There is a space between the pushing and the pulling insanity of the world around us that we can sink into if we trust. A way of living outside of striving and fixing. A form of growth that is natural and cyclical, like the seasons of trees losing leaves and resting, and then blooming again each spring.

Trust creates the place where peace lives.

Trust does not mean faith, although they are related. To come from trust does not mean to believe in God, or the Universe, or another spiritual presence, or even to have faith that everything is happening according to some divine plan, although you may believe in one or more of these things, and therefore trust. 

To me trust simply means to peacefully be with and create from what is, exactly as it is. Radical acceptance of the wholeness of life. To trust in the intelligence of things exactly as they are means to trust in how things got to be where they are, and to trust in where they are going.

Trust requires taking responsibility for our own part in the conversation of life. Trust asks us to listen to and live from the part of ourselves that knows how to partake in this conversation. I call this part of us our soul. You may call it your intuition, your inner knowing, or the part of you that can communicate with the divine.

Whatever you call it, this is the part of you that is connected in to all life: past, present and future. It is connected to a deeper truth that flows through everything. We have all had moments when we have just known what to do or to say, or when we have sensed something was wrong, and then found out someone we loved had died. This is the part of us that simply knows.

Listening to this part of us does not mean that we will always get what we want. In fact, sometimes it will mean we get just the opposite: the thing we wanted least. This is because the more surface level part of us, the ego self, that is constantly shouting at us all of the things that we want, is not connected in to the deeper conversation of our soul.  If we are willing to let go of our expectations when we don’t get what we want, and to move through whatever thoughts and emotions come up for us, we will likely find that what we got was exactly what we needed to become more of who we are.

And that is what this is all about. Our soul simply wants us to be who we are in the world. To be and to do and to experience all of the things that only we can in this lifetime. Our soul came here for a reason, and that is it.

The more we learn to listen to and to create our lives from this deeper place, the more life will align with what we seek to create. Trust is what creates space for us to access that deeper voice.

Yesterday I was at a talk by David Whyte, a poet and philosopher I follow, and prior to reciting a piece by the late poet and activist Antonio Machado, he said, the poem “was so deeply private it actually belonged to everyone in the end.” The poem is called Last Night as I Was Sleeping” – a heartfelt piece written by Machado after years of self-imposed exile following the sudden death of the love of his life. It is beautiful, and timeless, and if translated, would likely resonate with most people on earth.

The deeply private place from which Machado wrote that poem is the place I am speaking about. It is the place I believe that all great writing, all great art of any form, and all great ideas come from: a place that belongs to us all.

This is the place that shook me awake and reminded me that I love to write. This is the place that took me on a journey of self discovery and healing. This is the place that had me leave law and pursue life coaching and poetry. And this is the place that had me return to law and sink into all that is my life. This is the place I often write from, especially when my writing is poetic. This is the place where I find peace when life gives me the opposite of what I want.

This is the place we can all access when we trust. The place that knows what to say or to do or to create despite that our conscious mind may not understand it. To listen to that voice when we don’t fully understand, requires trust.

Trust offers peace. It creates space for joy, and it holds the invitation of a way forward, in painful and uncertain times. Trust is a beautiful way to live, one that I am practicing more deeply all the time.

xo,

Danielle

This is Joy. The one that comes in blankets and waves. Warming the skin, and sinking in, like sunrays on snowbanks in spring.  

This is Joy. The carrier of the knowing you have been waiting for. The trickster; the wise mentor; the friend. The one who leans in close, after months of wandering through fog, and with a playful wink, says: You've been on the right path all along!

This is where Joy lives: Here. In moments of pause. In moments you take in the life you are living with an open heart, and are surprised to find it more beautiful than you thought; more beautiful even than you imagined it could be.

Joy is the realization that you love your life not only for its perfection and clarity, but also for its unpredictable wildness and darkness and messiness.

Joy writes stories that exist only because you found the courage to embrace the unplanned and the strange. Joy is the beauty in bringing to life those new stories in your own tender and tentative way. 

Joy is possible only from peace, and peace is possible only from trust, and trust is possible only from listening to, and acting in alignment with, a deep inner truth; and listening is possible only from the willingness to let go of control over how things should look or should go.

