Danielle LaPorte on How to Be Loving, Forgive, and Heal

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Katie: Hello and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And I will let this episode largely speak for itself. I think you’ll get a lot out of it. But I’m here with Daniella LaPorte, who is a member of Oprah’s SuperSoul100 and who her most recent book we talk a lot about today. It’s called “How to Be Loving When Your Heart Is Breaking Open And The World Is Waking Up.” It’s also an audiobook and an e-book with a companion deck and journal.
She’s the author of “The Fire Starter Sessions,” “The Desire Map,” “White Hot Truth,” and producer of meditation kits and online programs. She’s also the creator of Heart Centered Membership and the Heart Center Leadership Program and as well as her own podcast, “With Love From Danielle,” which often ranks in the top 10 for wellness.
We talk a lot about her work today. And I think this is an especially relevant conversation for moms because we talk about how to be loving, and a lot about forgiveness and healing, and we talk about the early inspiration for her work, which was the question, what do I want to feel? Our relationship to our feelings and how to learn to get to choose how we want to feel, and why you aren’t your feelings and why this is a great thing. How to move into a space of more awareness and unconditional love with yourself and your children? The downside of hazard of the affirmations if they aren’t done the correct way. Characteristics of loving thoughts and how to create more of them in your life. The reasons she said it’s time to end the years of bucket list and what she suggests instead. Why gentleness is countercultural and why we need it right now, a practice she hasn’t recommended before but that she explains in this episode. And some self-healing and self-acceptance practices we can do with ourselves. And I also share a lot of my own parenting thoughts. So, I think you will learn a lot from this episode. I very much enjoyed this conversation. So, let’s join Danielle. Danielle, welcome. I’m so excited to chat with you today.
Danielle: Hello, hello. It’s a miracle you’re here with six children, that you even have a podcast, you should get some kind of reward just for that.
Katie: Oh, well, thank you. They make it pretty easy. They’re good kids. And I think today’s episode actually will be very personally helpful to me and also to all the moms listening, you’ve done so much, it would take forever to even go through your whole bio. But I’m super excited personally about your new book. And I wanna make sure we get to delve deep on that today and that there are so many things within that, that I think are especially relevant to moms.
I’m guessing a lot of people have already heard of you, but for anyone who hasn’t, can you just kind of walk us through how you got into the work that you’re doing? And then we’ll kind of switch and start talking about the book.
Danielle: Well, mostly now I write about love and consciousness. And I have a leadership program with coaches and facilitators where we’re training people in tools around resilience and how to have conversations around virtue and melting polarities. But I’m most well-known for a book called “The Desire Map,” which is about a more holistic approach to goal setting. And that’s me now, yeah. There’s lots before that, I mean, I have a, I’ll give you a little more, especially in the context of parenting. So, I have an 18-year-old son. I would never call myself a single mother, but we have two households, you know, he’s a really active father.
Before my current sort of career in incarnation, I was running a think tank in Washington, D.C., working with the Pentagon, talking about weapons of mass destruction, and water wars, and all sorts of things like that. And before that, I had a publicity agency, where I was promoting people that I thought were real change agents, who were trying to, you know, play at a global level in terms of making positive change in the world, yeah.
Katie: Yeah, like I said, your bio is quite extensive, and I’ve read “The Desire Map.” I would definitely recommend that. I’ll link to that in the show notes as well. But you have a new workout on how to be loving, and I think this is super, super relevant in today’s world, especially and very, very timely. I’m curious what sparked this book, in particular?
Danielle: This came out of a question that originally guided my life, which was how do I wanna feel? And that was really the desire map. So get clear on how you wanna feel and then design your life that way. And for a lot of women, that question was like, it was a light bulb moment for them that, you know, “My feelings matter, and I should guide my holiday plans and my quarterly objectives, and my wardrobe to my faith on how I wanna feel?” And my answer was, “Yes, it matters and your feelings are like this global positioning system for your soul.”
Then I realized that when I wasn’t feeling the way I wanted to feel, I still felt close to life, to source, to something bigger than myself, I could still be useful for my friends. And so maybe it wasn’t all about happiness, or feeling like bad— or inspired or lit up all the time. But it was about what I wanted to embody. So the question moved from how do I wanna feel? I’m asking you now, how do you wanna feel? To what do you wanna embody? Because I wanna be loving, no matter what is going on, I wanna be forgiving, no matter what the situation is, I wanna be compassionate at all times. And that’s about, like a fullness and an integrity. And those are higher states of being, they’re not feelings that come and go, like, you know, happiness, we all know happiness is fleeting, if you’re happy, sad, 900 times a day. But loving is steady, it’s abiding. I want that kind of consistency. So that’s how the book came to be, it’s really sort of an evolution through consciousness, yeah, for me.
