Daily Inspiration: Meet Sally Seiffer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sally Seiffer. 

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

I’d love to. Here’s the story as I have come to understand it.

I love to write. I feel things more than I can articulate verbally in conversation. I love feeling inspired. I love creating ideas to problem solve for sustainable results. The feeling I don’t like is stuck or spinning in a version of the same pattern leading to the same limiting results. It was before I turned thirty when I recognized a depressive cycle in myself. It felt like two weeks on, two weeks off. It seemed to follow my menstrual cycle so I loved to blame it for everything. That pattern and story continued throughout my thirties. At forty, I was determined to find a way to teach the students I worked with skills to get sustainable, lasting outcomes. To get ‘better’. The suicide completions seemed to be rising in the school district I worked at, and I knew transfers to the hospital and 72-hour holds were necessary at times, but not ‘the’ cure. Mass school shootings seemed to grow in shocking results of violence targeting those under the age of 21. School-based threat assessments were necessary to manage potential risks in the school setting but like the suicide risk assessments, not ‘the’ cure. I recognized that if death and violence were the problem, then life and well-being were the answer. I was not living a life of sustainable wellbeing. I was pushing against ordinary things: job, salary, school system, appearance, activity level, other people, and their poor decision making. I would name it existential depression: ‘life is a cruel joke even in the best of times’. I knew if I could flip my experience and find the skills that could get me leveled out on a sustainable path of good feeling mostly, and bad feeling sometimes – then I would know how to help. If I could help myself, then I could help others in a real, sustainable, authentic way. The students were ‘prescribed’ Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) groups when they were seen for suicidality and self-harm. I thought I would start there and learn more about DBT. One of the skills in DBT was a word I was not familiar with so I put it to the side and focused on the skills that sounded familiar: resolving conflict and anxiety reduction. The unfamiliar word was ‘mindfulness’. I spent my ‘40’ summer in Breckenridge. I was going to heal myself that summer. When I drove into town, I stopped at the library and in the entrance was a shelf of books for sale. I saw the word. Mindfulness was the title of a book by Thich Nhat Hanh. I bought it because of the word. I read bits of it that summer. It was too simple for me to take it seriously. I tell the story in a digital book: The Story I Tell.: How to make the Age of Disruption work for you. The practice of mindfulness eventually brought me back to me. It was a doorway to the Something More that I named another digital publication: Something More. Connecting to the Pulse of a Shared Humanity. I found the skills, tools, and strategies that led to sustainable growth outcomes in my day. I share stories, ideas, and practices in my blog and content posts on social media. I have A LOT of content. It has grown over the last ten years. I do not monetize yet. I share everything digitally and will monetize hard copies of the content when it is ready. My brand is authenticity. No tricks.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s interesting that this question includes the phrase ‘smooth road’. A saying that has been showing up for me recently is: ‘prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child’. In the lens of self-care, one could say: ‘prepare yourself for the road’. To answer this question as it relates to my blog and wellbeing content: No. The answer is no. No smooth road for me. The love of writing came early to me. A desire to write for publication started early as well. The decision to create content and share mindfulness skills, tools, strategies began with intention ten years ago. Ten years ago, I packed to move, put it all in storage, and rented a coworker’s cabin in Breckenridge June 1 – August 1. It was that August when I began the last year at the school I was at and began teaching mindfulness skills to students. I knew I didn’t understand it, but I knew the parts I did understand I needed to share. I was working a typical school day at a typical high school and worked part-time at an alternative school that started at 3:15 pm. The students gained credits working during typical school hours and then attended school for credits in the evening. I asked the principal if I could teach a class and he said yes. I had one or two main strategies (the frame and belly breathing). The next school year I left the typical high school to work more hours at the alternative high school and was placed at an elementary. I felt so out of place there. I knew that the skills needed to begin early so it didn’t surprise me that I ended up at the elementary level. I asked a Kindergarten teacher and a fourth-grade teacher if I could teach lessons in their classrooms. They agreed. I didn’t have any lessons. This went on for the next five or six years in several different school settings that became only elementary. I would ask. The teachers would agree. Then I’d realize I didn’t have a lesson. So, I would make one. It was a painful process. I’d freak out and get up really early and ‘will’ the lesson to come to me. It would always land but I made the process miserable. Now it is so clear how the process and experiences shaped my current collection of ideas and lifestyle choices that support my creativity. It seems as much as I desired the road to be smooth, I made choices that took me on the longest, most inconvenient, and unpaved path. At present, the content path is paved as I live the skills, tools, strategies I share. I continue to learn and be curious about ideas and information, but I shifted the energy in my day. I disrupted the limiting patterns and I tell a story of what is possible. Everything is different. I recognize life is a path of challenges and obstacles, but it can be initiated and moved toward from a state of well-being. Obstacles and challenges are constant in blog writing and content creation. Continuous learning: video editing, audio recording, blog design, website design. Creators create, so the content is continuously growing and expanding, as are the ways to deliver the content. As a result of my experience, I recognize that the obstacles and challenges are part of the life experience and will be there as long as I am engaging in it. I was the biggest challenge and obstacle. When I got out of my own way things started to get clear.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have a full-time job as a school social worker. I wake up at 2 am during the workweek to create. I publish a weekly blog at sallyseifferco.blog. I post a quote from that blog midweek (usually Thursdays) on @sallysifer Instagram. I make a video on Sunday that attempts to include three ‘nuggets’ that I’ve been ‘chewing on’ over the week. I have been making the Sunday video since July 2020. Last fall, I began taking clips from the beginning of the Sunday videos and making Instagram reels/TikToks that I post on Friday night or Saturday. This current blog year is taken from the videos as well. I scribe the main points from the video posted the previous year. The 2020 blog year and 2021 blog year were made into digital books: Something More. Connecting to the Pulse of a Shared Humanity, and abetterway. Using Inner Resources to Create your own Algorithm. abetterway is the hashtag I used throughout 2021 which was based on a 6.3.20 Curtis Hayes viral video. There is a lot more context in the video as it is a result of the history of race and degrading social policies. The video and the saying betterway desire to disrupt outcomes that are stuck and spinning in a version of the same thing. I am currently sharing my first digital publish that was based on the first class I taught at the alternative high school: checkIN: 8 steps to more inspiration, creativity, and possibility, fused with the first digital publication: The Story I Tell. How to make the Age of Disruption work for you, on my Sally & Sifer Facebook page as an eight-week series. When I was creating lessons for elementary classes I named it Movement.Breath.Kindness as I would follow the formula in my mind (move to get the energy unstuck/breathe to settle it again/and say kind things to yourself to return to your truth). I have a lot of lessons that follow that pattern. I have not made MBK a focus. I’ll get there. My brand is based on authenticity. I love the feeling of people being true to you they are – it feels fun, fresh, and real. Kids can only be that until they reach a certain age where they begin to notice the other. The young kids are fun to be with as they remind you of the innocence of authentic expression. My brand is also made from scratch as far as all the digital content design. I am my brand. I am the result of what I share. My life is turned inside-out from where I started. The skills, tools, and strategies shifted my experience of day. It’s a hobby and it’s fun for me to create and share.

Contact Info:

• Email: sally@sallyseifferco.blog
• Website: sallyseifferco.blog
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallysifer/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sallysifer/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCApiaMQIByH33WeuYq3Oo_Q

Image Credits
Sally Seiffer