So surrender to the fog if that is where you find yourself now, and listen for that small voice that knows. Trust it deeply even when the path is covered and the sky is grey. In the name of a wise and playful friend, Joy, trust that voice knows the way.

It will not be easy, at least not always. Some days the challenges will make you sick with their churning in your gut. You will be defeated and exhausted and heartbroken and enraged. You will be asked to let go when you want to hold on, and asked to hold on when you want to let go. You will be humbled, this I know.

Yet if you trust deeply, and if you walk ever so slowly, sensing your way forward from that deep inner voice, you will find that peace will always hold you; and that after the storm, the sun will return. The walk through the fog is always worth it.

Some questions will be answered in Joy’s early light, and though new ones will inevitably emerge, you will find that you were indeed on the path all along, and that you can now see beyond the next curve.

You will begin to catch glimpses of what is next, and that small voice inside you will urge: Take bigger, more confident steps, now. It is time for this next chapter to emerge. Love will flow and Joy will shout, to help you on your way. And those steps that you take, in those early days, will be nothing short of fantastic.

So, let there be fog and let there be light, and let there be weirdness in beauty. Let messiness seep through masks of perfection, and let certainty fade into wonder. Let us let go of the last chapter with the fog as it lifts, and let new stories be born of such unexpected delight that we can’t help but believe in magic.

And when Joy arrives in her trickster way, let us surrender to her play. Let us birth new from the old and old from the new, and something just for fun. Let us lift our heads and squint our eyes, and smile into the bright shining sun.

xo,

Danielle

There are days I forget everything good in my life, even when I am staring right at it. Maybe it is because I stare at my blessings everyday and have become blind to them. Maybe it is because I have been repeatedly taught by our culture to focus on the next thing - the next achievement, the next destination, the next level of growth - that it takes incredible intention and courage to simply relax into and appreciate what I have. Most likely both.

The past week or so this is exactly the place I have found myself: wanting to be further ahead; longing to have grown more, to have become more of myself, to have received and achieved and accomplished more than I already have. Seeing friends share recent successes in their business or life, and feeling some excitement for them, but mostly feeling my own lack.

Not enough. Still not enough.

After everything I have been through; after all I have loved and healed and grown and achieved and created, there is still an insatiable part of me that makes it never be enough.

Sometimes the longing to be someone or somewhere other than who and where I am in this moment is so strong it's all I can do to just get up and show up to my life. Sometimes I lay awake all night with anxiety. Sometimes I cry on the bus. Sometimes I cry at work. Sometimes I wail and scream and rage into my pillow, or at the ocean or the moon.

Sometimes I can feel the pain of our collective longing; of the exhausting effort of our collective running up a staircase towards some destination that never arrives, and I collapse under the weight of it. Sometimes I find myself in a pit of despair. Sometimes I want to just give up.

And yet, even in times of deep pain, I am peaceful. I feel the longing; I feel the sadness; I feel the rage; I feel the despair. And I allow it. I allow it all to be a part of my experience of life. I give it permission to move through me; to teach me; to heal me; to hold me; and to shake me awake into this moment. I am no longer afraid of my own humanity.

For this peace I am so grateful.

Five years ago I was terrified of the depth to which I feel life. I avoided my own experience with food and alcohol, and by making myself busy. I refused to breathe deeply into my own body.

This past week in the midst of my inner torment I consistently breathed deeply into my gut. I felt fully the pain and the longing there. I moved through my legal work at a slower pace, but I did still work. There was the familiar despair deep in my bones, but I felt love, too, because I was present. And I did not feel the desire to numb out my experience.

I am grateful I have cultivated the strength and the faith to be with pain and fear and longing and loss. I am grateful for the vastness of my human experience. And I am most grateful for the level of honesty and transparency with which I now live my life.

My law firm knows I feel deeply, and that I am passionate with mental and emotional ups and downs. And so does everyone in my life. And anyone who will come into my life in the future will know too. I am no longer hiding this part of me. I have transformed my beliefs and my behaviours in many ways, but I am still me. I always will be.

And although I sometimes long to be someone or somewhere other than who and where I am, I now hold those thoughts and feelings with peace, and continue on. Because I know in my heart that what I truly want, and the world needs most, is for me to lay down my masks, and to just be me.

xo,

Danielle

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