Danielle Bernock | Tapping into Your God-given Greatness, The Silver Bullet that Helped Her Heal, & Recognizing Your True Value

Hello, my Remarkable friend. Welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. You are going to hear the story of a woman who not even knowingly suffered trauma after trauma, after trauma throughout her life. Some mental, some emotional, some physical, some to do with loss of family members and loved ones and all sorts of challenges.

And what it boiled down to is her realizing that she truly is loved, she truly matters. And so do you. So listen to this whole episode. I say that every week cuz there’s gold packed along the way. But when you hear today’s guest story, If you have a problem, you know, deep in your heart and your soul, if you really feel loved, you know, if you feel like you have worth and purpose and matter, this episode is for you.

So get out your pen and paper, get something to drink so you can, you know, just relax and listen or watch the episode. But the woman who’s going to present today and share her. Insights with us. She’s an author, [00:02:00] she’s a writer, she’s a coach, she’s an entrepreneur. She is so much more than just a trauma victim.

She has her own podcast and each week she brings content to help us heal along our journey of life. So she’s going to talk to us about how. Impact of things in her childhood, from family instances to bullying in school, to teachers that harmed her, all translated into her adulthood just like it does in ours.

And then she talks about how a road trip cross country changed her life. And then she talks about the silver bullet to beat. The lies the silver bullet to help her remember and feel loved and to know she has value. And now, today and every day of her life, she spends [00:03:00] helping people coming to know the truth that God loves you, you’re super valuable, and there’s a purpose and plan for you.

So while I am a bumper and I stumble over my words, today’s. Is amazing and she’s going to be able to share her story with you through the next two hours. Now, you know this is a podcast. You can turn it on, you can shut it off. But once you listen to Danielle’s heart and story, you’re going to get more and more interested.

So stick to the end. She’s got some free offers in here. She also talks about her book, and her book is just, I mean, different people and different concepts, but just like our new book, the Remarkable People Volume one. 12 authors, 12 chapters, 12 laser focused topics to not only show you what they were able to overcome and achieve, but it gives the practical steps of how they did it.

So you can too. Danielle’s book is the same way. So check out this episode of the podcast. Ladies [00:04:00] and gentlemen, welcome to the Danielle Burn story.

Danielle Bernock | Tapping into Your God-given Greatness, The Silver Bullet that Helped Her Heal, & Recognizing Your True Value

Hey Danielle, how are you today? I am doing great and I’m so excited to be here. Oh, I’m excited too. I just told our listeners about you and they’re pumped to hear the real story, the whole story, the rest of the story. But before we get started, we have listeners who are new. We have other listeners who are part of the Remarkable community, and they’ve been with us with us since day one, or went back and listened since day one.

We’re going to talk about a lot of great content from your life, lot of valuable things that I, myself, and the community can all learn from and apply and grow as humans. Right. Awesome. But if there’s one thought and one lesson that our listeners are going to get out of hearing you today, what is that one lesson before we jump into your whole story?

Ah, you have great [00:05:00] value and you are worthy of love. . All right, so ladies and gentlemen, you heard it right outta Danielle’s mouth. You’re going to get a lot of content, but the fact that you have value, you’re worthy of love and you really believe that and you have that peace and joy, that’s just one of the things to accept in the accept to expect in this episode, besides me articulating poorly.

So, Danny, at this time, let’s go back to your origins. Where were you born? What was your family structure like? You know, we’re going to talk about the good, the bad, the ugly, cuz everything that’s happened to us makes us the men and women we are today. So let’s start off, what’s Danielle’s story? Well, I was born and raised in Michigan.

Still live there now. I’ve lived here almost my whole life. I did spend five years in Arizona, very life changing time, and two weeks in Minneapolis , which is a story in and of itself. , but born and raised in Michigan by grandchildren of immigrants. I’m [00:06:00] three quarters German, one quarter Danish. Nice and neat like that.

and I have very stoic parents because that’s how they were raised. They were also traumatized, but did not know that because people didn’t know what trauma was back then. Even those who went to war and came back from war, they didn’t even call that trauma way back then. Yeah, actually in World War I, they just call it shellshock, right?

Yeah. And then they blamed the men for being shellshocked. They shamed them and blamed them for suffering that because they called them weak for having manifested. It’s really awful. So it’s no, no wonder that people weren’t going to admit they were traumatized, but my parents were traumatized. I didn’t know that as a child growing up, but it had a big effect on how I was raised.

I’ve learned going back, it’s helped me understand myself, help me understand my [00:07:00] upbringing with them because my parents were older when they had me. I was not a planned pregnancy. I was one of those mistakes. I was called at one point in my life, happy little accident. I wasn’t a happy accident when I was told, so that’s part of my background.

I childhood trauma survivor of many different kinds of trauma and childhood emotional neglect, which is really because my parents were traumatized themselves. There’s. a lot of different ways a child can be emotionally neglected. And I learned that term from a lady, Dr. Jenice Webb. She’s got a fantastic book called Running On Empty, where she reveals what that is, how that happens and all that.

It’s wonderful, but one of the ways it happens is with parents who are well-meaning, but they were emotionally neglected themselves. So basically they didn’t have to give you what you needed cuz they didn’t have it themselves. So you really can’t [00:08:00] fault them for that. And it’s one of the things I try to help people with so much by saying, sharing that part of my story, because you don’t have to throw your parents under the bus to deal with the junk in your life.

I learned that just because they had no malice toward me did not mean I was not harmed, but it was hard to own the truth of my trauma because I felt like I had to blame them. , but it was, it’s more like cause and effect. It’s, it was not malicious in any way. But my parents were older when they had me my dad, to give you a framework of that, to see just how old , my dad was born in 1917, so he was part of the, I think it was called the Greatest Generation.

My mother was in the next generation after that, born in 1928. They were 11 years apart, and she was a stay-at-home mom, and it was authoritarian [00:09:00] household. So it was pretty much, you know, I was born in the fifties and that was what was going on in the fifties was, you know, there was one, the man worked, the woman stayed home, and if you veered off from that, you were one of the weirdos out there.

So , but that’s not what society is like anymore. So I grew up in a very different timeframe. I had those emotional neglect from that my parents. Had a hobby that came later. I almost jumped right into that. So I almost neglected apart they were a part of the church and we went to church when I was younger, but then there was a thing that happened in the church and they stopped going to church and then they got all into a hobby of training and raising and breeding laboratory retrievers.

They did field trailing, they did showing and they, you know, bred and raised puppies. I have an article on my website called 10 Bazaar Things [00:10:00] About Me that you don’t know , and it’s really quite a very humorous read. It would make you laugh cuz I made the little subtitles of them, like a play on words kind of things.

Yeah. Send me a link and we’ll put in the show notes so our listeners can check it out. , it’s, it’s a lot of fun. Well one of them is at one point I lived with 30 dogs, which is true. , 30 dogs lived in our house with us. That’s a lot of dogs. . Yes. That’s a lot of dogs and a lot of dog hair. Yeah. They had a lot of we had two litters of puppies and then they had the older, the older dogs and the ones they were breeding and whatever, that there were 30 of them all together.

So that was one of the things in that article. But that’s part of my upbringing is there in Michigan, my dad worked for the one of the big three auto worker places. And while I was growing up with the emotional neglect, I had people start to die on me. I had the traumas that happened. I [00:11:00] had trauma at school in first grade.

I had trauma at school in sixth grade. I had trauma at church in sixth grade. I had trauma at home multiple times around there in the neighborhood. And then I had my grandmother died and then my dad died and then my brother died, and then a good friend died. . So all of that happened before I was done growing up

So that was, and let’s go back to that. How many brothers and sisters did you have? I had two brothers. And how much time was between you? Cuz you said you were the I’m, I’m the youngest. I was unplanned. I didn’t plan on having three kids. Yeah. But I’m saying how many years were between you two? Two between me and the one brother.

And then my other brother was five years older. Okay. So it wasn’t like a 12 year difference. Right. But there was a gap. And did you and your brothers get along well growing up? Was there a distance, like, you’re not supposed to be here? What was that dynamic? No, it wasn’t like that. We had a lot of family dysfunction, [00:12:00] because of the trauma and what happened at church.

And my parents just that affected them. They went into that hobby, but they really got kind of obsessed with that. It like kind of took over their life. Like they were medicating the pain with that. . I don’t know, maybe I, I never really thought of it that way, but you know, that’s where the emotional neglect was.

They were not emotionally available to us. And the discipline, if you wanna call it that was overbearing and would not happen today. , I don’t wanna get into that, but my one brother outta my two brother, I’m still trying to figure this out, still boggles my mind. That’s where the hesitancy is. My oldest brother, for some reason that, I don’t know, I just like, I like idolized him.

He was like my hero for some reason. I still don’t know. And then the one that was a couple years older than me, I mean, we were fine [00:13:00] and all that, but then he was a part of one of the traumas that happened in my life. Actually. They both were, but I blamed the one and not the other because of, and do you wanna, you mentioned the trauma several times in the church.

if you feel comfortable talking about it. That’s what we do on the show. We actually talk about what you had to overcome and face, and then we break down the practical steps of how you did it, even if it’s later in your story. That way the listeners can too, so be as open and transparent as you’d feel comfortable.

Okay. Well, had asked about my brothers and so I was not close with the, the one, especially after the, a thing happened with the kids at school. It was a situation with the kids at school and the details. I don’t wanna get into the details of that cause I don’t wanna expose my brother, but the kids at school, they got angry with me.

They met me like a mob at school and threatened me in my life, [00:14:00] which was, I don’t know how I made it through sixth grade really. I really don’t know how I made it through sixth grade and my other brother, he just stood there and watched the whole thing happen and did nothing. So I don’t know why I thought he was so awesome.

But he’s the one who died later in life and the other one and I are very close now. We’ve worked through all the stuff and heard parts of our story that we didn’t know happened. Cuz when you’re growing up as a kid, all you know is your own experience. You don’t know what your brother or sister are going through.

You don’t know what they’re being subjected to. You don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, , you know? But now we talked and so we understand that and we’re like, wow, I had no idea. And that’s a big way of healing. To pause for your listeners here is if you wanna heal relationships, you have to talk it out.