Katie: I think even that initial question, how do I wanna feel, you’re right, is a new one for a lot of women. I know as mom especially, it can be easy to get wrapped up in what everyone else needs and all of the things that are required of us in a given day that even to pause and think of the answer to that question seems like a big shift. And I think often, at least, for me, one thing I noticed when I read your work was it was hard to answer because I so rarely thought of myself, I was thinking of other people so much that I had to actually learn how to ask that question.
Danielle: And how did you learn to ask that question? Like, what helped you remember to ask it?
Katie: For me, it was a lot of creating more stillness in life, which is admittedly a little difficult when you have young children. But even if it was just some small moments in the morning, whether it was to journal or just be in quiet and see what came up. I do think, like, gratitude journaling was very helpful for me because it helped to reframe and to focus on the positive, and through the last few years, I also realized a lot that I had been kind of repressing certain emotions or not really dealing with them on purpose because it was easier not to. And I’ve shared on here a lot of my recent journey has been around learning how not to resist or repress those emotions, but actually, like, acknowledge them, and give them space, but also let go of the ones that I didn’t need or that weren’t serving me or others. But do you find a lot of women run into resistance with that, even learning to ask the question?
Danielle: Yeah, for all of those reasons. And there’s some fear in there. It’s like, “Well, if I get clear on how I wanna feel, how do I feel that way?” Or, “What if I fail at feeling happier? What if it doesn’t come?” So there’s fear as a block. You said something really important, which is about stillness, and even with a bunch of children, right? That’s really it. That’s you tapping into really universal wisdom. It’s you getting into your higher guidance system. Stillness is…it’s essential, it’s essential. It’s a medicine, it’s the medicine.
Katie: And then the evolution of that, of course, I love your new work and the focus on becoming loving, because I think that gives space for the whole range, like you said, of emotions that we can feel, while still getting to choose kind of how we exist and embody those things to ourselves and to the world. And I would guess that’s also a learned shift for a lot of people. And kind of maybe unpacking some of those shoulds around, I feel like women especially have so many “should” around how we’re supposed to feel and act in the world. And shifting into that, it also probably seems like, to your point, something that’s not just, “Okay, I’m going choose immediately to feel this way and to exist this way in the world,” probably takes, I would guess some work, right?
Danielle: Yeah. So the whole conversation…your whole relationship to feelings is actually developmental. So learning that you get to feel the way you want to feel can be a breakthrough. Great, have that breakthrough, be more in choice about, like, “All right, if I wanna feel free or supported or connected today, how can I use my free will to do that? What is free and supported and connected look like? I’m in charge, I can make that happen.” Okay, so, you know, we start humming with our lives. Yeah. And then we’re gonna take it up like another few notches in terms of being awake and aware, and really using…you know, really empowering ourselves, which is the question of what I wanna embody.
So, then you have to realize that you’re actually not your feelings. Like, you get to play with them. You get to create conditions and situations, so you feel better, because feeling better is good, we wanna feel well, we wanna feel healthy, we wanna feel connected. But when we’re not feeling the way that we wanna feel, or when we’re in those kind of lighter, happy feelings, like just…you know, happiness, we all know comes and goes, right? That we’re not over-identifying with those feelings.
So, since this is a conversation with moms, with parents, it’s like, you know, we can all relate to that feeling of disappointment, that we’re not enough, or that we had a bit of an outburst with our kids, we’re not patient enough. And then there’s that self-criticism that comes in, that sinking…it’s like a…I think it gets into that territory of unworthiness, right? You’re not that feeling. You’re something bigger, you’re a soul. You’re a being of energy. You’re a pulsing heart. You are vast. You are love itself, having this feeling.
Like, a metaphor that really works, this is really powerful, is just imagine that you are as big as the sky, that that is the size of your heart. And I think as mothers, we can get that. When we look at it through the lens of parenting, it’s like, “Oh, of course, when it comes to loving my child, I’m vast, and I have all these negative things in these places that are sticky and I’m ashamed of and all of that.” But actually, you are this expansiveness.
And then all the other stuff, feelings of disappointment, or whatever it is, happy, sad, those are just clouds. So you observe your feelings. And you had said this in your own self-reflection, where like you see what’s going on and… I don’t know if these were your exact words, but what I heard you saying was, you would see those feelings, those emotions that you would not wanted to go near. But you didn’t criticize them anymore, or something to that effect. So it’s like, you just see the clouds, “Oh, I’m ashamed today of how I parented. I’m gonna let that pass through because I’m actually something so much bigger. I’m love itself.” And do we wanna be better parents? Yes. Do we wanna be more lit up, make contributions to our community, be more conscious and aware? Yes, this is the essence of how to be loving. We identify with the correct thing, which is our divine nature, as opposed to identifying with our lower nature. And that is what’s life-changing.
