When You Feel Too Much with Sam Eldredge

by on July 17, 2026

Some people seem to enter the world with an unusual sensitivity. They notice what others miss. They feel deeply. They ask questions long before they have words for them. And while that can be a profound gift, it can also be an incredibly lonely way to grow up.

This week, Dan and Rachael are joined by therapist, writer, and Noble Workshops founder Sam Eldredge for a deeply personal conversation about what it means to be an “old soul.” Together, they explore the gifts and burdens of deep sensitivity, the loneliness of feeling “too much,” and how our earliest stories continue to shape the way we move through the world.

Along the way, Sam shares about his own journey through depression, the healing power of story, and the work that led him to create Noble Workshops—an immersive experience that helps people engage the younger parts of themselves, mind, body and spirit.

Whether you’ve always felt older than your years, struggled to find where you belong, or simply long for deeper connection, we hope this conversation offers a gentle invitation to become more at home in your own story.

*Please note: This episode briefly mentions pregnancy loss and suicide and contains explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

About Our Guest:

Sam Eldredge, MA, LPC, NCC, has spent his career in the space where psychology and faith meet. Trained in the modalities that form the backbone of Noble’s work such as Internal Family Systems, experiential therapy, somatic practice, attachment theory, and EMDR-informed movement, he has spent over two decades watching what happens when people are given the right conditions to do the work they have been carrying. Noble Workshops grew out of that watching.

Sam grew up immersed in the world of the heart. His formation was shaped deeply by the work of Wild at Heart, an organization that has spent decades helping people recover their inner lives and understand the story they are living. That foundation shaped his understanding of what people are actually hungering for: genuine movement, not just information. The freedom that comes when something long stuck finally begins to shift.

Noble was Sam’s response to a gap he kept seeing: people who had done meaningful work, who had language for their pain and faith in the possibility of change, and who still couldn’t find a structure that allowed that change to actually take root. Weekly therapy sessions, however skilled the guide, have limits. Immersion changes what is possible.

He founded Noble to offer something different. A week held with clinical rigor and genuine care, set apart from ordinary life, where the work can finally build on itself rather than reset on longer timelines. Learn more at: nobleworkshops.com or visit noble-counseling.com.

 

Related Resources:

 

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, click here.

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at cclayton@theallendercenter.org

 

Episode Transcript

Dan: Rachael, I’m going to ask a very quick question. What were you like 9th, 10th grade?

Rachael: Very serious.

Dan: Very serious. A quick description.

Rachael: Well, I was a competitive runner. We had just moved from a really small town to a big city, so to speak. So I was new at school, but I was running cross country for the first time because they didn’t have cross country in my tiny little town. So I was the top varsity runner as a freshman. And there were all these opportunities to meet so many new people. So I was just very much enjoying being in this big, huge school, but also running for class office and having lots of opinions about ways we could improve life and culture at the school. So just very competitive, very good student, just very intense and very serious and very helpful, very helpful to the people.

Dan: No question. I could say the same of myself. Serious student oriented toward political matters wishing for the betterment of the world. And that’s a complete and total lie. So the reason I begin this way is I with our beloved guest, Sam Eldridge. Sam, it is such a honor and delight to have you on this podcast. And just to say Sam is, and we’ll be talking a bit more, the director and creator of Noble Workshops, a remarkable writer, the Killing Lions. I always forget subtitle, but essentially how to engage the unique struggles of a young heart. So Sam, as a writer, as a therapist, as a creator of unique and really remarkable opportunities for people to grow, I’ll just say my first memories of you are around 9th, 8th, 9th, 10th grade. So we’ll just begin with welcome Sam.

Sam: Thank you, Dan. And thank you, Rachael . I’m curious what you remember of me in that time because I have pictures of mostly feeling very mercurial and I was not a good student and I did not make the varsity track team as a freshman or ever for that matter. I remember feeling a lot already at that stage. There’s a phrase in the To Right Love on Her Arms organization when you feel too much, you feel too strongly. That was already beginning for me then. So I don’t know if that came through for you, Dan, but what was Sam like all those years ago?

