For most of my life I have been a rollercoaster kind of girl. High highs. Low lows. And lightning speed tracks in between.

While this does make for an exciting ride, it also tends to result in a lot of burning out, crashing, recovery time and starting again.

In some ways this made me a good fit for a career as a lawyer. Legal work tends to come in waves. I thrived in the intensity of long days and little sleep.

It also required I develop coping mechanisms to deal with the stress of being superhuman. Some of my coping mechanisms became addictions and the anxiety of expecting myself to be on all the time prevented me from sleeping. None of this was okay and so I kept it all secret, holding up the superhuman façade to the world. Hiding created barriers to connection in all of my relationships however, and so, despite having friends, family, romantic partners and colleagues, I was also often lonely. To top it all off, the shame that came when I did crash was excruciating and it required a herculean effort on the rebound to prove to myself that I was worthy.

All of this cycling led me to burn out completely and I decided to leave law and go in search of some other career that would be easier. What I quickly began to realize was every new venture I took on also came with a rollercoaster. Reluctantly, I admitted to myself that it was not the practice of law that created the rollercoaster, it was me. Until I changed the way I related to life, every new thing would be the same – high highs, low lows and a fast track in between. It would never be sustainable.

Over a few years of self-discovery and many hours of coaching, I became quite familiar with my rollercoaster way and its cost in my life, and I eventually found the courage to let the extremes go. I returned to the practice of law and I have found a way to do it differently, with much less stress and no need for coping mechanisms.

In the process I fell in love with a new word: sustainability.

I also learned two invaluable life lessons about changing our lives for the better, which I have applied in all areas of my life – from recovering from an eating disorder and insomnia, to creating healthy boundaries at work, to bringing my art into the world, to cultivating deep meaningful relationships – with reliable success.

Since the New Year is the time many of us try (and often fail) to create meaningful changes in our lives, I thought I would share some of my secrets with you.

First, you cannot make a meaningful change in your life until you become aware of the way things are currently going in your life and the costs of those ways, to the point it becomes easier to change than to stay the same.

This means you must be radically honest with yourself and exercise extreme discernment regarding which life changes you decide to take on in 2017. Dig deep and ask yourself if you are really willing and ready to let go of the old way for each of the changes you want make. If your intuition says no, your resolution in that area for 2017 might simply be taking on a practice of generating more awareness around the costs of the status quo.

Take on the change when you are truly ready and you will save yourself disappointment down the road.

Second, the change you want will only be realized – whether in your career, your relationship, your family, your friendships, your health, your home, or any new habit of any kind – if you can find a way to make its implementation sustainable.

And so, how do we let go of the extremes and make something sustainable? How can we get off the rollercoaster once and for all?

Simply, this one rule: Allow yourself to be human.

Simple. Simple. Simple. But not easy.

Even if you are truly ready to commit to a change – to give up smoking, or lose those 10 pounds, or begin a mediation practice, or take up painting – you will not be perfect in carrying it out.

Allow yourself to be human. Allow yourself to need rest and play on a regular basis. And allow yourself to ask for help at times too.

Have compassion for yourself when you fall off, mess up, or miss a day. Forgive yourself early and you will find it much easier to keep going.

If you find you have taken on too many new things a few weeks into the New Year, allow yourself to reassess. Forgive yourself for thinking you could be super human. Grant yourself permission to take a day off, or even to let a few of the goals that do not resonate as deeply go. Do this and you will prevent the exhausted crash and quit everything that would otherwise be just around the corner.

Listen to your intuition in choosing your new goals and resolutions, and allow yourself to be human in their implementation and you may find yourself this December, for the first time in years (maybe ever), talking about how 2017 was the year you made your resolutions stick.

xo,

Danielle

*Article first published at http://www.attorneywithalife.com/the-secret-to-sustainable-change-in-the-new-year/.

This year has been hard.  A peaceful start and then it quickly turned stormy.  I have been tested. Tempted by dreamland desire and wishful thinking.  Pulled back towards people and ideas and things I had already let go of, for good reason.

Not heeding warnings deep in my gut, I found myself lost and uncertain.  Heartbroken.  Depressed.  Heavy.  Weighed down by old doubts and fears. 

On the brink of breaking down beyond repair I was smacked awake.  Brought back to myself by family and friends and colleagues.  Held.  Shaken.  Called forward.  Gently, and fiercely.  Reminded again and again of who I am.

Reminded that I am okay.  That it is all okay, just as it is.  There is nothing to fix.  There is no where to get to.  All of this is life.  All of this in the cards, for all of us.  There is no escaping the heartbreak.  And there is certainly no escaping the love.

