Write To Rise Collective

About Write To Rise Collective

A podcast that brings together diverse voices in writing, coaching, and healing, showing how sharing your story can be the medicine for personal and collective transformation. lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com (https://lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Leslie Wall

Category

health & fitness · health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Oct 2024

Latest episode

13 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

48 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Jun 2026

   The Quiet Soaring of Kathleen Ahern

   Here you go — keeping it in the thread as requested: A Write To Rise conversation Kathleen has been in my world for about a year and a half. We talked back then about her wanting a podcast. We talked about her writing. We talked about all the things she was carrying inside her that hadn’t yet found a place to land. Then life did what life does, and the dream went quiet for a while. When she came back to me in April 2026, almost exactly a year to the day from our first conversation, the dream was still there, the writing had gone cold, she’d shelved the ideas like so many of us do and she still didn’t have a home on the internet that felt like her own. So she joined Hoala Studio (https://www.skool.com/hoalastudio/about), the free starter program I built inside of Substack & Skool for women just like her: women who know they have something to say, but who freeze in front of a blank page or a blinking cursor and don’t know where to begin. The studio is for the woman who is tired of social media and performing for algorithms. She is tired of getting blasted by ads and people showing up in her messages asking for her credit card information without ever even introducing themselves. This is the space for the women who are looking for an easier, softer way to express themselves and a cozier home on the internet. Six weeks later, I’m watching a completely different woman. She’s launched a podcast. She’s published essays I can’t stop thinking about. She interviewed a living legend in the Holistic Nursing space the first week of being in the Studio. She has a workshop coming up that she was talking about starting over a year ago. The thing I want to name out loud, because it’s the thing the internet rarely shows you — none of this came from a viral moment or a clever growth hack. It came from one decision, made over and over: do it messy. Do it anyway. This is our conversation, and the lessons I want every woman building her voice on Substack to take from it. The internet she’d been trying to make work Kathleen, like a lot of us, had tried the social media thing. Posting in groups. Trying to “attract” people. The unspoken rule in most of those spaces is no self-promotion, which is a strange instruction to give a small business owner. And the workaround — cold DMs — made her feel icky. They make all of us feel icky but we do it anyway because this is what we are taught to do to have a successful business or to attract the people that are meant to be in our world. “I know what you’re doing,” she said. “I can see where the conversation is going to lead.” Someone messages with friendliness, then steers it toward a summit, a course, a credit card. The transaction was always the punchline. As a neurodivergent person, those interactions quietly cost her energy she didn’t have to spend. This is something I want to keep saying out loud: the load social media puts on neurodivergent women is not the same load it puts on everyone else. The ads, the inputs, the constant performance, the algorithmic comparison — our nervous systems process all of it at full volume. When I pulled myself off social media a year and a half ago, two things happened: my bank account had more money in it at the end of the month (I’d stopped buying random things), and I stopped feeling broken all the time. (There is a laundry list of other amazing things that happened in my life, but these are the ones that came to mind during this convo) I could finally sit with how blessed my actual life was, instead of measuring it against a feed. When I finally convinced her to stop spending time on social media and start spending time on Substack, I watched her unfold into a completely different human in a month’s time. Substack didn’t just give Kathleen a new platform. It gave her a place where her brain could rest and a home for her voice and her perspective. Why “just do it messy” is the whole secret When Kathleen came into Hoala Studio (https://www.skool.com/hoalastudio/about), she didn’t need another online course. She needed a starting point. Her own words: here’s what templates are, here’s how to make them yours, here’s where to begin if you want minimal thinking required. That was intentional. I built it that way because I am also neurodivergent, and I know what happens when a woman with a thousand ideas opens a blank Substack: she opens twelve more tabs and closes the laptop. What you actually need is a structure simple enough to step into, plus permission to do it imperfectly. “It’s never going to be ready. It’s never going to be perfect,” Kathleen told me. “Just do it good enough, and you can go back to it later.” She changed her podcast name three times. She might change her publication name again. None of it has cost her a single reader. The work is on the page. The polish comes later. Her voice is getting stronger by the day. The Dr. Jean Watson email This is the story I want every woman reading this to hold onto. Dr. Jean Watson’s Caring Science has shaped Kathleen since her second semester of nursing school. It’s the framework underneath everything she does — personally, professionally, all of it. For years, she’d carried this quiet dream of connecting with Dr. Watson, but Dr. Watson is a living legend in the holistic nursing