Katie: I love the sky metaphor so much because it helps you also realize, even the rain is beautiful and serves a purpose, it nourishes the earth. And even the lightning is important at times and those things aren’t bad, and we would never judge them in the context of the sky, we understand that they all must coexist at different times. But I think it helps change that focus. And one thing I even learned, I firmly believe that words have so much power. And I started learning to speak differently, out loud, and also to myself, and not say, “I am sad,” for instance, or, “I am mad,” I would reframe it as, “I am experiencing sadness.”
Danielle: That’s right.
Katie: Or, “I’m feeling this.” Because I didn’t wanna create an attachment to those things. And even with happiness, I didn’t want that to become my identity, I wanted that to be a thing I was capable of experiencing. And that was really eye-opening for me, with my kids as well, to help them kind of…for me to hold space for their emotions and help them be able to feel hopefully their emotions and also realize those are also still separate from our actions, we still have choice in our actions, even if we’re experiencing a feeling.
Danielle: Brilliant. Yes. And you think about what pattern that is creating for your kids, in terms of healthy patterns, it’s, you’re really teaching them to be the sky, to identify as a higher self. And this comes out of…you know, being able to gift that to your children comes from you having done the work. It’s like you made space for your emotions, you held them, you love them.
And, you know, I often use the metaphor of motherhood, in terms of our own emotions and our states of being, so like, for example, fear, you created that, that fear is your thought baby, your anxiety, your rage, all those things that we tend to push away, they’re actually of our making. And when we realize that we’re the mother of that stuff, then it’s like, you would never intentionally neglect one of your children, you would never try and push them away or say, “You’re not worthy,” or, “You’re not from me,” right?
We have to mother our emotions, we made those, love them, they just want our attention. Your fear, your obsessiveness, whatever, you know, your dark, heavy stuff is, you made it, it just wants to get loved. And when you love it, and stop criticizing it and being ashamed of it, you just say, “You can come in, I have space for you.” We’re still gonna get on with our day, but, you know, you take your fear with you to the grocery store, because you’re capable, you’re amazing, you’re vast, you’re loving, you bring all this stuff with you, and it starts to relax, it starts to chill out a bit, it becomes less of a needy child. And I don’t know if this is the right word, but it begins to behave more. And that’s how you become your own parent.
Katie: Yeah, I think many of us maybe have that experience of having to sort of reparent our own childhood emotions. And I think for moms, especially it’s such valuable work because while our kids do, hopefully, listen a little to what we say, I’ve seen over and over how it plays out, they much more pay attention to what we do. And that has been some of my biggest catalyst for change in my own life was realizing I need to change this also for their sake because they’re paying attention to these patterns. And I can give them all the verbal tools I have to help them, but the best thing I can do for them is to model it in small things, whether it be even just moving my body or spending time outside or doing creative projects. And then they often join me with those or in my words and how I speak about different things or my mindset, like, they pay so much more attention to that.
Danielle: And there’s another level to this. So yes, yes, yes to all of that, they’re watching and they’re sensing. There’s an energetic level to this. So, of course, they’re picking up on all your verbal cues, and they’re watching you do life every day. But they are just little psychic beings, right? Like, you walk into the room in a particular state, they are picking up on that state. If you are in a state of compassion, and gratitude and flowing with life, versus a kind of festering self-criticism, and nothing is good enough. All that stuff gets held in your auric field. I mean, this is…you know, now we’re moving more towards metaphysics, but it’s just like, if you think of all of the thoughts you’re thinking and your emotions, as these little spheres, these little marbles of energy, that are floating around you, that’s what your kids are sensing. That’s what everybody in the world is sensing because we’re energetic beings, with all these little thoughts and ideas, these little mini creations that hover in our space, and then we’re just like thoughts and energies bumping into each other. So it’s all sensed, yeah, by everybody, really.
Katie: Yeah, I’m sure people can think of experiences where someone’s walked into a room who was really upset or afraid, or… and you can sense that immediately. And often I have found myself in those instances being like, “What’s wrong?” Because you can just tell without them saying a word. And it seems like from what I remember, and interacting with my kids, like you said, kids are psychic beings, it’s like, they’re so much more in tune with that. And I know, there’s been brain mapping and studies that say, kids at a very young age exist almost in a version of like an LSD trip, because they’re psychically experiencing the world so differently, and that’s part of how they learn so rapidly when they’re young. But I think it also really speaks to your point that a way to be present for them energetically, and how strongly they can feel that.
Danielle: And, you know, everything…how you just described who we are when we’re children, we get trained out of that. I mean, the social programming to play by the rules, get the right answer, fit in, it just…it beats our sensitivity, our sensing capacity out of us, we get into those boxes of right and wrong, worthy, unworthy, superior, inferior. And the ego mind is constantly measuring, measuring, measuring, whereas children aren’t so much in their ego mind, right, they’re really…when we’re younger, we’re in that state of beingness.
And, of course, there’s so much to develop in terms of consciousness. But, I mean, I talk about this in how to be loving, actually, through a metaphor, where I’m talking about virtue. So virtue, just being higher states of being like, love is not a feeling, love is a virtue. Love is a heightened state of consciousness, which we wanna be that, we wanna speak that and give that, and cook that way and move through the world that way, exist, as you would say.
