means to draw the invisible.

Episode Notes

Connect with Yumi, my guest:
Instagram: @yumisakugawa
Website
Affirmation deck

Connect with me, Hanna, your host: 
Instagram: @grace.pilled
hannawilliams.com (bookings, merch, etc)
patreon.com/gracepilled
(join as a free member to get access to a collection of talks!)

In this episode of Gracepilled, I sit down with interdisciplinary artist and author Yumi Sakugawa (she/they) to trace the spiraling, unexpected path of her spiritual life—from childhood flashes of psychic imagery and goth teenage atheism to meditation, soul retrieval, and ancestral reclamation.

Yumi is the author of beloved illustrated books like There Is No Right Way to Meditate and Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Believer, and exhibitions at the Smithsonian and the Japanese American National Museum. But today we go beyond Yumi’s amazing career accomplishments and explore their inner world.

We talk about a recent health scare that became a surprisingly spiritual wake-up call, and how discipline, fueled by the powers of Virgo, interacts with creative ritual. We talk about their dark night of the soul experience teaching english in Japan, finding meditation through Eckhart Tolle and David Lynch, and how grief led her deeper into ancestral connection with her Okinawan roots. Yumi also shares the story of a traumatic ayahuasca ceremony—something she’s never spoken about publicly before—and the long, slow, embodied healing that followed. And, full disclosure, in telling this story and discussing it, neither of us are suggesting there is anything wrong with plant medicine or ayahuasca, we are simply exploring what that was like, and some potential aspects of modern Ayahuasca usage that aren’t so commonly discussed.

We cover: 

• Spiritual emergence through crisis: Yumi shares how a painful post-college experience teaching abroad in Japan led them to meditation, marking the beginning of their spiritual path.
• Creative discipline as ritual: She talks about her workshop “Discipline is Pleasure” and how creative practice, health routines, and spirituality all benefit from intentional containers of time and attention.
• Lineage, colonization, and ancestral reclamation: They reflect on visiting their paternal homeland of Okinawa and how it catalyzed a deeper connection to their ancestral roots and the region’s spiritual and political history.
• Ayahuasca, trauma, and healing: Yumi opens up—publicly for the first time—about a devastating ayahuasca experience, soul fragmentation, and the long arc of recovery supported by their community and energetic healing.
• Art, intuition, and the evolution of purpose: She reflects on how her creative journey has shifted from needing to prove herself to trusting intuition, play, and her unique voice.