Calling, Creativity, and Paying Attention with Sarah Wells

This week on Caller ID, I’m joined by my wife, writer Sarah Wells, on the day her new book Say One Million Times, Wow! Essays on Awe, Faith, and Family from America’s Great Outdoors (and Some Hotel Rooms) releases.

But this isn’t just a conversation about a book—it’s about calling. We talk about what it looks like to build a creative life in the middle of real responsibilities, how identity gets shaped over time, and why you need to listen to your instincts and not settle for a safe road. 

Sarah shares the behind-the-scenes of her writing journey, the tension between vocation and family, and how awe isn’t just a feeling—it’s a way of seeing that can reframe your work, your purpose, and your everyday life.

If you’re trying to figure out who you are, what you’re called to, or how to stay grounded while pursuing something meaningful, this one’s for you. 

Her new book Say One Million Times, Wow! Essays on Awe, Faith, and Family from America’s Great Outdoors (and Some Hotel Rooms) is available now on Amazon or  wherever books are sold. Learn more at sarahmariewells.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Well, that's not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to be a stay-at-home full-time mom. That's that's what I'm called to do. And six weeks into Lydia being alive, I was like felt brain dead. I felt purposeless. I was, I probably had postpartum depression, but didn't realize that's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

So kind of an identity crisis right there, right? Of like I thought my life was gonna look like this. I thought my identity was gonna be mother, husband, but actually it's a bunch of things.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Yes, yes. And also, is it okay for me to want to work and not be full-time mom? Uh and it didn't matter whether that was okay or not, because I was like, I'm gonna die if I just do this. At least it felt that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

I'm Brandon Davis Wells. Let's dig into what we're really doing here.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Today I get to sit across from someone whose fingerprints are on almost everything that I create. The music, words, ideas, life. Today's guest is Sarah Wells, and I wouldn't have my wife on if she didn't have something to say. But she has a lot to say on identity and career. She's an award-winning poet, the author of seven books, a gifted teacher of creative nonfiction, a former marketing guru, a university administrator, a co-writer on nearly every song I've released or am releasing, and the strategic brain behind so many of the projects that I take on, including countless help and encouragement in this podcast. She's also the woman who walked through long COVID, deep uncertainty, massive life shifts with courage, honesty, and grit, all while being an extraordinary mother, partner, and creative force. Today, on the day her second memoir, to say one million times, wow, essays on awe, faith, and family from America's Great Outdoors and Some Hotel Rooms, releases into the world. She's stepping behind the mic with me today. This is a conversation about creativity, suffering, marriage, calling, resilience, career, faith, grief, hope, all the things that really hit all of us in our relationships and the strange ways that those things reshape who we are when we're not looking. I'm honored to introduce to you my wife, Sarah Wells. Sarah, thank you for taking the call from about 50 feet away.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Thanks for having me. I'm just gonna go get a box of Kleenex now because that was pretty sweet.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

I had to make it through as well. Um my first question I like to ask people is you know, we're talking about career and identity. How many jobs do you think that you've had? Can you count them all? I know when I've done this exercise for various purposes, I've counted I think around 33 to 34 jobs.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

It depends on how you count the jobs, but I think going back into high school, probably over a dozen. But maybe but more if I count specific employers. So, like for a season I was a substitute teacher and worked at four or five different schools during that season. But if so that would bump the number up to probably over 20.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

What about careers?

SPEAKER_03 3:32

At least four shifts.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

When you when you meet somebody for the first time, I was talking about this with a friend of mine, a new friend of mine. What do you say to somebody about what you do? Because it's one of the most common questions people ask, right? They say, So what do you do for a living? Now I hate that question. I've grown to hate that question. Here we are talking career on this podcast every week. Right. I try to ask something different, but how do you usually describe what you do to people when you meet them?

SPEAKER_03 4:01

I always stumble over this question every time because I just don't know where to start. And there's so much that matters to me. Uh, and I could probably get over in my head. And we were meeting with somebody a couple of days ago and she said, So tell me about yourself. And I went, uh, where do you want me to begin? In the context of this conversation, what matters the most? Right. Uh so last night at a at a meeting that I was at, I introduced myself as Sarah Wells. I'm a poet and a writer. Uh I'm a committed follower of Jesus. And those were the things that I led with, the things that I cared about in that particular context. But I think it does change depending on the audience sometimes, what I lead with. I find it tricky.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Sometimes I'll say, you know, I serve as because I learned that from Rob Poole and I've shared that with a lot of people and they love that. But when you s when you are a freelance person in your role, like it is a little even more challenging, right? Like I so you you know, I talked about your writing in the open. If no one ever read a single piece of what you write, would you still do it?