But what we do in the beginning is, we do the right thing, just like children do the right thing, because they don’t wanna be punished. This is good, this is bad. And that’s really where the conditioning starts, is the world tells us, and unfortunately, it’s…you know, how many of us parents, like, “If you do it this way, you will be loved. If you don’t do it this way, then, you know, there’s repercussions.” So, that’s kind of the child’s level of virtue.
And then the next level we move to is, “Well, I’m gonna do the right thing because I wanna impress people that I respect.” So like, we kind of move into adulthood, and like, you know, we wanna earn favor from our church or our spouse, and that’s healthy, like, identify who you love and honor, and let’s get into harmony with them. That’s good, that’s good. But then there’s this other level, where we move into committing to doing the right thing, wanting to do the loving thing just because it’s love. Love is life. Love is my happiness is connected to your happiness, so I’m gonna be compassionate, and forgiving, and generous. Because we’re all here at the same time. There’s no you, there’s no me, there’s just like, this is what love looks like today. Yeah, that’s the evolution of virtue.
Katie: Yeah. It seems like that begs the natural question of if kids are already more in touch with this and if it’s trained out, how do we help them maintain that as their parents, and also how do we retap in as adults?
Danielle: Well, I think first we have to retap in as adults, right? So it’s just like, you have to go through that unconditioning, like, “What am I? Who am I? Why is this making me angry? Oh, is because I got trained to be angry about this.” “What’s my real self? Oh, my real self is actually really forgiving. I wanna forgive all the time, even though so many people in society say, “Don’t forgive, sue or hold everybody accountable.” But actually, my true nature is forgiving. So we do those things, and we do those things… We do the things to help us realize who we are. And you mentioned an important one, like, we get still, we clean, we meditate, we hang out with loving people. There’s that.
And then I think the kids sense that, feel that, see that, witness it. But really, really, really, the answer is we have to love the children unconditionally. “So, if you are angry, I will love you. If you are a criminal, I will love you. If you want to choose a different faith, I will love you. If you make choices that are so in opposition to how I’ve raised you, I will love you, there is nothing that can interrupt how much I love you.” Because when we start to train them to shift their behavior, you know, they’re feeling something, “Oh, well, you should feel this way,” the messaging is not healthy. The messaging is, “You’re wrong, and you’re getting a…you’re a little bit wrong, and you’re getting a little bit rejected for this.” And that’s when the behavior patterning starts, “I have to be a particular way to be loved.” And then we wake up and we’re 35 or we’re 55 and go, “Wow, I’ve been being the good girl, my whole life.” Or, “I’ve been being the rebel my whole life because that got me attention. It was negative attention, but it was attention.” And we realize, “I’m neither one of those things.” And we figure out who we are at that point.
Katie: And it seems like there is very much a theme of parenting being a great metaphor for learning about ourselves as well. The rebel part definitely resonated with me with what you just said. But I also think of, like I noticed when my kids were young, if the only time they got my undivided attention was when they were acting up, “in some way,” it made sense that they would wanna do that more because they were getting undivided attention. And I realized, “Oh, I can shift this and be present with them all these other times, so that while they still, of course, might experience many emotions, they don’t feel the need to do that just to get attention.”
I also love how you talked about unconditional love kind of being the antidote, which you’re right, I think comes very naturally to mothers and something I tried to tell my kids every day, I feel like I only got half of this growing up, my parents were great parents, but I only heard half of it. But I tell my kids, “I love you unconditionally. There’s nothing you can ever do to take away from that. And there’s nothing you ever have to do or could do to earn that.” Because I felt like at times I did need to earn it.
And then I realized slowly and I’m still learning that while I can tell them that every day, I had to also learn to unconditionally love myself, and that I wasn’t doing that in many, many ways. And that some of the conflicts I would see play out in parenting, for instance, I would look at, you know, a lot of parents think, okay, the opposite of defiance is compliance. But I view those as kind of the same thing of they’re actually…they’re both existing on a power struggle spectrum. And the opposite of those is actually love and connection. And so even though I was able to do that with my kids, I was still trying to, like, compliance, defiance myself into being a certain way. And it was love and connection to myself that ended up being the antidote. So it’s so funny how often as a mom, maybe it’s easier to work these things out out of love for our children. But maybe the lesson they’re teaching us is how to work that out out of love for ourselves.
Danielle: Oh, so juicy, the spectrum of…what did you call it? Defiance and compliance is on a spectrum of what? What did you say?