Dan: Well, and thank you because I was going to talk about that no matter what, but being given the invitation is sweet. The thing that I remember was you were brilliantly suspicious. And I say brilliant in that sense of you saw things that most 9th graders don’t have the capacity to see. And your ability to put words to the reality of what you saw, even with a caution or suspiciousness of… I just remember you kind of looking at me like, how did this clown get into my world? Which I appreciated because I think of myself often as the clown, but also mercurial, but also so strangely centered. And in that strange interplay of something a core of you, such goodness, such wisdom at an age that felt like, oh my gosh, this is an old soul who’s hiding it, but not so cleverly that it can’t be seen.

Sam: I’ll take it. Wow. There’s just enough. Yeah, that resonates. I can mostly picture myself driving around listening to Death Cab for Cutie and really wondering why I didn’t seem to fit in with my peers.

Dan: Fair enough. And again, the dilemma with being really, again, I think it’s a helpful category to bring that is an old soul. So when I look at both of you, and again, you Rachael , you’ve been an old soul since about three and since I didn’t know you at that time. I’m curious how both of you begin this conversation, this thought of what’s it been like to be an old soul?

Sam: Oh, I mean lonely, right? Yeah. I can picture Sam in third grade and I think I was still at that stage of there weren’t strangers, just friends I hadn’t met yet. And there was an innocence to relationship and to connection, but I think there was already perhaps a little bit of a disconnect, a little bit of that loneliness, which I think is probably really human that we all can feel quite alone even perhaps especially when surrounded by others. But that loneliness and that tension of wanting connection with others and wanting it to be genuine, wanting to be seen and to see, oh my gosh, we could tell the story of my life at least through that lens and be fairly close to the epicenter. I’m curious, Rachael, what you would say.

Rachael: Oh yeah. I think can so relate to that loneliness. And the only other thing I was thinking was just like it was also really scary because I think to be an old soul… I always talk about being plagued with wisdom, but not knowing that’s what it is and not having, even if you have really good people around you who are wise and all those things, it’s just we still have a hard time imagining that little tiny people are making connections that you are making when you’re an old soul or longing for the kind of connection. My parents would be like, “Oh yeah, Rachael used to just talk to adults all the time.” And I think it’s because in some ways, at least an adult, if they ever did acknowledge me like I was a full human, it did feel a little less lonely. And again, I didn’t have language for what I was sensing and feeling. When you said too much, you were already feeling too much, too much. I think that is very much the feeling. There’s just so much happening. I mean, I’ve talked before in the podcast, of having my first really severe existential crisis at the end of first grade because I love my teacher so much. She was so attuned in the simplest ways and gave us stories big enough for all the fear I had. And then first grade came to an end and it was just like kindergarten felt slower, first grade felt faster. Is each consecutive year going to feel faster and faster? Are we just spinning? And basically I’m a grandmother and I’m leaving my house and I die. It was like I saw my whole life flash before me. But to go home weeping to my mom, she was just like, “Oh, if you want to go tell your teacher, thank you. Are you just really sad about your teacher?” And of course I was, but what was actually happening underneath the surface I’m getting this real experience of time that I don’t know how to metabolize and it feels terrifying and I need someone to tell me it’s going to be okay and it will slow down or it won’t always feel this fast. But I didn’t have the words to articulate. I understand time in a real way. I just felt scary and overwhelming and I’m crying and I don’t know how to talk about it. So I think that old soul feeling of you’re feeling so much, you’re making connections about things and you’re longing to have other people help you make meaning of that and to see you in that, but you don’t know how to say, “This is what I need,” because you’re not quite sure. It takes a long time to be a little more clear about what it is you’re feeling and needing.

Sam: Okay. That stirred something in me, Rachael, of I felt sometimes almost like I was armed, like someone had given me a kitchen knife and that I need to be very careful how I used it. But it would be like observations and saying certain things. Basically be very careful because probably what you feel, say, experience and would articulate is actually going to be damaging to others or shocking or harming. And therefore just trying to hold that very close, the kitchen knife of the experience of being alive.