SPEAKER_03 5:15

100%, yes. Because it has been life-changing. The work has been formative for me. I had that question posed to me about our my memoir. I said our memoir because it's about our marriage. Uh, but about American honey, before I ever had a publisher for that book, I was talking to somebody about the work, and I said, you know, if nobody ever reads this book, it won't matter because it saved my marriage. The work saved our relationship. The processing of that season was formative for me. And everything I've ever written has been either prayer or processing or lament or praise or whatever to figure out how I think about the world world, how I'm made, why I'm the way I am. What am I supposed to do about the way that I am?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Well, that leads me to my next question. When you were 18, did you know this about yourself? Do you like, did you envision this being the sort of career path, or or what did that look like?

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Definitely not. I was thinking about that this morning, trying to look back, and uh there's a strange paradox in the way that I was brought up, in that my family's motto was Fugemans are hard workers. Fugemans is my my maiden name.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

That's the real reason she married me, because Wells is easier to say. That's it. Wells versus it was on the list. You know what they say that like now the things I learned this yesterday that it's um uh the things that women look for, uh according to today's social media, you know, is the two sixes, six figures and six feet tall. Well, I don't hit either of those, but I do I do have an easy name to add on.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

It did help. There was a guy I dated for a while whose last name was Wright, and I was like, this is perfect. That didn't turn out. Well, I'm glad we related. Yeah. There's still time.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

There's still time.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

So anyway, back to my paradox. I was brought up with this motto Fugemans are hard workers. It's hardcore ingrained in who I am and how I've made a lot of my life choices. But at the same time, the thing that I wanted to be the most in the world was a wife and mother when I was young. Uh career woman was not an aspiration that I thought I thought was what I ought to do. So the the very the like complexity of feeling obligated to do certain things and pursuing your heart's desire and not not knowing for sure whether those two things overlap, I think caused me to not really be sure what the future would look like when I was 18. When I was 18, all I really wanted to do was get married. And I was like, oh, I can also write. I like writing, so I guess I'll go to college and pursue a really impractical creative writing major and religion minor.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Two things that every parent hopes their kids study uh going into especially as a first-generation college student. This is throw in philosophy and you'll have the holy triumphant of it.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

I wanted to, but then I you know tried to graduate or I graduated early in order to get married.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

This is a typical overachiever. Oh, yeah, I graduated early.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

In order to get married.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Okay. So when you were growing up though, you you you clearly knew that you had some kind of gift or skill or aptitude or even just a penchant for or a love of writing. And that's what your career and your most of your jobs have revolved around as an adult. Was there a teacher or somebody in your life that said, hey, you're really good at this?

SPEAKER_03 9:05

Yeah. Uh when I was in first grade, I broke my or I sprained my wrist in first grade and I was left-handed. And first grade's kind of a crucial time for writing development. And my teacher, Mrs. Keefe, put me down in front of a computer, which was like the first time I'd ever sat in front of a computer.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Well, I didn't realize they had computers then in Jaga County.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

So that's I know. It's kind of amazing that we had a computer. Uh we had a computer at home and in our classroom. Wow. And she said, you know, instead of practicing handwriting during that time, I could type and write stories. And she submitted me to a young authors competition. That meant a lot to me. It definitely was formative in that direction. So I've always loved words. I've loved language, the music of language. My dad used to read uh a Hooper Humperdink book to me when I was a kid. And the rhythm and music of language has just stuck with me throughout the years. Love poetry, love, love putting words together to make them both beautiful and meaningful. So that definitely has been a calling. I just have never, I haven't always known where it belongs in the rank order of priorities in my life.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Can you walk us through the pathlet that sort of led to where you are now? You know, you've you've published your seventh book comes out today, and there's a mix, right? You've got some Bible devotionals, you've got some poetry, you've got not a nonfiction memoir, uh, and you've written countless columns and articles, whether that for your own uh personal website or whether that's for root and vine or other uh entities. What has that path been like?

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Well, coming out of college, I wanted what a lot of creative writing majors wanted and jobs in editing or publishing. Uh, and those did not transpire right away. I worked for a while as an office assistant for a landscaping company and then was substitute teaching, uh, then switched to public relations management for the for a private high school for a couple of years. And then uh an opportunity opened at Ashland University to move into their new MFA program at the time. This was in 2007.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

And this I know this story a little bit, but people out there don't. The way this came about was wild. I I like asking people these kinds of details because whether you think it's fate or destiny or God's will or just some random act that happened, sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time. And that's sort of what happened, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:45

