Hi, I’m Dani.
Writer, facilitator, recovery coach, lifelong journal-filler, and the woman behind Write From Here.
I believe writing can help us hear ourselves beneath all the noise — not because the page magically has the answers, but because sometimes it gives us enough space to notice what we already know.
This is the work I’ve been finding my way toward for most of my life.
I’ve been filling journals since I was ten.
I don’t remember exactly what made me start. I just know that writing quickly became the place I went when I needed somewhere to put everything happening inside my head.
And I kept going back.
Writing followed me through growing up, relationships, career changes, addiction and recovery, grief, caregiving, and more than one version of starting over. There are boxes of old journals in my house that contain versions of me I barely recognize anymore, alongside others I can still feel sitting just beneath the surface.
For a long time, I thought journaling helped because it gave me somewhere to figure things out. Now I think it gave me somewhere to listen.
Writing became less about figuring myself out and more about building a relationship with myself I could trust.
Over the years, I started noticing that the most useful writing rarely happened when I sat down determined to solve my life problems. It happened when I slowed down enough to notice what kept tugging at me and got curious about it.
I learned to follow one thread instead of trying to untangle the whole knot at once. To ask better questions. To let different parts of me have their say. And to stop looking outside myself for the “right” answer.
That’s what restorative writing means to me now: creating enough space to hear your own voice a little more clearly. Sometimes that leads to an answer. Sometimes a better question. Sometimes simply seeing something differently.
The goal isn’t for me to tell you what your story means. It’s to help you hear what you think it means.
I’ve spent my life working with stories.
Professionally, that’s looked like six years as an award-winning journalist, followed by work as a writer, editor, communications professional, recovery coach, book editor, and facilitator. Different roles, but the same things keep showing up: curiosity, careful listening, good questions, and helping people find language for what matters to them.
Personally, life these days happens in a tiny Northern Ontario town with my husband, our two dogs Hank & Ayla and our ginger cat, Gonzo. I’m three years sober, happiest somewhere in the woods, perpetually curious, and still very much practicing everything I talk about here.
And this is where I am now.
These days, I’m bringing all of those threads together through Write From Here: writing circles, restorative writing practices, one-to-one support, and spaces for people to explore their own stories with a little more curiosity and a little less pressure to have everything figured out.
I’m still writing my way through my own life, too. Still asking questions. Still following threads. Still learning what it looks like to trust my own voice as things change.
Maybe we can practice together.