Katie: They’re both kind of on the power struggle, power…
Danielle: Power struggle, yes, yes, yes, yes. And isn’t that life on Earth? You know, like, everything until we wake up and change the rules and just say like, “How about no rules?” Everything is this power struggle dance. And, you know, that translates so clearly to relationships. Like, I was just having a conversation with a friend who said, you know, they need to figure out…in the past relationships, they weren’t clear about what they wanted. And so they were always at the mercy of the other person’s desires and visions. So, you know, they should get really clear on what they want now. And I said, “No, no, no.” That’s still, you know, as you would say, on a spectrum of power struggle, it’s like, “If I don’t know who I am, then they’re gonna take me over.” No, just know what you want. Because love, because personal clarity, because free will, and then get with someone who wants to dance with your own free will. There’s no tug of war of desire, it’s just like, “I am this, and you’re that. What’s the dance look like?” And that’s parenting too. Yeah. You have a personality, your child incarnates with a very distinct personality. How are you gonna be that together? Yeah.
Katie: Yeah, and that’s beautiful because I feel like it’s, you know, six sample sizes of my own life, each one is so different. And I always thought, it’s funny that there would be books about, like, one method to parent, because I don’t know, I’m like, I feel like you figure out that child at that specific time, and then you have figured out only that, like, they’re also…they’re evolving constantly. And so I’ve actually been writing parenting thoughts, and they’re much more along the lines of this adaptive system, that does feel more like a dance because it’s, I’m constantly changing, they’re constantly changing, they’re all different, what works on one is gonna have a completely different outcome with another. And more importantly, I want a relationship with each of them, which requires seeing them where they are, not trying to fit them to, like, my parenting model.
Danielle: And, you know, that adaptive system that you’re using with your kids applies to our own healing. Like, I think in this space of wellness and personal development, what happens a lot is we find these things that work for us, it’s like, “Okay, this particular meditation helps me feel more centered, more balanced, or this supplement or this workout regime, or whatever it is.” And we really do get results. But then we get…we don’t adapt, we get hooked on that system.
And, you know, some of my most powerful work working with…you know, being blessed to work with energy healers, or a spiritual director, or just like really wise friends is like, “Okay, what really worked for a year or has worked for millions of people, it’s not appropriate today, your body is different, you’ve evolved, your relationship is different. It’s a different season, the world is a different place. So what’s the new meditation? What’s the new decor? What’s the new prayer? What’s the new workout regime?” And you move.
And my life has taught me that, well, A, adapt, but also, I see a bigger pattern here, which is the adaptation is always going towards what’s the simplest thing to do? What’s the simplest? So, maybe there’s a change required, but it’s like, “All right, what’s the simplest supplement program?” Of course, there’s times for complexity. But that simplicity is love. And I could see that with my own kid too, just like he never needed much, right? It’s like, just needs attention, just needs a really basic conversation. I don’t need to get hyper-philosophical. We don’t actually need to go on a trip. Just simple, simple love.
Katie: Yeah, I’ve had a woman named Amy McCready on the podcast before, who explained the science of how kids actually…we often think, or at least feel maybe mom guilt of we should be spending all of our time with them, entertaining them, focused on them. And she’s like, “Actually, the science says they’re very simple, even 10 to 20 minutes of just one on one focus time per day is enough for them to fill that cup and feel connected.” And she talks a lot in her approach about how them feeling that connection makes so many other aspects of parenting much more simple because they feel like they can come to us, they feel connected to us, they don’t feel like they have to do things to get our attention.
And it seems like there’s an emerging theme in this episode of that modeling first, of course, and that what we work on in ourselves is much easier than to impart to our kids. And so I’d love to go through some of your suggestions that I’ve read about along some of these lines and get a little bit more granular, starting with maybe, how do we start to curate and choose higher quality thoughts and then by nature of that also help our kids do the same?
Danielle: First, you have to start realizing that you’re in control of your thoughts, that you’re actually… This is gonna sound so basic, but it’s like, you are thinking something right now. What is that? And how did that get into your mind? Where does that come from? Is that some program from your parents or from some self-help book or something? And then you entertain the idea that the quality of your thoughts is gonna affect the quality of your life. Higher vibration thoughts like lovingness and patience and generosity and positivity. Positivity being not like a spiritual bypass of everything’s great, but like, there’s something meaningful happening here, that’s high vibration positivity.
Commit to those and know that you will probably have to intentionally choose a better thought, a higher quality thought, what I would just call a loving thought, a zillion times a day. So you’re gonna think, “I could be a better mother, I’m not a great mother, my butt doesn’t fit in these jeans, I’m behind on life, I should be farther.” All those things. It’s almost endless. Most of us live in this programmed, you know, endless critical loop. Immediately meet those negative thoughts with a positive thought.
Here’s the characteristics of a loving thought, you actually have to believe it. So don’t tell yourself something you don’t believe, this is the downside of positive affirmations in the wellness space, like, let’s use body, for example. You could say…positive thought you would give yourself is, “I’m in excellent health.” You know, that’s very that kind of pushy affirmation vibe. When your brain knows, your mind knows you’re not currently in excellent health, you don’t really believe that thought. But you could believe the thought that I am capable of healing. Just go with that. To have a critical thought about your body, you just say, “I’m capable of healing.” You might have to do that over and over and over and over again.