world. Busy. Important. Unreachable, presumably. Kathleen finally got an email address. She poured her heart into a message. She assumed she’d hear back in a week or two, if at all. Dr. Watson emailed her back in two hours. I have fifteen minutes tomorrow. Send me your Zoom link. (Kathleen didn’t even have a Zoom account. She set one up in a panic.) The first two minutes, she was tongue-tied. The last two minutes, she was tongue-tied. The ten minutes in between, she said, were one of the best moments of her year — a woman she’d looked up to for over a decade pouring wisdom directly into her. A week later, Kathleen sat down with me and said: what do I do with this? I don’t want to keep it to myself. And we figured out the answer together. Upload the recording to Substack. Don’t worry about editing it or polishing it to perfection, just do the scary thing and hit that publish button. Stop debating the title. Push the button. You can fix everything later. She has a podcast now!!! Ahhh! The girl that was terrified to start a podcast last year has a podcast now and her first interview is with an absolute legend. Rejection sensitivity is not a personality flaw I want to name this because it’s part of why so many neurodivergent women never launch the thing they’re dreaming about. We don’t experience the small risks of putting our work out the way neurotypical people do. A normal nervous system can rationalize a quiet post, an unanswered email, a critical comment — okay, on to the next one. Ours doesn’t. Ours runs a thousand simulations of what we did wrong, what those people thought of us, what we’d have to change about ourselves to be acceptable. So when a neurodivergent woman does launch the thing, what she’s pushed through is not laziness or perfectionism. It’s a real nervous-system response. The confidence Kathleen has now didn’t appear because she suddenly stopped being sensitive. It appeared because she shipped anyway, got real feedback from real humans, and started slowly building evidence that her voice was wanted. The first time she hit fifty subscribers, she said it felt like imagining fifty people in a room who wanted to hear from her. That image is everything. Every subscriber is a tiny affirmation: yes, you. Keep going. What Heart and Hearth is really about Kathleen’s publication, Heart and Hearth, reflects a broader vision that goes far beyond Dr. Jean Watson’s work. She’s writing for the BIPOC community, the Asian community, the Filipino community specifically. She’s writing for the women who walk into wellness retreats and notice they’re the only brown person in the room. She’s writing about the eldest daughter role, the high-achiever-as-the-only-form-of-praise dynamic, the family-needs-over-individual-needs script so many women in her community grew up inside of. She’s writing about boundaries you were never allowed to have as a kid and have to teach yourself as an adult. About cooking and cleaning and doing laundry, you learned alone because you’re a smart kid; you’ll figure it out. And she’s writing about something I love: the search for childlike wonder as an adult, when your childhood was structured by other people’s choices and you never got to find out what actually brought you joy. There is a particular kind of work that can only be done by a woman who has lived inside that exact experience. Another Filipina, another Asian woman, another eldest daughter can read Kathleen and exhale in a way she couldn’t reading me. Representation isn’t a buzzword. It’s whether the woman who needs to see herself in the work can actually see herself. What I learn from creators like Kathleen I grew up in Mississippi inside a specific Southern Baptist doctrine. I’ve spent years deconstructing the religious teachings, the whitewashed history, the cultural assumptions I was handed as fact. My partner is full-blooded Japanese, born in Hawaii. My closest friends are Korean, Chinese, Hawaiian-Filipino-Japanese. I’m the only white person in my circle. And the depth of what I didn’t know — what was stripped from my education on purpose — keeps surprising me to the core of who I am. Substack has been one of the places I’ve done that learning. Creators like Kathleen, writing from inside experiences I will never have, have given me language and context I bring back into my own home. When my partner can’t quite explain something about her culture, sometimes another creator has already explained it for her, and I can meet her with more compassion than I’d have had otherwise. This is why I keep saying it: your quirks, your perspectives, the things you’ve safeguarded and been afraid to say — those are often exactly what other people need to hear. The thing you almost didn’t write is the thing. Find Kathleen — and her workshop Kathleen Ahern (A-H-E-R-N) publishes Heart and Hearth here on Substack. Her handle on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook is @hearthandforgehealing. Her workshop, hosted with the Nurses for Natural Health Collective, is Saturday, July 11 at 9:30 AM Eastern. It’s built on Dr. Jean Watson’s caring moment — but turned inward. Instead of directing that energy toward someone else, you turn it toward yourself. There will be writing prompts, breathwork, and a calm peaceful hour where you can show up and just be. She has been dreaming this workshop for years. Watching her finally step into it is one of the privileges of doing this work. I’m so proud of her. If you’re a woman with something inside you that hasn’t found its home yet, this is what I want you to take from Kathleen’s story: the dream sat quietly for over a year. Then she gave it six weeks of messy, imperfect, just do it anyway, and the dream became real things in the world. Your voice does the same thing. It unlocks when you use it. Not before. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com/subscribe (https://lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   12 Jun 2026

