A HOLY MESS | Purpose, Recovery, Trauma, Life Coaching, Shame, Regret

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → calendly.com/danisumner

Dani's son Zach hit a hard, heartbreaking season, so she and Gary got him out of Dodge and flew to Hawaii to help him heal. Through a string of God-ordained moments, he landed a visit with University of Hawaii football, his dream school, and committed on the spot. His first words in the car? "Wow, look what God did."

Almost 16 years sober, Dani shares why she's now grateful for her own rock bottom, and invites you to look at your hard thing and ask, "God, how can this be the gateway?"

If you're ready to heal, 1:1 coaching is a great place to start. Ready to use your story to help others? Messy Life Transformation Life Coach Certification was built for you.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here,

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or go straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to use your story for others.

If this episode gave you hope, leave a review and share it with a friend who's still waiting on their lemonade. 🤍

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani →  https://calendly.com/danisumner

Healing From People Pleasing: Become Unavailable to Self-Abandon

You said yes when you meant no. You ran twelve errands for everyone else before you ran one for yourself. Everyone made it onto your calendar, and you hoped there would be time left over for you. Now you’re past exhausted and wondering where you went. If you’re healing from people pleasing, Dani’s recalibration teaching was made for you.

She plants one phrase in the ground: become unavailable to self-abandon. No more death by a thousand cuts. No more saying yes out of guilt or old conditioning. Dani walks through how she builds her calendar with herself on it first, what white space looks like and why your nervous system is begging for it, and why joy is something you practice and protect every day. She also reminds you that having the ability to do something doesn’t make it your responsibility. Learning how to stop people pleasing is how you start moving forward, and your best hours belong to you and God. If you want real support taking them back, 1:1 coaching with Dani is built for exactly that.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you’re here, Dani

Want to Go Deeper? 💫

Book a free discovery call at danisumner.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don’t have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who keeps putting herself last. 🤍

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → https://calendly.com/danisumner

Your Dreams and Desires Are God’s Will and Purpose for Your Life. Finding Faith to Be Courageous.

You’ve spent so long living for other people that you don’t even know what you want anymore. Maybe you gave it away slowly. Maybe it was taken. Either way, you stopped dreaming and started surviving. If you’re healing from people pleasing or self doubt, this one’s for you. On a car ride, Dani tells the story of a gas station stop in Ventura and a woman headed to Nevada with two kids, a dog and not enough money to get there. Dani filled her tank, bought snacks and sandwiches, and pulled $300 from the ATM. She’ll tell you she’s no saint. She’s just done the work to get out of scarcity, so generosity comes easy now. The desires in your heart are there on purpose: to give more, write the book, become a coach, invest, say hi to the stranger. God planted them, and finding your purpose starts with trusting that. The “how” is none of your business yet. Do your work, stay curious, take the next step. If you’re ready to stop living small and start moving forward, 1:1 coaching with Dani is where that conversation starts.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you’re here, Dani

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who needs to hear that the desire in their heart is still there for a reason. 🤍

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → calendly.com/danisumner

You're at the happiest place on earth, you open one email, and your brain goes straight to worst-case scenario. That's where Dani was when a surprise tax bill landed in the middle of a family trip to Disneyland. This one comes from inside her coaching community, shared because it was too good to gatekeep.

The tool that helped her find her footing came from Betty, a prayer warrior in her 90s, who calls it Triple A Faith: Acknowledge, Appreciate, Allow. Name the hard and fight just as hard to name the good. Find the lesson and the people God brings through a rough season. Then let God be God. Dani lands the whole thing on Guardians of the Galaxy, the ride where she once pulled a shoulder muscle holding on, and this time rode it with her arms in the air.

Every season asks something hard of you. It's either hard to heal or hard to suffer, so choose your hard. If you're ready to stop white-knuckling and do the healing kind of hard with real support, 1:1 coaching with Dani is where that starts. Book at aholymess.com.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here, Dani

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who's been holding on too tight. 🤍

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → calendly.com/danisumner

What do you do when someone you love judges your faith or questions your calling from God? Dani recorded this one in the car on the drive home from LA, still processing a moment from the night before. A family member called her faith "Diet Coke" to his "Coke," and it hit a nerve. She gets honest about why it triggered her, and about what she found in herself once the sting wore off.

The opinions that cut deepest rarely come from strangers. They come from the people you love and respect most. Dani shares the story of a client who was at the top of his career in his 30s, felt called into ministry, and got pulled back into business because family and colleagues drowned out his own voice. She also revisits the priest whose words at 16 carried more weight than God or her own intuition, and what that cost her.