Yes, definitely. I had a had stumbled upon the job description in the first place and submitted my application like you would for any normal job. And months went by. I was pregnant with our middle son Elvis at the time, and uh probably was six months pregnant, I think. And I reached out to the faculty member who was in charge of the MFA program and was like, hey, I never really I never heard from you about this application, just wondered the status of this job. And he wrote back almost immediately. I hadn't been in touch with him in probably four years or so. And he said, Actually, Sarah, we just filled the position yesterday. Uh, but I got an email a minute ago or whatever. It was within within the last 24 hours that the person had to back out. And they had already notified all of their other candidates that this the position was filled. And he said, Can you interview? I didn't even know you applied. I wobbled into uh the interview and um ended up starting that job eight months pregnant, and uh it changed the course of our lives for sure. We shifted from one place to another and made made that big change. And it's funny because uh rewind a little bit when our daughter was born, I had been patchworking jobs together, doing some you know, part-time stuff here and there. I don't think I was full-time at uh the public relations management role at Lake Center. I think that was a part-time job, but I was certain that when Lydia was born, I was gonna be a full-time stay-at-home mom.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

Thought for sure that was that was my destiny. That was my calling. This other stuff that I did was just what I had to do or I was supposed to do, even though I loved uh I love working. I like this is a thing that you don't understand. No, I don't.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

I don't love working, but I I that's not I I I tend towards sloth. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Yes. But at the time I thought, well, that's not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to be a stay-at-home, full-time mom. That's that's what I'm called to do. And six weeks into Lydia being alive, I was like felt brain dead. I felt purposeless. I was, I probably had postpartum depression, but I didn't realize that's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

So kind of an identity crisis right there, right? Of like thought my life was gonna look like this. I thought my identity was gonna be mother, husband, but actually it's a bunch of things.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Yes, yes. And also, is it okay for me to want to work and not be a full-time mom? Uh and it didn't matter whether that was okay or not, because I was like, I'm gonna die if I just do this. At least it felt that way at the time. And so I called back my uh employer who I had told I'm not coming back and asked, can I please come back? And I learned definitely learned something about myself during that season that that working really mattered to me, being in a career, doing something that used my gifts beyond mothering in a way um that was very fulfilling and necessary for me. Now, fast forward a few years and I've had that part of my identity tested a little bit. It's been an interesting journey from the, you know, going into a full-time career administrative role and higher education, and then moving from higher ed in the arts to a business school. I worked for a while at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and their Weatherhead School of Management as a managing editor there for their um magazine and their marketing department, and then moved into uh marketing at an agency level for a number of years. And I thought that was where I had land, that was where I was gonna retire from.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

I thought I I hit gold. This is perfect. I get to be creative all day, I get to be strategic, and I work with an amazing team, and I'm have a great relationship with the owner, and we were gonna fly all the way to retirement. And then COVID happened.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

So quick pause. If you're enjoying this, make sure you're following or subscribe wherever you listen. It helps more than you think. Share, follow, tell your friends, leave us a rating. All of those things really help us going here on the Caller ID podcast. Thanks. COVID hits. You had already felt like, hey, things had clicked, right? And I asked people this question all the time like, would you ever feel like something clicked? And you had hit that moment. And then as life happens and it does, you get long COVID, and what did that do to shift your identity, your your career? What was that like for people out there? I know what it was like, obviously. Super challenging.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

We both had minor mild cases of COVID early on in the pandemic in 2020. And of course, everybody was working from home. So it was kind of easy to hide that I wasn't doing well at work because I wasn't among my colleagues all day. They didn't see how exhausted I was necessarily. All the way until from March until August was a long churn of trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Yeah. Because I was having all kinds of weird symptoms, dizziness and exhaustion, and headaches, and tingling in my nerves, and all kinds of crazy things that are symptoms of long COVID. And finally in August, I had a diagnosis of POTS, which is a dysautonomia and disorder of the autonomic nervous system. And POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. So there's a good reason that it's abbreviated as POTS. Uh, and so that that realization and doing research and finding that many people who get POTS from viral infections um don't recover, that this is the nor new normal. And facing your new normal comes with a lot of grief and a lot of struggle trying to figure out what happens next. So we took a lot of walks during 2020 together.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Very slow, slow walks.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Very slow walks. Daily, daily slow walks. And I think every day for probably two months after that diagnosis, I said something like, I think I might have to resign. I think I might have to resign. And you were really great. You're like, you gotta do whatever you need to do. But giving up that part of myself and not knowing what was going to be on the other side was terrifying because for so long, all the way since Lydia was born, I had primarily identified myself by what I was doing.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Well, go back to what you said.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

Fugemans are Fugmans are hard workers.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