Dan: Okay. Let me just say that as we begin talking about this notion of being an old soul, I think there were a lot of people who would go, “I don’t know what you’re talking about ” And then certainly there would be what I would say, a minority, a significant minority who would be going, “Oh yes, thank you for naming that.” As a young anarchist who loved exploding mailboxes with M80s and burning things down, I don’t think anyone would have looked at me and said, “Oh, there’s a young soul.” Not sure we can even say perhaps he bears a soul. Nonetheless, to look at both of you and to go, what a weird way to enter into the world with the sense of sensibilities that you bore. So how do you understand that for both of you? Because I don’t think I’ve had two young souls to interact with, with whom I have so much respect. I mean, Sam, as I’ve watched you grow, I mean, one of the things I can say as an older person is many times I have said, “Let me live long enough to see this person grow into not so much maturity, but what they are called to do.” And Sam, you have been one of the top two or three people I’ve had that sense of, I can’t wait to see what you bring into this world. So how do you two understand? I understand my anarchism. I do. I understand from the fragility of my particular world why I might want to burn things down. But both of you have this rich, deep, inner life that always brought you in some sense, into calamity, into conflict that some of us didn’t have to bear.

Sam: What a compliment. I’m just letting that soak in. Yeah, thank you for your words. The story that I’ve been telling myself around this, one is that I really do see the trajectory of my life compared to and in relationship with other people. And I think coming into the world with some level of sensitivity and some clarity, though like with the kitchen knife metaphor, I didn’t know how to use the clarity. I didn’t know how to put it in context. I didn’t have just the maturity or the schooling, the mentoring and how to guide and direct that. And so I think the tension of relationship with other people, on the one hand, it would be very easy for me to say, wow, Sam came in the world as a sensitive soul and experienced as much as he could take in a few short years and then became a hermit in the woods because to be in relationship with other people became too painful and to continue offering to others became too risky. And I would look at the years of mocking and shaming and bullying I experienced in high school and beyond and go, oh, that innocence of I see and I feel and can we connect and can we be friends? Just was harmed over and over again. And so I can see that sensitivity actually driving to becoming a hermit. Oh my gosh, it sounds really wonderful. The daydream that is in my mind now isn’t quite the woods because I have access to those. It’s like, give me a small boat in warm salt water and an old radio that probably goes up to a three out of 10 on the volume duct take to the railing and just rock.

Rachael: Yeah. The rocking’s really important.

Sam: Back and forth. It really is. Just soothe my system here on this boat and there’s nobody else around. And I want those moments. I don’t want that story. I don’t want the story to have become that I’ve been pushed into isolation. But it wasn’t the autopilot. It wasn’t inevitable. I think the autopilot and the inevitable would’ve been to drift away further and further from other people and the choice to stay in and offer and pursue. Sometimes I wake up some morning a little bit shocked. I’m like, even these people are really dangerous to be in relationship with. In Eugene, you’re choosing that. Yeah. Yeah. And also Sam, we’re not six anymore. We have more tools. Be okay.

Dan: Well, and I know for you, depression has been more of a war that settling into something that can easily turn away from the goodness you know you bring and the goodness that is not always but often available. And Rachael, for you, I’m not going to say that depression’s not been an issue, but anxiety has been much more, again, not to say Sam, anxiety was not, but when I think about the two of you, the interplay of the dynamic of despair on one hand and risk and uncertainty and fear on the other. So in some ways there has been a level of intensity to both of your lives that again, I’m not trying to beat the pure contrast, but I’m not often anxious nor depressed. I’m really the French meter of normalcy in my internal world.

Rachael: I’m sure everyone would concur.

Dan: Compared to the two of you.

Rachael: Yeah, you’re not anxious. I feel like you’re maybe going to have to own that one a little bit.

Dan: I didn’t say I’m not anxious. I just said compared to the two of you. Okay.

Rachael: Okay. That’s true.

Dan: All right, thank you. Thank you. Would you not concur, Sam?

Sam: What? That…

Rachael: You’re the French meter of normalcy.

Dan: Compared to the two of you.

Sam: Oh, I’m glad you led with blowing up mailboxes so that we have the full context.

Dan: That wasn’t regular, just weekly.

Sam: Right. We have to look up regular.

Dan: Right. Thank you. So again, to go back, there has been a intensity, a mercurial… You both feel so deeply. And in that process, what I would say is both of you have such gift in the engagement with other human hearts. And when did you both come to that point of going, whether this is the best word or not, but when did you come to be able to say I’m a therapist?

Rachael: Well, you know, Dan, I still don’t know if I would say that.

Dan: I said it may not be the best word.

Rachael: I’m just laughing because –

Dan: Therapeutically engaged in the movement of the human heart toward the goodness of God.

Rachael: Yeah.