This was a hard year, yes.  Not just for me, personally, but for the world.  So many painful events.  Testing us.  Breaking us down.  Causing us to fear we are being pulled backwards as a species into ways of interacting with each other and the world we had already let go of, for good reason. 

But I am still here.  You are still here.  And we are still here to shake each other awake, to call each other forward and to remind each other fiercely of who we are.  We cannot run any longer.  Not from our pain.  And certainly not from our love. 

Even the heaviness can be a gift.  Holding us in place, grounded and present.  Forcing us to receive the life all around us.  

So, let us look back on this year and be grateful for all of the smiles and all of the tears, and for the breath of life that still flows from our lips.

There is so much hurting in the world, but there is so much kindness too.  If we focus on fixing things we think bad or wrong or broken, we fail to see the beauty and the love.  We fail to see that it is only in the darkness of the night we can know ourselves as the creator of our own light. 

Being thrown into darkness and being forced to find we are okay is painful, yes.  But it is also a great gift.  It is the opportunity for each of us to know our own power to create an inner world for ourselves of peace.  It is the opportunity for each of us to fiercely protect our own compassionate state. 

Gandhi and Mandela found peace in jail.  Jesus found peace nailed to a cross.  When we can write a story for ourselves that allows peace through all of it, that is true power.  That is the healing our world needs.  That is love.

This is the opportunity the darkness of 2016 has given us.  The opportunity to stop running so fast and so hard at the expense of our health and that of the world. The opportunity to hold our experience of life in a peaceful glow. 

2016 was the year I let go of my story of struggle and escape, and began to live a new story of peace in my own life.  Rewriting this inner story has been challenging.  I have been tested in many ways.  And I have found the faith it takes to stay.  

In staying I am learning how loved I am in my life exactly as it is, with all its imperfections. And I am learning how much love there is in all of life, even the parts that are heartbreaking and hard.

Yes, 2016 was a hard year.  But it was also a year of many gifts. 

I love 2016 because I published my first two books and filled a life long dream of being able to call myself an author.  I rediscovered my feminine power and my fierce protective inner mother.  I found there is nourishment and joy in working towards something long term.  I created a community and a home filled with so much love it is challenging for my heart to let it all in.  I rekindled, and lost, and rekindled again, my passion for the practice of law.  I found the courage to be fully honest in relationship, to humble myself, to allow myself to be wrong, to let go of the kind of love that does not serve me, and to forgive myself for risking my heart against the wise warning of my gut. 

In 2016 I found peace in all of the human moments, from depression and heartbreak and fear to inspiration and fire and love.  I kept walking forward through raging storms.  I kept putting one foot in front of the other despite I could not always see where I was going, and despite I was at times moving so slowly it felt like I was not moving at all.  I trusted myself and loved ones and strangers and the world, though each broke my heart many times.  I found faith to keep my commitments and am discovering the rich beauty of life on the other side. 

I can honestly say am grateful for life in all its messiness.  I am present and grounded and peaceful in a way I have never been.  I am in love with this slow walk across the tightrope.  I am excited to keep building my life from this beautiful foundation I have created.  And I am filled with a love big enough to hold all of what 2017 might offer.

Sending you love, friends, and a prayer of peace, as we take the first step forward into the beautiful uncertainty of this new year.

xo,

Danielle

The faith it takes to stay is different than I imagined it would be. Unsettlingly unknown though it is filled with the familiar. Wider somehow than jumping off the cliff or running to the next new home. But terrifyingly narrow, also. Letting go of a million other paths, a million other places and people and things, and sinking in to my life. Saying, here I am. This is me. This is home.

If you know me well, or have been following my journey for a while, you will realize the significance of what I am sharing in this post. You will know that leaving my entire life (or at least some core parts of it) and beginning a new adventure excitedly is my specialty. I have, in fact, not lived in the same home for more than one consecutive year since leaving my childhood home at the age of 18.

Over the past few years I have become aware of my quite predictable yearly pattern of leaving and beginning something new. Late June, early July, doubts creep in. In the summer sun my feet start itching for adventure. I begin to empty out my life. The letting go picks up speed in early September. New ideas take hold and begin to grow alongside the retreat of my old life, until some abrupt magic moment in late fall when I fully let go and jump into something new.

This year’s leaving season started out much the same as in years past. Doubts crept in right on time. My feet began their itching. The letting go started, alongside the arrival of all kinds of ideas about the next exciting adventure I would begin. At one point, I nearly sold everything, bought a camper and embarked on an unplanned book tour across North America. My rational mind held me back, but just barely.

