Hi, I’m Danielle.
I’m a word lover, a culinary enthusiast, a traveler, a curious observer, a multi-faceted creative/entrepreneur, a student of the senses, a champion of story, and an advocate for things that bring life, health and connection.
What’s this Substack about?
Welcome to my new bi-monthly journal and home for my creative expression!
Here you'll find themes and topics exploring and supporting questions like:
What replenishes our sense of health or life?
How do we understand and alchemize emotion?
Where to look for missing ingredients for fermenting our experiences into a biotic medicine?
Basically, I am interested in how we survive. How we make an art of life, even the parts we didn't choose. And, how we regain agency when we feel like we have lost control.
Brief Backstory:
I grew up in California and Northern Idaho, the daughter of a pastor in a chaotically religious home. I started college at 24, when I could apply for the FAFSA on my own, deferred by my parents' disapproval and their refusal to supply what was needed for aid. I studied furiously, graduating with pride and highest honors, alongside a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design and Media Art, three years later.
While waiting to begin college, I lived in France, Shanghai, and Singapore, with the privilege of traveling (and eating) many places near and far, in between. An international pre-requisite education, of sorts, for which I am grateful for the privileges.
For the last (almost) ten years, since graduating, I've split my time between New York City, Brooklyn, and New York’s Hudson Valley, where I am currently growing an herb and flower farm with my husband.
I’m passionate about a lot, especially emotion and food… The way those things have carried me! Aside— color, sensation, memory, curiosity, inspiration, and story. I am always so greatly impacted by the way we find our way home to a life that feels whole.
These passions have been essential in surviving things like breast cancer, multiple sexual traumas, religious oppression and abuse, a house fire, a divorce, alongside the handful of other terrible and amazing things that occurred there between in this blessed little thing called life.
What I do:
With a resume as a graphic designer, previously designing logos and brand materials, I like to joke, I've somehow become a professional “homemaker.” With my partner, I‘ve successfully renovated, designed, and developed 3 properties in the Hudson Valley.
Our latest work involves a slow-growing herb and flower farm + stay called Field of Seasons in Elizaville, NY and a hand-poured organic therapeutic body oil benefitting survivors called Swanskin.
Beginning summer of 2024, we'll also be starting our next home improvement project in Andalucia, Spain.
Why subscribe?
Free subscribers will receive a poetic bi-weekly journal and update much like my Instagram posts. These will go out with the full and new moons. Moons over mixed feelings.
Paid subscribers will receive the above with bi-weekly recipes, explorations in color, texture, flavor, sensation, emotion, the body, and the seasons, plus access to occasional travel guides, seasonal gift guides, entertaining suggestions, beauty and wellness tips, our resource toolbox, and Q&A’s.
Paid subscribers will also be invited to join me as I share about beginning fertility treatments in Spain (as a breast cancer survivor), while continuing work on the book proposal for my memoir and growing the herb and flower farm in NY.
If you've enjoyed my content on Instagram, I sincerely appreciate your support here on Substack. Your contribution will directly support my journey as both a writer and a farmer, in addition to supporting my work advocating for cancer and trauma survivors.
Community
Joining me here, you’re not just subscribing to a substack, you are partnering with me in championing health, honesty, life, and community.
We take care of ourselves, better, together, so I am beginning this community with the aim it will be an inspiring place to look for and exchange resources, tools and encouragements that support and provide care and creativity. This will be a space to nurture and nourish, inspire and engage the spirit and senses.
With Much Gratitude! Thank you.
I’m so excited to share these moments with you. May this newsletter inspire you and make you feel more connected to yourself, your story, your environment, your food, your community, your senses, and sense of safety. You are not alone, and you are loved.
XO
Danielle