Dan: When did that begin?

Rachael: Yeah. I think I just… It’s helpful what you’re naming because even in what I said about high school Rachael, it was certainly an attempt to outrun something. I mean, I was not good at long distance for no reason. Yes, I’ve got some genetic athleticism, but there was something about running that was like, oh, this is keeping me ahead of pretty severe anxiety or just doing a lot of things was a way I could manage. But I do think it took me a long time for that word to feel germane, even though I had been reading people mostly to just get some kind of care. How could I read people well? Or to stay safe or to know how to be helpful to help manage the world for a long time. And it’s interesting because I have a three and a half year old who I think I’m not saying we haven’t traumatized her or that we’ve done everything perfectly because for sure we haven’t, but I think for the most part, she feels pretty secure. And she is very hypervigilant, very hyper-attuned, very intense, tells me each morning, “Mom, did you take your medicine?” I don’t know. I don’t talk about taking my medicine. I just take thyroid medicine every morning like, “Mom, did you put your eyedrops in?” If I say something that’s kind of hard, “mom, that really hurts my heart.” And I always assumed these kind of things came from just trauma or in some ways this language of old soul. I’ve had to reckon with how much of that is like, oh, this is a part of just how you are in the world. And yes, it gets honed and shaped and contoured in certain ways, but I’m looking at this three and a half year old going, there’s really not a lot of reasons why you should be extremely hyper-attuned and hypervigilant to your world because we’ve got this and mom is way more hypervigilant and OCD than you are. So you don’t have to manage my pills. I’ve got it. I’m not doing something where I’m forgetting and you’re having to tell me. So I guess that’s my long way of saying it took me a long time to say I’m doing therapeutic work because it felt really intimidating. And it felt like, no, I’m not therapeutically trained in the sense I don’t have a counseling degree. I have a master of divinity and I’m still much more pastor by orientation. But yeah, I mean I think well into my 30s working with the Allender Center and being like, “I’m not a therapist.” And that kind of imposter syndrome of doing story work, but feeling like, when are they going to find out I’m not good at this and I’m going to get kicked off the team. So I don’t know, Sam, about you because obviously you have continued on this journey and are doing deeply therapeutic work. So I would love to hear when that came to be language you would use for who you are and how you are in the world.

Sam: Well, and it was what? We’re recording this on a Monday. So my client on Friday afternoon, I sat there and the thoughts in my head were, “What is this again? What am I doing again? I think their name is Todd. I’m pretty sure, but they weren’t wearing a name tag. I know that name wasn’t Todd. I do know their name, but I did feel that level of disorientation of just, okay, we are well and truly lost here together. And I hope that someone, oh it’s me, is going to help find our way out, but maybe it’s not?” So I do relate to that. Oh, is it going to all be exposed that I don’t always know? Because it pulls on these things in me that got developed somewhere of, oh my gosh, I would love to use the clarity, the orientation, the ways that I feel wired to one, figure out the puzzle and get up to 30,000 feet and see and go, oh my goodness, your story is tragic and beautiful and hysterical. And I laugh a lot in therapy. I don’t know whether that’s appropriate or not, but they keep coming back. So at least they haven’t taken it as mocking. And yet then there’s this place in me that wants to bring the silver bullet, bring the penicillin, that bring the singular solution and bring relief. And sometimes the observation, sometimes the tears that I have, sometimes the laughter helps to move that forward. But often they leave and I sort of look at myself and I actually don’t have a mirror in my office. Thankfully I just stare at the brick wall and I go, huh, okay, we can keep showing up. Because when I begin to see myself as a therapist, I don’t know, Dan, I was in denial for a long time. I did the narrative focused… I came out and did the NFTC what, 12 years ago now? Yeah. And I was working in ministry at the time and was sort of continuing to delude myself that you can sit in people’s stories, but you don’t have to, don’t feel any pressure, Sam. You’ll be fine. It’s okay. Rewind the clock even further back. And in those years of depression, I would jump at the chance to drive down to the beach in my 1968 Volkswagen bug and have a cigarette with a friend who is in a hard place because it felt like it resonated. It was this like, oh, I can see you in that place. And then that’s not too much for me and we could hang out there together. And it was years before I’d encounter the writings of Irvin Yalom and his invitation of like, let’s talk about death together so we don’t abandon one another to face it alone. I didn’t know that yet, but it felt true. It felt like that tugging in my chest to go, yeah, this is where you’re supposed to be. It was right.

