Hi I'm Danielle, and I sometimes went by Akasha online. I'm a middle aged woman living in Waller, Tx with my partner Kevin in a guesthouse on his parents' property. We have two cats, and I have a 17 year old daughter who will be graduating high school in the class of 2025. We both work for an inventory service which takes us all over Texas and Louisiana. I also do side jobs on apps that pay you for small jobs in stores. I had about a 20 year career working with children in a few different capacities. I started when I was 16 and stopped when I was 36. Suffering from panic attacks when I was about 36 led me to need something a little more quiet and simple, so I started caregiving for elderly and disabled people in their homes. One of the companies I worked for used me as a "sub", so I was working with a lot of different people every few days whenever their regular caregivers needed days off. I have also been a regular caregiver, but all of my previous main clients have passed away. After about ten years of battling panic attacks, I feel like I'm ready to start working with kids again. But the inventory service pays pretty good, unlike any caregiving profession ever. So I'm easing back into it by writing a book about my experiences. I'm titling the book The Child Advocate. It's currently sitting at a word count of 21,713. That's a very rough draft. I hope to participate in NaNoWriMo in November, but the daily commitment is hard on me with the kind of heavy content I'm writing. My therapist told me that I suffer from secondary trauma as a result of caregiving jobs for both kids and adults. As a result, I have to take the writing slowly. Other times, a writing session is extremely therapeutic, cathartic, and helps me discover things about myself I've never realized before.
I'm also passionate about sewing and crafts, especially up cycling. I am working on making denim chenille quilts for an Etsy shop, and I love to make upcycled jewelry. A thrift store near my partner's old home has 25 cent Wednesdays from 7:30-11:30 am, and I go if there are no inventory jobs. I stock up on items I can cut up for upcycled crafts.
I'm also really passionate about self-directed education and thinking outside the box. Self-directed learning has led me to where I am today. It's a really long story. I'm a firm believer that if people just pursue their passions and interests all the time, then many prosperous doors will open up as a result of those pursuits. It doesn't matter what the interests are. I will blog more later about how I pursued my own passions and interests, and how those led to doors opening for me. Thanks so much for reading, and I can't wait to form new connections.