As the seasons turned from summer to fall I began to create many more slightly less extreme opportunities to leave. Some so tantalizing and rational I decided I would in fact go.  But every time I began the preparations necessary to leave my home, my city, my job or my community and begin a new adventure, something strange would happen.

My gut would squirm. Anxiety would race over my chest. My head would take on a cold. I would have strong urges to consume bowls of pasta and red wine curled up in front of my fireplace.  I would remember how much I love my friends and my colleagues and my dance community and my weekly writing sessions and my financial freedom and my very own, very comfortable bed.  And a sharp pain would lodge itself in my heart.

Every step I took to leave generated a pre-emptive wave of anxiety and heartbreak so strong I just couldn’t do it.  For the first time in my life it had become less painful to stay than to go.

Not that it was easy to stay.  I was still fighting my life in the usual way that I do to justify my need to leave.  I was not focusing at work.  I was not creating anything new or moving my business forward and I was blaming that on my dissatisfaction with the status quo.

A million fears screamed at me every day.  You need to leave!  You don’t believe fully in this work you are doing!  You need to be writing more!  You need to build a business faster!  You are wasting your life! You will never make a difference in the world at this rate!  Just jump!  Take a risk!  Go!

And then, as I allowed each opportunity to leave to pass me by, different fears showed up.  Nooo!  You are becoming resigned!  You are giving up!  Your heart is broken forever!  You will never fall in love or be excited about anything ever again!  What’s the point of life if you aren’t doing something exciting and new?

These fears caused me to shed many tears.  And I have at times been furious at my heart’s unwillingness to fall in love hard and fast and jump into something new.  As I let the emotions out, however, I began to feel increasingly peaceful.  And most recently, grateful.

I am grateful there has been no major upheaval of my life.  I am grateful for the downswing in drama.  I am grateful my wild passionate heart is learning patience.  I am grateful for this growing trust in myself to respect myself and assert boundaries.

Mostly I am grateful because I am somewhere I have never been before.  I am here.  In my life.  And I am not going anywhere.  I am grateful for the deep loving community I have cultivated.  I am grateful for my home.  I am grateful for my colleagues.  I am grateful for my work.  I am grateful for my writing.  I am grateful for the increasing opportunities to share my message with the world.

I am grateful because I know I am settling in to my life after a long journey of exploration.  I am grateful that I have a long-term vision for myself and for the world that is big enough to hold all of it.  I am grateful for the stability.  And I am grateful, that for the first time in over 12 years, I am able to tell my friends they can send me Christmas cards at the same address as they did last year.

This does not mean that my life is now static.  I know I will still make changes in my life.  I will grow and shift and create and move.  But it will take something truly and deeply aligned with my soul for me to be willing to shake my foundation.

And I will fall in love again too.  I can feel my heart opening a little more every day.  But I also know that I will never again give myself away with my love.  There is a difference.  This is what I am learning.

Loving someone or something does not mean giving all of me.  It means loving me enough to know what and when and how much I can give without depleting myself, and respecting those same boundaries of others. 

Staying asks me to live this truth.  Staying means trusting I do not need to give myself away to experience love, and that I do not need to suffer to serve the world.  Staying means consistency and sustainability.  Staying means asserting daily the boundaries needed for committed long-term love.

So here I am.  I am here.  I am yours, life.  And you are deeply mine.  I am in this for the long haul this time.  I have created a life I love too much to leave.  And, I have found, the faith it takes to stay.

xo,

Danielle

I am wandering without course; no destination, no purpose. My head pounds with dreams unlived and all of the effort used up on those dying and dead. Hope is so far away from me here. I can barely remember it. I know its presence only by its painful absence, and the nothingness that now consumes.

I am depressed, I tell myself dryly. Naming the unnameable void gives me no comfort any more. I keep walking; my eyes two saucers, a mixture of vacancy and deep pain that leads straight to my soul. I stare ahead, not really seeing. Only walking.

A man reaches out an empty Starbucks cup, and, shaking it, asks me if I can spare some change. I keep walking diverting my eyes. My heart rages. I could have helped him. I have change in my purse. My pain is drawn to his and for a second I pause and think about turning around. But a well of self-pity drowns out my heart and numbness sets in again. I walk on.

Where is my compassion? I ask myself. Where is my empathy?

I shrug and keep walking. The feeling will return, I tell myself. The pain is just too great for me to feel right now. I should be grateful for this cold despair.

One foot, and then the other, and then the other.

At the next intersection a man in a wheelchair approaches and I pause as he passes up the slope where the side walk meets the street. My dead eyes meet his gaze and anger flashes across his face. He probably thinks I hate him.

