Hi. I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for visiting. My name is Samara. Welcome to SamaraSerotkin.com!

Let me tell you a little bit about how this website came to be. Most of my previous writing was published on my clinical website, Focus and Thrive. I am a licensed and practicing psychologist who believes that my personal opinions and beliefs, for the most part, don’t belong in my relationship with clients. And so I have limited my writing on that website to mostly educational pieces and I’ve held back on inserting much of my own personal voice.

Psychologists, just like most people, experienced major shifts in their jobs during 2020. I found that the kinds of topics my clients were bringing into our virtual sessions shifted dramatically. Suddenly, people were asking direct questions about my opinions about what to believe in the media. Not only that, they started to ask what I believed in a bigger sense. Ultimately, when the world as you knew it starts to crumble around you, you have to anchor onto something. People started asking questions about their core values and their spirituality and some really big why’s and how’s started to take over my workday. I started to develop more comfort with bringing more of my own personal voice to the conversation. My clients responded warmly and many said it was helpful.

And then, in June, I was offered a publishing contract for my very first book, Mindful Willpower. I was given 10 weeks to complete it.  And complete it I did. There was no other option, really. The world was an ever-increasingly distressing place and I was helping people cope with enormous suffering. Like many others, I was feeling frustrated at how limited my ability was to help more people than the seven or so I could squeeze into my workday. When I was offered the seemingly impossible task of writing the book, I was also told the book would be going on the shelves the first week of 2021, and I knew I had to do it.

Writing a book in 10 weeks is no small task, especially during a pandemic when living and working in a house with two young children and a husband. But forcing myself to write quickly helped me get my own self critic out-of-the-way enough that I could let the words flow. It also helped me build confidence in my ability to use my personal voice to help people. And so I chose to launch this website as a place distinctly separate from my clinical psychology practice.

This is not a site to come for medical advice, but instead it is a place where I can let my hair down a bit and have more casual conversations with my coaching clients and my reading audience. I plan to create resources and content designed to help you reduce unnecessary suffering in your world in the world around you. I have also prepared some resources, recordings, and classes that will be available here in early 2021.

I hope you enjoy your visit here. If you like what you see, please consider signing up for my newsletter. That’s where I will be announcing new content and resources available to you.