The Social Impact Heroes of Social Media: Why & How Maria Hill of The Happy Healing Shop Decided To Help Change Our World
Being a shy person and an introvert, I have not enjoyed putting myself out there on social media. I later learned that this was stifling our growth. I had to overcome the fear of people seeing me and having eyes on me. It turns out that when you’re just authentically yourself and you don’t let fear be the driving force, things can manifest so much faster.
As a part of my series about leaders who are using their platform to make a significant social impact, I had the pleasure of interviewing Maria Hill, Co-founder & Head of Creative at The Happy Healing Shop, a metaphysical & lifestyle company that believes in guiding & healing others in a safe and comfortable environment while empowering them to find their own strengths and to tap into their own natural gifts. She is the lead modern psychic medium, who can connect and convey messages and insight from the other side of the afterlife — whether it be a friend, loved one, or spirit guides.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Thank you for having me! It all happened by chance. Back in 2018, I revealed to a trusted coworker, Trang Pham-Nguyen, that I had psychic abilities and how I grew up being able to see and sense spirits, including people who have passed away. I kept this to myself most of my life, out of fear that people wouldn’t understand.
Trang pushed me to get out of my comfort zone, to feel more comfortable with my intuitive gifts and thought it was something the world should know about. Even though I left that job, our friendship still continued to blossom.
One day, Trang suggested to me, “Hey, let’s have a psychic night where you can practice your abilities with a couple of my friends. Since we’ll make it free, there’s no pressure. Plus, they can give you any feedback to help you become better. Can’t hurt to try, right?”
It was March 2019, when we had our first psychic night. Six lovely women came out and I each gave them a tarot & oracle reading, plus a psychic mediumship reading. It was an incredibly impactful night, after seeing many tears stream down their faces. I was very humbled to hear that they were able to find peace, closure, and guidance through the cards and after speaking to their loved ones.
Trang and I realized this could turn into something bigger. We realized we could create a company that had a mission of facilitating healing in others, and that’s how The Happy Healing Shop was created.
Now, we have a website full of resources to help people find clarity, healing, and enjoyment through different tools and modalities. Our most popular services are the tarot readings, psychic, and mediumship readings. However, we also offer Reiki energy healing and life path consultations.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this career?
The first big case I worked on was when someone’s mom fell into a coma after a sudden heart attack. I was called in, to try to communicate with her spirit to see what was going on, what to do, and ended up learning a lot of new things with this case. It turns out I could communicate with the spirit even if the person is in a coma, which I had always wondered about. We ended up being able to find out information such as where important paperwork and documents were, preferred flowers for the funeral, who the mom wanted to come visit her before she passed, and more. This was able to speed up the healing process for the client because it helped resolve some important things before the mother had passed away. This showed me how mediumship could be helpful to people on a deep level, and it also taught me that your body doesn’t have to be conscious in order to be able to access someone’s spirit. That was pretty life changing for me.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Trang and I were hosting a psychic night event, and I had just read a bunch of people. I finally got to this one guy, who was kind of skeptical and hadn’t tried mediumship before. His girlfriend wanted him to have a reading. He was restless and had fussy energy which threw me off. I kept trying to tune into him, but I couldn’t stay focused because he kept fidgeting with the crystals and other items we had laid out on the table. The reading wasn’t as smooth as I had liked.
After his reading, he sat down on a chair in the corner of the room, when all of sudden he said “Erik, Erik, Erik. That name is being shouted in my ear. Does anyone know an Erik?”
He went around the room asking if anyone knew an Erik. I told him I know an Erik, whose one of my spirit guides. The guy ended up giving me a message from my spirit guide to stop doubting myself and my abilities. He didn’t know he was a medium himself! Afterwards, we had a good laugh about it.
You have been blessed with success in a career path that can be challenging. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?
The first thing people should know is that it takes time, practice, and intention to hone your metaphysical craft. A lot of people get impatient when they start to understand they have psychic abilities, and they want to get to the advanced work really quickly because it seems fun and exciting. However, the most important aspect of your business and practice is working a lot on yourself, doing self-healing work, learning to ground yourself, and diving into shadow work. If you’re not okay with working on your own shadows, you will not be grounded when working with clients. No matter at what stage you are in your journey, you should always be working on yourself.
On a business note, sometimes you have to work on the side to get started while you hold down a full-time job. Then overtime as you build clientele, you can start to fade into your full-time business. Many times, the insecurities of financial stability can create a lot of self-doubt in you, which can sabotage your ability to manifest what you’re looking to get out of your business. Therefore, sometimes the right approach is to overlap: doing it as a side business, getting it out there, and growing it.
Ok super. Let’s now jump to the core focus of our interview. Can you describe to our readers how you are using your platform to make a significant social impact?
Yes, I’d love to! I’m very passionate about education and community. So many people with psychic abilities feel very alone because they don’t know what’s happening to them. As a result, this can lead to a lot of self-doubt, isolation, self judgement, and people who don’t understand them. We strive to create a safe place where people can ask all kinds of deep questions about the metaphysical world, be part of a community of others like them, find security and safety in the knowledge that they receive, and realize they’re not alone in the world.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted by this cause?
This is actually about a group of individuals flocking to our community on Facebook, organically. We had one mom who made a psychic appointment to understand what was going on with her child, which she suspected was psychic. She gained much more clarity after her reading. Then she joined our private Facebook group “Happy Healers”.
Later one, we met another mom who needed clarity, so she joined the Facebook group. Before we knew it, we had a pod of parents who were passionate about learning their children’s psychic abilities in order to know how to support them on their path. Now, they support one another and share their own stories. We now have a place to send parents who feel very alone and don’t know where to begin with their gifted child!