What if I'm not working hard? Now who am I? What am I gonna do now? I'm just gonna be Sarah instead of super Sarah. I took a lot of pride in the things that I was able to accomplish and do uh and my skills. And suddenly the thing that I had relied on most to establish my identity was damaged. I couldn't sit in a strategy session. See, now I still trip over words because of COVID. Thank you. But I couldn't work in a strategy session anymore without getting a migraine. And I couldn't process, I was switching words or losing words all of the time in the middle of sentences or explaining things. And uh it was really frustrating and hard. Eventually, though, I we arrived at the okay, I'm going to do this. I need to have a conversation with Jeremy about my future at the marketing agency. It was really, really frightening. But that same week, in the same mysterious way that I landed at Ashland University in 2007, um, the Lord provided for us in really magical, mystical ways that feels it's humbling and weird. But that week I that I decided to resign officially. I hadn't said a word to anyone except you. And I think I made a decision on a Wednesday. I said, this is it. This is what's gotta happen. Here's the timeline. By January, I'm going to be, I need to just quit and recover from this, hopefully recover from this pot situation. And the next day, uh our mutual friend, Kate Tucker, sent me a text message. And I haven't talked to hadn't talked to Kate since it had probably been five years, six years, I don't know, a long time. She sang at our wedding. Yeah. Yeah. And she said, Hey, I uh I was I'm working for this new magazine that is looking for freelance writers that are interested in faith and creation care. Do you know anybody? I know you're in that world. And of like, do I know anybody? I know someone.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

I know someone, that's me. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

And the timing was just so crazy. I've never had such an opportunity fall in my lap before to fully live into the things that I love being able to do and the giftings that I've been given. And suddenly. I had an opportunity to write almost exclusively for them for a season. And uh it was incredibly joyful and freeing work that allowed me the space I needed to recover or to begin recovering. So that was a pretty amazing moment.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

It's quite a journey, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Yeah. But then uh to to get to the because it wasn't that simple, of course.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

No, no, no, never is.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Yeah, right. Yeah. So I resigned and then in January, officially I resigned in January and um started writing for them uh for root and vine. And every day we continued our walks, and every day I had a laundry list of things that I had achieved that day.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

This is no joke. She had to run through them every day.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

Yes. They were like, so how was your day? And you would tell me, and you'd be like, so how was your day? And be like, Great. I did this and I did this and I did this. And at one point, I'll never forget it, you said, Sarah, you are a human being, not a human doing. And I was like, no, I have to prove myself. I have to prove my worth. And uh I think that was the the hardest lesson from that season of our lives together for me, was setting down the primary identity of production and earning my worth through significance all of the time and seeing that my life is worth it just because, because I exist, because I am who I am, and uh I am loved and that that is enough. Uh, and I don't have to do anything to earn that love. Um, so it was a huge identity shift during that season um that was only forged through suffering. I don't think I would ever have arrived in that mindset of truly believing that I'm worthy of love and acceptance outside of what I've accomplished without having everything stripped away in those ways. Well, thank God, not everything, but a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Hey, if you're enjoying this conversation, make sure you're following or subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts, Apple, Spotify, all the things. It helps more than you think. You can also find deeper reflections in behind-the-scenes stories on my substack that will be linked in the show notes if I can figure out how to do that. Right. That's the next thing. So, all right, so you that journey walks you through quite a bit of it, but then there's more. Right? So now you're writing, you're writing, you're writing. You feel like God has kind of put you in a great spot.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

And then, like the Israelites, sometimes we think, wasn't it better before?

SPEAKER_03 25:00

Yep, yep. This is this is my life. I I am the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and looking back at Egypt, very excited to return to slavery.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

So walk us through. So you end up actually a job at Ashland University, and you and I talked about it a little bit about you know the tuition benefits and all those kinds of things as the kids were getting close to college, and you said, Yeah, I I think uh I think I'm gonna try for this.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Yes. So I had an opportunity in 2022 to return to Ashland University. It had been eight years since I had left my job as an administrative director in the MFA program, and then I had an opportunity that seemed golden and perfect for me to re-enter a full-time workspace after two years, no, a year and a half of recovering and being in this freelance space. And uh I went ahead, I accepted the position, and it was hard, very draining, exhausting, frustrating, difficult. Not the job itself wasn't my own ability to do the job, was it was very, very difficult for me to re-enter that space. And I couldn't figure out why, because I am a hard worker and I am a bootstrapper and I am going to do the work. And I was very determined to make it work. Um, even though every time I talked about the job, I was like, Well, it's how was work doing? Yeah, yeah. How was your day? So it wasn't there wasn't anything in particular, like people were great, program was great, excited to promote stuff, but just felt something felled off. But I was determined to make it work because that's that's how I am. I'm going to lean in. We're gonna keep on going. One morning at a meditation class at our church at the time, my friend George Shunk was leading us through a meditative practice. And this was about six weeks into the job. And I had said, I'm gonna give it three months because that seems like a fair shake. We'll be able to figure it out in three months.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Some of us have given jobs less than that.

SPEAKER_03 27:32

Yeah. Well, I did work for one and a half days at a job once. So I did I have given less time.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

You got me beat. Well, no, I had one day at UPS. So you got me beat. I have you beat there.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

Yeah, you do. So it's not a competition.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Everything's a competition, everything is a competition. Don't you know me by now? 26 years, right? Is that what it is? 23 years. Sorry, I forgot. 23 years. I was giving us more credit than we deserved.

