Dani & Co Photos & Community - Hi!
👋 I’m Dani. And I’ve been massively MIA for the last little while. 8️⃣ months ago, I walked away from my almost 12 year marriage. I felt free and more motivated than ever. You can look back to October and see that I was still cranking out content and chasing my goals. And then my world turned upside down when the initial adrenaline of a new life faded. I hit rock bottom. Then I hit it again. And again. And again....
For about a year before my divorce, I had started investing a lot of time into ME. It all started with reading @rachelhollis “Girl Wash Your Face.” That snowballed into listening to business podcasts, reading more self help books, and just really finally feeling like an INDIVIDUAL person - not just a mom and wife. It ultimately is what gave me the courage to walk away from a marriage that left me feeling worthless and unlovable, too. That feeling of having self worth and confidence stayed.... until it didn’t.
So here I am - 8️⃣ months later and FINALLY starting to feel the faith in myself to not just get out of bed in the morning, but to start moving towards the woman I want to become again. I’m severely bruised and beaten from this last little bit of life. It’s the hardest time I’ve ever gone through (way more so than losing my dad to cancer when I was a teen and then having a severely emotionally abusive step-dad for five years right after that). So feeling this itch to “get back in the ring” and get going with life again is a welcomed feeling!
Dani & Co Photos & Community is going to be not only my new business name, but my fresh start to create my dream job. I have literally had an army of supporters during this transitional time in my life. Girls, I couldn’t have got through this without them! They literally picked me up out of bed at times. And the thing that I realized through this is that we ALL have our struggles. We all have friends, sisters, family, co-workers, or neighbors in our lives going through HELL. Sometimes we just don’t know how to help. So that’s where the “community” in my new name comes in. This is going to be a place where women share their experiences of the difficult times they’ve been through and ways they were served during their struggles.
I’m going to be honest about a lot of what I’ve been through. Some people may not agree with what I will share. I’ll put this out there right now though. I whole heartedly know that if I would have known five years ago about a lot of the resources I have used to cope with the AFTER effects of divorce BEFORE my marriage became unsalvageable, I wouldn’t be divorced today. But I didn’t know about them because most people aren’t willing to share the “ugly stuff” in life. I want to share what I’ve learned, what’s worked for me, and what helps me heal a little more every day in hopes that I can help someone avoid this kind of pain.
Finally, I’m asking you to reach out if you have something you would like to share. Have you been through something really difficult? Something that you felt completely alone in? How did you get through it? How did other women impact your healing? I’d love to do a series of posts on ALL different struggles that we feel alone in facing. For me, I’ve dealt with losing my dad to cancer, infertility, divorce, PTSD from a difficult child birth, being a grad-school wife and moving away from family…. and every single one of those hard times were accompanied by so many acts of service to help me get through them. No one should feel alone in anything they are facing because the reality is, we aren’t alone. My most favorite birth affirmation when I had Holland naturally was “Women all over the world are doing this with you.” It helped me more than I can explain to know that truly I was not alone in the exact pain I was feeling. Email me at dani@danichristensen.com if you would be willing to share your story!
