Sue Scarborough’s coming-of-age story—centered in the Green Swamp of Central Florida in the 1960s—echoes a real-life version of Where the Crawdads Sing. The area was rugged, dangerous, and isolating. Much like the Wild West, the swamp was a lawless, untamed frontier, with shootouts, robberies, abuse, wild animals, and wildfires.
Drowning in guilt, shame, and fear of her gun-toting father’s explosive rages, Scarborough also feared the unwritten rules of society and the judgment that came her way due to her intuitive introversion. As a teen and young adult, she rarely lifted her head to make eye contact with others and became mute for a while in her freshman year of high school.
Scarborough carried the trauma of her childhood into adulthood. Religion created a diversion, for a while, of her lifelong search for God and meaning. Then, during a dark night of the soul, Sue experienced a life-changing glance of the Other Side that opened her to a path of spiritual discoveries. Seeking answers to her life’s many challenges, she experiences spiritual awakenings, receiving messages of love and acceptance through light energy, guides, and the spirits that surround and sometimes save her.
Scarborough’s memoir is a courageous story of at-first hopelessness, followed by her Near Death Experience (NDE); a vision in a dream; a family tragedy; and the unexpected fulfillment of a miracle list. Along the way, she shares the stories of spiritual teachers who became a part of her life, including a psychic, a medium, a pranic healer, and a natal astrologer. Her stories reveal dimensions that are joyful, healing, and aid her in putting life’s pieces together like completing a puzzle.
Written with honesty and insight, Scarborough’s memoir explores what it means to be both human and divine as she explains: Everything happened for me, not to me. I was no longer a victim of my circumstances. Both my consciousness and personal reality were shifting. Suffering has the potential to uplevel us and can be a catalyst for profound transformation. Every step on my life’s path had a purpose. Often, the darkest and deepest challenges are experienced by those who can rise to the highest timelines. To the extent that you have known pain, you can know joy at that same contrasting level.
Born in Winter Haven, Florida, in 1954, Scarborough received her bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Georgia in 1980 and her master’s degree in counseling from Webster University in 2001. She spent 25 years in the educational field: as a teacher, a principal of a school for teen parents and their children, a community liaison for adult education, and for a decade as a school district grant writer. She has also been a hospice volunteer, stroke liaison, caregiver, and is a Reiki Master. She is forever a student of the Divine.
From one of the toughest scenarios I’ve ever read in a non-fiction memoir, Sue Scarborough has survived and thrived. Portals of Transcendence is so compelling and so visual, that it reads like a film-script. A natural story-teller, Scarborough takes us along with her on the rugged ride through her childhood only to come out on the other side with a compassionate heart and a higher consciousness that is usually reserved for psychics and saints. A profile in courage for any and all who have gone through the labyrinth of adversity and emotional abuse, Scarborough is lifted up and out of herself with various mystical experiences that open up a new world of lightworkers, intuitives, orbs, miracles and magic. Beautifully rendered, descriptive, and engaging, with cinematic detail, the compassionate heart and higher consciousness make this story a beacon for others caught in a web of behaviors and values that feel alien to their soul.
Thomas Rain Crowe Author of the award-winning nature memoir, Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods and other published works
“Portals of Transcendence by Sue Scarborough is the ultimate inspirational story of taking pain and turning it into purpose. Through sharing her soul’s unfolding and multi-layered awakening, Scarborough captivates the reader by weaving her many challenging experiences of her human condition into a beautiful tapestry of new awareness, connection and understanding of the divine.
As her soul evolves, she captures the gift embedded in each difficulty and applies a meaning that truly transcends what most would consider another defeat. Engaging, inspiring and enchanting, Portals of Transcendence offers hope and intrigue to anyone who seeks a path to finding their true self—their soul.”
Katherine T. Kelly PhD, M.S.P.H., Licensed Psychologist, Soul-Healing Specialist and Bestselling Author of Soul Health: Aligning with Spirit for Radiant Living and other published works
“Sue Scarborough’s memoir is a testament to the resilience of spirit. From the harrowing tales of a difficult childhood to her spiritual growth and quest as an adult, this book is a page-turner that will inspire you to never give up and always be open to all that the universe has to offer.”
– Karen Frazier PhD, Metaphysical Parapsychology, Medical Intuitive and Energy Healer, and Bestselling Author of Crystals for Beginners and other published works
Portals of Transcendence isn’t just a story of endurance; it is a spiritual roadmap showing how the hardest human suffering can serve as the precise soil needed to anchor a divine, luminous awakening. Sue Scarborough proves that no matter how dense the mud of our past is, our souls are always intrinsically fortified to bloom, like the lotus flower, toward the light. Sue’s vulnerable, visually stunning memoir proves that the human spirit cannot be crushed when it is aligned with the light. Captivating, healing, and genuinely transformative, this story is a profound profile in courage and empowerment, and a beautiful illustration of a spiritual awakening.
– Geoffrey Jowett
Intuitive medium, teacher, author and spiritual artist
“Sue Scarborough’s Portals of Transcendence captures the reader with deep fervent details on how family dynamics, along with intuitive self-discovery, affect a person throughout life. This memoir shows a path from treacherous to divine. Sue invites you inside her patterns of ups and downs, as well as engages the reader with her inner knowing that creates her spiritual awakening. This story moves you, intrigues you, and connects you to wanting to know more about life and what is beyond. From start to end, Portals of Transcendence is incredibly written- I hope to read a continuation of her journey.”
– Jolie DeMarco – Llewellyn Worldwide author High-Vibe Crystal Healing, How to Meditate with Crystals, Soul Talking & Relationships, professional Psychic-medium channeling Archangel Michael
Portals of Transcendence is a powerful story that pulls you into a window of time so vivid and captivating you forget you’re reading—you are there, in the swamp, in the darkness, and then in the light. Sue Scarborough’s spiritual awakening is nothing short of remarkable, and what makes it extraordinary is how generously she shares the lesson with the rest of us: that no matter how dark the road becomes, there is always someone watching over us, guiding and protecting us, even when we cannot feel it. Her journey reminds us that we are on time and on purpose, and that each of us carries a role in this world that only we can fulfill. This is a memoir that heals as it unfolds. Read it, and you’ll never again believe you are walking alone.
— Jamie Magee, The Southern Mystic
In the Press
As seen on Oprah Book Club and the Oprah Show, the Portal of Transcendence has been endorsed and received awards such as the ones below.