Here's the truth: your call from God is not a conference call. The people who love you don't get a vote. If you're ready to hear your own still small voice again, 1:1 coaching with Dani is where that work starts. Book at aholymess.com.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here, Dani

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who's been waiting on someone else's permission. 🤍

You're taking care of everyone else's needs, grinding through obligations, and somewhere along the way the simple stuff got buried: sleep, water, a walk, the massage you keep pushing off. Dani recorded this one fresh off the massage table, frizzy hair and all, and she came with something on her heart. Your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health are not optional maintenance. They are the work.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here, Dani

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → https://calendly.com/danisumner

Dani is fired up today. Fair warning: if little kids are nearby, AirPods in.

You can't numb your pain without also numbing your joy. When you go numb on one end of the emotional spectrum, you go numb on all of it. Real healing means building the capacity to feel all of it, and here's what Dani knows for certain: we've all survived 100% of our worst days so far. C.S. Lewis said it best: you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. For years Dani wanted to rewrite her story, undo what happened, undo what she'd done. That was a fool's errand. The work was never going back. It was learning to embrace the broken, fragile parts that had lived through hell and letting God breathe life into them. And here's the thing that changes everything: God wants to use the hardest things you've been through to help someone else. You don't need to be fully healed. You might just have a little limp. That limp is a war wound, and it taught you something. Revelation 12:11 says it plainly: by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony, people are healed. Your mess is not for nothing. Helping others is the medicine. That's exactly why Dani created the Messy Life Transformation Life Coach Certification: for the people who've lived through the school of hard knocks and are ready to turn that wisdom into something that helps others do the same. Joel 2:25: God will restore the years the locusts have eaten. He's not done with you.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here, Dani

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who needs to hear they're not where they used to be. 🤍

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → https://calendly.com/danisumner

You've prayed for everyone else. For your family, their health, their marriages, their hard seasons. But when it comes to your own life, your business, your calling, your finances, you're either praying crumbs or not praying at all. Dani was right there with you. Then came a Friday night at the Cheesecake Factory, a $5 bet with her old-school Catholic dad, and a parking spot that opened right on cue, and something cracked open in her.

This episode is a faith story, a recovery story, and an invitation to stop settling for scraps. Dani unpacks why so many of us default to "thy will be done" and quietly forget we're allowed to pray specifically and boldly for the desires God already planted in us. She names Psalm 37:4, walks through the three schools of life where God wants to meet you (relationships, finances, health), and lands on a real question: are you actually praying for what you're called to do? Dani is, and she is praying out loud for 20 people to join her Life Coach Certification by year end. If you have been feeling that pull, this episode just might be your answer.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here, Dani

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who needs to hear they're not where they used to be. 🤍

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → https://calendly.com/danisumner

You've been through things that were never supposed to happen. And if you're still carrying the weight of it all, wondering when God is going to do something with all that pain, this episode is for you.

Recording from a hotel room at Disneyland (messy beds and all), Dani drops everything after a call with a man who has walked through the fire and is now on the other side, asking what so many of you are asking: what do I do with everything I've been through?

The answer isn't more processing. It's not more waiting. It's service. Your story isn't just for you. The comfort you've received is the comfort you're built to give out. And that nudge you feel to help others with your exact mess? That's God.

For some of you, the thing that's been missing from your healing isn't another tool. It's giving away what you've been given. And for those who feel called to do that as a life coach, the Life Coach Certification is exactly where this goes. The most powerful coaches aren't the ones who had it easy. They're the ones who've been through the fire and came out with something to say.

Dani doesn't waste a damn thing. And neither does God.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here, Dani

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who needs to hear they're not where they used to be. 🤍

📞 Ready to talk? Book a free discovery call with Dani → https://calendly.com/danisumner

Life is lifing. Hard in multiple directions at once. Parents, friendships, grief, the mess you didn't sign up for and the mess you created yourself. Dani recorded this one in the middle of her own intense season and didn't pretend otherwise. She's navigating her parents needing more support, two friends with stage four cancer, and a shitty committee that would love nothing more than to drag her into every storm. Her response? "I'm unavailable for that chaos." Not because things aren't hard. Because she knows you can only do what you can do, and emotionally stepping into what you can't control is just another way to abandon yourself. This is the kind of work 1:1 coaching with Dani is built around: getting your nervous system right, your vision clear, and your permission to believe that better is still coming.

She closes with a guided white light meditation, a Habakkuk 2:2 vision exercise, and a C.S. Lewis quote that lands like a deep breath. Book a discovery call at aholymess.com, or grab a spot right now at calendly.com/danisumner.

In this episode, Dani talks about:

Glad you're here,

Book a free discovery call at aholymess.com (or jump straight to calendly.com/danisumner to grab a spot right now). 1:1 coaching for the deep work. Life Coach Certification if you feel called to do this for others. No magic wand. No magic pill. Just the process, and you don't have to do it alone.

If this episode spoke to you, leave a review and share it with a friend who needs to hear they're not where they used to be. 🤍