   From Nurse to Author

   A Write To Rise conversation with nurse coach and author Darcy Ziel A year and a half ago, Darcie came into my program with a dream. She was already an established nurse coach with more than twenty years of nursing behind her, but she carried a book inside her that had been brewing for years. She was, in fact, one of my very first authors — I had barely built the program out when a mutual friend connected us. Looking back now, it feels like it was always meant to be. Since then, Darcie has published not one but two books, launched an online course, created a thriving book club, and expanded her nurse coaching work into retreats in remote Alaska. This week she joined me live to talk about what the writing journey actually changed in her — and how a single book quietly reshaped her entire business. The book that almost stayed a textbook Darcie spent much of her nursing career in education. She taught at the university level, and teaching is her natural mode. So when she sat down to write Reconnect to the Wild Within: Seasonal Practices to Embody Your Primal Nature, her first instinct was to do what she’d always done: teach. “I’m a natural teacher, and that’s what I wanted to do in the book,” she told me. “And Leslie was like, no — you have to put your story in there. You have to draw people in with your story.” That push changed everything. The finished book weaves together her personal stories, client stories, teaching, and — to my genuine surprise when I first read her drafts — her poetry. Some of the most beautiful moments in the book are those pauses for reflection around poems I didn’t even know she wrote. This is something I tell every author I work with: we live in the age of information. Anyone can Google a topic, and now anyone can ask AI. What readers are hungry for is the humanness in a book — the thing they can’t get anywhere else. Darcie’s book is proof of what happens when an author is brave enough to offer that. Writing with the seasons What makes Reconnect to the Wild Within so distinctive is its structure: the book moves through the seasons of a year, inviting readers to slow down and engage with the land they actually live on. “It’s so easy to go for a walk in the park and, while we’re walking, plan out our day or plan what we’re going to have for dinner — multitasking while we’re engaging with nature,” Darcie said. “I wanted this book to be more of an invitation to go deeper.” That means thinking about the land beneath your feet, your connection to it, your ancestors, the indigenous peoples who lived there before you, and the way light and season actually move through your body. Darcie lives in Alaska, where you can’t help but pay attention to those rhythms — and she pairs that seasonal awareness with the somatic and nervous system work she does with clients, offering practices readers can take into their own bodies and landscapes. The reader responses have been remarkable. People tell her things like I never thought about that or I never knew about this animal on the land where I live. For some, the shift has been genuinely transformational — the realisation that there is a deep, undomesticated part of us that is nature, and that tapping into it can bring both peace and wildness. And here’s the part every aspiring author needs to hear: while she was writing, Darcie often wondered whether any of it would land. Is this going to touch people? Is this going to reach anyone? It did. When we’re brave enough to put our passion into the world, it reaches people — and empowers them — in ways we can’t predict. On being seen Darcie and I have something in common: we both spent most of our lives identifying as introverts, and we’ve both come to suspect that label was partly a self-protection mechanism. Writing cracked that open for both of us. “Tapping into that place where you can be creative in the first place takes a level of safety in the body to even get there,” Darcie explained. “And then the next level is sharing it. That takes a certain level of vulnerability — and knowing that some people are not going to like it. Those aren’t your people, and that’s okay.” When I asked her what the most healing part of publishing was, her answer was simple: learning, at the level of the nervous system, that it’s safe to be seen. First I read her writing. Then her husband. Then an editor. Then the world. Each step stretched that capacity a little further. She was also clear about something I find so important: you don’t have to share everything. “Your book is not you,” she said. “You can share what feels safe to share in that moment.” So many of my authors worry about hurting a loved one or exposing