You have to have two parties on both sides that want to talk it out. If you have one party on one side and the other party is not interested, that will not [00:15:00] work. You have to have both parties on both sides want to do that. and I really learned that from my mother. I, I shout out credit to her all the time because she was my hero in this.

Not knowing anything about trauma, about healing psychology or anything. Just later in life she came to me and asked me, do you want to be friends? And I said, yes. And so we started meeting, going out to lunch and just talking. We talked about why we were upset with each other. We talked about why we were, you know, we had a issue with this and why did you do this and why did you do that?

Because how she responded to my dad dying, augmented my trauma, whereas I didn’t, you know, I was a kid, so I didn’t know what she was doing. Later in life, now I look back on, well, she lost her husband, I lost my dad. Those are two different relationships. Mm-hmm. now, she was dealing with the loss of her [00:16:00] husband two months after the loss of her mother.

and she had no one else related to her except for a stepfather who accused her of stealing things and her children. That’s what she had left. No support system. Nobody at church. You know, neighbors that brought food. But you know, that was not a time when anyone did anything about emotional intelligence or any of that stuff.

I was like, oh, I’m so sorry. Here, eat something. . Yeah, . But you know, eating something does not heal your trauma. No, not at all. I I, different cultures too, it’s more excessive, but that’s why people stay in the dark and hide and then they medicate pain, whether it’s through drugs, pornography, alcohol, food.

They’re going to find a way to medicate when they’re not dealing with it. Yeah, because it’s not okay to bring it out. You have to keep it in the dark because it’s been made to be. Unacceptable to bring it out. That’s why it’s so important now in [00:17:00] society as people are becoming more open to that and letting people share things.

And there’s safe spaces and safe places to be able to bring that out because it’s necessary. Safety is a primary, primary thing needed for people to heal. A, a safe place to bring that out, you know, matter how ugly it is. Yes, absolutely. So now you’re going through life, there’s two brothers, you yourself, your mom and dad, and you’re in sixth grade and your brother does something.

Your middle brother. That’s, that’s obviously hard. You’re getting picked on because of it. Your older brother’s not doing anything about it. Where does your life go from there? I, looking back, it’s now, I pa I take it apart now cuz in the midst I just was a kid trying to survive. just trying to survive because of my parents’ [00:18:00] authoritarianism.

And they were from a denominational church that was very strict and authoritarianism. So there was, I was sheltered in a lot of ways. It had no idea that sheltered was a thing because I was sheltered from it. . Yeah. And when I got into seventh grade, I already had a whole pile of trauma from other things.

Like sixth grade, not sixth grade, sixth years old. My first grade teacher shamed me in front of the entire class when I was six years old. And when I was six years old, I learned to not speak up because what she did in addition to. Falsely accusing me of something and shaming me is she put tape over my mouth and forced me to read in reading group with the tape over my mouth.

And as a [00:19:00] child, I never told anyone about that. I never went home, said anything cuz it was unacceptable. They’re the adult, they get to do whatever they want cuz that’s the danger with authoritarian, overly strict parenting. People think that it’s, you need to do that and it’s about control when it’s like that and the harm in that is it steals a child’s sense of self.

It takes away their voice. They have no choice, they have no voice, and they just let anything happen to them. It sets them up for predators to take advantage of them. because they feel like they have no will of their own because they just have to do, but all the authoritarian people tell them to do . So when my first grade teacher did that, it’s like I didn’t say a thing to a person.

And then I had another thing happen in fourth grade, and then another thing happened in sixth grade, and then the thing at the [00:20:00] church happened where my parents had already stopped going to church at that point. But I went to church and I had this, I sensed the spirit of God. There is what it was, but I didn’t know that’s what it was when I was a kid.

I just, there was, I sensed that I felt the love of God there somehow. Even though I look at the things they did and how they treated me and how they did things, somehow God was able to get through to me enough to want to go. Yeah. It wasn’t necessarily the people. But it was the spirit of God and he loves you and he was trying to reach out to you, even though they’re a hundred percent wrong, they’re going to have to face him.

Yeah. But while you were there, he was speaking to you. Yeah. He, he did what he could in that place because he respects us. Like when Jesus went to Nazareth, he could do no great miracles because of their own belief. He was limited [00:21:00] by that. And he showed me that he was limited in that church with what he could do with me because of that environment, because of the way they believed.

They did not allow the Holy Spirit in there, except for as a footnote, you know, father, son Holy Spirit. That’s, that’s all the Holy Spirit they would have. But they, I went to church. I kept going to church as a kid because they had a bus program and they would come and pick me up at the end of my street.

And I think about that now and I think about society now. I mean, I was. Nine and 10 walking to go be picked up by this bus to go to church and then come home. And I just think of the danger in the world now and how that’s so different. But I went, I went to the church on the bus all the time. I loved going and they had this little song singing for Sunday School and I could still sing that song to you today.

But then they came this some one Sunday. I still would like [00:22:00] to know that’s the disassociation of trauma. I would still like to know why I was in this place at this time, . But I was in the big people church cuz there was the little people church, you know? And then there’s the big people church, which when you’re little it looks like it’s, you know, the size of the universe.

Yep. And I was there and the pastor did what is called an altar call. what he said, or what I remember he said was, if you feel like there’s something not right between you and God, you know, then he wanted you to come up there. And I’m sitting way in the back and I feel like my heart’s going to like hit the ceiling cuz it’s pounding so hard.

And I felt this draw to come up there, but I was terrified. I’m in this big thing with all these adults and it’s huge. I’m all by myself and nobody’s answering this. And they’re, they’re playing the song just as I am, you know, over and over and over and over and over again. And finally I can’t stand it any longer.

So I walk up to the front [00:23:00] and the pastor says to me, thank you. And I’m like, why are you thanking me? Because I’m the only one that came up here. . That’s what my little kid heart. . And then he sent me with some lady, I don’t know, off somewhere who sat me down. You know, she’s getting in my face about, well, what’s wrong between you and God?

And I’m like, I, I, I don’t know. You’re supposed to like tell me , or something like that. And then I went through classes for membership and then I got baptized, you know, went through all the rigamarole of what I like to call being religious size, . I went through all of that and I got baptized. And then after that they had a thing called membership cuz he had to go through all of that to become a member.

So I jumped through all their hoops, and did everything that they wanted. And then came the Sunday where I was finally going to be able to be a member. And if, remember my story at the beginning, I had that childhood emotional [00:24:00] neglect. And part of that was I, I grew up feeling unloved and unwanted. I was a mistake.

I wasn’t told that yet by then, but I felt that, I felt that in my house. I felt that I was not wanted. I felt that there was just something wrong with me, something inherently wrong with me, which is a side effect of childhood. Emotional neglect. Also called the Fatal Flaw. If anyone really knew who I was, they would never want me.

So I was super excited about becoming a member. Cause they’re going to want me, right , it’s going to be the answer to this big giant hole in my heart. So they, you know, we all get up, we’re all sit in the front row, all those little kids and you know, pastors up there, he’s that authoritarian person that, you know, I need to listen to.

And so he’s like next to God in my mind as a kid, they’re reading off the names in one by one. The kids are going up front [00:25:00] and they read everybody’s name but mine and they left me sitting on the front row display, rejected from. Belonging to the church. And I was utterly devastated. Just utterly devastated.

I don’t remember how I got home and I felt like God himself threw me away. God himself doesn’t want me, nobody wants me. My parents don’t want me, and family don’t want me. The church don’t want me. God don’t want me. I mean like why breathe . And that went really underground in my heart. And then people started to die.

And I started blaming God for that too. Cuz you know he’s killing off these people now. First you throw me away, now you’re killing off. Everybody in my life, I got really angry at God.

And it was when I was 18 years old, 17 years, 18 years old, I went on a road trip out to [00:26:00] California and that’s when. Finally caught up with me as I was running away from him, trying to prove he didn’t exist. Cuz I heard enough of all that negative stuff at church that everything’s all my fault anyways, so I’m going to die if he really exists.

So I tried to prove he didn’t exist, tried to become an atheist, couldn’t really do that cuz I couldn’t prove that he didn’t exist cuz I just, I really knew better. I have such a offer, nature and creation. There’s a little side segueway, there are, there are things called dark sky parks. Did you know that?

Dark Sky Parks? Yeah. Define that. I’m not sure it’s the name of the kind of park. They’re, they’re all over the world. Oh no, I’ve never, I’ve never been to one. I’ve never heard that. I’m assuming it’s a park where there’s zero lights. You can see the stars in the moon. Yeah. But they have, it’s they have rules around it and you can go.[00:27:00]

and they have observatories. People come there with telescopes. There’s rules about it. Of what, how you can come into the park, how far away, because there is no light allowed in the park. You c you bring flashlights covered in red so that it doesn’t disturb anything. And I’ve been to one in Michigan, but it was cloudy.

I was so sad cuz in Michigan sometimes you can see the northern lights from that park. Oh, now I’ve seen that when I was in Alaska and it’s breathtaking. Oh, I’d love to do that. And see things like that just strike wonder into my heart. Yeah. And I think that’s what children need is a sense of wonder. And I think that’s what kept me just hoping that God was real and hoping that he loved me.

Even though I’d had all this big trial of tra big pile of trauma, was that sense of wonder. . I had such a sense of wonder of nature in that. That’s one thing my mother had. She was, she was really big into nature and [00:28:00] so that’s one thing she rubbed off on me and I went to camp every summer as a kid. I was a campfire girl,

I went to camp every summer and absolutely loved it. That was my safe place. And so I went through all of that and it wasn’t until God caught up with me that I came back and I started the long, messy journey of healing. It was a long, messy journey of healing. The loss of my grandmother, the loss of my brother, which I was lied to about why he died.

I was told he was murdered, which he was not. and, Hey, I am so sorry. I hope this doesn’t play on the recording, but there’s a blue angel jet flying over my condo right now, and I couldn’t hear you. . You said your, you were told your brother was murdered? Yes. But what was the real reason He died of auto asphyxia.

Auto. [00:29:00] Auto erotic asphyxia. Gotcha. Okay. So he was basically strangulated while in a sexual act. Mm-hmm. , he accidentally killed himself. He had just saved his roommate in at college the week before. Okay. So they got into some bad things and that’s how he died. Yeah. Not that he deserved that. That’s not what I’m saying.