Dan: Well, and again, I don’t want to claim being prescient and predictive, but the reality is I saw your therapeutic leaning when you were in high school. And in that, probably a certain veneer of suspicion and cynicism was a sufficient defense to keep that internal world from engaging others. But there was always intrigue in you, always a deep sense of wanting to know more. And not for power, not for control, but just this delicious sense of there’s something of mystery in the universe. And as a stranger, I somehow want to think that maybe there’s a back door I might be able to enter. Does that feel accurate?

Sam: If we can find the catch of the mask, I’ll change the metaphor to that. We can find the edge of it perhaps, and we don’t have to rip it off, but if we can give it a little tug somewhere around the jaw bone and the other person’s not going to fully freak out, then maybe we’ll actually be able to see eye to eye and not masks to mask.

Dan: Well, and so 12 years ago you went through kind of our early NFTC program, but you’ve moved from there. And again, we don’t have to go through a full complete itinerary, but you and your brothers established I think one of the most delicious magazines “And Sons”. And that run was six, seven, eight years, something like that.

Sam: Yeah, right. I was with the ministry for 10 full years and I think “And Sons”, the podcast was probably six. The magazine was more like eight.

Dan: Yeah.

Sam: And this year’s the 10 year of the motorcycle film when you punctured a long out here in Colorado.

Dan: That’s unbelievable. And again, we could spend the entire episode on that experience because it was brutal. I had a ball other than nearly killing myself, literally.

Sam: Other than that small detail.

Dan: But you bore so much assault in one sense. I don’t know if it’s something that you can even look back to and see all the goodness that was inherent in that given what I’ll call the broad sense of the motorcycle community turning against the film and against you in particular. I was actually accused of having faked my three broken ribs and punctured lung, but I was like, I’m fine. I don’t –

Sam: He was doing it for the plot apparently.

Dan: Yeah. We needed a intense moment. Yeah.

Sam: Yeah. Well, that year as well, Dan, had the death of Craig, a father figure to cancer and the loss of our first and a miscarriage. And that was the year where we’re sitting at the family ranch and I was having a picnic outside and someone asked me to go in and bring out some tongs to help with the grill. And I went in, I came back out with a thing of ranch dressing and had that look on my face of, is this close to what you asked for? And those that knew me and loved me has had this morning of like, yes, sit down and you need some care because you’re not well.

Dan: Well, and again, so much of that from my standpoint is that not just having been an old soul, not just having good training, your master’s in counseling, but the reality is, at least I have found that those who work best with others bear scars that they still would wish at one level to be erased. And yet they have come into a ownership that those scars really are beautiful. They also provide in some sense, the entry point into the hearts of others. And what I want to do is make sure that we spend a little bit of time on what you have created with the Noble Workshops.

Sam: Yeah, I love it. What’s fun is that there’s some really beautiful, talented, wise men and women I get to work with on the team. And 66% of us have been through the NFTC program. And so it’s very familiar to be able to have this language. The couple that haven’t feel a little bit left out like we’re a part of an inner club because that really tugs it.

Rachael: Yeah, it does.

Sam: Our deep fear human beings. Yeah, I do see all the threads being very connected. So the formation on being able to see my story, as I mentioned earlier, I didn’t have the language for, oh, what’s at stake is whether I will actually continue offering for other people. Or if I’m going to end up on that panga rocking back and forth, maybe still someday in the future. And without the eyes and the language and the formation to be curious about the impact of my story, be able to tell my own story, there’s no way we would be doing these workshops now where we’re inviting others, small groups of men and women, 20 people at a time at most so that we can keep this protected. But we’re just rushing towards earning their trust trust and earning safety as fast as we possibly can, as authentically as we can to get them to be able to go on this journey together of seeing their story, seeing the impact. We begin with their family of origin. We begin with all of the impact of mom and dad and setting the stage. And what I love about it is it does pull into my folks met in theater and I had a client who was working in this realm and they were bringing things up for me of some of the earliest theaters in Greece were actually connected to hospitals. And the stage was for the place of the mind and the heart where things that couldn’t be handled in the body were then written and produced. Actually, I get very excited about these pieces of like, yeah, when we set the stage and we can see it in our heart and our mind, but then we can see it in a room that quite literally has set things up for us to step into our story in a different way and look one another in the eye. And when I first experienced this care myself, again, so much of my own work has been based off of something that I’ve heard the two of you say many times, we cannot take someone somewhere we have not been willing to go ourselves. And it’s this, we may not need to have done the specificity of their story, but have we been okay with embracing courage and honesty and stepping into the tragedy of our own work? Then we can have that dignity to ask others to do the same. And so some of my own work with this, I got to be on the receiving end of everything that has woven together. And when you’re standing in there looking someone else in the eye as they’re weeping, but you’re standing in as a mother, a father, a lost child themselves that feel lost and you just get to be with them as they’re expressing some of that work. It’s profoundly holy ground. It’s, everybody take off your shoes. Some of those rooms have been anointed in tears. And so how do you encapsulate that? I could go on, but there’s a brief window.