too much. But there’s always a way to write your perspective — what a story taught you, how it shaped the work you do now — without telling every detail. A book is a living, breathing piece of art. You can add to it, revise it, and release new versions. It’s never as final as the fear makes it feel. Creativity, play, and the permission to be silly One thread that runs through Darcie’s coaching is creative practice — journaling, writing exercises, play-based work. “Anyone can be creative. You don’t have to be an artist, so to speak,” she said. “It’s such a powerful healing tool that is often overlooked.” I’ll add my own confession here: my creativity routine includes sliding at the park with my dog, sticker art, and the occasional 90s workout video that leaves me laughing the entire time. So many women have been trained to act right, say the right thing, stay serious. But what births from joy is pure creativity. When we give ourselves permission to play, we reconnect with parts of ourselves that have been buried — and that’s where the magic is. How one book became a whole ecosystem Here’s the thing I tell authors that they rarely believe until they live it: a book will change the way you do business. “I really didn’t see that,” Darcie admitted. “And it’s been interesting to watch how my business has morphed over time.” Today, the book functions as a touchstone across everything she does: Her coaching clients — most of whom she works with over Zoom — receive the book and its companion journal, giving them real-time practices to do on the land where they live, between sessions and long after their work together ends. Her year-long book club, launched last September, meets once a month to go deep on the book’s concepts. The transformation she’s watched in members “just by reading the book and doing a once-a-month book club” has astonished her — and several members are now coming to her July retreat in remote Alaska to meet in person. And the newest layer: a book club facilitator training, so women who loved the experience can lead Reconnect to the Wild Within circles in their own communities, helping people reconnect to their bodies and the nature around them. This is what I mean when I tell authors I don’t chase bestseller badges. A badge is ego — a bragging right you can never trace back to a single changed life. What Darcie has built is the opposite: a book that people don’t just read but practice, in community, season after season. You can watch the transformation unfurl in real time — fitting, since her business logo is a fiddlehead fern, opening from a contracted coil into full expansion. That’s the vision she holds for her clients, and it’s exactly what her book has done for her. Follow the seed If there’s one takeaway from this conversation, it’s Darcie’s reminder: “If you have that seed inside you that wants to create something, follow it and see what unfolds. Maybe it’s just that thing — or maybe it will become something else entirely.” You don’t have to know where it’s going. You just have to begin. Connect with Darcie Find Darcie at DarcieZiel.com (https://darcieziel.com), where you’ll find links to: Reconnect to the Wild Within: Seasonal Practices to Embody Your Primal Nature and its companion journal (both available on Amazon) The Book Club — next cohort begins in September Joyful Little Life — a three-month group coaching container starting in September, focused on building a nervous-system baseline of joy One-to-one nurse coaching Alaska retreats — July’s retreat is full, but keep an eye on her site for next year’s dates. (You fly into Juneau, then take a float plane to a remote Southeast Alaska community for full nature immersion. Alaska in July is pure magic.) Write To Rise helps women and underrepresented voices write, publish, and build a life around their books. If you have a book brewing, it’s worth writing — even if the first life it changes is your own. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com/subscribe (https://lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   4 Jun 2026

   Live with Magali Mathieu & Book Coach: Leslie Wall

   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com/subscribe (https://lesliewallwritetorise.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

Who has been a guest on Write To Rise Collective

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Leslie Wall
• Michelle RosaBarz
• Elizabeth Muñoz

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 29 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

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Guest appearances

Books guests

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