I’m not going back to like what your pastor said, . I’m, what I’m saying is that is a lot of times we get wrapped up in things we shouldn’t be in. Yeah. And then Satan gets ahold of us and it ends badly. So I’m really sorry for that. Yeah. So once you found that out, where did things go from there? I don’t remember when I found that out.

But when I, when my brother died, that was un, I mean, I keep wanting to say, well, that’s when my, it went really bad. Well, wait a minute. No, that’s when it went really bad. No, that’s when it went really [00:30:00] because it went really bad a lot of times. But like I had said, he was the brother that I idolized. I think part of what I did is I took what I wanted to get from God and put it on him, and I took from when my dad died and put it on him, and then when he died, then just the sense of abandonment.

When my mother told me that he died, I screamed and I passed out

and I woke up later. Yeah. And I think it’s good you’re saying that because so many people have a false view of life. Like, man, I have so many hardships. There must be something wrong with. or, you know, I, I just had this epiphany and yet I’m still not out of the depression. There’s a lot of things that happened to us in life that pile on.

Yeah. And we gotta go through that. Like you said, the long, hard journey of healing, long, messy, think uses her messy, right? Mm-hmm. a long, messy journey of healing. [00:31:00] It’s a process, ladies and gentlemen. So when you’re listening to this story, please, one of the key points to take away is it is a journey and it’s worth it.

I mean, I’m, I’m sure that when you’re listening and Daniela is sharing more of her story, you’re going to see it’s all worth it. But it’s not easy, but it’s what you need to do. So you start, Danielle, in this journey of healing and untying, these, this, these messy knots. Keep going from there. Well, I, if I could circle back to a little bit of what you said about the piling on, cuz I’m, I’ve created workshops to help people and one that I am sharing in my communities and looking to get it into the church in the area here too is trauma informed self workshop.

And in it, talking about the widespread of trauma and also how trauma happens because you mentioned [00:32:00] all the different piling on, well, that’s one kind of trauma. That’s complex trauma. There’s chronic trauma, there’s acute trauma, there’s vicarious trauma, there’s all different kinds of trauma. There’s intergenerational trauma.

So I, I wanted to stop here because not everyone has all those big pylons and I don’t want anyone to dismiss their trauma if they’ve been through one huge thing, cuz acute trauma is one big thing that happened and it’s a single thing, but that’s what people get P T S D from. . P T S D happens from acute trauma, so do not lessen that at all.

Mm-hmm. , it’s just a different way. It’s like if you took the side street to get to the store, or if you took the freeway to get to the store. It’s just a different way. There are those out there that want to talk about Big T trauma and little Ty trauma, and I avoid that because those are the [00:33:00] experiences and those are what are called a trauma exposure.

A trauma exposure is the situation, the experience. It’s a thing that happened. My brother died. That was a thing that happened. How he died. That’s a thing that happened, but trauma is not the thing that happened. Trauma is what happens inside the person. It’s the wound, the injury that’s left behind. It’s how the person was incapable of processing it.

Because trauma is involuntary. It is involuntary. People who are traumatized, they blame themself. It is not your fault. If you are suffering trauma, it is not your fault. I don’t care how many bad decisions you may have made to get there. Trauma is not your fault. It is an involuntary wound on the inside, in the brain, in the body, in the soul, and in the spirit.

It happens in all the [00:34:00] different places, and it’s not equal, and it’s not the same with everyone because trauma is personal. Trauma is personal. That’s the beginning of a quote in my book, emerging with Wings that went viral. That really catapulted me into doing what I do because I felt. I had a hard time validating my trauma.

I thought I was alone. I had a hard time calling it trauma. But when that quote went viral and people resonated with trauma as personal, does not disappear when it is invalidated and it goes on about how you have to enter the pain and you have to hear the screams for healing to begin, and people resonated with that and I’m like, wow, I’m not alone.

And it’s needed. People need to know what trauma is. They need to know it’s not their fault. They need to know that there is hope and there’s all different kinds of it. Childhood emotional neglect is a kind of trauma that’s not even the same [00:35:00] as acute or the other one. There’s so many different kinds. So I wanted to make sure to say that cause I want anyone to get stuck in.

Well, mine’s not the same as hers. Nobody is the same as mine. I validate yours, whoever you are listening. , I validate your trauma and I just implore you to do something about it. Don’t let it go sepsis in you. Cuz Trauma kills people. It causes sicknesses and diseases in the body because the great book out there, the body keeps the score.

It does. It is. It’s stored in the body. They do brain scans, they can see it in your brain. It’s a real thing. It’s not a made up thing. It’s not all in your head. Like some people want to say yes. And there’s so many people like there that are, it’s just ridiculous. Like leave the past in the past. Well there’s a, you learn from the past, you become a better person in a better nation, even.

Learning from the past and applying it. Right. [00:36:00] But like you said earlier on with you and your mom, you have to talk through things in order to move through and heal. Is that correct? Yes. You have to process it in some way. There’s all different kinds of therapy too. For some people, depending on their trauma talking, they don’t have words.

They can’t get there yet, but they can go to a counselor. There’s mdr, there’s all kinds of different therapies that are available out there. There’s emdr. It’s more, more one way to skin a cat, as they say. , emdr. Is that where it’s like tapping and you’re thinking about what’s happening? You kind of compartmentalize the trauma?

Is that what that is? Something like that. I’ve never had it myself as eye movement. Desensitizing. EMD or reprogramming? Yes. I actually tried that cuz I, I had some traumatic stuff happen in my life and I was very skeptical of it. But I tried it and it really helped me with. the anger I was feeling towards a circumstance mm-hmm.

and it helped me, [00:37:00] like, compartmentalize it so it wasn’t interfering in other aspects of my life until I was ready to face it. So I, I know there’s some people, there’s people who do everything. You have good pastors, bad pastors, good attorneys, bad attorneys, good teachers, bad teachers, good psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors and bad ones.

So you’re going to find somebody who can help you truly and not be a nut job. But that is something that, yeah, I agree. There’s all different types of methods that work different for different people. Yeah. So it’s like, if you, I encourage people, if, if you go to a counselor and, and it’s not working, don’t give up.

Get a new counselor. Yeah. And don’t spend $20,000 before you figure it out. . Exactly. Good point. Good point. Yeah. Oh, trust me. Yeah, there’s, there’s some nut jobs out there that need, they need counseling themselves, . So go on with your story and so now you’re working through this journey. and you’re starting to have realizations and facing the trauma.

So pick up [00:38:00] from there, Danielle. Well, actually it’s not quite that simple. I wish it was that simple and that’s why I do what I do, cuz I didn’t know I was traumatized. I knew I was miserable. That’s what I knew. I knew I was miserable. I still felt unloved, but I came back to faith in Jesus. I gave him my life back.

But I was afraid of God. I was afraid of everything. I was stuck in flight mode. My whole body, my whole person was stuck in flight mode. I was shame based. I blamed myself for everything. I was filled with self-loathing. I had so many destructive behaviors because I was working at trying to kill myself slowly as painfully as possible because I didn’t believe I had the right to exist.

Until that day in my car, in my road trip, [00:39:00] when the spirit of God showed up in my car and then I gave him back my life. But I was still, I was terrified of him. And I’d done so many bad things and I, I was afraid I was going to die. I am going to say, okay, God, save me. And I thought I was going to die. And that was the end of it.

But I didn’t die and I was so pleasantly surprised. Which is funny because I had been trying to kill myself slowly. So it’s like, talk about a paradox, . Yeah. But then, you know, I came home after the road trip and I started going to church with my mom cuz she had started going back to church. And same church or a different church?

Oh, different church. , different church. She went to one, it was close to home. It was a different denomination, but it was close to home and it was working for her. And I went and I met a lady there and she told me about this. This church thing on a Friday night with young people. And I’m like, I can’t go on Friday.

That’s party night, man. I’m not going to church [00:40:00] on Friday night. And she, she just convinced me, she was so kind to me that that’s really how she convinced me because she was so kind to me. I’d never had anyone that kind to me before. And she said, just go once, just one time. Just try it one time. Never have to go back.

And I’m like, okay, I can do once. And then I talked to her, you know, afterwards and I ended up going every Friday. And it turned into other things. And it was about a year later or something. I don’t know the timeframe when I met my current husband at a particular Sunday service. and I went up to him and we knew each other in eighth grade.

So I went up to, to talk to him because it’s like I knew him in eighth grade, so I’m like, wow. Some I know from my past. So that’s how we started talking at the church, kind of sorta. But then it was a, a time later [00:41:00] and then we had this really bizarre story of how God put us together. It’s very humorous, bizarre and supernatural.

It involves writing songs and me writing music and him writing words. But he didn’t write songs, but he wrote a poem and then God gave me a song and told me I had to sing it to him. And I’m like, you’re outta your mind. I’m not doing that , but I ended up doing it. Cause you know, if I wanna walk with God, then I need to listen to him because he, he is smarter cuz you know he’s, God I’m not, and everybody’s glad I’m not.

I’ve destroyed the world already.

But we ended up getting engaged because of that, which was so bizarre cuz after that happened, we had no ring, we hadn’t been dating, we had gone to some Christian things together. I was going to never get married. I broke up with him once and I mean it started August 6th. We were [00:42:00] engaged September 1st. So all of that, we went on these things.

I broke up with him, we got back together and then when he proposed and we sat on a blanket, he was at a camp, I was up there with his, his sister and mom for the weekend. We sat on the blanket just in shock going, we’re going to get married. Fi fiance, bride, she supposed to have a ring. How do you do this marriage thing?

How’s that work? ? It’s like was the most bizarre thing that happened. And then, you know, when we told his parents and they asked us if we loved each other and we looked at each other and went, I guess so. because we, that wasn’t really part of how God put us together. But then I’m going to jump right into, as we are recording this, my anniversary will be in just a couple of days and we will have been married for 43 years.

So that’s pretty smart . [00:43:00] Yeah. And you know what, it’s kind of interesting because I always tell people feelings are a great indicator, but anybody who lives by feelings, it usually ends in disaster. But people who live by facts, it usually thrives and flourishes. And you said yourself, you didn’t know, but you felt God told you to do it.

So you did. You obeyed and it turned out beautiful. So I’m so happy for you. Oh, thank you. Yeah, he had lots of things in there confirming it cuz I was like, peace out. I’m not doing this man. I, I, men are done. No, done, no with what I’d been through. I’m like, Nope, not doing it. But. , and let me actually clarify something too, because we’re talking on the same page here, but we have listeners from all around the world, and I’m so thankful for our community.