SPEAKER_03 28:01

Anyway, so six weeks into this job that I was pretty well committed to doing and continuing to do, was in this meditation class, and I closed my eyes and was like, all right, I'm gonna meditate on this verse of scripture that has absolutely nothing to do with career and calling. And I not audibly heard but heard the Lord say, Sarah. And anytime God says your name, you know you're in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Well, I don't know about trouble, but you know you need to listen.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

For sure. But also you're in trouble. Okay, all right, all right, all right, and I heard I heard God say to me, I gave you all of these opportunities to do what I made you to do with joy and with freedom, and you chose insurance and stability. And I just started sobbing because I knew in that moment I had to quit that I was being being disobedient to the call on my life, and that I had trusted in stability and insurance instead of the freedom that the Lord had given me because God had been so faithful to me and us in that season. I had not had to really work to find work. It it came to me in ways that were magical and mystical and beautiful. And I instead was like, eh, all the stuff that's really fulfilling, I'm just gonna leave behind to make sure that we have insurance. And not even great insurance, and not even great insurance. But it was insurance!

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:02

And so uh after a lot of tears and a lot of praying and letting trying to let go of the disappointment that I thought I was going to be to so many people and the embarrassment of taking a position, I went in the next day and resigned with a lot of freedom and a lot of peace. But um, it was not an easy place to arrive. And the story doesn't end there because nine months later, or a year and a half later, probably, or multiple times along the way, I've had the same temptations happen over and over again. And every time it feels like I'm back in the wilderness eyeing Egypt and thinking maybe that's the way, maybe that was better. Maybe I should go back.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

But I think everybody has those moments. I think everybody has those moments where you look back with nostalgia in what uh behavioral therapists will call memory editing, where you look back and you only remember the positive things of an experience. It's what nostalgia is, right? You push away the negatives, the things that that you hated or or just didn't couldn't stand, and you focus on the positives. And it's easy to do. And in some ways, it's helpful, right? It's actually an evolutionary brain uh that that does that because in many ways we we want to focus on the good because if we dwell on those bad things, it doesn't take us to a good place.

SPEAKER_03 31:33

Yeah. Well, and like we were talking about with Lydia and that identity crisis for me, uh, I had an opportunity in the last year to enter into a job that I thought was my dream job. I had thought I wanted to do it since I was in the MFA program in 2007. And suddenly I had to face I okay, I now I the opportunity is here. Is that actually what I want? Is that actually what I'm called into? And that I think of all of the decisions along the way in the last five years may have been the hardest one for me to say no to because for so long I thought that was who I was supposed to be, or that would be the thing that defined my arrival. I've done it, I am an MFA director. That I don't know why that's the thing that was like the crowning achievement of my life was the temptation, and it turned out to not be said no. I said no fast. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Any regrets on that?

SPEAKER_03 32:42

Uh none.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

I think as we get older, hopefully we learn that not every opportunity is one we need to take. And I've struggled with that too. Of it always feels good to be wanted, to be desired. And I don't mean in a sexual way, I mean in a way that where people view you as a quality, intelligent candidate for something and they want you to be part of their organization.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

And that is so alluring, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:10

It is, it's alluring, and it's also bad theology that we have had to try to navigate together about uh well, if this uh if this opportunity must be God's will, if it's going to work out, and trying to um sort through that calling and God's will and pathways and all of that stuff becomes very muddy. Um just assuming that a job that is available to you is is God's will because it's available to you is not and because people have either recruited you or offered it to you, not necessarily that it's just available, but yes, like oh the doors open, yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

I got the vapas. Yeah, I gotta take this job because they want me to do it, right? Yes, uh hard to say no, though. Okay, next question. Have you ever felt like an imposter? Have you ever had imposter syndrome?

SPEAKER_03 34:13

I have imposter syndrome all of the time. How about right now past tense? Not right now, thankfully. Yes. Uh or not right this second, not today yet.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Sure, it's early. Day ain't over yet, as Curly said on City Flickers. Tell anybody today?

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Yes. I was thinking this morning about this uh a couple of years ago, the word of the year for me was confidence, and uh felt a real call to try to embrace who I am and the things that God has given me and not be shy or ashamed or whatever about them, um, and lean into those giftings and and and do do better at doing that. Uh and it I definitely have gotten better at that, but I'm going to a conference in a week that I know I'm going to feel like an imposter at, even though I've published seven books and it's a writing conference. I should feel like I should feel like I've arrived, that I'm a pro, that I'm in this space and I should, you know, be taken seriously.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Do you think that will ever go away?

SPEAKER_03 35:28

I don't know. I hope so.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

So you say no to that job, you keep doing your freelance writing, you're doing some work for for various clients around the globe, if you will. What have you been working on? What gives your work meaning right now?

