Episode #36 :: The Rabbi From Cracow + Samantha Wallen

Today I’m chatting with Sam Wallen, a poet, steam-punk time traveler, writer, speaker, and book coach living in Mill Valley, California.

Sam takes a unique approach to her work, combining three elements—writing, the practice of looking deeply, and the desire to be fully expressed to help people awaken their voice, find deeper meaning, and see the potential in who they already are.

She’s the Founder of Write In Power, which is a growing movement of conscious people who commit to writing into the core wounds and brilliance of their lives in order to claim their value, live in abiding self-trust, AND create a book!

As you can tell, we’re kindred spirits, doing similiar deep, transformational creative work in the world. So it’s with pure pleasure that I get to share this with you.

Enjoy our ramble through the story of The Rabbi From Cracow as well as Sam’s relationship with her body and creativity.

Resources from this episode:

Connecting with Sam:

Connecting with Janelle:

Reciprocity & Appreciation

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Things we chatted about in this episode:

  • the story The Rabbi From Cracow
  • On the theme of home
  • how we go far outside of ourselves to find home, but it’s already right where we are – the journey of leaving in order to find it on the homecoming
  • on having an ill mom, parents that married a lot, having a lot of change as a child
  • had a vision as a child of building a home someday, thinking that ‘then I can become the person I want to be’
  • on marrying young, built a house with her husband in Wyoming by the age of 23, then after completing the house moved to Boulder, Colorado, then bought and sold a house, decided to flip a house but it was end of 2007 and market crashed, eventually lost the house to bankrupcy and foreclosure
  • a phase of loss – house, mother, etc – moved to California, became renters
  • began the journey of writing a a memoir on all the homes she’s lived in – based on themes of value, outward success and materialism
  • has been on a constant search for home, and deep sense of unworthiness and non-value, is now on a journey of arriving into the vision of her dream
  • her golden treasure (from The Rabbi From Cracow) is that of valuing herself
  • on our ‘divine errand’ or ‘what we came here for’ – that we can be called at any time, and that our lives are always moving us in the direction of waking us up to ourselves
  • knows her journey is to create environments of meaning whatever the circumstances
  • our only job is to wake up as much as possible
  • on how taking a journey involves having to leave the comforts of home and taking a risk
  • on determination and dealing with new layers of doubt and fear as you get closer to your goals
  • the more you go after a dream that doesn’t feel traditional, the more doubt, fear and resistance you experience – yet the more you move through that, the more you find the gold that is within you
  • relationship with creativity
  • creativity is just the state of who we all are
  • to create is to bring energy or essence into form
  • each of us is that inherently
  • creativity is an inherently spiritual practice – the process of delighting in bringing this mystery of life into form then play with through building, painting, writing, etcetera
  • being a poet first and foremost – how in Nicaragua poets are placed in politics as an embedded value in theculture
  • stepping towards her creative self and creative life, wanting to support her own writing process first instead of last
  • has often supported others more than herself creatively
  • asking the questions: what is your process? doing spacious wandering, then relaxing and trusting that process
  • asking: how do I have a relationship of acceptance and delight more than criticism and judgment?
  • on trusting what wants to come through and allowing it to emerge
  • on appreciating and being curious about what you create, rather than contrasting it to the original vision
  • relationship with body
  • none of existence is possible without her body – it’s what carries her through life
  • shiftings of body towards peri-menopausual and midlife
  • energy and mind are slower
  • learning how to tap into a deeper place in the body differently than ego/mind
  • on being an empath and sensory intuitive – sensing things through the body
  • learning how to drop more fully into body sensations and guidance and step out of her mind more often
  • more in flow, intuitive, connected when in-body rather than in-mind