01/04/2026
I just realized something.
Some people are probably like… who’s she?
To tell me - what to do, or not do, with my body.
To give me relationship advice.
To be talking to me like this. Like she know me.
To sit up there on her high horse looking down.
***
Well. Gulp.. deep breath. Here I go.
Hi. I’m Dani. I’m 38, & I have 3 beautiful, intelligent, amazing daughters.
I’m a special education teacher. I’m a divorcee.
I was a teen mom, and before that- I grew up in poverty.
(And then adoption, and then, given up again, foster care, and homelessness, and couch surfing, and experimenting with.:: a lot of things a young girl of 14, 15, 16 shouldn’t have been.
Oh. Back up. I was SA’d at 11. And then 12. And 13. And 14. And 15- and then - I had had enough. I got tough. And I got mean.
Flash back forward. I got pg when I was 19. Had a miscarriage. We were devastated, and young. And dumb. And got pg again right away.
I birthed a beautiful, healthy, darling girl child at 20. Despite my valiant attempts at raising her maturely and all the right ways, I was devastated when my partner had 0 interest in being a parent in our young 20s. I pressed on and did it anyway. I worked night and day and day and night. I put in 16 hour days at a nursing home and graduated with my associate’s degree. And then my Bachelor’s in Health Administration.
Disclaimer- waters were murky during this 6 year period. I chased someone who didnt want me- through 3 different states- and desite all that, they just wanted to protect their image. I danced professionally. I went down a lot of roads my 12-16 year old self did. Self destruction. But also- disconnection.
I birthed my second beautiful baby girl in August of 2015. Alone. Completely alone. No home. I was exiled. For making the choice of choosing my family (the same family ((man)) that didn’t choose me back). Homeless, my two children - (then a 7 yr old, and a newborn baby)- couch surfed, moved into a homeless home in Melbourne, FL for young single mothers in college.
I pressed on. I graduated. I moved home to MI. Started a business, a family, and a home for my two young daughters and I. About 9 months later I entered into a very abusive relationship that not a single person warned me about.
Two and a half years later, I was broken, battered, and alone. I had given every ounce of myself there was left to give and yet… I was the one on the chopping block. From anyone and everyone all around me. How could she, why don’t she just leave, it’s her fault, those poor kids, that poor guy. No one cared what I endured. No one.
I picked up what was left of my dignity and pressed on. I lived in an absolute isolation chamber for the next 3 years.
I married someone I thought was the one for me in 2020. When I was subsequently dx with stage 4 cancer in 2022, he abused me every way except physically- he spent all the money there was (there wasn’t much, with me as the breadwinner on disability). He went to bars, drank himself stupid, hit on women, drove out to casinos hammered, lost everything we owned. Heavily pregnant and battling cancer what could I do? The moment I was cancer free and healthy again I took the baby and I left.
Not a week after I leave, he files for full custody, a divorce, etc. He showed pictures of our “disheveled” home as evidence. (I had been moving things out, for a good four weeks before I left for good. Ofc it was disheveled).
During the past 2 years, he has made my life a literal living hell. Today, I have full custody of our daughter as he has failed drug test after drug test after alcohol test after alcohol test.
I have a very checkered past. I’ve been down the deepest hole, I’ve been stranded at sea with no life preserve.
I’ve pulled myself up by the boot straps more times than I can count.
I’m not proud of all of my past, and at the same time, a lot of things - many things - were NOT MY FAULT.
Anyway. If you think {insert attention seeking/ destructive / harmful / irreparable / not good for you behavior here} is going to help, or make you feel better, fix something you can’t, it won’t.
All the money and attention in the world cannot fix what’s broken and missing inside. I don’t really care how cliché that sounds. It’s the truth.
Do the work, the inner work, to dig out the dirt inside, and then plant the seeds that will propel you into a life of peace, and light, and happiness.
From within.
It’s the only way. ✨