Dan: Well, one of the ways that if folks look on nobleworkshops.com, you’re going to see the invitation is so brilliant into engaging the younger parts. And you write a letter, you invite people to engage and write a letter and you write a letter to young Sam and it is so tender, such a tender move. So the reality of dealing with in one sense, younger parts requires something of being on the stage and allowing yourself to be on the stage. And some of what I know you do is a kind of therapeutic engagement with story and acting out story. Just say a bit more.

Sam: Yeah. So this is weaving together our story, understanding the narrative. It’s weaving together the origin, some of Dan Siegel’s work on just what happens in our minds when we make eye contact. And so at the beginning, after we’ve resourced and made sure that you have the tools you need to get back out, I use a metaphor of like a belay rope for a harness. We’re not going to ask you just to jump into this cave and have no means of escape. We’re not going to be cruel. We’re going to earn this. And so once we have that set up, now can we belay into the cave knowing we can get back out again? We set the stage with mom, dad, little you and God as the very minimum cast required. And we have some structures for this. So for mom and dad, each person’s going to get an index card and they’re going to write three things that were good about dad and mom and three things that were hard because no parent was any one thing. And on the other side, there’s going to be the message, whether it was explicit or implicit, communicated verbally on one intense moment or non-verbally 10,000 times. And we’re going to give those cards to our fellow group members who are going to stand in as mom and dad and have a scarf that helps embody that. And then they’re going to put little you somewhere in the room. And what’s so fun about this, I love the creativity is that no one’s scene has looked the same of everyone that’s come through. Some have said, here we are around the dining table. Here we are in the kitchen watching the television. Here we are mystically. He should be way, way far away because of his job and he’s going to deliver his lines with his back to me as I sit on the floor and just wish for his face. And I didn’t know God yet, but he was close. And so I’d like you to stand behind me as well, but closer and almost looming over where I did know God and you can hold my hand and sit with me. And I mean, we set the stage and invite as there’s the window of tolerance and as there’s the ability to step in and out of younger self, to hear those messages, to speak to younger self, to speak to God back then. There’s a few things we’d look to make sure we name. But again, it’s depending on where they go. Now my hope for them is that they can hear from little Rachael, little Dan, little Sam, and have those places speak honestly and then ask things for us of how does this story go? Or can you not leave me here anymore? Will you remember me? Will you take me from this place? Any of those directions. And again, that’s my hope for them is that we don’t just set the stage and say, “Well, this is really brutal. All right everyone, let’s break for lunch. We’ll be back in an hour.” But then we can have the surgery and flush out all of the bone and metaphorical dirt and scar tissue. And if that’s what we get, then we sit. And if we get more, then we get more.

Dan: So much of the work and I would say of the Allender Center and the labor is getting people to even just begin to visualize something of the reality of the scenes of every story of course has characters, dialogue, plot, movement, context. But what you’ve done is you’ve actually taken it out of just what some people would hold as left-hemisphere and begun to move it into the physicality of movement, of the actual language being spoken and the positioning of where people would be on the stage. And in that sense, you’re inviting people into a radical, deep, right hemispheric engagement with narrative that’s actually left hemisphere. So you’re embodying in some ways deep truth, therefore the potential for incredibly deep change. Again, I know some of the people who’ve gone through Noble Workshop, so I know, but what have you seen? What have you seen in terms of the effect?