And then you’re gonna create new neural pathways, you’re gonna create new grooves, new habits of thinking, and then those higher vibrational thoughts are gonna get easier to choose. And then it’s gonna affect your choices. Like, if you’re just telling yourself throughout the day, “I’m capable of healing,” I bet you start eating differently. I bet you get online tonight at some point, and you just find the right practitioner. I bet you have this magical conversation with someone else in a mom group, about some supplement that’s working for them or a class or something. Because the energy of your thoughts is radiating throughout your life, and our thoughts are magnetic, right? Energy follows thoughts.
The other characteristic of loving thoughts is that they’re not rebellious in nature. So to use your concept, there isn’t a power struggle with loving thoughts. So you see this a lot in the wellness space with body positivity, is you get this kind of, like, you know, someone’s saying, “I am so beautiful.” But you can feel this kind of, you know, screw you, kind of energy behind that. And that’s really just coming from that wounded place of, like, that kind of pushback. Whereas like a truly loving thought, it’s the same thought, “I’m so beautiful.” But it comes from this heart recognition of like, “Everybody’s beautiful. There’s so many things about me that are beautiful, how kind I am, the color of my eyes, whatever.”
So just be really careful when you’re choosing the thought. It’s not a pushback. It’s really kind of got this relaxedness to it. It’s probably universal, in its energy. And then you just go…you just go girl, and you just choose those loving thoughts every time a negative one comes up. You see the negative one, you don’t say, “God, I’m a loser for thinking that I’m this, that, or the other.” You just see it. It’s the cloud. “Oh, that’s the cloud, okay, on the sky. I’m gonna choose love.”
Katie: Yeah, I noticed that as well of when I had a Hashimoto’s diagnosis in the past, I had to shift my languaging from…I stopped saying, “I am sick.” And I started just saying, “I am healing.” And that alone made such a big difference in how I felt toward those things and how I felt so much more empowered to change those things. And it became not a resistance to, or having to punish myself into doing these things. It became an excitement to want to do those things out of love to nourish my body, not to, like, deprive my body of the things that currently weren’t working so well.
I also had phrasing around like, “Oh, I’ll be happy when…” Or, “If only I was this size, then I would be happy.” And I learned to kind of flip that on its head and reprogram some of those statements as well. And I also noticed that anytime I was using the word should, it was a good indicator that it was some kind of programming and not necessarily what was actually coming from me, and it’s something I learned to be very aware of using very carefully in language because I think words like “I am”, have a lot of power. And should, is a good teacher of…at least a good indicator of maybe looking at where that came from because it perhaps didn’t come from you.
And I love… I think often it’s easy to think of these subtle changes and think like, “Oh, those seem like they wouldn’t make a big difference.” And I realized often, those little subtle changes are the ones that over time makes such a big difference.
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I’m glad you mentioned healing as well, because I think a lot of people listening, maybe have a health struggle of some sort or something in their life they’re trying to work out. So what are some of the ways we can create more of these conditions for healing in our lives?
Danielle: I’m gonna go big on this one. God, life, the divine, the mother, whatever term works for you. Life does not want you to suffer. Life is not asking you to prove how tough you are, how resilient you are, how strong, no. Life is gonna do that anyway, because we’re here, like, in this dimension. So what would you want for your children? Again, it’s so great to have a conversation, you know, that’s parent-focused because parenting is such a powerful metaphor for self-love. What would you want for your children? Do you want them to stay in a toxic relationship? Do you want them to put themselves in experiences of positions of being abused or neglected? Do you want them to be eating food that’s making them sick? No. Your job as the parent, your joy, actually, as the parent on most days, you know, is to create conditions of wellness for your kids. That’s your job for yourself. And, you know, every mystic will tell you that we have free will. Life does not want you to suffer. But because you have free will, life is not going to intervene in your choices. We are conscious individuating beings that are all connected. We get to design this life, not entirely, but hugely.
And so when someone…you know, this comes up a lot, when you have conversations with women about leaving abusive relationships, or quitting jobs, especially women who consider themselves to be on like this wellness, personal development path, they’re just like, “Have I been as loving as I can be? Is this about learning boundaries? Should I stay longer so that the transformation comes?” And it’s just like, “Is this healing for you? If it’s healing for you to stay, and you becoming…you’re learning how to love yourself more, and how to love the other person more and you’re actually expanding and becoming more well, absolutely stay.”
You can break that down a little arguments. It’s like, if you are more patient, can you turn this argument into like, an intimate conversation, and you stay, yeah. But if it is wearing you down, if it’s too hard on your nervous system, if it’s so toxic, that it just becomes…feels like it’s impossible to reach for a loving thought, then you gotta peace out. If the food is making you sick, if the lifestyle is repressing your vitality, well, you got to make a shift. So those are how we create conditions for healing. And it has to be… I’m a little reticent to use this term, it has to be you first, you got to take care of yourself first. The reason I’m reticent with that term is because some people go a little too far with that, it actually prevents us from actually being really loving and flexible and kind of putting up with people stuff sometimes because we can, because…just let them work their crap out. We’re big enough to accommodate their bad moods for a while. Yeah, we can do it.
