I love words. Always have. Always will.
I love that when words are combined in certain patterns they create a greater-than-whole feeling to empower our lives. Reveling in a beloved symphony of syllables is the deliciousness of word-smithing orchestration. And there, I get carried away!
Though most people know me as a life coach specializing in Somatic Money coaching, for me, all aspects of my work return to “How do we language?” How do we identify the words of our lives with our bodies for expression, leverage, excavation, exploration, emphasis, emergence and meaningful life path? I’m looking for words that land in your mind and then expand into moving you, woo-ing you into greater living through your body, your soul, your space. I’m looking for the words that make your toes tingle, spine zing, and core shift. I’m talking paradigms dancing into new frameworks for a refreshing viewpoint. That’s the power of words.
My background? I began noodling with words early on in high school, doodling in my notebooks and playing with word phrases. It was my English teacher from senior year who located my literary creativity and encouraged my development of thought, logic and imagination with words.
Professionally, yes, I did graduate from traditional word training with a degree in Journalism from Indiana University’s Ernie Pyle Hall. During that time I also gravitated into creative poetry writing and integrated Natalie Goldberg’s pivotal Writing Down The Bones into my work. Secretly, at that time, I also experienced what I called “creative writing sessions with the light angels.” These were times when I was studying in the great halls of the IU Library or Student Union and I felt myself enveloped in powerful balls of light, then something or someone else would invisibly take my hand and begin to move it across my pages with pen and draw out words that moved through me — words that were much greater and more than I was myself on my own. After these events left me, I’d sit in my chair, feeling myself dripping in light and look down at the pages to see heavenly passages written in the same notebooks as my economics or environmental studies or even my logic classes. I told no one about this while I tried and failed to gain admission into MFA Creative Writing Programs in Alaska, Iowa and Indiana.
And so, after a brief spell in trying to make professional writing stick in my life with freelance and several journalism internships and a handful of half-hearted submissions, my writing went underground into my journals. I see now I wasn’t strong enough to know how to fight for myself in the greater world. I was, however, lucky enough for a momentary writing mentor in Journalism who encouraged curiosity, showed the precision of unpacking thought, celebrated the glory of words as a real thing, and required rudimentary grammar to help me with my craft.
As I continued to explore my writing in my journals, I drew inspiration from the gritty wisdom of Maya Angelou and John Mellencamp’s poetry and song. I held the love of words from The House on Mango Street and Gary Snyder’s soul beats from the many poetry books I found in the library stacks at Indiana University. I also had 1980’s talk radio KOA 850 out of Denver filling my soul with the stories and philosophies of icon Peter Boyles who hosted favorites Ric Masten and cowboy poet Baxter Black. It was Andrea Van Steenhouse who gave me my first psychology wisdoms and Scott Hastings and Dave Logan’s sports humor kept me in stitches. That’s what set my sail in the late 80’s and 90’s.
Off The Beaten Path. The synchronicity of my creative writing met, in a pivotal moment in 2001, with a woman who became my spiritual mentor. Linda, an accountant by trade, and a closet mystic by night, she was the one who perceptively identified my writing gift as the deeper insight of channeling. This news did precisely what it needed to: It freaked me out. Yet, I was hooked. Sure enough, given time, research and experience, the deep vein of my writing was sitting in my greater intuitive and psychic gifts — the lighted automatic writing visits from the angels was no accident. And no college class, professor or editor could have ever revealed that.
Avoiding Publication. And so, I bumped along for a long time, a VERY long time with my writing. I wrote as I felt compelled and shared my words when I knew it was right and reveled in great writing of other authors. The oddity is that for as much as I love writing and words, I never found my footing in the publishing world. For a long time I felt my words were too precious and raw to merit risking being “out there.” I needed my written word for my own personal emotional survival as my life careened through layers of trauma, adventure and deep change.
Then, as I developed, I noticed my writing style regularly leaned in directions that never fit with predetermined genres. I was simultaneously too spiritually-conscious for main stream publications and too edgy for the oft-required fluffiness of consciousness writing. (What? You mean we can’t cuss and be spiritual?!) The brief times I attempted publishing my work, either in print or blog, had me running back to my private fences of FaceBook.
Until now.
Along The Learning Curve Of Life. Since 2019, more and more people have commented, “Wow, you are a really good writer. You changed my mind. You made me feel something. You connected details I never saw.” The growing wave of comments, after several decades of practicing my craft in private, has encouraged me to bring my special brand of writing back to public space.
I offer an odd combination of spiritually conscious insight, plucked of fluff, given a backbone and served up with the reality of bits of dark humor and edgy inspiration. It’s what helps me keep my sanity in a rapidly changing world while we all experience the learning curve of life.
You may find the most polished archive of my pieces here at this website, paired with my voice in podcasts at https://learningcurveoflife.podbean.com/
If you want to stay up with my live feeds, you may find them at my personal Facebook page at Dana Stovern and Facebook at LearningCurveofLife.
I’m also on Instagram @LearningCurve88 and Twitter at @LearningCurve88. I hope you join me at one of these live channels to stay abreast of my latest work.
And my other work, the one where I’m a body-based money relationship coach? That can be found at www.somaticmoney.com. Please check it out!
Thank you for being here!
Dana Stovern
March 2022