SPEAKER_03 35:42

Uh well, the work that I do for pay, because uh probably I probably work between 25 and 30 hours a week as a freelancer and then dedicate the rest of my time to my creative and personal work. But my um my freelance work, I love partnering with people who have similar missions and objectives to help people in some way, shape, or form. I especially love working with people who are in some kind of faith-based setting, who are you know thinking in creative ways about spiritual formation. I love trying to usher people into that space more and more. Um, one of my main clients is really focused on addiction recovery and betrayal trauma recovery. And she was another one that was felt very much like a God-ordained partnership and has been really meaningful work uh for me in the last few years. And then I'm currently working on poems in response to issues of climate change and in the climate crisis, and uh really enjoying responding to some work by Paul Hawken in his book Regeneration, um, which is about reversing the climate crisis in one generation. So it's very inspirational, aspirational, and hopeful about the future of our planet, and uh really taps into an area of interest for me. And I just love making trying to make something beautiful in a time that's very filled with anxiety and crisis. Feel called to be a hope-bearer in those ways, um, and respond in uh in ways that are creative and and make beauty.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Caller ID exists because of listeners like you. So if this episode matters to you, follow the show, leave a five-star rating, share it, come join me on Substack for deeper reflections and stories. You've written about your family, your husband, your kids. What has that looked like as far as putting yourself out there and why write about those things?

SPEAKER_03 38:05

Uh I can I am not very good at writing about things I don't know. And I know my marriage and I know my kids pretty well, and uh I know my family, my extended family pretty well. And uh and I really uh I love the the form of the essay for the the ability to see the way that a per another person has processed their own life can be a real entryway into healing and hope for another person. And so when I've written about difficult subjects, it is always with the hope that there would be something redemptive and restorative in that revealing of something very difficult or hard that we've been through together as a family, uh, as a couple. Uh, the the vulnerability on the page makes for uh connection opportunities with other people. And so that really drives me when I it's not the first thing because I don't write in order to help other people heal. I write first for my own healing and restoration and and trying to be formed and made more whole from whatever brokenness I might be emerging from. And uh finding the glimmers of grace in whatever has happened is really the first thing that I seek when I'm writing. And then secondary is the public aspect. And so uh I wrote recently about writing about my kids uh our kids. You always give me crap about saying my kids.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Yeah, I was gonna let it go. Your kids.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

My kids. I was writing about my kids and um and writing writing our intimate stories in the past when they were little, it was just it was easier because I was writing about them so that I could write about my own experience, um, which is still true as they have become teenagers and adults, but as they but now their stories are their stories to tell. And so it that has been very that has been a little bit more complicated to navigate um because I want to honor their stories, I want to be careful with their stories because more than anything, their relationship with me matters, and I don't want to misrepresent. And so, as I've written about you in different uh seasons of our lives, I've always taken my paper to you and shakily handed it to you to say, I'm going to tell this story. And sometimes you didn't know the details before I handed you the essay. Uh, so that was a real fun time. Um, and then other times I've handed in the in this latest book I've written about the kids and their journeys um some really difficult and low seasons. And I asked them to read those chapters before letting them out into the world. Um, because above all, my love for them comes first, and their love and relationship with me comes first, not whether or not it's a good book.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

And those stories are in your book that came out today. Yes. Tell us more, tell us more about that where can people find it?

SPEAKER_03 41:39

Yes. So to say one million times while will be available or is available on Amazon and any other major booksellers online. You can also go to my website, Sarah Mariewells.com, and find it there. It's really a journey of midlife crisis in good and bad ways, uh, of turning 40 and all of the different changes that happen in this season of our of the middle of our lives. The faith changes, parenting changes, relationship changes with your marriage, relationship changes with your parents, uh, all of those pieces and parts, and how all of that a career changes, obviously, health changes. All of those things are interwoven with grace and with awe. And so it really is exploring those both mundane and extraordinary seasons of our lives through the lens of grace.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

What do you wish somebody had told you about work or careers when you were coming out of college or when you were younger?

SPEAKER_03 42:49

Probably that I didn't need to have it all figured out at 18 or 21 or 25 or 29 or 40. And you know, we learn so much about our about who we think we are supposed to be through just osmosis and the examples that surrounded me. And looking back, it probably shouldn't have been such a surprise that I wanted to work or that I was going to get a lot of value out of being a hardworking woman, even though I grew up in a pretty traditional uh setting, rural Ohio environment where the husband's the breadwinner, the wife stays home with the kids. I was surrounded by hardworking women as well. And they were powerful models to me that I didn't see really until I started writing about them. And I was like, oh, that's where I got it from. That's or at least part of it anyway. That's meaningful to me having raised a daughter and thinking about the kind of model that I was and that my mom and your mom have been. To her as to what is possible, you know, as a woman.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Yeah, both both are mothers, small business owners on their own right, and strong women who um have been hard workers and also good caretakers at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Yes. Who also pursued things that they cared about, their own passions that away from their spouse and their their kids. Yes. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

If this conversation is meaningful to you, follow the show, leave a five-star rating, share it with someone who might need it. Join me on Substack for longer reflections and behind-the-scenes stories for caller ID. I call that backstage pass. Yeah, there it is. Okay, a little fun question for you. As you think about your career and leadership journey and some of the things you've gotten to do or you get to do, what situations or pieces of work tend to trigger your inner Larry David frustration, insecurity, misalignment? And then what helps you come back to that inner Ted Lasso, the joy, purpose, grace, curiosity?