And if you don’t have the same worldview as Danielle and I or you’re like, what are they talking about? God speaks to you. It’s not necessarily an audible voice. I mean, the number one way that we speak to goddess through [00:44:00] prayer, the number one way he speaks to us is typically through when we read our Bible.

But then there’s all other ways when you trust Christ as your savior. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost comes in and dwells in you, and it’s as greater as he that is in you than he that is in the whole world. Meaning there’s more good God, the Holy Ghost in you than he, small h evil Satan, all as minions than an entire world.

So sometimes God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. Sometimes God speaks through us through outside factors. Sometimes he speaks through us through nature. Sometimes you just know and you don’t know why, but you know, so Danielle has a different experience. I have a different experience. You’ll have a different experience, but I don’t want you to think we’re seeing the clouds open up and voices and you know, sheets are coming down.

It’s nothing like that. It’s just God confirms certain things. Like, you know, there’s been times where I’ve prayed and I’ve even made a list and it’s like God’s answered every prayer doesn’t always work that way, but don’t look for a consistent, it [00:45:00] has to be that way. For Danielle, she was praying and asking, and he was answering Is is again, is that accurate, Danielle?

Yeah. You speak to us in all different ways. I I’ve never heard the audible voice of God . Yeah, I can say that. But I’ve heard it so loud inside of myself that I thought it was mm-hmm. twice. I remember that happening, but it was not audible. And I like how you said sometimes you just know, and then you’re like, why do I know this , how come I know this?

How could I know this? And it’s, it’s, and it’s really hard to explain that when someone’s never had that before. Now I get it cuz I’ve been walking with, with the Lord for a long time. But I remember at the beginning, I’m like, how do I hear from God? How do I know it’s God? And I would freak out going, God, how do I know it’s you?

How do I know it’s you? How do I, how do I know it’s not just me? How do I know it’s not this? How do I freak out? And the thing. God is his. His. He’s so gracious. [00:46:00] He’s so kind. He knows where you’re at. He knows where you’re freaking out. He knows why you’re doing what you’re doing and he’s just going to come right alongside and help you.

I mean, I think one of the greatest prayers a person can pray is God help. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to be flowery. It’s just what I said. It just has to be real. Mm-hmm. Now he knows what’s going on in there. You know, you try and hide it, but like in Psalm 1 39, if I go up to heaven, you’re there.

If I go down to hell, you’re there. If I go here, you’re there. And but one of them says even there, and that just recently they came up even there, your hand will guide me even there. And I love just those two words, and I made a graphic and made the word there all capitals. Because we get to places in our life where we feel alone, we feel useless, we feel hopeless.

We feel even God can’t talk to me. Nope. Even there. , even there doesn’t matter where you are, even there, God can turn the light on, can [00:47:00] bring hope, can bring encouragement, can help you find your way. Even there, there is no place that is too far away. There’s new, no, no too far gone, no such thing. Long as you’re breathing, there’s hope.

Amen. Amen. So you talked about the, the journey, the messy journey. And I kind of segue into that cuz it wasn’t so neat as that. My husband is really the beginning of my journey because the man God gave me for my husband was my first encounter with unconditional love. I’d never tasted that before. Never You.

heard what love was, what is love, I don’t know. And then you hear all these things and all you gotta earn and instead, and you know God loves you, but or God loves you live or God loves you when, and you know, it was also conditional. But my husband loved me without condition. And before, you know, we went [00:48:00] through that whole proposal thing.

When I told you I broke up with him, is because I told him all my dirty secrets, everything awful about me because I was trying to make him go away. Cause I was afraid that if he found those out later, then he would go away. Cuz I had such a root of rejection in me. I expected rejection everywhere. So I’m like, well if you’re going to leave, leave now.

I don’t wanna get attached to you. And then you. . So it was so much fear. I, I had so much fear in me. So when he loved me anyway, and he kept loving me anyway, and I’m like, you’re loving. Why do you love me almost like, what’s wrong with you? Why do you love me? Kinda thing. I mean, that’s how, how I couldn’t process it.

The, the, the thought of being loved unconditionally was just so far removed from my capacity that him loving me. Like that was the beginning of my healing. Like, wow, that [00:49:00] that’s really, that’s really a thing that, and God’s supposed to love you like that. I don’t know if I believe that, but we’ll table that.

Burnett and I got that from my husband and when I got pregnant pregnancy in me was, it was ugly. I mean, the hormones, I mean, I did not do well with pregnancy. We weren’t going to have kids. That’s a whole nother story. But I even got preeclampsia with my first Pregnancy was hospitalized, but then it miraculously went away.

So not the same story with my daughter. She got that and it turned into help. So I’m so thankful that God intervened and I came home, okay? And so did my daughter, but I was just astounded that he didn’t leave me when I was pregnant. I would tell him that he deserved a medal for staying with me. And I’ve told him that.

And I’ve told it before and I wrote it in my book , that when you’re [00:50:00] just really feeling so ugly about yourself and you have someone who will just wrap their arms around you and love you in spite of your how ugly you could feel, it just, it breaks something off of you. And that was the beginning. And that planted hope in me.

you know, and I wanted to take that love that I got from him and pour it into my kids. I’m like, my kids are going to grow up knowing they’re loved if I do one thing right? , if I do just one thing right with my kids. Cuz I was terrified of having kids cuz I knew I was messed up and I didn’t wanna hurt them.

That’s one of the big reasons why I didn’t wanna have kids cuz I was afraid of messing them up, . And so if I loved them, that was my primary focus, was making sure they knew they were loved. And I’ve talked to them and they both said yes, but we have talks now. I’m like, if you need to talk about anything at any time, I probably did it.

I’m probably guilty. Let’s talk . And we have talked about things and it’s [00:51:00] great. But in that process with my husband, I went to counseling at one time. I went to a Christian counselor, but that didn’t go so well cuz he blamed me for everything and I needed to earn everything. And it just made everything all worse.

and I ended up getting sick with some things that were, I know now is somatizing, but back then it was, it’s all in your head, you’re nuts. And you know, just, I don’t even know what they told us to do because it’s just, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re making it up. You’re a hypochondriac, which is not what was happening because the psychosomatic is the psyche making you sicky.

That’s how I like to say it. The psyche making you sicky. It’s not pretend. When I was growing up psychosomatic, what people presented that as was, it’s pretend you’re not really sick, it’s all in your head, but scientifically it’s your mind. You’re psyche, somatizing, sickness into the [00:52:00] body. It’s the body processing what you refuse to deal with or what you are incapable of dealing with.

Cause that’s the trauma is, is the incapability of dealing with it. But once you become aware of it, . Then if we refuse to deal with it, then it even goes deeper than that. So later I put myself in a counseling years later to write my first book. But in between there I came across a lady named Joyce Meyer, who big bible teacher, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her, but she had trauma in her life.

And I also came across a book that talked about trauma. And I got that book. So I started, I just, I grabbed for things that would help me. I was just a voracious learner and with a warrior mindset, a victor mindset. I’m not staying here. This is miserable. I’m not staying here. I don’t know how to get out, but I’m going to kick and crawl and scream and do whatever to get out of this [00:53:00] place of misery.

And I got that book. And I discovered Joyce Meyer and I listened to Oliver Tapes. Yes, back when they were cassette tapes. and then I would get I would watch her and I went to see her at a at a conference a couple of times. And she was traumatized as a child. She was sexually molested by her father among other traumas she en encountered.

And so she wasn’t trauma informed, but she did the same thing. She had trauma, that she was using what she knew with the things of God and God had called her to preach and she was a woman and they didn’t let women preachers in. So she got more of that flack when she was going into ministry. And so I, I kind of came along with her as she was going through that.

Cause I met her kind of early in her ministry and so I kind of grew with her and it helped me grow out of my trauma, I think, as she [00:54:00] was healing from part of hers as well. . And so I healed a lot and I knew I grew a lot and I dove into the scriptures. I read so many books. If I found anything that remotely spoke to what I was dealing with, I would feed on it and God brought me things.

And I would feed on music, on books, on videos. And at 1.1 year there was a particular song I listened to with headphones on every day after my kids went to school. I mean they were in junior high or high school by then. So that’s quite a ways. So I’m still a long ways in the healing journey. And that song was speaking to that God loved me and believing that God loved me.

Cuz I knew in my head Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me. So that a million times, yeah, great and. . I [00:55:00] struggled to really believe it. It’s like I knew it in my head, but I couldn’t feel it. And I couldn’t just, when I was bad, when I did something wrong, when I made a mistake, I thought God left me.

Cuz there are PE people out there that preach that, you know, sin separates you from God. No it doesn’t. Sin does not separate you from God. Jesus took care of that. It separates you relationally because you’re freaking out. You separate yourself by pulling back. But God does not pull away. When Adam and Eve fell in the garden, God went there.

Sin does not separate you from God. So if you’ve been told that you’re listening, it’s a lie. Jesus took care of everything. Run to God and say, help and just start there. It, it took me, I have a little book at my website called Love’s Manifesto, where I share a little bit of my struggle to believe that love of God and it took God 34 years.

For me to [00:56:00] believe that he loved me even when I was behaving badly, even when I was doing something wrong. Even like that scripture, even in your sin commended his life, commended his love for us, that while we were yet sinners, while it’s like I was taught that that was kind of like a line in the sand that happened like then, well, I’m after that.

You know, Jesus died for the sins of everybody, of all time, past, present, future. You know, you don’t have to. I was taught, you know, you don’t confess for it and then you die. You’re going to hell. That’s a lie. That’s religious trauma. I was religiously traumatized on top of all the other stuff. That’s why I’m so driven that you have value and you are loved, you have value, and you are loved, and you can heal from trauma.

Depends on how many kinds you have, how long it will take, but there is hope, and in the process there is joy because you get measures. Measures of healing as [00:57:00] well. But when I put myself into counseling to write my book emerging with Wings, that was just an, an epic turn for the positive cuz I went through three counselors to get to the good counselor.

Here we pause again. If you have a bad counselor, look for a better one. I almost gave up because I had a, one of those three was, it was real. But then I had left a message on this other lady’s voicemail and she happened to call when I was having a horrible time and I had a meltdown on the phone with her.

