Finding My Truth
My insatiable appetite for learning and my constant quest for the truth is not just for me. Please let me share it with you.
Hi, I am Danielle Rifkin, LPC, ATR, and I am the owner of Rise Up Rooted LLC. I have been seeking the truth throughout my life even when I didn’t know what that meant. I am constantly curious and love learning especially when it comes to understanding myself and other people.
Art was one of my first paths I took to finding my truth. Along the way, I took a strong academic and rigorous path to learning, probably because at the time that was the only way I had been shown how to learn. I got my BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2003, with a major in Visual Communications and a minor in Psychology. From there I went out into life school, working in different settings, living and traveling around the world, and growing up some more before being ready for my passion to help others. I decided to continue with the academic path, which felt right. I graduated from Naropa University with a degree in Transpersonal Psychology and Art Therapy in 2014.
Since then I continue to feed my insatiable appetite for personal, spiritual and therapeutic trainings, and at the same time, I strengthened my truth that learning comes in so many ways beyond the professionally approved avenues. I worked as an art therapist and grief counselor in a variety of settings including medical hospitals, hospices, behavioral health facilities, community centers and more. I also learn everyday through my own life experience. I traveled the world. I have had more coaches and mentors than I can count. I have learned so much from my friends, family and clients. And I will ALWAYS continue on my path to finding my deepest truth. I would never feel comfortable preaching what I don’t practice for myself. I know my constant quest for truth is not meant just for me. I love to share my learning with the world. And love seeing when people find their truth.
Finding My Truth
Art Therapy allowed me to rediscover the purity of the creative process and find a deep connection to my inner world.I believe art is meant to be a tool of connection, understanding and growth. I lovingly shout to the world, I want it to feel safe to create and find your voice.
At a young age, I just innately created. In a world where I felt shy and hesitant to speak, I found my safe space to express freely and be myself through my visual creations. At 8 years old, I told my family of my plan to go to art school. My wise little self just knew this is where I felt at home.
And then I went into an education system that encouraged judgment and critics. I remember in art school crying after my fair share of critiques. The system was set up to prepare me for judgment and be ready to defend my work, and for me it made me want to protect myself and find distance from what I was producing. It created a wall from deeply listening to what wanted to emerge. Over the years that I created art for others, I could feel the power of my inner critic and the growing apathy and disconnection I felt from my creative process.
When I discovered art therapy, everything changed. I was able to connect back to the purity of creating. I was able to feel a deep connection with my inner world and began to find my passion and excitement for creating again. And once I discovered it for myself, I felt called to support other people to switch the script. I believe art can help us build more connection to our truth. I believe art can help us grow our self-compassion and loving inner voices. I believe art is meant to be a tool of connection, understanding and growth. I lovingly shout to the world, I want it to feel safe to create and find your voice. And I continue to lovingly nudge myself of this reminder as well.
My Truth with Art
When I have witnessed people cracked open by grief, it is a sacred privilege to see who they are at the core: their hearts, their love, their pain, their beauty. It is a precious gift.
Most of the times I have experienced grief in my life it has been a choice. No doubt this is an undeniable privilege. I grew up in the same house, the same school, the same friends until I left for college, where I chose to make a big change and leave home and the life I knew and go out of state. Other than the death of my grandparents, that I loved dearly, there wasn’t a lot of change in my life at that time to understand grief. I don’t even think I knew what it was.
When I got to college, I was in a place I loved, studying what I had always wanted, and finally felt like I was surrounded by my people for the first time in my life, and I was heartbroken. I carried a heaviness I couldn’t understand. Now looking back, I was grieving the life I had known, the life that was almost stale with safety. And with this first experience of grief, I discovered the potential of turning toward change. Grief has now become a companion and teacher for me. In my own life while living my truth, I have chosen grief over the known. Every time, I speak and live the truth, I grieve. There are countless experiences in my life that have been companioned with grief. Here are just a few: I grieved when I ended a job and relationship to travel the world for a year alone. I grieved when I moved across the country and left so many friends and a career I had been well established in to start a new life with a new home and new career path. I grieved when I chose to heal from a chronic autoimmune disease where I drastically had to change my lifestyle and mindsets to allow for the health I believed was possible. I grieved when I chose to start radically honoring and telling the truth and lost many friends, experienced endless changes, and discovered what it means to go through a death and rebirth process within myself.
I also realized that grief rituals were a powerful way for me to support my grief process. When I set an intention and connected with myself, it gave me a place to be present with my grief and metabolize it. I also discovered my capacity for love just keeps growing the more I can be present to my own grief.
Along the way, I also decided to befriend grief even more by becoming a grief counselor. I have had the great privilege to be present through many people’s grief journeys. I have been at the bedside of people dying. I have sat with people after the worst unimaginable losses have occurred. People ask me why I am drawn to grief work, I believe it is sacred work. I have learned so much about how to live by being closer to death. I have seen people at their rawest moments and it is precious. It is a gift for me. I have seen when we are cracked open in the worst ways possible, we can also more clearly see our truth at the core. I can see their humanity, their hearts, their love, their pain, their beauty.