I keep walking straight into a coffee shop, and stare at the baked goods behind the counter. As the cashier approaches I turn around and walk out.

Another block. Another block. Another block.

Where am I going?

The question hits me and then falls to the ground, dazed like a bird flying into a window thinking it’s a tree. I can no longer hear myself.

Another block. Another block.

I turn into a little vestibule, brightly lit, with doors leading to shops and cafes. At the far end a sign with an arrow points right, toward a little Italian restaurant.  I follow it and find myself in a stairwell.

The cement swallows the hollow sound of my heel landing on each step. Up. I am going up.

At the first floor I pause and stare at the door leading inwards. There is no handle. A world accessible only from the other side.

I keep walking and find that every floor is the same. Empty stairs leading to a door with no handle. At the fifth floor I stop and for the first time feel the pressure of my handbag straps cutting into the soft flesh above my shoulder. I shift uncomfortably.

The moment falls away and again I feel nothing. Up. I am going up.

I arrive at what is maybe floor nine. The end of the stairs. A large box filled with insulation and cardboard sits to my left. Again there is a door with no handle. I lean forward and push hard. The door moves a half centimetre and slams against a steel bolt jutting into the wall. Somewhere deep inside me I feel something break.

This is the end. I have arrived at this locked door with a box full of garbage. In two days I will be thirty.

My life flashes before my eyes. Slip ‘N Slides, apple picking, buckets of grain and coveralls; the squealing of the pigs. Fresh picked corn and harvest meals with my family under the old oak tree. Breaking curfew and falling in love on back country roads. Getting drunk for the first time. The tremble of my hands as I read my valedictorian speech. The buzz of traffic and sirens outside my window. The strange feeling of trying to fall asleep with ear plugs for the first time. The undergrad days of studying, drinking and partying. The metallic taste of sleeping pills in my mouth in the morning. The working out and the counting of calories. The hiding and the bingeing. The raw acid in my throat as I threw up my lunch. The scholarships and the awards and the leaving my high-school love as I dove into law school full time. The fancy wine and cheeses. The swank law firms in sky scrapers and bright twinkling city lights. New friends and more partying. My highlighter on case law. Studying late into the night. The drive across the country with my mom as I embarked on the next chapter. A clerkship at the Court. A bigger city. New friends and more partying. The days of smiles and hiding my eating disorder. The nights of crying and making promises to myself that I never could keep. The trying harder in articling than I’ve ever tried before. Breaking down crying in my office surrounded by boxes of documents. Finding the perfect friends and the perfect man and the perfect little law firm and letting them become my family. The exciting jam-packed life. The sneaking away. The bingeing and the purging. The hiding and the shame. The cold sleepless nights. The frustration of realizing my demons were still with me. The moment I decided to change. “Mom, I’m bulimic.” I hear myself say. The coming out. The writing. The blogging, the sharing my secrets with the world. The haunting of the question why and the quest I went on that transformed my life. Out of law and into worlds I did not know existed. The energy, the aliveness, the connection to all things. The bliss of the first moment I realized I was living it, I was writing, I was a writer, I was doing the thing that was my thing. The visioning and the moments with the divine. The painful healing, the letting go, the deep trust that began growing inside. The first conversation I had with my own soul. The days of blissful falling in love and forgetting everything. The entrepreneurial adventures and striving to save the world. The pain of losing it all again and the excitement of starting over. Losing it all again, and starting over. Living on couches and spare beds and futons. Falling in love harder and deeper than ever before. Holding my first published book in my hands like it was my very own child. Crying for hours when I let it go into the world. Coming back to my old life with my new perspective, my new peace with my body and my mind, and finding everything really was different because I was. The moment I realized I now knew too much about life and what I truly believed to ever truly fit in. The heartbreak and the exhaustion of fighting the knowing that I could not stay.

And now finding myself here. The end of the stairs. A box of recycled items beside me. Facing a handleless door. The climb has ended. There’s no where to go. Something inside me has died. My body knows this is true. I am exhausted and empty. I have lost interest in climbing. All I want is to be me. Nothing more.  

I sit down on the concrete to cry, but I can't. I know its not the time. I don’t know how. But I know I must go on.  

With one last look at the box of remains beside me, I gather myself up and walk back down the stairs. My steps muffled by the same concrete well, glancing at each landing towards the same handle-less doors.  

As emerge I again see the sign with the arrow. Down one floor, it says.

Oh, I sigh. This time I take the elevator. I arrive at the cute little Italian restaurant as advertised.