And she’s the one who became my counselor because of how she responded to me, she was safe and we need safety to deal with that. And so I did that to write my book cause I figured, you know, I’m going to revisit some things. I should probably not do this all by myself. And that was more wise than I could have even fathomed [00:58:00] because she helped me uncover the second half of that book that I didn’t even know was a thing.

She helped me uncover more deal with the things that I knew, little bits about, putting names to things. I uh, validate things that I was still dismissing as nothing. And so she helped me. I was in counseling for about five or so years with her until she said, you don’t need me anymore. . She goes, as a professional, I have to tell you that, that you know, you don’t need me.

You can still come if you want to, but I have to tell you, you don’t need me anymore. And I’m like, I don’t know. I, I still need you. . I was not ready to let go. And when I was ready to, to go, then I asked her, you know, you know why, what? And she said that I was a textbook success story. And I’m like, what’s that and why?

And she responded [00:59:00] Without hesitation, courage. It takes courage to face the truth. It takes courage to do the work. It takes courage to own your new life. I wouldn’t trade my life I have now for anything. I would go through all that pain and crying and weeping and doing all the work in between a gun and a gun and a gun.

for where I am today. I am a completely different person than the woman my husband married. He came along the journey with me, obviously 43 years together, and he’s been my greatest cheerleader along the way. And he helps me in so many ways and he just supports me and I just, I am just so, so blessed by that.

Well, let me ask you a question, Danielle. Some people don’t have that cheerleader in their life right now, or at least they don’t see it. [01:00:00] Mm-hmm. , what steps, at least to start, can someone take, to start feeling that love and building that courage and seeing the reality that God loves ’em and they are special and unique and they really do have a purpose, but to start building that courage and to, to start on that journey of healing.

What steps do you have for them? Well, what feeds courage is love, and. . There’s many ways to feed on love. Where do we get love from? We get love from people in our life. We get love from ourself, which we’re supposed to, but if we’re busy self-loathing, we’re not doing that. And if you said, like you said, if they’re surrounded with people who they don’t feel love from, and then if they’re with God, well, some people they do they have animals?

Do they have a dog? Do they have a cat? Or they could go to a place to play with them, if that is a way. What makes you feel loved? I would in a healthy way. not doing drugs. If doing [01:01:00] drugs makes you feel loved, I would say reach for something else. I did lots of drugs myself. But there are other ways to feel loved of feeding on music that speaks to your value.

Feeding on music that makes you feel loved. Reading books. Whatever you can do that’s healthy to feed that. I would say reach out for a counselor, trying to find a good counselor, maybe a support group maybe a church, maybe online, because it depends on, you have to be safe. So, you know, do what you can do.

You know, reach out to me if you feel like y if I feel safe to you, reach out to me and you can be on my email list and be in my Victoria Souls group and you can start there in that safe place and I will feed love into you. I have lots of free resources on my website for that because I call myself that lady on the [01:02:00] internet who loves you.

That started a little bit before the pandemic, and I am driven to do that, and I will pour love into you. So if I can be that, if you have it nowhere else, you can start with me and let me do that. And then you can branch out into other areas, you know? But there are different ways to feed. That love into yourself and learn to love yourself because we need to love ourself.

If you don’t know how to love yourself, that need to start that. And there’s lots of articles you can read on that. I have a little course on that. But whatever you can do to fine to pour that love into yourself. What, where, where is the break and where can you start to shore that up and pick one thing to start.

Because if you pick multiple things, you’ll get overwhelmed and you’ll stop. So pick just one, one place to start and do one thing. Yeah. And I think that principles holds true in [01:03:00] business and life. and healing in all areas. Financial, you know, if you’re in debt, if you’re trying to amass wealth, that same principle, start with one thing.

Mm-hmm. and just continue to grow and master it, then move on to the next. If you haven’t, did you ever read Ben Franklin’s autobiography? No, I didn’t. He does. He’s great at, like, Ben Franklin’s actually an interesting character cuz he, he had so many, you know, we hear all the good stuff, but he probably wouldn’t be someone we morally agree with.

Right. But yet he did so many good things, but he had this way to make himself improve as a human and he’d take one characteristic and just focus on that for a week and then he’d add another characteristic and focus on it for a week. So it was pretty interesting how he built his character and, you know, he developed and just like we all do, so, but he has a very interesting story.

So. All right, so now let’s talk about this too. , [01:04:00] you’re going through your journey and you talked about the importance and the blessing. Your husband’s been to you, and some people, a trauma comes from their spouse. Right? But that thankfully was your safe place and over 43 years you developed and grew together.

But did we miss anything in your story and your journey between your birth and today that we need to talk about and share with the listeners to help them really understand who you are and how you got to today? And then we’ll transition the show into where you’re at and where you’re going. Well, maybe one thing is all the different churches I went to I went to one as a child.

Then when I came back from my road trip, I went with my mom to one, and then we ended up going to another one. And then after I wasn’t going to church, then I ended up at one with my husband when we were first married. And. then we needed to [01:05:00] leave there. I was sick and

I needed to do something different. You know, they, they said they believed in lay hands on the sick, and we all recover. But when I went for prayer, I didn’t feel like they believed in any more than I did. So I’m like, something’s, something’s gotta be different. And we ended up at another church, which I ended up getting connected with a gentleman who, you know, what felt led by God to give me a book.

And by reading that book and doing what it said, I ended up getting healed of this thing that the doctors didn’t know what it was. And a chiropractor actually as the one who identified what was wrong with me, I had a, a yeast infection in the blood called Candid Candidiasis or something like that. And I was there for a while.

Then we ended up moving to Arizona. Like I, I said I was Michigander, but lived in Arizona for five years. That was a big, pivotal time in my life Also. . It was during the [01:06:00] housing crash, right before the housing crash. 2008. Yeah, 2007 is when he, I moved out there, he did the end of 2006. He had lost his job.

Couldn’t find one here. And so we were moving to Arizona cuz we felt like that was what we needed to do and God was leading us to do that. But it was one of those things where we felt like that was the thing we needed to do, but we didn’t know anyone in Arizona. I’d never been to Arizona. And so it was terrifying.

And I was moving away from my family, which I was really attached to. So I was going away from safety into seclusion, which ended up being kind of part of God’s plan for that. When you think about the butterfly, it’s like, I was like a caterpillar. I, I went through all the thing, but I was, I was a caterpillar and I had healed and I had grown a whole lot.

That was a really pretty caterpillar . [01:07:00] But a caterpillar’s not supposed to stay a caterpillar. Caterpillar is destined to be much more than a caterpillar. Mm-hmm. . And so when a caterpillar is going to transform into a butterfly, a caterpillar has to go into a chrysalis or a cocoon, depending on what kind of caterpillar, moth or whatever you’re talking about.

And they go into isolation. And that’s kind of what happened when we went to Arizona. We moved to Arizona. It was horribly painful, emotionally painful, but it was life altering in a way that I could have never done had I stayed in Michigan because it, it took all the familiarity out of my life. It put me in a place where I could find myself in a way that I couldn’t before because all the authoritarians were gone.

I had no more authoritarians in my life. It was just me and my husband. And what are we doing with life now? Because I was, we were empty [01:08:00] nesters then. And so we were on a journey of self-discovery when we were out there and we went to different churches there, ended up at one that served us for a while, was good.

And God even used that to restore a number of different aspects of my traumas. Cuz part of what you know he did is he would safely put me through or put me in a situation where a part of that trauma was like rubbing up against me, but not enough to traumatize me or anything to help me deal with something.

Like one of my sixth grade traumas was I sang in the choir and I hit a solo and we had. Assembly at school. So I was singing in front of the whole school. I had sung lots of times and sung in front of people, and I played a violin. I [01:09:00] played that in front of people. I played a piano, played that in front of people.

I mean, I had no problem with doing things in front of people like that, but this particular day I stood up in front of the entire school and forgot every single word of my solo was utterly humiliated. And then the whole class just bullied me because of it. And then I never did that again, . And then I dropped my violin.

I stopped playing piano, I stopped doing all of that. But at this church when I was, you know, during the churches, they sing songs they do worship for. If you’re not familiar with church, you’re listening to this going, what do they do at church? They do a thing called worship where you know, we put our heart and we, we adore God because.

he’s God and he is awesome. And, but we sing songs to do that, to help us do that. And I was singing the songs and I happened to be in the row behind the pastor and he turned around and like stuck his finger in my face. And the [01:10:00] guy who was in charge of the worship team, his name was David and he, so I’ll clarify that cuz your name is David

Yes. . So he stuck his finger in my face and he said, you go tell David that pastor says that you have to be on the worship team. And I was like, that authoritarian wound came right back up. And I was like, yes sir, yes sir, yes sir. Kind of thing. And he might have meant it with all good intentions, but it just stirred something up inside.

Oh yeah, it was that authoritarian. I have to go do what I’m told. I have to go do what I’m told . And so I went up to David and I told him, a pastor said, and he’s like, you know, I’m in charge of this not pastor kinda thing. David. David was awesome. I love David. But I went through the thing and they, I had to do an audition and I was on the worship team and God restored that trauma with being on that worship team there.

He healed my heart [01:11:00] and took away that fear of being on stage and doing it again and all of that until one day another breakthrough happened through a trigger. We were practicing and we were on the stage and the guy who was did the tech technology did the video and all of that. When I sing, I, I’m, I’m not one to sit still a lot.

I like to move a lot. I’m, I’m, I like to go walking, riding. I’m very active. I’m not a couch potato. I’m, I need to be moving. So when we would sing, I, I’m swaying, I’m moving. I’m not standing still. And he wants me to stand still. . So he ca he came and teasingly taped my feet to the stage. Oh no. And Oh, you saw it.

You felt it. Yeah. But everyone there, I mean, I was just gone. I was gone in a second. I was just, I was six years old and I [01:12:00] was gone. Yeah. And everyone, everyone on the worship team is looking at me because they could see that something’s happening. And and that was probably like a compounding, you had to tape across the mouth.

Then you had where you forgot the words and everything is just boom, just firing off. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. But you know, like a good child of authoritarian parents, we shoved that down. We shoved that down because that’s not allowed. So I shoved that down, finished practice, and then went in the bathroom and freaked out and made a different choice than I had.