Was there a tipping point that made you decide to focus on this particular area? Can you share a story about that?
It really was that initial psychic night that I had mentioned earlier. Seeing people in tears after their session because they were able to find clarity, relief, peace, guidance, and closure really made me go, “Wow, this could grow into something bigger and be rewarding as well.”
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Yes, the three things that society and communities can do to support those who have psychic gifts is to understand that there are some things we cannot explain. We need to be accepting that people come in all forms, different interests, and abilities. Some of those abilities will push our limits of what our mind currently understands.
The second thing is removing the stigma behind the ways any person practices any kind of spirituality. We should not be judgmental towards people who see the world a little bit differently than us, who are not hurting anyone. We have so much intolerance in the world today already, and intolerance is one of the deep-rooted issues in our society.
Thirdly, fostering and nurturing environments for our children will make such a huge difference for them. Children have these innate gifts and wisdom within them, that adults program out of them. This happens because we expect them to fit a certain mold in our society that we think is best for them. However, if we allow our kids to teach us more about who they are, we can then understand their path much more clearly from their perspective and give them the proper parental guidance to explore those things, instead of forcing and punishing them for things we do not understand.
What specific strategies have you been using to promote and advance this cause? Can you recommend any good tips for people who want to follow your lead and use their social platform for a social good?
Honestly, it’s been simply sharing my experiences. I started sharing stories on what it’s like to be a psychic medium and they were relatable. Gifted people didn’t realize there were others out there who were just like them. Seeing someone out share these crazy stories online helped them to open up and feel safe on chatting with us about this stuff. We come from a place of authenticity, honesty, and earnestness about all things metaphysical. We always teach people to use good discernment online as well as provide lots of free resources through our site, blog, and YouTube. As a result, now people come to us to get help as they dive into their own spiritual journey.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
1) Being a shy person and an introvert, I have not enjoyed putting myself out there on social media. I later learned that this was stifling our growth. I had to overcome the fear of people seeing me and having eyes on me. It turns out that when you’re just authentically yourself and you don’t let fear be the driving force, things can manifest so much faster.
2) Know that there are cruel people out there that are angry at the world. They will say unkind things to you because it can make them feel more powerful about their own lives. This tore me up at first, but then I realized I don’t know them. They don’t know me, and I shouldn’t care about what they think. They aren’t the people following our content and joining us on our journey. They are just popping in, making flash judgments and trolling. You have to not feed or respond to them because that’s exactly what they want.
3) It can be exciting to be busy and to be constantly creating new projects while working late nights (and working two jobs), but in the long run this can create burnout pretty quickly. It’s really important to take little breaks to rejuvenate. This will make you productive and happier in the long run. Also, do not be afraid to outsource work that is your weakness or things you shouldn’t have to be worrying about. It’s one of the best investments you could make because that way, you can focus on your main talent and what you do best in order to grow the business.
4) Set healthy boundaries. When people find out you have psychic gifts, many of them see you as a side show act and they want you to entertain them. People might test you for fun to watch you falter. They might ask for free readings on the spot. Others might beg or guilt you to give your time and energy for nothing. People may latch onto you and your energy because you have compassion and then pretend to be your friend to get free services from you.
When you start, it’s absolutely imperative that you set firm boundaries in regards to when it’s appropriate to use your gifts and when you don’t wish to use your gifts. You’re not obligated to perform for people because they guilt you into it. This will cause burnout, frustration, and exhaustion.
5) Be comfortable knowing that your time and skill is worth something, so make sure when you’re building your business, you price your services in a way that is an even exchange for your time, energy, and skill. Take your time, look around, and see what the industry rate is for what you offer and see where you fit within that range. You may need to raise your prices at times because you might realize the prices you had originally set are not an equal or fair exchange for your time and energy. It’s a process of trial and error.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
There are so many! I think for The Happy Healing Shop, it all meshes and intertwines with the following: making the idea of having psychic abilities no longer a taboo, making resources accessible to anyone who wants to learn, giving people a place to always feel safe, teaching people that there’s nothing to be afraid of regarding the metaphysical world, being able to bring healing to people, and using innovation and technology to teach people how to heal themselves and show that they have the power to do these amazing things.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
In order…
My Co-founder, Trang, has a very wise grandfather named Loan who we love to have philosophical chats with. We bring him in spirit, which you can catch on our YouTube channel. Grandpa Loan has given us some amazing words of wisdom that have helped us on our journey.
This quote was when he was speaking to everyone in world, but it is extremely relevant to what we do in our business: “In order for us to grow, we have to think of solutions and start to think about our part in the world as individuals. There’s a lot of complaining but not a lot of problem solving. We live in a crowdsource world. Why can’t we crowdsource solutions, and through that, peace?”
This is powerful for us in what we do because we deeply wish to empower individuals to break through societal boundaries, ancestral & generational traumas, self-doubt, and fear so they can truly live the life they came here to live. If we work together and create empowerment within ourselves and in turn empower others, what kind of incredible solutions might we come up with to move our society into a more positive direction? And in turn, we would have healing throughout communities all over the world.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Simon Sinek — his philosophies on human dynamics, society, culture, leadership, and problem solving have inspired us so much in how we have decided to craft our enterprise, how we handle people, and how we want to become an example of a “people first, profit after” company. If more people in the world took the time to challenge our old crusty societal norms like Simon has, the number of incredible solutions we’d come up with would be mind-boggling.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
We have services people can book, courses on Reiki, psychic development, and healing through grief and loss, as well as a blog FULL of information at our website www.thehappyhealingshop.com and our YouTube. You can also find us on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much!
It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me!
The Social Impact Heroes of Social Media: Why & How Maria Hill of The Happy Healing Shop Decided To was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.