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Well, the very first thing, and I like I feel embarrassed to say it, but I'm going to because it's fresh. Uh, my inner Larry David hates to have uh her authority challenged. And so if I feel like I knew what the heck I was doing, and somebody else came in and was like, no, you should do it this way, and that gets trumped. Oh man, it just burns me up. And you know it.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

I do, I do.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

I am I believe in in what I think ought to be done. I am an Enneagram one. I am going to do it the right way. That's my objective. And if somebody says it ought to be a different way, man, I struggle with that. And it it makes me really fired up.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

I heard this quote the other day the from a longtime CEO who said, we'll follow the data. And if there's no adapt if there's no data available and we're going with opinions, we're going with mine. And I loved it.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

Yes. Yes. Yes. So this just happened just this week for me, where I I was triggered into the pissed-off Larry David mind. And in order to get out of it, I really just have to humble myself and take a moment and take a breath and process a little bit of like Sarah, you are not the only one who has an opinion about the way that things ought to be in the world and come back down. So that's definitely a Larry David trigger for me. Uh Ted Lasso, man, creative work and creative collaborative work just makes me shine. When we have written songs together in the last five years, and it has been the most enjoyable, delightful part of my creative process. And I'm not just saying that because you're sitting across from me in this, well, 50 feet away from me.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Down the hole through a couple closed doors. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

It it also has opened up my eyes to the power of collaborative creative work. And as a writer for so many years, that work was done in isolation. Um, but there's so much pleasure and joy in being able to work with others to make both your work better and also to see what other people bring to the mix. Um it really just is so fun.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

How do you feel about vulnerability in the workplace and why it's important and to what extent?

SPEAKER_03 47:46

I think that it's really important because we're all we spend the majority of our, well, most of us spend the majority of our time at work during the week. And uh, you know, that the those are the folks that you are really developing deep relationships with. And if you're just a robot sitting there getting the work done and not interacting with other people, um that vulnerability, uh, that that opportunity for relationship and um and richness disappears. So that was one of the things I I it is one of the things I miss so much about being in the marketing agency space was the team collaborative spirit, the joy, the laughter, the the what if we did this moments um and problem solving together was just um it is it does take courage to be able to say that what if we did this because you're putting your ideas out there, and somebody might say, No, I hate that. I think that's so dumb. But hopefully they love you enough to be able to say it in a nice way.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Let's do some some word association. Career.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

I'm an internal processor, so you're gonna have to give me a second.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

I can edit this out or leave it here for people to laugh at. That's fine too. You're externally processing, by the way, about being an internal processor, just to be clear.

SPEAKER_03 49:19

Which which slowed the process.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

I'm aware and me talking slowing it down too. This is what our life is like here every day, people inconsequential. Now the it's gonna take like 30 minutes to get through five of these.

SPEAKER_03 49:43

My career climbing ladder crashed five years ago. So it is now an inconsequential aspect of my life.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

You're like Clark Griswold hanging on to the side, right? Like the ladder's gone. I'm just hanging on, hanging on to the gutter. Calling.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

Everything instead of inconsequential.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

Say more.

SPEAKER_03 50:10

Pursuing pursuing what I have been called into has been life-giving, even when it seemed irresponsible. So I think pursuing calling, listening for that calling, listening to what my heart desired, what was going to bring delight, what was going to bring freedom, this is it. This is the life. We only have one of them.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Mary Oliver said it.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

Yes. What are you gonna do with your one wild and precious life? I'd like to enjoy it. And not in an in an indulgent way, but in a in a abundant way. Uh the the abundant life that that the Lord has promised to us.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Um Get McMahon said that a couple weeks ago on the podcast where she said abundance without excess.

SPEAKER_03 51:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

And I loved the framing of that.

SPEAKER_03 51:07

That's very good.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

Failure.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

The only way. We only get to hope through suffering. And you have to keep going through failures in order to arrive at any kind of success. It's formative.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

I hate that so much.

SPEAKER_03 51:27

I know you do.

SPEAKER_01 51:30

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I hate it. The hard way on purpose. The hard way on purpose, as David Giffles said, right? Like actor and author and and and friend of yours. Um I I think the reason I hate failure so much, I mean everybody dislikes it, but is the competitive part of me and the athlete that I just grew up playing and then coaching and rest.

SPEAKER_03 51:54

Essential and a gift.

SPEAKER_01 51:59

Money.

SPEAKER_03 52:01

Also essential. But I'm gonna say a tool uh as a means, uh a powerful means to achieve good.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Have you ever Googled your name?