Every other time I had been triggered previously. I would’ve grabbed my purse, I’m going home, I’m done. And would’ve hidden. But instead, one of the ladies on the team, she came in there, she prayed for me, asked me, I tried to explain. She didn’t understand, but she prayed for me. She was so kind. . But people don’t [01:13:00] understand trauma.

I mean, you, you knew, I mean, I said the one thing and you knew, and I came out from the bathroom and David and his kind and they said, do you wanna not do this today? Do you, do you want to? He gave me the out with complete grace, you know, no condemnation, no overbearing, no authoritarian anything. And I said, no, no.

I wanted to do it cuz I. I think God gave me the courage then to, no, we’re going through . We’re not going around. We’re going through, and you healed enough to that point to face it. This was the time. I guess so, cuz there were two songs that I knew were going to touch that same trigger that we were singing that day.

Yep. Would redo what had just happened. And I went through that. I did just fine. And, but after that, God gave me the grace. I, I went home and I love rocking. Like I said, I like to move. I’m, I’m not a stay still person, so I, I have a rocking chair. I’ve had one [01:14:00] for years and I sat my rocking chair and I’m like, I’m not moving from here, God, until you like, do something that’s not, that’s never happening again.

That’s basically where I was at. That’s never happening again. What happened to me, all I knew is I was there and then I was there and I had no idea what happened in between. I had no idea the B. It was just darkness. And I had talked with people before about this. I didn’t know they were called triggers, so I, I didn’t call it that.

When I talked with them about it, I would talk with them about what I was going through and how I was feeling. And basically they told me I had to just think differently and I needed to just stop being so hard on myself and I needed to just this and, and it was all my fault all that time. So I sat there in that chair and I became self-aware.

I didn’t know that term at the time either, but for the sake of audience, I [01:15:00] use self-awareness is how I got to what was happening there. Self-awareness. I sat in that chair and I prayed and I’m like, God, I need to know what happened. And he slowed down time of what had happened in between there. , that there was a thought progression that had taken place, that this went to, this thought, to this thought, to this thought, this thought, this thought.

But it happened in a split second. Before that, the closest thing I had to that Joyce Meyer has a book called Battlefield of the Mind, and she talks about mindset and how a mindset is something, how your mind gets set in that way because of how things have happened or things you’re thinking or whatever.

But there’s a way that it becomes set like that. And so that’s what I had it. I had a mindset as the best way I could fathom that in that moment when the Lord was showing me that. But he slowed it [01:16:00] down to every thought in between there, and I wrote it down and he showed me where it left me, and it left me.

and, and the voices, the internal voices that were yelling at me in that moment of how I had no value and that I didn’t matter and nobody wanted me, and I needed to just shut up and have no voice. And I learned a thing which I call a silver bullet.

And what that is, is I get it from my, I think it’s the werewolves or something like that, that you shoot them with a silver bullet and it stops them. Something like that. Yep. And so what it was to me is I had that thought progression. So when that happened, I needed something to interrupt that. I need something to interrupt that [01:17:00] sort of like you, if you’re riding a bike and you stick a stick in the spoke of the wheel, it will stop the.

And the person goes flying over the handle bars, . Yeah. But it’ll stop the bike. And I needed something that would do that emotionally for me. And so I prayed, I was like, I need that. I, I need a silver bullet. And he gave me one. And it was just two words. It was the two words. I matter, I matter. And so what I started doing after that is I started saying that to myself all the time.

Daily, whenever I thought about it, it had written down when I had, you know, prayer time or whatever. But I would do it frequently, just however I did it. It wasn’t, you know, regimented or anything like that. But I did it all the time because I was feeding that inside of myself, because the hope was, and it did work.

The hope was [01:18:00] if I have that in there, then when that moment happens, that’s going to come outta my mouth. Because we put that in there and that’s what comes out. You know, like if you squish a orange, you get orange juice. If I squish in there enough that I matter, then when that thing comes at me that says, you don’t, it’s going to come out saying I matter.

And I went through a season of that doing that, and it’s silver bullet. It did work. And that’s part of my message with people. Like I said, you matter and you are loved. It’s so important to know that because that’s everything comes out of ourself. Ourself. It’s where our choices reside. It’s where we, that’s who we are, is ourself.

And if we don’t give ourself value, we won’t live the life that God desires us to live. And part of what I’m on a mission to do is to make the invisible scene, [01:19:00] you know, the trauma is not a visible thing and certain things. Childhood emotional neglect. That’s something that’s missing. I mean, you don’t even have an event.

You have something that should have happened that didn’t happen. So that’s even harder to see. So I’m on a mission to make the invisible scene. So those who have been silently wounded, cuz they didn’t know they were wounded, they can heal and then they can embrace what I call their God-given greatness.

Cuz I believe there’s greatness in everyone. Everyone who’s listening, there’s greatness in you, whether you know it or not. Whether you’ve ever seen it or not, it’s there. That’s our podcast. Did you see our cover art? It shows three humans of all walks of life, each season as different art and the shadows behind them are superheroes.

Mm-hmm. Because there’s greatness that God puts inside of us. We just need to unleash and let go. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree with you more. I think it’s bi, it is biblical. That’s why I, we both agree with it.[01:20:00]

So I take people through my self process. I devised a self process to help people cuz I created a course based on my first book because I’m like, how did, how did I do this? Like you said at the beginning, you know, to help people, how do they do this? And I’m like, God, help me. I, I don’t know. I can’t just say, let God help you.

That’s not helpful, but you need better ways of doing that. And God gave me my self process and in that course that I have, it takes ’em through the self process four times. And I made it the self acronym on purpose for two very specific reasons. One is because self is who you are and your choice resides in yourself and you have to take ownership of your healing.

You have to own it. because no one can change your life. Only you can do it for you. That requires yourself to do that. [01:21:00] And yourself is where your choices reside. No one can make you choose something when it appears that they do through authoritarianism or something like that. It’s not your choice. It’s coercion or it’s manipulation and it’s not really a free choice.

God gives us a free choice. That is one of his greatest gifts. He started in from the very beginning. He gave a choice. He gave the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He didn’t hide that anywhere. He put that out front and center cuz he honors our choice. So the self is where your choice resides. So that’s why we have to focus on the self and empower the self.

And the other thing is because self is like a dirty word. In some churches it was a dirty word to. , I was told I was selfish. I was just, I squished the self down because the self was so bad. You need to die to self. You need to kill the self. All these negative things about the self. No, your self is beautiful.

That’s who God created you [01:22:00] to be. So that’s why I use the self process. And it stands for C, expose love and free. C is about awareness cuz you can’t do anything about something you can’t see. That’s why I need to make the invisible scene so you can do something about it. E is exposed cuz you have to go underneath what you see and you have to see why.

You have to see how, you have to see where you have to see when. So you have to expose, you have to go deeper in doing. Ellis for love because you have to lavish that love on yourself. You have to fill up with love in whatever way you can in the different layers. You know, finding it outside yourself, finding it through animals.

Then finding it through your learning. How to love yourself. Finding people in your life who can love you. Who will love you, and letting God love you and it. But it’s a process wherever you’re at in your journey. But that love is what gives you the [01:23:00] courage to do the work. It’s what gives you the courage, because it feeds your sense of value.

And we take care of things that we say have value. I mean, you know, we have jewelry, we have clothes, we have cars, we have houses, or whatever it is we have. We have children, you know, we have our favorite food, you know, whatever it is that we care about, we take care of. . And when you will see that you have value, you will take care of you.

So that’s where the love is, where we have to feed that value into you and feed that courage. And then f is free. That’s the action step. It’s where you do something. You have to take freedom cuz freedom doesn’t happen to you. Every freedom is, is fought for in some capacity, unless you know someone else fought for it.

Like I live in America, the land of the free, the home of the pray. Well, you know, I didn’t fight for it, but there are people who lost their lives so that I could have this freedom. Someone fought for it [01:24:00] and Jesus fought for our freedom that’s he fought for. So he wants us to be free. So that’s my process and I take people through that to help them go through that so they can emerge free.

Like my, my book is called Emerging with Wings. The Wings Stand for Freedom. and I was just so blessed by a lady who wrote a review on that book just recently and she loved how I used the word emerge. She’s a fellow trauma survivor and she loved how I used that word emerge because she said that the book really is take, does take you on the journey where you really do emerge.

And so I just, I really love that. I felt very validated by that. That’s awesome. And the curtains behind me, did you see before the show started what I had on there? No. On the one side of my condo it says it’s a full nine foot fly. It says landed free and the other side [01:25:00] says, because of the brave . And I had to shut the currents cuz we had a camera issue before the recording.

Mm-hmm. . But yeah. Danielle, once again, I agree with you completely and no freedom is free and that’s just a beautiful statement and truth. And that alone, I don’t want to, but that makes me feel loved. Like Jesus’ sacrifice, God’s sacrifice. You know, the Holy Spirit coming down to be with us. If you’re live in America or any country, somebody battled and sacrificed for the freedoms you are enjoying or they’re battling now so that you can enjoy those freedoms.

Or maybe you’re the one battling. But yeah, freedom isn’t free. Everything has a cost, so that’s beautiful. Now, people who are listening, sometimes you get they’re, they’re connected with you. They’re like, this is true, but they mentally are shutting down and exhaustion because there’s so much emotion.

There’s so much coming up and [01:26:00] stirring, and the natural flesh just wants to be like, oh man, I’m tired. I’m going to go take a nap. Like, it’s not even that they don’t want to deal with it, but just the trauma from the past sucks. You dry. , what kind of advice do you have for those people who are listening now?

They want help. They need help, but their emotions are just, they’re like almost like, okay, I gotta check out. Oh, self-care. Self-care is so important cuz you feel like you need an app. Take one. Take one. Because yes, it is emotionally exhausting and baby steps. Pace yourself, patience with yourself because it will be a journey.

If you were going to be in a marathon or if you wanted to be on the the big cycle thing that takes place in France, you wouldn’t just go to the marathon or just hop on a bike. You have to go through training because there’s endurance that’s needed for that. You have to [01:27:00] learn how to go that far and how to take things for that long.

So baby steps. Baby steps. Maybe if you’re, listen, how, how many minutes were you able to pay attention before you started feeling drained? Then bark that out while I was able to pay attention for 30 minutes. Okay, well then put something on your plate of something to do and have it be 25 minutes long and do that till, oh, I’m not tired at 25 minutes anymore.

