Susan said that she did not set out to venture “into what I think of as the house of the indigenous or the Native American, it evolved of its own accord".

Because of the images coming through her, she began studying shamanism. "Dream Basket", painted in 1986, grew out of a guided shamanic journey led by a friend and explores the central event of this journey. It demonstrates the interplay between the personal and the symbolic worlds in her art and her life.

During the course of her journey, Susan found herself in a womblike cave where she felt embraced and comforted by a bear. She realized that the bear was her mother, who had died when Susan was two years old. She felt completely loved by the bear-mother. The piece conveys great tenderness, as if Susan were learning to comfort and to mother herself. It marked a breakthrough in her psychological work and recalls a comment she made in an interview: “I’ve come to think that the work itself is perhaps my own wish for myself, my own looking into what I might like to become rather than what I am.”

The bear as nurturing mother has been one of the primary portrayals of the bear in myth and folklore for millennia and became a critical symbol for Susan in her quest for wholeness.