About Danielle Roessle, LCSW – Memoirist & Chronic Illness Advocate
Before I gave birth to my son, I was an adventurer, entrepreneur, traveler, and connector of people. Then on February 4, 2024, I assumed a new identity I had always longed for: mother. But other identities came with it that I wasn’t expecting—chronically ill and intermittently disabled. Complications during delivery caused severe hemorrhaging and the loss of kidney function, changing not only my body, but the shape of my life.
The question became: Who am I now that my body doesn’t allow me to live like I once did?
How I Found My Way to Writing Again
As a trained therapist, I once relied on meditation and mindfulness to find calm and self-connection. But when my body failed, those practices were harder to access. I was left with a mind that was active, layered, and questioning—exactly the state I’d been taught I should quiet or rise above.
Forced into this inner world, I finally started listening, observing, and investigating. I discovered that thinking and feeling isn’t the opposite of presence—thinking and feeling can be presence. And I began writing about it.
What I Write About
Writing became the way I process the world around me and what has happened to me—paying close attention to shifts in identity, illness, parenthood, grief, love, and uncertainty. The words I share are intentionally chosen and emotionally precise, not to make a point but to make an experience felt.
I’m working on a memoir that follows two years of my life in chronological chapters, each rooted in a specific moment—from losing my kidneys during childbirth, to a kidney transplant that failed, to an outcome no one could have predicted. Each chapter tells a story, then pauses to make sense of what it revealed—allowing meaning to emerge rather than prescribing it. Along the way, I explore forgiveness, justice, medical gaslighting, acceptance, and other questions that surfaced as I moved through illness and motherhood—not as neat ideals, but as lived experiences, full of contradictions, nuance, and the ways reality rarely matches the expectations we’re taught to have.
My Background
Before dedicating myself fully to writing, I spent more than fifteen years as a career counselor, blending my clinical social work background with career development to help people find clarity and direction. During that time, I authored The Inner Compass Process: Using Childhood Memories to Clarify Your Career Direction, a workbook designed to help people understand themselves more deeply and make more meaningful career choices.
Who I Am Today
I’m a mother to an incredible almost-two-year-old, Barney. I’m a writer, wife, daughter, friend, advocate, and community builder. I still love hiking, the outdoors, travel, and adventure—though it looks very different than it was before.
If I were to make any meaning of this—not that I have to make meaning of chronic disease, nor do I think my disease happened for a reason—at least I get to share my inner world and give you permission to explore yours too.