Katie: That’s a good balance, a good reminder, I actually have two small tattoos on my hand. On my left hand, I have a tiny heart, and on my right hand, I have a tiny question mark. My two reminders every day of, in every moment, like, how can I be the most loving? And also, how can I always ask better questions? And those are kind of like my two little guides on my hand.
Danielle: Oh, you’re good. You need to write a book.
Katie: Yeah. I think one’s brewing for sure. Yeah. But a couple other things that you have written about that I’ve seen that I would love to bring up because I think they help us shift some paradigms. The first is I’ve seen you write that the days of self-centered bucket list are over.
Danielle: Over.
Katie: I’d love for you to explain that because I think that might sound really like harsh to some people at first. And I think it is important to understand just because I think for so long, we like that was such a focus and, like, we were all gonna work really hard to do these things, we could have these bucket list items. And I agree with you, the reasons for this, but I’d love for you to explain it.
Danielle: Yeah, this is just what I wanna say, “Enough, it’s done.” Look where the self-centered bucket list has gotten us. It’s like, the planet is pillaged of her resources. We’re hyper-materialistic and consuming, which just leads to adrenal fatigue and houses full of stuff that we don’t really need. And still in relationships that aren’t as fulfilling, and it just goes on and on and on. Because we’re just like looking out for ourselves. And sometimes we’re looking out for ourselves, because we’re trying to fill this hole, it’s…the goals are coming from our unhealed self, our wounded self, our own inner child, like, “I need to acquire this so that I can feel worthy.” “I need to accomplish this, wear this, or be married to that, or whatever, so that everybody can see that I’m actually worthy, I’m actually great.” And we can see where that’s gonna go. Like, you get there and you find out, you still got your stuff and you really just have to love yourself no matter who, what, where.
So, self-centered has just created a lot of problems, and it will continue to do so. We heal in relationship, we heal in community. I mean, even this conversation, everything you’re saying is me loving my children makes me a better person. Love has me expand, and I direct my love vastly towards my kids. So, what if…? You still get to want everything that you wanted in the beginning. But what if our bucket lists and our vision boards and all of our goals were not just about our happiness? There are kind of two other layers to this, which is we ask ourselves, “How does me getting what I want help or harm other people?” I mean, really, we want goals that are saturated in goodwill, “When I manifest this, I will be peaceful, vibrant, prosperous, and I’m going to share that in every possible way. I’m gonna be a better mom, I’m gonna be more fun to be with, I’m gonna be, you know, I was like, just way more entertaining in my relationship, I’m gonna be better in my community, I’ll be able to make some donations, right?”
So there’s that. How does your happiness uplift the happiness of others? Or not? And then can you have aspirations that are really explicitly about healing other people? What if we all had bucket lists or vision boards, that had images of a lush green Amazon rainforest, or have other happy families, like images of content neighborhoods or diversity, and it’s like we’re taking other people along with us? That’s the game changer, I think.
Katie: And probably intuitively, people rings true of how good those things feel. Like, if you think about the feelings of that, it, of course, feels great. And I think that focus of expanding from the most natural, easy place, which is our family, outward, I think also just like you get to expand to those good feelings. There’s no negative, it’s only positive at that point. And it springboards into another thing you’ve talked about, which is I think you worded it the call for gentleness being counterculture. And I would love for you to explain this one a little bit more too.
Danielle: I’ve just gotten more gentle over time. And I used to really identify like as a baller, ambitious, get it done. And I have those capacities for sure, I just direct them elsewhere. And I noticed that the teachers and the leaders that I respect the most, they all tend to be gentle. It’s like there’s a softening that’s come with their life experience. And it’s in that gentleness that, you know, you can love all of those parts of yourself that you’re ashamed of, and you can love other people. This is really the essence of inclusiveness, which is really counterculture, because look how divided and polarized we are, like, everything right now, like, yeah, you know, the Queen’s death, and medical choices and bodily freedom, feminism, all of it are just becoming one more excuse for us to be more opinionated, and therefore more divided, like, it just like picking sides and being super vocal about what side we’re on. And it’s just…it’s so harmful, it is so detrimental to the nervous system, to our bodily system, to our families.
And if we could just be more gentle in our tone, oh, my God, just that alone will change the world. Being more gentle in how we listen, just like, listen a little more softly, there’s probably something you have in common with this other person, there might be pain and unhealed thing that’s driving their own righteousness, just a little more gentle, just more gentle with our own shortcomings and struggles. You know, I’ve been dealing with the same themes my whole life, most of us will, it’s just there’s a very finite amount of time. How many issues can we work out, you’re coming with like three or four. And those are your pain themes for your life, you just get to heal those a little more every day.