Sam: Oh, one of my favorites are there’s been folks who we start Monday evening, we end Friday afternoon and there’s a handful of folks who will come up and say, “Can you take a picture of me today? I know I look different than when we started this.” There’s been some that I’ve seen and it’s just so beautiful because we don’t know what the moment is that each person’s going to need, but there’s some that live in my mind. One, when we set up some resourcing, we have folks write messages from figures for them that they’re going to find grounding and connecting. And it’s a bit of a booby trap because they don’t know they’re going to be read these lines back to them, but watching folks stand as they stand there and hear a word of blessing and this is Tuesday morning. We’re just getting started. And there’s tears and collapse and snot and this heavy just relief of, oh no, they would say that. And that something of being alone for them in that moment is broken. I actually have some poetry that for sure I need to work in today from one of the beautiful people I got to work with because they didn’t write it. They introduced it to me. But again, what have I seen months later, folks coming back and just going, the work has continued? This was this moment for me of this, not the mountain top, but the boulder finally getting momentum from up high and rolling forward. So I think what’s, as you well know, the mixture of the story is folks coming who have lost a partner or a spouse and they’re not too distant past and others decades ago that are there to work on grief. Others that are there to work on the harm they’ve received from their families, from their partners, from strangers. What’s beautiful is I can picture some of these faces and our ability, my ability to again, continue to not dissociate from my own work and my own story lets me stay further in the moment with them. I’m picturing a moment of a man who’s facing that suicide feels like the only option. It’s provide, but I can’t figure out how to provide. It’s take my own life, but I don’t want that. And just having these ropes pulling him as the intensity builds, I’m standing there with him going, there’s going to be a solution. There is a way forward. And the more that I can tolerate not solving it and not rushing to the right answer, the spiritual bypassing, the simple solution, the more I can stay and go internally, holy shit, I hope he takes a step in any direction, the more he’s able to and the more that we’re able to just be together. And that’s, in that story, he does after the tension builds and builds and builds and he gets six inches of movement. He doesn’t get six miles in a moment, but he gets this next half step and the relief that you watch through their body as there’s just been movement at last. There’s a moment at the end that I won’t fully spoil. We had a pretty intense several events last year. There were really this question asked to me and the team of, are you sure you want to do this? As you’re going to have to ask people to leave the program for not abiding by the contracts as you’re going to have to get intervention for folks who are not doing well. This is an aside whether this goes in this episode or not. I literally was watching the movie Tenant during that week because it was like a sound canceling headphone. It canceled out the intensity. I didn’t feel much that week. Normally those films totally fry me, but that week I was just, “Oh, this is really nice.” We’re doing an event towards the close and the quote from John O’Donoghue, “To be holy is to be home within ourselves.” This experience there at the close as folks are speaking aloud, things they’re leaving and things they’re taking and there’s this settling on the group and just go, “Wow, wow, wow. Okay. Yes, yes, we want to do this. Yes, we want to step in. Yes, it’s going to be messy.”

Dan: As we come to an end, one of the things that I hope truly people say is I want to hear the poem that Sam was going to read.

Sam: Perfect. That’s what I hope they’re going to say too. Are you familiar with James A. Pearson? He’s in your neck of the woods. Okay. His book of poetry is called The Wilderness That Bears Your Name. And I have no affiliate codes, no ways to make money off his work. I just hope he experiences success because he has beautiful, beautiful language. This poem is called How to Listen: I’m not asking you to come down here and clean out the muddy corners of my life. I’m asking you to be a forest where mud and leaves, shadows and light, growth and decay all have their unquestioned belonging. I’m asking you to be an ocean where even great storms don’t trouble the depths and each tier is welcomed as a homecoming. I’m asking you to be as spacious as the vast darkness behind the sky, which will never be afraid of what I do or don’t choose. I’m not asking you to hold me together. I’m asking you to open so wide there’s room for all the ways I come apart.

Dan: Good poetry to me is always a form of prayer, even if it was not written in that form. Nonetheless, it is such an invitation. And to say again what work you do and have done and will do through Noble Workshops. I commend just how you have lived. And in one sense, born scars on behalf, not only of you, your family, your children, your friends, but those who are privileged to be able to walk into the theater that you provide to see and feel something of the integration of taking the mud and the dirt and actually becoming flourishing. Thank you, Sam. Thank you for your life.

Sam: Thank you, Dan. Thank you.