I pull out my notebook. The words begin flowing. A glass of wine and a few pieces of cheesy pizza later the words are now flying. I order a second glass of wine with dessert and capture a picture of my half eaten lemon tart.

Many things are gone. Everything is stripped down. I am empty and bare like the autumn trees. But in this emptiness the fire in my heart has returned. My words spill out onto the page like paint onto a canvass. Three decades of life well lived.

I still do not know how.

But this is my life. I am alive. And I am writing it. I am making my art.

And I cannot think of a better way for my thirties to start.

xo,

Danielle

I am nearly a month after declaring I am creating a career for myself as a writer and a speaker. As you may have anticipated (I did, although I was in denial and hoping I could somehow avoid this part), I find myself in the “I don’t know what the hell I am doing stage” of starting something creative and new.

And since I believe in being honest, and that it is okay to be human and messy and not have it all figured out, I’m writing to you as I’m flailing about.

I really do believe in this radical humanness (I’ll call it that for now). Allowing ourselves to be all of who we are – the hurtful and the loving, the ugly and the beautiful – is part of my life philosophy. I believe that if we give ourselves permission to be all of it, that is when the voice of our soul - our intuition, who we really are - can be heard. It is this voice that knows the way forward to a more beautiful life and a more beautiful world.

I believe these things with all of my heart. I believe in them so much I have devoted my life to living this philosophy and sharing it with the world. Sometimes I believe in it so much it hurts.

It hurts because I feel the pain of us hiding both our brilliance and our weaknesses. I see how exhausted we are from running so fast towards some perfected future than never arrives. And I see this hiding and striving result in violence and destruction in the world. And it hurts even more because I don’t know how to make a difference except to try my best to live more honestly and to be more present myself, and to hopefully inspire others to do the same.

Sometimes I can feel the bliss of living this more honest, present way. And sometimes I just want to punch myself in the face for having a philosophy that is so challenging to live.

Sometimes I just want to be ten steps ahead. Sometimes I feel so strongly the urgency of “getting there” that it is challenging to even think about anything else. I want to know things I don’t yet know. I want to know what to say and where to go to share my work. I want to know who will listen and how I can make the biggest difference.  And I want to take all of the action I possibly can.

Sometimes when this passionate drive kicks in I let it take over and channel it into my work. And sometimes I force myself to set it to the side so I don’t lose my grounding and forget to take care of myself and be present in my life. Because that will serve no one, least of which my philosophy or myself.  

So there you have it. What comes after taking the second step onto the high wire is the frustration of knowing that if I start running I will surely fall. And so, instead, I am inching, and wobbling, and flailing about.

Don’t get me wrong – I am (of course) doing all kinds of things. I have set up an official book launch party, poetry has been flowing out of me effortlessly, and I powerwalked home Friday evening in a frenzy of passion and wrote late into the night and most of the next day. I’m speaking out. I’m being seen. And I ate half a pizza, drank half a bottle of wine and cried for an hour before writing this post.

Being fully human. That’s how I make my art. I guess I should have anticipated that too.

xo,
Danielle

Arms outstretched I lift one foot from the solid ground beneath me and reach it out over the edge. Slowly, carefully, I let it come to rest on the thin rope that draws into the unending expanse ahead.

My insides lurch with a mixture of fear and anticipation. It is the second step that is hardest, I know.

I pause and take a deep breath, and reassure myself. Old dreams have been let go of and grieved. The quiet listening has been done. The inspiration had. The preparations taken. The prayers spoken. Everything is ready for this new adventure.

And now, I stand here, one foot outstretched onto a tightrope in the unknown, wondering, where did she go? Where might I find that courageous soul with big dreams that brought me to this edge? 

Minutes pass, then an hour, then a day. After a few weeks of straddling the cliff face, the enormity of the unknown becomes overwhelming. The second step begins to feel impossible. And I am paralyzed with opposing urges to either throw myself forward into the void or pull away and run back to the safety of what I know.

What are you waiting for? A voice screams at my frozen feet. Just jump! Stop being such a coward. If you fall, you’ll figure out how to land on the way down. Even if you crash you’ll find a way to be okay; you’ve been broken before.

Maybe you’re just not quite ready, another voice chimes in. Just turn around and go home. A bit more learning – another book, another course, a stronger community, a bigger nest egg – then you will be ready to let go and step both feet into the unknown.

I’ve played out both of these options before, of course. And while each are appealing and comforting in their own way, this time I want something different. I want something more. I don’t just want the excitement of a new hat; the thrill of a new beginning. And I'm unwilling to turn around and walk away. I want to be fully seen. I want this story to be all of me, and to last.

