Divorce, Drinking and Dating

by Danielle Prahl

  As I mentioned, I don’t think this person is bad or rude or wrong or any of those things. There just comes a time when we realize who stands for our betterment, and clearly she and I just don’t stand for that in each other. She works in some sort of drug counseling, so perhaps that’s her go-to explanation, but I was done dealing with other people’s problems. I was tired of the bullshit. And, you know what, after that, the strangest thing happened. Absolutely nothing.

  I finished my cry fest and flew home the next day to return to work. It would be many more months before I sorted through all my bullshit, but I was happy that I could finally feel feelings, that I was human. I felt lighter somehow. I still had so much pain and destruction in my body from that event, but some of it had broken free in my whirlwind breakdown and gotten outside of me. Even though I surely scared my parents half to death, I think it took all of these moments and being in a safe environment, for it to actually bubble up and break free from where I had suppressed it all. Now, healing could finally start on some level.

  Chapter 21:

  A New Perspective

  I used to base my worth off whether or not another human being found me to be cool, or deemed me worthy of their friendship or attraction. But I’ve realized that worth has nothing to do with these things. Every human being on this planet is born valuable. You have more value than you will ever know, because even if you could grasp a small percentage of how valuable you are, you would own the freakin’ world and all of your dreams along with them. You are SO valuable that you cannot mentally comprehend it. This is why playing small and putting up with people, situations, and jobs that don’t suit you are such a waste of time.

  This revelation hit me recently. Sir and I had talked extensively about how I wanted my own family—not that I don’t consider his son a part of that, but I wanted to be a mom. I looked around at my friends who had kids and the milestones they had been through, and looked back on my life. Sure, I’ve eaten at fancy restaurants in countries all over the world, partied at the best night nightclubs, VIP this and that, cool yadda yadda. I had never been sure that I wanted to be a parent, but I started feeling the pull toward eventually being a mom. Sir told me he would be honored for me to have his babies, which even though he already had one, was a sweet compliment.

  After a tumultuous few weeks with him (being a step parent and sharing your partner with someone is hard and requires the other person to work on themselves A LOT), I went inward and asked for a sign about where I was supposed to go, big-picture-wise, in my life. I woke up in the morning feeling all over the place. The past week, I’d felt really up and down emotionally, which wasn’t the norm for me. I was beyond exhausted. I took a shower and started gagging out of nowhere—not throwing up, just gagging.

  Sir and I went to grab lunch across the street, and I felt so thirsty. He said, “I bet you anything you’re pregnant.” I wasn’t sure but my body felt different than usual, so it was possible. We went to Target and bought a pregnancy test. I went home and took it, and as the two pink lines showed up, I looked at Sir to see how he would react. His response blew me away. With tears in his eyes, he hugged me and said, “You will be the best mom. The best mom. From here on out, whatever you need, you tell me, and I’ll do it. It’s not about me anymore.” I was shaking. I was unsure if I was ready to be a mom. I was unsure that Sir could handle the juggling act of being a parent again. I was nervous about having a child with someone who had one already. All the new things parents experienced together for the first time would not be “new” to him. Would everything my baby did be compared to his past life by those around him? Would everything I did as a mother be compared to his past? I didn’t care about that stuff, but I certainly didn’t want to hear about it my whole life.

  I am my own person, and I do things in relation to my beliefs. Pregnancy was a whole other journey that perhaps I’ll write a book about another day. Especially as an unwed mother, I can’t tell you how alone I felt at times. Going through the journey was not only isolating but difficult for me, because my partner had been there and done that already. There were these sweet, incredible moments, sure, but the best one was truly just having her. She blew my world into a pile of glitter and filled my life with love I had never truly known. She taught me what true and unconditional love is.

  When my daughter, Vail, was born, I realized what it means to have value. Her only skills on this earth as a newborn were using the bathroom in a diaper, eating, and crying, yet she was and is still the most magnificent and valuable thing I have ever seen. Her very being radiates with the miracle that this life is. I think of some of the ways I have treated myself, or lowered my standards or settled or put up with things that didn’t suit me, and I wonder why. I contemplate when I look at her why it took me so long to decide to become a mom. If my mom felt the wonders of me the way I feel the wonders of her, I can’t imagine how hurtful it must have been for her to perceive me making choices that were so subpar. And, yet, at the time I thought it was all I could do, what I had to do, or “okay for now.” I believe the Universe feels very much the same way.

  Please. Stop. Allowing. Bullshit.

  Life is beyond short. Be a badass motherfucker and ditch all the stuff in your life that doesn’t make you beyond happy, and do it now. Don’t be like me. I settled and stayed in a relationship far too long, clinging to the good times, and all it left me was betrayed, conned, and financially burdened with an open case of identity theft.

  You want to talk about the law of attraction? I let this situation convince me that I was less than worthy, and it completely robbed me of my self-esteem. I remember thinking, “What must people think about me?” or “They probably think I am so dumb.” I remember thinking people that have always judged and disliked me were probably celebrating and laughing at the fact that my wonderful life imploded around me. Now, through all of the hard work, learning, and coaching, I understand that our lives are a REFLECTION of what we believe to be true. Yep. Swallow that for a moment.