Then maybe you can do it for, you know, 35 minutes after that and you, you train for doing it at little bits of time. Take care of yourself in the process. You have to take care of yourself in the process and validate that. Yeah, it will be exhausting and take a nap. I mean, even just doing these interviews, it’s going to be draining to David and to me, because we’re using emotional energy.

There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just we only have so much energy and we spend it [01:28:00] when we do stuff , it’s just a fact. So there’s nothing, there’s no shame in it. Definitely said there’s no shame in that. And whether you could pay attention for five minutes, well then give it five minutes. Five minutes a day.

And that’s that one thing. Do just one thing I learned that David talked about Benjamin Franklin, I got that from Old Prevention Magazine years ago. It was revolutionary to be, when I read that and I’ve taught it so many times and I still have the magazine and they called it Do Just One thing. They were talking about, you know, health things and eating differently and losing weight and stuff like that.

But I saw the truth in it and they talked about doing just one thing. Like this person wanted to eat healthier, you know, add one thing, well you should eat more vegetables. Well, that’s too vague. Say I’m going to eat, you know, so much a, a half a [01:29:00] cup of carrots every day. and then do that till you’re like, you know, pick a vegetable, you like, obviously, or, and a fruit, blueberries, or it doesn’t even matter.

I’m just grabbing at something, a spinach salad with every dinner. I know what you’re saying. We’re tracking with you. You don’t wanna eat. I laugh because you don’t wanna eat too many carrots, you’ll turn orange. Right. . Right. And it’s, some people don’t like carrot, so it’s like, it’s not, it’s not what it is.

It’s that you do that one thing and you do that one thing until it’s not a thing anymore where you’re not expending energy, it’s just part of your life. It’s just a part of your, it’s a habit. And then you do just one thing and you repeat. and then you, what you have to do on the front end of that.

Because I hear the arguing already because it, it happened to me, but I have to change 27 things, but I need to lose a hundred pounds, but I need to start in all that. You can’t do them all at [01:30:00] once, and if you try to do them all at once, you will do nothing. But what if you just, if you do the one thing and you look back after a year and you did the one thing, you did one thing, which is one more than trying 27 and doing nothing, and so you celebrate that.

You celebrate that. You do the one thing, you do it till it’s not a thing and celebrate your progress. You have to celebrate your progress. It’s so important to. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And again, I hope you’re listening to Danielle and connecting the dots here. Like she said, it’s in every area. So I know I’m a marketing consultant, Danielle and I talk with my clients, you know, okay, here’s your goal and here’s where you’re at.

We reverse engineer the plan and there’s so many steps, but you take ’em one at a time and a lot of people, let’s just say blogging, they’re trying to reach more audience. So like, okay, whether it’s video content or whether it’s written content, just produce one piece of content a week. Just one. Just [01:31:00] start with one.

And then they look back after that year and now they have a database in their website of 52 articles that help people, and it’s helping them achieve their goals. But it’s a process and it takes time. So listen to Danielle. Don’t try to eat the elephant at once. Just take small little bites consistently.

Yeah. Even reading something like you mentioned blogging. I started blogging. Cause after I. I published my first book, I got the feedback of it, which is what has propelled me into doing what I’m doing. I didn’t know what I would be doing after that. When I published it, my greatest spear was that someone would read it , because I, as I said, I put myself in counseling in the second half of that book was all new and fresh to me, and now I got it in this book and my best friend didn’t know stuff I have in this book, and I’m going to put it out there for the general population to read this.

Mm-hmm , it was terrifying. [01:32:00] But they did read it and it resonated with them. And I felt the need to, okay, well I need to get my book into more people’s hands, so how do I do that? And I read an article, every book needs a blog. And I’m like, well, what’s a blog? ? I don’t, what’s a blog? Cuz I did all this self-study to do that.

Cause I published my books by myself. Self-publishing on purpose. because I wanted to own my story. If I had a traditional publisher do my book, they would own my story. It’s my story. You can’t own my story. It’s my story. So I did it myself. I studied, I took courses and classes and all kinds of things to do that, and I did the same thing with the blog.

What is a blog? It took courses and classes and stuff to do that. I have well over 300 articles on my website now, and I have lots of things that could help people who, they got five minutes and they, that’s their attention span. Read a blog post. I have a podcast, [01:33:00] Victoria SOLs. You can listen to a podcast e, a podcast episode.

I have episodes that are like five to 10 minutes long because I have short ones, but I also have longer ones where I interview people all around the world. I have a YouTube channel, which you could watch them if you don’t wanna listen, but you wanna watch. But there’s all different kinds of content that can serve you wherever you’re at.

in that process. Like one of the things for self-care, we mentioned David, on my free resources page, I have an emotional health journal. It’s free. Download it for free. It’s 30 days. It take about five minutes a day. Talk about not being time intensive. There’s five questions that ask you. It’s got an inspirational quote or something like that.

Just a motivational quote, quote on one side, and then it’s got five questions just to track yourself emotionally, how are you feeling today? And to [01:34:00] spur you on to self-care and to pay attention to that aspect of your life. That’s, that’s a great place to start. If don’t do anything else, that emotional healthcare journal would be a great place to.

Beautiful. Now, we’ve covered a lot and I think we can go a lot deeper and longer, but you have your website, you have your podcast, you have the book, but I want to make sure we don’t miss anything that’s important that you want to cover. So between your birth and today, Danielle, is there anything else we mixed missed?

And then I want to transition to where’s Danielle today and where are you going next and how can we help you get there since you’ve been so kind to help us? It’s so funny that when you asked me this, it just opens up a whole nother aspect of like, oh, I forgot to bring that up. . Yeah, but that’s the purpose.

Hey, I truly believe like you and many of our listeners, that God inspires and leads us with the Holy Spirit. So whether you’re a believer or not, you’re [01:35:00] listening to Danielle and I. and we’re just opening the door and seeing where the conversation goes. In a lot of ways, God does speak. Is that thought that pops into our head we’re, you know, we wouldn’t have thought of that man.

When I was in fourth grade, I had this instance. Why did I think to share that on this podcast? I don’t know, but I’m going to do it cuz God told me to. So yeah, whatever just popped in your head, Danielle, go ahead and share it. Well, my name Danielle was not the name I was given at Earth in 1988. I legally changed my name because of trauma in my life, and that was due to a bully because of the trauma that was in the bottom of my life.

Like the layers that, like it built on layers higher and higher and higher until I was underneath all of it. Mm-hmm. , I had a bully that was, you know, the coolest kid in school. You know that one, right? That one that you’re all afraid of them because they’re like the coolest person in school and if you’re on their bad side, you’re in trouble.

Well, for some reason she hated [01:36:00] me. I. and she attacked my identity using my name. Also, she chased me and got in my face and was yelling and screaming at me in the process of doing it. The whole story is the premiere episode of my my podcast, but she yelled at me and she tapped into that childhood emotional neglect that I didn’t know that I had, and told me that my parents named me what they had named me, because they didn’t want me and they never wanted me.

And so that’s why they named me that, so that every time they said my name, they would be telling me to die. So she planted in my heart. That death in my heart planted in my. Reiterated that my parents didn’t want me and [01:37:00] didn’t love me cause I already believed that. Mm-hmm. . And when I was in counseling telling the story to my counselor because I was nonchalantly on the way to another point and this, this is what highlights hidden trauma cuz trauma can hide.

And again, I wanna make the invisible scene so the silently wounded can heal. And this name trauma was something I dismissed in my life. When I brought it up to my counselor, she was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. About, you know, I didn’t felt I belonged in my family. And she stopped me and said, why? I’m like, I don’t know.

She said something went terribly wrong. And she proceeded to unveil to me how a child is supposed to be loved and nurtured what parents are supposed to do. And I was just shocked by that. . Then later when I was telling the story of the [01:38:00] bully, somehow sh her first response was, well, why did you believe her?

And I was like, I thought of not believing her. Never entered my mind because it had been piled on that emotional neglect. And I never told anyone about that incident at the time. But when I’ve gone back, you know, healing and stuff, I disassociated, I don’t remember like anything after that incident with her.

Later, after my mother and I reconnected, I would share some stories with her. And I told her that story and she wept. And I was just shocked because my mom was not real emotional cuz she was emotionally neglected and she was traumatized. So she, she was wounded. So her doing that, I was really surprised by that.

and she suggested that I change my name. And I was [01:39:00] just astounded by that because a child of authoritarianism, I didn’t own anything, let alone my name. So I thought of changing. My name was beyond my idea. So I’m like, wow, that’s interesting. And it turned into a whole journey of doing that. But I wanted to bring that up because bullying is a big deal and people can tend to dismiss it.

And I don’t want to dismiss, let bullying be dismissed, how I wrote in my book, how I didn’t go home and kill myself, I don’t know. And do you know that the second biggest cause of death in children age 10 to 14 is.

So how would it bring up bullying? Cuz bullying is a big deal and I don’t know if that’s the cause of why [01:40:00] a child that young would want to kill themself. And when I actually look back, I’m like, I was in that age group, I was in that age group. And I want people to know that bullying is a big deal. And with social media, they have bullies hiding behind screens.

They don’t even show their face. They’re cowards. Mm-hmm. , they’re just freaking cowards. But the child is like uncooked cupcakes. They, they don’t know what’s going on. They, they’re not done. They can’t process it. They do not have the capability of dealing with that bully like an adult would. A fully cup cupcake.

I use that analogy for the two of them. Cuz if you drop a tray of cupcakes on the floor, they might crack, they might break. But you drop a tray of [01:41:00] cupcakes on the floor that haven’t been cooked yet, you got a big mess. And that’s the difference between childhood trauma and adult trauma. Developmental trauma and adult trauma.

It’s a completely different thing. And bullying for kids is a big deal. So I wanted to bring that up to validate that. So if you are listening to this and you have been bullied, you have value and you are loved, tell someone about it. Don’t be silent about what’s going on in your life and reach out for help.

Yeah, that’s amazing advice and truth. On the flip side, and this does comfort people, but they don’t think of it at the time. Most of those people bullying. Are complete jackasses, but they’re a jackass for a reason. And even if their life seems so wonderful, they probably feel terrible [01:42:00] about themselves. And that’s not an excuse cuz I remember people bullying me.