There is so much more at stake when it comes to actually being yourself in the world. As David Whyte has said - What if you risk being yourself and fail? Then what would you do? Then who would you be?

And so, one foot vulnerably into the unknown, I find myself in this paralysis: distracting myself with the minor dramas of life and making myself busy with unimportant things. Yet, I will not turn back or lurch forward. I am deeply trusting. I am committed to finding another way.

Slowly, as the days pass, I begin to see that my paralysis is actually patience, and that I have not really been stopped. I have simply been moving so slowly my mind with its distractions has not noticed – my weight has been shifting, my foot has been lifting; I have been leaning forward and out into the unknown one fraction of a millimetre at a time.

This morning I woke to find I had leaned far enough forward that I could feel, through the war of stories in my mind and the tempest of feelings in my gut, the summer breeze brushing against my face, inviting. And I was reminded of a post I wrote some months ago on falling in love with my life. 

Everything I seek is now.

The words come from a place deep within.

I feel something release. My mind quiets. The old stories fall away.

A wild mixture of terror and love begins to pulse through me, as though the wind itself is moving me, and I realize that my foot has lifted from the solid ground behind me and has come to rest, wobbling and uncertain, on a small piece of rope stretched out into the clouds.

I have taken the second step. There is no turning back now.

xo,

Danielle

Every once and while the heavy feet of depression walk their way into my life. My soles become heavy, drawn with a fierce pull into the ground. My knees buckle, my heart drains and I begin to disappear without fight into the pit of sinking sand beneath me. It takes all the energy I have left to shed even a tear of sorrow before a deep emptiness envelops me and I go cold with indifference. Who cares? Why bother? Wouldn’t death be easier than this life draining hole?

These thoughts and feelings used to terrify me. So much so that I spent a good deal of my energy trying to avoid them. I worked so much and filled my schedule so full in the hopes that negativity would not catch me and steal me away into its clutches. This did not work, of course, and so I tried to manage the depressive thoughts and feelings with food and alcohol and other fixes to get me into a state of numbness. Which worked temporarily, but like a Band-Aid on a gun shot wound, not even an endless supply of chocolate and wine could do the trick.

And so a few years ago I started feeling my feelings, and I found out not only did I survive them, but that they were actually on my side. I found this with joy and with sadness, with rage and with contentment, with grief and even depression. And so, this time when depression came knocking I did not spend my time holding the door closed with one hand and stacking boxes up against it with the other. Instead I found myself slowly opening the door to an old friend and welcoming her in.  

I have learned through this process that the way you approach depression (or any emotion, or really anything in life) will to a large extent shape your experience of it and what you take away from that experience.

The way our culture often approaches depression is with an immense amount of resistance and fear. We shame ourselves and others for being depressed, and stigmatize depression as weak, “in the way of our fast-paced lives” and just generally as something that “shouldn’t be.” When depression shows up we are taught to ask questions like “What will make this go away so I can get on with my life?” and “How can I fix myself so this evil thing never happens to me again?”

But what if the only thing evil about depression is our demonizing of it, and if we would instead change the way we relate to depression and the questions we ask of it, it could be an ally, and friend?

This is exactly what I have found to be true.

Before I go further and offer a different way to relate to depression and some helpful questions you might ask when it comes barreling down your door, I want to note that in cases of chronic depression or more serious cases accompanied by suicidal urges, medication and other professionals may be necessary to assist for a while in rebalancing a long imbalanced psyche. Good friends and family support are never a bad thing either.

But for the most part I believe depression can be addressed by shifting how we address it. Neither medication (whether prescription or self-medicated numbness), nor your friends and family can get to the bottom of your battles with depression and transform them for good. Only you can do this. And it simply starts with the willingness to be open to a new perspective: one that says your depression might actually be helpful and good.

Karla McLaren writes in her book The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You, that depression carries with it a vital life-preserving message: it tells you what you need to let go of so you can live. Depression, and even suicidal thoughts, she says, offer wisdom from your emotional and physical body about aspects of your life – people, environments, work, lifestyles, beliefs - that are literally draining you of life energy and must be let go of, or let to die. It is not your actual life that needs to end (as can be wrongly interpreted from suicidal thoughts by those that have them) but some part of your life that is already killing you.

The thing that needs to die may be as life-changing as an abusive relationship, an unhappy work environment, or a home or lifestyle that does not resonate with your soul. Or it may be a belief or habit you are holding onto that no longer serves you, or some social or work activities you need to cut out to make room for a creative project.

