About the Author

Soorya Townley was born near Detroit, Michigan, and her family moved to Los Angeles when she was eight. Her father helped open Disneyland when it first began, and since she played there most weekends while he worked, she thought the entire world of every race and color lived in absolute harmony. When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are…” At age twenty, her daughter Charla was born, making Soorya grow up faster.

Soorya became a massage therapist in her thirties. During the first year of her practice, the singer Sting asked her to go on the Blue Turtle Tour to Europe with him. Soorya attracted many other celebrities to her practice, including the late singer John Denver, Lily Tomlin, Richard Gere, Joan Rivers’ family, Jane Fonda, and many more.

In her spare time, she published a few articles on health, wrote poetry, and even won a couple of Honorable Mentions.

After Charla’s husband murdered her, Soorya dropped everything to raise her granddaughter for ten years and started from scratch in her career working at a Reno spa. In private moments, Soorya began her memoir. Being educated as a poet hindered her at first because she thought in more complex, lofty phrasing. But now the advantage of poetry has helped her excel in combining words more creatively.

Once Soorya’s granddaughter was eighteen, Soorya moved to Cotonou, Benin, Africa, to join her son (and family), who lived and worked there. She was grateful to land a position as the editor of the American Embassy’s newsletter.  She also took advantage of the African culture and went on road trips with the American Ambassador and her husband.

In 2019, Soorya moved to Asheville, NC. Her trachea collapsed that same year and she had to wear a trachea tube in her neck for fifteen months. Luckily, she found an airways specialist who reinstated her surgically. 

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Currently, Soorya is finishing a book on how she got started working in L.A. with high-profile clients.