SELF MADE launches on 7/11 + you're invited.

aka: Baby Bird is finally leaving the nest.

✍🏽 ***SOLD OUT (can’t wait!): June writing workshop is live! Register here (Sunday, June 26, 10am - 12pm PST).

Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.

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Hella fresh

In 2008—The Great Recession looming unbeknownst to me on the horizon—I was a year out of undergrad, paying $500/month rent and selling study abroad programs for a now-defunct cultural exchange company. After that contract ended, I turned down three (count ‘em, three) job offers, and took off for Chiang Mai, Thailand. Eight thousand dollars was the most money I’d ever had at one time, and somehow that modest commission (plus the bit of money I made teaching English to Thai teenagers for a couple seasons) carried me through an entire year.

I came back to San Francisco in late spring 2009, and, well, nary was there a job offer in sight. Word of mouth pointed me in the direction of a receptionist position for an acoustical engineering firm downtown, and they hired me. Forty-thousand dollars/year, ninety minute lunch breaks, and full benefits to answer some phones, type things up on a typewriter (!), and play on the internet.

This was a cushy place to land, and I am so grateful. But I knew it was temporary, and from Day 1, my mind was running. What would be next for me? I had a vague idea that I wanted to work for myself, and so I started dreaming in that direction.

I started yoga training in earnest, convinced I would become a yoga instructor like the teachers I was obsessed with. Eventually I left the receptionist job and started working part time at a clinical skin-care studio to “focus on teaching yoga.” In reality, San Francisco was (is) saturated with yoga teachers and not *one* person was like, yo, keep that cushy job, the chances of you doing this full time and making enough money to subsist on more than one burrito every two days are slim to none.

These were the Magical Thinking years, the paddling around in circles years, and I bounced around from job to job always with the background dream to Own My Own Business.

Here’s a list of other avenues I entertained on my quest to become an entrepreneur:

• Yoga Instructor

• Food truck owner/operator (this one makes me LAUGH)

• Nutrition Coach

• CrossFit Coach

• Writing teacher

All of this to say: I have been longing for this moment for over a decade.

On July 11th, I am launching SELF MADE, my 1:1 coaching practice + online community for people in recovery (or curious about recovery) which is to say, people like me, people like YOU, all of us who are working to shed ourselves of societal programming and to step boldly into a life of our design.

Here are the words my brilliant branding friend had me hone in on:

REBELLIOUS
CREATIVE
RECOVERY
COMMUNITY
CO-OP
(!)

I’ve guided hundreds of individuals through the process of creating a recovery practice of their own making and held space for thousands more in group settings. Walking alongside someone as they take responsibility for their life and bearing witness to the subsequent transformation(s) is the greatest honor of my life and I love my work.

SELF MADE is an evolution of the work. My greatest curiosity these days is how to foster and deepen relationships and communities over time as our practices and our lives/identities/hopes/dreams/desires/circumstances continue to unfold.

Community is what saved me, and is my foremost value in everything everything that I do/believe/create. Working individually can be vital (and I’m FUCKING THRILLED to be expanding my skills as a coach via this training starting in the fall), and, in the words of bell hooks in “All About Love: New Visions-”

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”

The work we do at SELF MADE is to fortify our practices so that we can sustain ourselves through the long game of healing, self-discovery, deprogramming social constructs, dismantling shit systems, learning to choose things that make us feel better rather than worse, navigating all the things life will inevitably throw our way, and, most important of all, to cultivate the capacity to create a world that works for all of us.

And before you get nervous, and think, ayyyyy, am I ready for this? I’m here to remind you (I will never stop reminding you) that we get to do all this with other people, who I promise are the most gorgeous humans you will ever meet, who will make you laugh until you piss, who will wipe your tears when life does its life thing, and who get you, the real you, in a way that you have always wanted to be known but didn’t know could be possible.

I’m inviting you into a new way of being.

So: STAY TUNED. In the meantime, check out the About page to get a sense of how this space is about to radically shift.

I’ll be opening enrollment for 1:1 coaching on July 11th for start dates the week of August 1. If you have questions before that oh my goodness, please just hit reply and let me know—as always, I love hearing from you.

Last: a note to you longtime readers and my original Recovery Club humans. I want to sincerely thank you. I would have never had the guts to go for this (and for once I’m not being hyperbolic!) if not for your support and care. I love you and I’m forever grateful for you.

All my love forever,

Dani

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From the archives ~ this time last year:

⭐️Discomfort Means It’s Working

⭐️New Thoughts

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SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and to step boldly into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA. 

Click here to learn about working with me 1:1 (coming soon!). Check out the “About” page for more information about our online community and to become a member.

You can also support this work by pressing the little heart button on these posts, sharing this newsletter with others, and letting me know how this newsletter helps you. 

Thank you.