So instead of treating your depression with fear and hostility and asking how you might get rid of it, try instead treating it as a wise old friend that has come to visit you with some deep truths from your very soul. You might ask it: “What in my life is no longer serving me?”, “Is there a person, situation or belief system that is draining my life force?” or “What do I need to let go of here in order to live more fully?” If you are willing to be honest with yourself in your listening you will hear the answer from your wiser self in return: this person, that belief, that situation, etc.

This is the gift in depression that is missed out on by simply trying to avoid our depression every time it arrives: the opportunity to stop and check in with your truest self, and to re-recreate your life in a way that is more in alignment with your own unique truth.  

And how, you ask, are you to find the energy to right your life when you are caught in a sinkhole of depression?

I would say that once you have the awareness of what it is that needs to go, it is your depressed state itself, your deep and utter exhaustion that will give you the strength to be honest. You will simply have no energy for anything else. You will no longer have the energy it takes to pretend you are fine with whatever situation has been depleting you. You will no longer be able to hold up the façade. And so you will start being more honest.

Depression and the exhaustion that comes with it are powerful agents of truth. From that truth comes the energy for change.

If you lie in bed thinking your depression sucks and strategizing your way to a happier place you may succeed in temporarily pulling yourself back into a lighter state where you can again go about your life, but your “I’m fine nows” will not last, nor will you be truly peaceful or joyous, until you face your dark times as you face an old friend, and take the hard wisdom she offers.

If you do, you may find, as I have, that you will start to welcome your depression and your exhaustion a little more, and that it is in your darkest days you are closest to your own truth.  Though still unpleasant and challenging as all hell to be with, you will appreciate their presence in your life as much as their absence. You will relax a little more into the darkness and let these old teachers heal you and strengthen you until you find yourself midday in a burst of life-preserving energy getting out of bed with the courage you need to speak your own truth. You will set out with a mix of urgency and peaceful conviction and take the first step to end the things that need to end and to say the things that need to be said.

And when you wake the next morning you will likely find that your new friends have left and that you feel nourished somehow though you haven’t yet eaten. Give it an hour or two, or a day, or a week, and you will feel a certain tenderness of heart and the inklings of a fire deep in your loins. New life is being formed!

Sure as the cycles of life-death-life in nature your joy will return, tugging at your insides, bursting forth from a deeper place with new love, new creation, new life; and a deep sense of peace and gratitude for the gift in the darkest of times.

xo,

Danielle   

There is a time for leaving, yes. I have been there. I have felt the pull of the ocean and sailed away from everything, and everyone in my life. I have done this many times. And so it does not surprise me that I found myself again wishing for wind in my sails.

My life is full with many things, you see. All are things that I chose from a deep place aligned with my soul. All are things that I love with the hugeness of my heart. All are things that challenge my mind and my body in delicious ways. And yet, the past few weeks I have been exhausted by all of the doing. And I once again found myself resenting all of these beautiful things.

This past Wednesday, I attended my weekly 5Rythms dance class – a freestyle dance that I took on as a practice last fall, and that has allowed me to deepen my connection with my body, with energies flowing through me and others, and with spirit. I usually have little trouble sinking in to a place where I can let go and allow the music to move me. This past week I found myself feeling the same as I was everywhere in my life: frustrated, anxious and trying to get back to a place of peace and joy.

And then, about half way into the two hour class, I remembered something really important: that place doesn’t exist.

There is no there, my heart whispered. Only here, now.

Suddenly all of the emotion that I had been holding in as I ran from thing to thing over the past few weeks came roaring up and I sank to my knees. My eyes welled with tears and I felt the floor beneath my body, solid: holding me. I had a choice to make – I decided to let go. Trusting myself and the safe space held by this dance community I love, I curled up on the hardwood floor and let the tears flow, beats of the song and the patter of dancers’ feet reverberating my body and soul.

Here I am. I am here, now.

My circumstances have not changed: I am still a little tired; my life is still full. Yet, I am here now in it, fully. My heart expanded on that dance floor, and in the days that have followed. I am again more deeply allowing my own truth.

That place I was looking for had not gone anywhere; it had simply been right here, waiting, as it always does, for me to stop trying to be somewhere else.

And through this experience I am learning about another kind of dance that has eluded me many times: commitment.

I am learning that commitment is not a hard line. It is not black and white. It does not involve trying really hard. It does not require pretending or faking it until you make it. It does not need forcing. Those are all strategies I have employed in the past when trying to commit to people and places and careers. And they have each helped me in a way. They have gotten me far. But at some point each one of my strategies failed, and I left, or the thing I had committed to fell apart.