SPEAKER_03 52:18

I have a Google Alert set for my name, baby.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Yeah, yeah, me too. Me too. And it will take your identity down a little bit, just knowing that there are tons of other people with your name, right?

SPEAKER_03 52:33

I I have a note on my phone that says things all the other Sarah Wellses are doing in the world.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

I love this so much. I forgot all about this. I need to start this with mine. Like, I see them on a daily basis. I get the Google alerts too. And like I see there's Brandon Wells who die, there's ones who go to jail, there's ones who are like high school wrestlers and college basketball or football players, and I'm like, I I do other people have these alerts? Does my name ever come up in somebody else's Google Alert?

SPEAKER_03 53:09

Is someone else cursing me because of how successful I've been today?

SPEAKER_01 53:13

They're not doing that because of me, but you know, right. Like, oh, that's that idiot that was on the school board. Yeah, I got all kinds of notifications about him from 2020 to 2023. If somebody is listening and they're walking through illness or or loss or massive life detour, that some of the things that we've experienced, what would you want to gently tell them from this side of that journey?

SPEAKER_03 53:41

Your life is worth it even if you don't recover. That's really hitting me hard right now. Because of course, I'm so grateful that I've made it through the long COVID journey and that I'm 95% recovered from the symptoms that I had early on in the pandemic. But it couldn't, it could have been different. It could have been otherwise. And the hard truth that I learned about the value of my life outside of the productivity that I was capable of was life-changing and so refreshing and absolutely necessary. And when you have your abilities stripped away from you in ways that you're they're out beyond your control, your whole identity is shattered and you like you don't know what to do with yourself. And it's hard not to uh get sucked into the bitterness of uh something being taken from you. It's just and it's an injustice, you know, that grief and that pain. I know um, it's not fair. Uh but it also is the most severe mercy that I've ever experienced of taking away my false idol of my worth being in my in what I could do for the world instead in just being who I am, and that it is enough to exist. It's enough to be, um, to be a child of God, to be a person that gets to experience this amazing magical world. That's what I would tell you if you were dealing with chronic illness or struggling with a cancer diagnosis or walking through a miscarriage or in a season of loss where you've lost a loved one. Like it's all unfair and not the way that anybody wanted it to be, but it is still so worth it.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

When you look ahead, what kind of work or life are you hoping to grow into next?

SPEAKER_03 56:04

I really love where we're at right now, babe. I love the freedom and the creative life. I think I would love um to see to continue to create and be um involved in our community to step into this next season. You know, the that's part of the question I end our book my book on is what comes next? I don't know if I'm ready for it. Am I ready for it? Who knows? Uh, but you know, this next season is one of a lot of unknowns like every season previously. You know, will our children have their have children? If they do, I desperately want to be a part of that. If they don't, I want to be a part of their lives still. I also want to explore, I want to experience this world. I want to continue to do meaningful work for people who are trying to do meaningful work for others and partnering in that space. That's what I hope for.

SPEAKER_01 57:06

As we wrap up, I keep thinking about how rare and valuable it is to be known for who you are, not what you do. Uh, when I think about my wife, I don't first picture job titles or career milestones or books. I think of her curiosity, creativity, courage, the way she shows up for people. And maybe that's what I think we all should be looking at as success. A life where relationships and presence are what matters the most. And it's why I started this podcast, because Color ID doesn't exist to talk about how to do a better resume or how to find that dream job, but it really was a creation in order to help us all learn from each other and be reminded that regardless of what we get to do or have to do, in some and in many cases, that our identity is as a human being.

SPEAKER_03 58:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

I'll give you the last word here as we close up. Thoughts, wisdom to share with anyone out there.

SPEAKER_03 58:27

Well, I think yeah, we didn't talk a ton about what it means to be a woman in the 21st century and the different roles that women take. And I thought early on that I had to choose. Um, I said it, you know, I thought I was going to be a mother and a wife, and that was it. But instead, I have gotten to be a mother, a wife, a writer, a marketer, a colleague, a friend, a daughter, a granddaughter. And all of the roles have been so great. They've been wonderful and joyful. And we don't have to choose or narrow ourselves into one space, but can do all of those things. Sometimes girls aren't given that picture, that vision for what their future could look like. I think as parents and as future grandparents, hopefully. Not anytime soon, Lydia. Uh, we hopefully can model those things and encourage that reality for the young, young girls in our lives to give them a vision for a future that is full of possibilities and not limitations.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

That's Sarah Wells. Check out her new book, Wow. It's out on Amazon. I don't remember the rest of the book.

SPEAKER_03 59:43

You're gonna have to say the whole title.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

Go for it.

SPEAKER_03 59:46

Okay. This is Sarah Wells, author of To Say One Million Times Wow.

SPEAKER_00 59:56

Thanks for listening to the call of my deep.