  As soon as I started to believe all of those things, my life reflected them. I lost the nicest apartment I have ever lived in, I lost all of my money and was left with debt that wasn’t even mine, I lost my luxury vehicle, I lost the great state of California as a home for a time, and, along with all of that, I lost my identity and self-worth. From there, I wondered why people were treating me so shitty, why they suddenly reacted differently toward me as if I were unimportant or worthless. I thought it was because I didn’t have “all the fancy” stuff anymore. That is probably partially true (for some of them), but I now realize that it was actually because, number one, I put up with it (you get what you ALLOW), and number two, I believed these things to be true about myself, so my entire life reflected them back.

  I am not saying that I deserved or created the chaos of a conman spouse. What I am saying is that, once in a while, when we don’t listen to our true selves, when we allow things that we don’t want to continue in our lives, and when destruction happens, we can sometimes make the situation we didn’t deserve that much worse. I don’t believe I created the horribleness of my ex’s choices. Those are his seeds he sowed. I do believe that this situation was a catalyst for me to find my purpose in life for this chapter, to become who I needed to be in this moment, so that I could share this story and what I have learned, to hopefully help others in some way, shape, or form.

  I also don’t think I had to suffer quite so much with what I now know. I went, in a year and a half, from completely destroying my life and basically being homeless, living with my mom with no job, a bunch of debt, and a conman ex-husband with a jail sentence, to building a successful six-figure business, living in my dream location, finding my purpose in empowering women, and raising a beautiful daughter. But I would be so much further along if I’d had the tools that I do now PRIOR to this disaster happening. So, how in the hell do you dust yourself off after an explosion and rebuild your city (so-to-speak)?

  Let’s back up.

&nbs
p; I built my current business out of complete and total need. I knew that would hopefully give me a small shred of something I didn’t have in the rest of my life: control. My hope was to make my own schedule, to be my own boss, and to be able to make unlimited amounts of income, but that isn’t exactly the way things started. When I first started my current business, it overtook my entire life. I worked with everyone out of fear. I never said no. I didn’t know my time was valuable. I didn’t know my gifts were valuable. I didn’t know that I was valuable. It took me a long time—a year and a half of almost 80 hour weeks—to figure this shit out.

  I built my business on a dream that I was more valuable and more intelligent than the offers available to me. I imagined the type of life I wanted to live, the type of person I wanted to be, and the bounds I wanted to live outside of. And I got started. In the beginning, a good friend hooked me up with some pretty stellar entrepreneurs. I was humble. I knew I wanted to be in that space and that I was meant to do huge things in this world, something a traditional job wasn’t going to afford me personally. Yet, I started at the bottom (literally) and told my girlfriend who knew about the online world and knew my background, that I was willing to do literally anything for these people. This way, I could make money (more probably, than at a traditional, random job) and learn their businesses and tactics from the inside out.

  If I didn’t know exactly what it was I wanted to do, I would learn what I didn’t want to do, and I’d learn it from people who were already doing it extremely successfully. I started reading, learning, taking courses, taking on jobs, anything and everything to get as much knowledge and as much experience as I possibly could. Sure, I had already run successful businesses before, but when someone has what you want, you swallow your sparkles and shit and listen to what they have to say. If they said do this, I did it. If they asked, “Hey, will you…” the answer was, “Yep.” I didn’t care what the task was, how little or how big. My friend taught me a lot. During my free time, I learned more. And more. And more. I had more knowledge at a certain point than I knew what to do with, and guess what? I was still just checking emails for some of these people. I didn’t give a damn. I knew my time would come. I would learn the ropes and then I’d start swinging from them, MY way. I knew this was temporary.

  At first, it paid my bills. Then it paid my bills and THEN some. Soon, I had to do what any CEO of their own business would do as my skills and offerings got to a certain point; I had to raise the bar for what I was willing to do and what I was willing to get paid for it. The first time I raised my prices, I was terrified. What if everyone said “no thanks” and hired someone else? I soon found out that not only was it still too little to ask for what I was worth, but also that there were very few people who did the job as well as I did. I also learned this the hard way, when I tried to hire internally for my own business. I was a hard motherfucker to replace.

  Eventually I started handlinging digital strategy and tech for entrepreneurs and their launches, and I was good at it. It was like so many moments combined from my life gave me a certain set of tools that were made to do this sort of thing. Not just good, damn good. I was making more than I ever thought possible, and I was making other people obscene amounts of money (like, more money than people I grew up with spend on a house) in the just the span of a week, using the techniques I had spent a lifetime learning. I realized I needed to step out on my own in more ways than one. If I wanted to inspire other people to truly live their dreams and live life on their own terms, then I had to. If I believed it was possible for others to make unlimited amounts of money, then surely it had to be possible for me. It was time to start living it.

  Chapter 22:

  Making Money is GOOD

  I remember there was a time when my thoughts and my feelings about money were SO fucked up. I’m not using that term for shock factor; I say it, because it was the truth. I went from busting my ass to make rent (and sometimes even asking my mom for help) to living a life that some people could only dream of. Then, my world came crashing down because of the choices and lifestyle of my ex. I took this as punishment for thinking that life could be so good, that I could live a certain way, that I deserved nice things, that I was valuable. There were lessons to be learned here, but my thoughts and relationship with money didn’t need to be impacted so badly as a result. Yet, they were.