When it comes to the kind of commitment that is sustainable and fulfilling, these strategies simply will not do. Commitment, like life, is a wild dance that cannot be tamed. Discipline and performance will not be the things that keep me showing up and saying Yes! to being fully present and engaged in my life.

Rather it is the permission to feel what I feel in each moment. The permission to break down. The permission to be exhausted. The permission to doubt. The willingness to let go of the way it “should” look or the way it “has to” go. These are gifts of deep trust. These are the hands of love I will need to dance with. These are the tools of faith I will need to stay.

And so, I allow doubt amidst these times of love and joy. I accept that I will at times be exhausted and frustrated, and lonely and lost. I will not banish my fear. And I will surely continue to feel every emotion under the sun. It is here, in this deep allowance, that I find I do not need to leave. It’s okay to be me. It’s okay even to leave, and, somehow, I find, I deeply desire to stay.   

This is not the time of leaving. This is not the time of giving up on everything and everyone in search of a better more magical way. This is the time of finding a new way to live in an old world. This is the time to believe in dreams. This is the time to sink in to the uncertainty of each moment. This is the time to trust that my truth is what is needed to make magic today.

And so, I am here now, in this moment; embracing this heart-wrenching ride; this embodied expansion; this beautiful dance, of commitment.

xo,

Danielle

I can feel it. I am, once again, falling in love with this mad thing we call life. Tentatively, though. This time patience is required in equal measure to passion. 

I’m not used to doing things this way—slowly and gently. I have preferred to throw myself into frenzy and foray, and to just get things done.

I have been in love many times before in that fast and furious way, with people and places and things. That head-over-heels, living off ecstasy, making passionate-bordering-reckless decisions on the wild feelings in my heart. It was delicious. And not sustainable. Like skipping dinner for ice cream every single night.

I do like to be in love though. In fact, I love it. It is my favourite thing. I am not willing to give it up. But I know I must do it differently this time. And so I find myself in this long-drawn-out beginning: listening and moving slowly; choosing delicately and firmly; speaking with intention; adding in more time for play.

In response I feel a flutter: the wings of a great bird long dormant; stirring, waking, stretching; preparing for flight. This time, yes, this time, I know I can fly. My wings are mine to use on this new adventure.

And I now know how they work. I have gone on a few good test runs. I have hovered at the end of this runway, on the lip of this nest, on the edge of this canyon. I have flown little circles above it. Dipped a wing beyond it. 

There is peace and joy in this beginning, no doubt. Yet sometimes I feel frustrated with this inching; desperate for the thing that is not yet now. And I think, why don't I just jump? Dive in? Throw myself over the edge? Force myself to take flight?

Part of my hesitation is fear, I know. I fear that I will—like so many times before—be swept up into the vortex of some thing or someone and let it carry me away, only to wake in a pile of rubble. I have never been good at smooth landings. And past heartbreak always returns as a voice of reason, saying stop.  

I also know, at a deeper level this fear is necessary. It is keeping me safe until I realize that I already am.

And, I am learning a most beautiful and frustrating thing: patience.

Patience is hard because it requires trust. And trust is hard because I have to let go of control. And letting go of control is the scariest thing in life. But it also feels so damn good. That freedom. That finding of joy and love outside of searching, in the messy here-and-now.

So I am trusting. I am trusting this slow opening. I am trusting that life can be easy; that I do not need to push and strive and drive so hard every day. I am trusting I can just be. I am trusting I can receive. I am allowing the magic and joy in this half-way-flight.

And patience does not mean I do not challenge my fears. Every day I do. Patience simply means being kind to myself and my fears and honouring where I am at in the process of taking flight. If today I feel anxious and retreat, that’s okay.

It is as a result of this permission, this allowance, this honouring of my human experience, that my rationally calculated fears begin to appear less rational. More and more I can hear the stronger quiet voice deep inside. The one that knows that the only thing more terrifying than crash-landing-heart-breaking-starting-again, is retreating to a safe place where life and love can no longer find me. 

One day I will soar freely over my canyon like the condors in Peru; diving out from my home in the cliff-face and arcing my full-wingspan into the roaring wind; trusting that no matter how far, no matter how high, no matter how long I engage in my dance with the sun, I will find my way home to the cliffs and the streams and the trees. And I will land safely, too; talons sinking into cool earth like the roots of an old tree, wings ready for tomorrow’s new feat.

That day is coming soon, I can feel it; I am growing into it, or it into me, I cannot tell. I am simply trusting this gradual expansion of my heart. I wake each new day a little stronger, a little brighter; wings tugging at my imagination, calling that part of me that was born to fly to rise into the wind and play.

xo,
Danielle