You just talked about this bully for you, that doesn’t give them any excuse. But if you’re able to break down and think, yeah, that kid’s home life is a thousand times worse than even mine and just crap runs downhill. They’re just making everybody else’s life miserable because their life is miserable.

Mm-hmm. , again, it doesn’t justify it, but you can see that hurting people hurt and that what they said isn’t true. They’re just saying it from a place of hurt and that has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them and their crappy life. So, and if you don’t mind me asking, you can’t process that when kids are kids, they, to say that to them, they, I don’t know that they can process that, but adults can.

So when you’re looking back, it’s able to do that. But as a child, so I just want also. cause I was speaking to someone who might be bullied or have been bullied. Mm-hmm. , if you’re listening, you have kids and they’re telling you about a bully, don’t dismiss their pain. [01:43:00] Don’t dismiss their pain, don’t dismiss it.

Oh well they’re, you know, in any way, don’t make up a story. Just let it hurt. Validate their pain and look for a way to solve the problem, not dismissive. Yeah, that’s good advice. And then let me ask you a question too. And again, you don’t have to answer this, but a lot of times we worry about stuff and 95% of the time it never comes true.

Mm-hmm. . And then another 94, 5% of the time we interpret data and we misinterpret data. And then down the road we find out that we were totally wrong, yet we agonized for years about this and were in pain. And it was just a miscommunication or understanding. Did you ever talk to your, when you talked to your mom about why she named you what she did, was it true or was it just a complete misunderstanding?

Oh, had no, my parents loved me. I [01:44:00] talked with my mom about this. She, I was very open. She, and I felt like my dad didn’t love me. He died when I was, I just turned 14 and she reassured me, you know how my dad did love me and it’s something we talked about. So yes, they loved me. And it talked about how, you know, she said I was in accident, you know, and I told her about how that hurt me and that, well, I was unplanned.

It, it was true. But, you know, then she went into I, the past day, you know, mistaken. An accident later it when, you know, it was after the fact.

And when I picked the name Danielle, she said, that was the name. Your dad was going to name you. But then he changed his mind. . I thought that was really interesting. I don’t know why they changed their mind. Might have been having to do with my grandfather. I don’t know. Cuz he’s a Greek. It was a [01:45:00] step-grandfather, a Greek descent.

And the name I was given at birth was Diane, which is a Greek name. So I don’t know if that’s, don’t know cuz both my brothers had biblical names and so it almost doesn’t kind of make sense but I, I don’t know. They were, I don’t know. But it wasn’t what that young lady, no. Satan used that young lady, not even knowingly to just hook you and rip you apart.

Mm-hmm and none of that was even true. It was all a lie. Yeah man. And I found out later that she died of a heroin overdose. So I, who knows what was going on in her house that drove her to do that. Yeah, you don’t just go shoot up with heroin cuz you’re a healthy, happy, well adjusted individual. , right? I mean, seriously, there’s very, very few people who have, like, they’re just doing it for fun and they, by accident overdose, 99%.

Yeah. 75% of people who are in treatment for substance abuse disorder. It’s because of trauma. Yes. [01:46:00] 75%. Yeah. And I think the, I personally think the number’s even higher. They just literally have suppressed or blocked out the pain or they just physic, they just mentally can’t come to accept it. Yeah, I’m, that’s my personal opinion.

I don’t, I’m not like part of the medical association of the world. Right. Either. I’m not a doctor, nor do we play one on tv. . So. All right. So where are you today, Danielle? And where are you heading? How can we help you get there? How can people reach out to you? What’s next for you? Oh, well, this year I’m really working on.

Doing more speaking. I love to do speaking. I love meeting people in person. I’m in a vendor program taking my books and doing book signings in grocery stores. I lo get to meet people doing that. It, the program is in nine states, so if you’re an author and you’re interested in more information, just connect with me and I can give you more information about [01:47:00] that.

Cuz the books have to be vetted into the program. So I do that. I love to do that. It’s in-person, especially since the pandemic. I’m loving the in-person things and also speaking. I speak at conferences and seminars. I do workshops and all those. I’m looking to do more of those. And I’ve devised workshops.

I’m actually taking my workshop. I have a trauma informed self workshop that I’m taking into the community and into churches and I’d like to do more of that And I have my podcast. I’m loving doing that and interviewing people all around the world with their stories last year that I’m tying up this year’s season and the year before, just anyone who had a Victoria’s Soul story that was going to help people.

I interviewed some just amazing people. This particular season, I’m focusing on Christians. I don’t know, maybe the next [01:48:00] season I’ll go back to just everybody, because you know, Christians are better than anybody. They’re just, you know, they just have a different story. This all . So I’m doing that and I’m real excited about that.

I went to, I have some people lined up who’ve been through religious trauma and church hurt and stuff like that, for them to share their stories. One lady, how she became an atheist for a while, and then how she came back to Grace. after becoming an atheist because of church trauma. So I, I’m doing all these things and wanting to do things in, in person with people.

I, I’d really like to do that. If anyone is looking to have someone speak at their seminar, their conference, their retreat or whatever, I have one possibly lined up to do it with a ministry within a church area, but they have to have their meetings, so I don’t want to divulge anything there. But there’s all different things.

I, I love doing that. I, I spoke at a writer’s [01:49:00] conference last year too. It was on a panel. I’ve done self-publishing of my own book, so I, it’s not my focus area, but that’s something I can help people with or steer ’em, steer ’em in the right direction. And you can find everything at my website. I am have, my website is linked to everything, to all my courses.

I have courses. I have the a short one. Seven day challenge to love yourself. I have heal your childhood self, which is what I had talked about going through with my book, emerging with Wings, going through the self process over and over again to, you know, own your trauma. Where is it? Where did it happen?

Do I have this? And stop dismissing what you think was normal. That isn’t, you know, if you have deep trauma that you need to do a deep dive with a counselor, then do that, you know, or get a counselor and then do my course at the same time alongside each other at the [01:50:00] same time. And I have a course to help people to do what they dream.

It’s based on a book called Unhackable, because we get hacked, you know, computers get hacked. Well, our brain’s a computer, super computer, and we get hacked and they’re like, oh, look at Squi. And then we, I was going to do this today. Oh man, I didn’t get that done. Oh, I always wanted to write a book. Well, what is it that you wanna do?

And finding out what is that thing you wanna do or that one thing right now, and how to get there. I have a, a 30 day book club where you go through that alongside with the book to identify what is it that you dream and how can you get there and what’s in your way, and how can you accomplish that. So I have that.

And then I have other things on my website, courses and just so many ways that I wanna help people because like I said, mine was so long and so messy, and I just had to grab from everywhere. And my, my company for F Media [01:51:00] is about exposing the truth of emotional trauma and breaking the barriers to healing because I’m a person of faith.

but you need psychology and science. And it was like they were oil and water to me when I was going through this like, you want psychology? Go over here. Well, you better be careful because you know they’re the world and they’re all this, be careful. Be careful stuff. But then if you go over in the faith, well then you just need to pray and you just need to memorize scripture and you need both.

And that’s what I do is I, I marry those two together so you can take your faith and you can get the statistics and the truth and about the amygdalas and all that stuff and attachment theory and those things that are real, that are, the body keeps the score and we need to get it out of our body. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

I mean, physics is physics. It doesn’t matter if [01:52:00] you’re a believer in God or not. Yeah. , you know, gravity moves at 9.82 meters per second squared. It doesn’t matter what you believe. If you jump off the building, you’re going to die. Yeah. . So it’s just like when people are. In the church and they say, oh, psychology is evil.

Or when people are psychologists, like, our Christianity is foolish. Both of those people are wrong. I always look at it balance, a false balance is abomination to the Lord, but just wait as his delight. If you go all left, you’re crazy. If you go, all right, you’re crazy. You need to be balanced and, and I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about.

So that’s fantastic, Danielle. So it’s been our truth. I created science. He’s, he’s a creator, right? He is science. I mean, it’s like when people talk about science, that’s God and everything, there’s not one truth that doesn’t tie back to the Bible and that can’t be proven from the Bible. And I am so thankful for that, cuz I don’t wanna believe people hired by the World Health Organization.

I wanna believe God and the Holy Spirit [01:53:00] and facts. Facts and reality, right? Mm-hmm. . So when you’re dealing with emotional pain, God created our mind. and there’s a science to it and God created our body and there’s a science to it. And you’re a hundred percent right. Yeah. Oh, and one more thing in my book because you matter, like my book Emerging with Wings is my journey of getting free from childhood trauma and finding my value.

It’s written like a love story. So it is a hero, a villain, and the person overcoming. So it takes you on the journey. But my newest book, because you matter, because you do matter, and God gave me the title of that book. It has the stories of 10 other people in it. Also, it’s a self-help book written with small little things because broken hearts can’t swallow big paragraphs like we talked about.

What if people get tired? Well, that’s a small little thing to do and maybe my trauma’s not something a person can relate to. So I interviewed five men, five women. Different ages, [01:54:00] races of different kinds of trauma and how they dealt with that and how they went from survive to thrive in their life to help people identify, well, maybe you can’t identify with Sylvia, but you can identify with Naomi.

Or maybe you can’t identify with Jeff, but you can identify with Andre, the people you know in the book and, and what they’ve been through. So wanted to bring that up too, because trauma is a variety. We started with that and it just seemed fitting to tie it up with a boat like that. Beautiful, beautiful.

And if somebody wanted to get ahold of you, what’s the best way to connect? My website, danielle burn.com. All right. And we’ll put a little and on all the socials and I mean you Google my name and find me. So , email me info danielle burn.com. Awesome. Thank you for being here, Danielle. And ladies and gentlemen, I’m glad you listened to this entire episode.

Like our slogan of the podcast says, though don’t just listen to great content. Do [01:55:00] it. Repeat it each day so you can have a great life in this world. And most importantly, an attorney to come. So I’m David Pasqualone. This was our friend Danielle. Danielle, thank you again for being here. Thank you for having me and you for listening.

I love you. I’m that lady on there. Not who loves You, . All right? So have a great day. Check out Danielle’s website, download that free tool she mentioned, apply it, reach out to her, let her know how it’s going. If I can help you, let me know. And more than anything, we love you. God loves you, and we’ll see you in the next episode.

Ciao.

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