It’s like, you know…nobody really changes dramatically, our behavior, hopefully, can change dramatically. But you look at your children, this is one thing I learned about my son, I wish somebody would have told me this. The personality he had in the first few weeks of being an infant, he’s the same person. I kept waiting, I’m like, “Oh, he’s gonna change, he’s gonna be less this and more that.” And nope, that’s him when he was born. Just like, just fully honor the soul when they get here because that’s the divine DNA, it’s right there from the beginning.
Katie: And on that note, are there any other ways that we can help teach and truly be in a state of loving acceptance and unconditional love for our kids, especially our families, but also everyone we meet and ourselves? Are there any other things that you recommend? I know there’s more in the book than we can cover in this hour. So I’ll link to that in the show notes. But anything else practical that you would suggest for people who are trying to make these shifts?
Danielle: I have never recommended this before. But the most practical, economic, powerful thing is hugging. If you can physically hug the child, the person, any kind of, you know, appropriate loving touch, there’s that. But also with our own selves, I will often do this gesture, and I consider it like a spiritual practice where, you know, I’ll be feeling, let’s just say, you know, some anxiety. And I just see it and I see it in front of me and I just bring it into my heart center, bring it into the heart chakra. And I just hold it there and breathe. It’s a powerful…sense of really powerful message to your psyche. And breath is really powerful, really breath and hugging. That’s it.
I mean, sometimes when I’m in a real bind with someone, you know, I can be really easily agitated. I think most people talk too much, which is ironic. But, you know, I have a podcast…I’m here on a podcast, I talk for a living. But often I’m just like, “It’s enough. I got it, I got your point,” you know. And I just breathe in those times where…because I wanna stop the judgment. I don’t wanna be sitting there thinking just enough of you. I wanna be…I wanna embody love no matter what. And if they need more time to tell me what they wanna tell me. So I box breathe. And this is really great for moments of impatience parenting, so you inhale for four counts, just 1, 2, 3, 4, you hold it for four, exhale for four, hold it for four, and repeat. And if you could just do one round of that, it’s gonna help your nervous system just chill out. If you could just do three rounds of that, that’s great. You could do it while you’re changing a diaper. Inhaling four times, hold it, exhale, hold it, repeat.
Katie: That’s such a great tool. And I think often the power of breath is so underestimated for how much it really impacts our nervous system almost instantly. And also something that I found with still pretty young kids is helpful for them if you can get them into a space of just breathing with you, even if they’re not consciously wanting to do it. Even if you as the parent start regulating your breathing, their nervous system will sort of respond and match you. And not only are you helping your own system calm down, but they will respond to that as well. Like, we talked about them being so alert to energy, they respond really quickly to that.
And I know there’s so, so much more that you go into in your books, all of your works. And I’m gonna put a lot of links in the show notes for you guys listening at wellnessmama.fm. So you can keep learning from Danielle. But a couple of last questions that I will say just to respect your time today, the first being if there is a book or a number of books other than your own, that have profoundly impacted your life, and if so, what they are and why?
Danielle: I’m gonna give you a couple of books because we’re talking about motherhood. So for everybody who’s a new mama, I read a book called “The Continuum Concept” that just blew my mind open about how kids were raised in different tribes around the world, which really supported all of my theories, my leanings, really, towards attachment parenting. I mean, this was almost 20 years ago now because my son is 18. But all the early stuff with Dr. Sears was so helpful. He talked about a fourth trimester. And yeah, that too was really aligned with how I wanted to love as a mom. Other books, “Women who Run with the Wolves,” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés really helped me. I felt like she held my hand, as I walked over this threshold of becoming a young woman to like, “I’m a woman now.” And it was really the ideology that I started to live into, not age or any event. Yeah.
Katie: I will link to those as well. I second your recommendation on…I haven’t read “The Continuum Concept” yet, but the others for sure. And I loved “Women who Run with the Wolves.” Definitely recommend that if you guys haven’t read it.
And lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to one of the many things we’ve talked about or entirely unrelated that you just think women needed to hear?
Danielle: Your power is sitting right behind what you’re afraid of. And so if you go towards that, let’s say, you know, you’re afraid of losing control. Just look at that. Just hold that fear, that very particular fear in your heart, have a conversation with it, be friendly with the stuff that you are afraid of. And you will find out how powerful you are, you will find out, like, you are supported, you are wise, you have the capacity to love infinitely, that the universe is loving you at all times, just got to be still and see it. And you can just pass that love on and on and on and on.
Katie: That’s a perfect place to wrap up for today. It has been such a joy to get to chat with you and to share your work. And so there’ll be many links to you in the show notes, people can continue to learn from you. But thank you so much for your time and for being here today.
Danielle: It’s so beautiful. Thank you, Katie.
Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today, we’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.