  Being a proponent of self-help and working on my mindset early on helped me learn these lessons more quickly, and counter some of the negative lessons I had taken on from childhood and people around me. Believe it or not, my ex also had some positive effects on my mindset. For instance, he taught me that you can be anyone you want to be. He was surrounded by a lot of really successful people who had done amazing things, and they always had good advice, and optimistic outlooks. He taught me that it wasn’t glutinous to be comfortable. He was huge into self-care and taking the time you needed to reharness your energy and concentration. He wasn’t all work and no play. But he polluted all of the positive effects with his own toxic beliefs and his ability to lie, cheat, and steal. My mindset was something that I had actually worked on earlier in life as well, but I didn’t truly absorb and understand fully, until life turned around and kicked the ever-loving shit out of me.

  With my newfound business alongside these extremely successful entrepreneurs, the one thing they all had in common was their focus on personal development and mindset. Why is this underlined? Cause it’s freakin’ important, yo. All of them invested in some sort of higher learning, read personal development things, and surrounded themselves with people who had higher personal and professional achievements than they did. And, sure, even though some of them had a chip on their shoulder, they were open to working on themselves to constantly and consistently become BETTER.

  I asked them to reflect back to me the types of things I was doing and saying, that were not in alignment with what I wanted. For instance, when I was finally making money, I would buy myself something with the thought of “Oh, well, maybe I shouldn’t buy this because later when I have nothing, I will be mad that I bought this because money will be tight and I’ll think shit I wish I wouldn’t have bought whatever the hell that was because then I’d have an extra $100 and that $100 may not be hard to come by now but it probably will be in the future.”

  Maybe you are laughing at me—laugh all you want—but I went from someone who had it all, to losing everything I had worked my whole life to gain. Flying in a private jet one week, living with my mom the next. If you resonate with that thought process, then you know how hard life can be and how your mindset can make or break a lot of this, especially when it comes to money. When I stopped allowing myself to think that way and changed my perception, everything around me changed. I started thinking, “Yep, I spent that $100 on that thing, because it made me feel good and I deserve nice shit. I’m going to rock that $100 item, and I’m going to love the way that it makes me feel. And when I feel good, I naturally draw more good shit to me. And I make more money. Money is a renewable resource, and I’m renewing it right now.” Sure, it sounds insane and maybe people at the mall thought I was off my pills or just a space cadet for being so in my head, but this was something I literally had to go through to change my relationship with money.

  I think it became the most apparent to me where my money issues were, when I went to change my prices. I increased them a lot because I had waited too long and was way over-delivering, and way under-charging. When I started talking to other people in my industry, I realized the scale used for charging for things was not what I was using; I was basically the massage parlor giving out happy endings for half price. I needed to go from free hand job to high-class hooker, pronto. When I approached my clients with my price change, a few of them were like, “Uh, duh! Not a problem.” One of them protested and it caused me to have a heart attack. Finally, the person relented and decided to pay what I had asked, but I still fell into the same trap of over-delivering, always making myself available and working
twice as hard, because, you know, I had asked for a more livable wage for the amount of work I delivered, so I better bust my ass ten times harder. It was insane.

  It wasn’t until I really dug deep and worked extremely hard on my beliefs and changing them at the core of my being, that things started to shift. I still think I have a long way to go in this department, but when you start to learn about the ways people cheat themselves with their bad money mentality, you start to see it as a “tell.” When you say, “I bought this thing BUT,” that’s a huge red flag. When you find yourself explaining away why you bought something, that’s a sign you need to work on your own money mindset, not because I am telling you to, but because you deserve it. It will change your life for the better, and also turn you into a crazy person who is hyper-aware of the verbiage that others use when they talk about money (a little-known side effect).

  So, what is money mindset and all this stuff anyway? It’s just a buzz word term for basically your belief of whether or not you deserve something, and the actions and terms you use during, before, and after that happens. It’s a reflection of what you believe to be true in the Universe, and it will greatly affect how you live, what you charge for your work, and what you can accomplish in this world. So, yes, it’s pretty damn important.

  Recently, a relative who will remain anonymous bought a boat. This person had been looking at boats their entire life. Now, they could afford a boat (or 2 or 3), but they nonetheless put off getting on for YEARS. They finally came to the decision to just go ahead and purchase one. They bought a real badass of a boat. I mean, the kind of boat you buy after dreaming of one for 50 some years. For real, it wasn’t a yacht or some cruise ship, but as far as fishing boats go, it was basically as nice as you could get. This person said to me when I remarked how nice it was, “Yes, it is a really nice boat, but don’t worry, we bought it used.” My response? That is nobody’s business if you bought it new or used or by giving blowjobs in South Beach. That is your friggin’ boat. Don’t explain it away. This person has worked their entire life, has taken care of people, and has never bought frivolous items for themselves so that they could provide the best available for their children, family, and friends.