In this fascinating episode, you’ll meet Danielle Massi a.k.a. The Shadow Queen – who is building a growing empire as a best-selling author and thought-leader, CEO of The Wellness Collective, and founder of the annual SELF(ish) Philly Conference.

After a cervical cancer diagnosis before her 30th birthday, Danielle transformed her life and career, and has become a leading voice on the topic of shadow work and holistic health.

Tune in to learn more about shadow work straight from Danielle, and to hear how she redirected her entrepreneurial path to become an advocate for women’s well-being. Plus, get a glimpse into Danielle’s own daily rituals, and how she balances business and motherhood with unapologetic self-care. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed by podcast guests are their own. The She Rocked It podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen.

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Episode highlights:

• [01:13] How a cancer diagnosis changed Danielle’s career and life path
• [01:56] How “Shadow Work” works
• [07:33] How Danielle found the confidence to become an advocate for Shadow Work 
• [21:22] Why women need to be more selfish 
• [24:10] Danielle’s daily routine (spoiler: baths, ahoy!)
• [29:41] Danielle’s one tip to rock it

Links from this episode: 

• Danielle Massi website: https://www.iamdaniellemassi.com/
• Danielle Massi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamdaniellemassi/ 
• The Wellness Collective: www.wellnessphl.com
• SELF(ish) Philly Conference: https://www.selfishphilly.com/ 

Danielle Massi Transcript

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Hello and welcome to the She Rocked It Podcast. I am your host, Karen Gross. So excited you are with us and really diving into great conversations this season with courageous creative women. And our guest today exemplifies this, Danielle Massi who I’m so excited and very curious to talk to, just so many great questions I’m looking forward to diving into. And I’ll just say really briefly that Danielle and I connected through another guest on our podcast this season, Kate Marlys, Philly PR girl, who said, “you have to talk to Danielle” and we always say here at She Rocked It, it’s all about the network. And if you don’t know yet about Danielle’s work, you’re going to hear a lot of great stuff about it. I’m gonna let Danielle actually start by telling us a little more about what she does.  

DANIELLE MASSI: Thank you so much for having me. So I’m Danielle Massi. I’m a licensed psychotherapist by trade, but I’m not practicing anymore, because I’ve moved over into doing best-selling author work. I’m the founder of the SELF(ish) Philly conference. I’m the CEO of The Wellness Collective, which is a holistic healing center, servicing clients around the world. And then my real true love, the thing that I spend my most time on is doing shadow work, which is something that I’m extremely passionate about, and something I’ve helped 1000s of people across the globe with so far, and I intend to keep that going. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: It’s amazing. And you’ve been featured so many different places Shape magazine, New York Mag, BuzzFeed, we’re going to hear more about that. But how do you describe Shadow Work, Danielle? 

DANIELLE MASSI: Yeah, Shadow Work is the process of going into the unconscious mind, which is the deepest level of your psyche. And the purpose of doing that is to pull up anything heavy that you might be holding on to, that needs to be resolved. The funny thing about it is you don’t actually know that it’s there. So when you talk to people, and you try to talk about the things that are holding them back, or the things that are weighing them down, they’re like, “I know what it is, like I had a tough time in middle school and whatever else,” but that’s probably not it— those moments tend to reinforce a pattern that already exists, that’s so hardwired into your brain, that you don’t even recognize it. So Shadow Work, when we do that, it really helps us to get to the root of the root of the root, there’s no deeper that you can go. So we can heal things fully. And when we do that, it creates that domino effect of healing for everything above it. So you just feel good every single day. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Wow, I’m taking that all in. I love that. Like how did you find this as a calling for you? 

DANIELLE MASSI: Yeah, it’s so funny. I get asked that all the time. And it’s like, you know how the universe kind of sometimes like, places things in front of you. And you just like, push it to the side where you’re like, “Yeah, whatever. Yeah, whatever.” Shadow Work is something that’s been on my radar for so so long, between like my background in psychology and neuroscience, when I was an undergrad, I went on to study my, get my master’s degree. And we studied Shadow Work, because the great Carl Jung was the one who created it back in the 1800s. I used to teach at Penn State and I did an entire lesson on Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and the Shadow. And I wasn’t doing Shadow Work that entire time, it was just something that was like floating in the ethers around me. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with cancer…  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Like a little tease.  

DANIELLE MASSI: I know, it really was. I had a cancer diagnosis back in 2018. And that was the moment where I was like, “I really need to figure out what the heck is going on with me internally.” So I found an incredible shadow worker. She was a licensed psychotherapist in the UK, and we did zoom sessions and she brought me deeper than any therapist I’ve ever had anyone else I’ve ever worked with. And within weeks, I felt like a new person. And then I kept going with her for a year, two years until I felt like everything that I’d ever gone through was so resolved. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Well, first of all, I’m glad you’re here, healed I hope. 

DANIELLE MASSI: I am Yes, I’m very lucky.

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: And it’s amazing how you have to be your own advocate for your wellness. Navigating the health system can be so frustrating, and you have to kind of find your path. So you found something that really spoke to your own healing and well being?  

DANIELLE MASSI: I did  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Tell us about raising your voice, yeah. Within the needs of your health and recovery. 

DANIELLE MASSI: Yeah, I actually had a very hard time with this. Because I think yeah, being a therapist is kind of like training yourself to not speak, like you’re really just the sounding board and also like the ear for other people. So I spent 10 years listening and not advocating not speaking, just taking on other people’s pain and holding it for them.  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Wow. 

DANIELLE MASSI: So over time, I just kind of learned to assume that role. So when I was diagnosed with cancer, I still stayed in that space where other people were speaking for me a lot. My husband would come in and he would want answers, he’d ask my doctors questions, and I’d just kind of sit there and take it all in, like what is happening to me. But by the time that I was a few months into the process of my cancer treatment, I said to my doctors, “I’m not okay, like things are not going well.” Like, I understand cancer, things are never gonna go well. But like mentally, I was a wreck.

Physically, I’d been through a lot of surgeries, my body was really struggling with what I was going through. So I asked them for some recommendations or some referrals. And they directed me to a wall of pamphlets about nothing. I was so disappointed, they didn’t have anything more for me. And the doctor that I was working with and still see to this day, she and I have conversations about this. But she had been someone who was in my corner for a very long time. And she just didn’t have answers for me. She was like, “I don’t know why this happened to you. And I don’t know how to help you. All I know how to do is get the cancer out and beyond that it’s on you.”

So I couldn’t accept that as an answer. It didn’t feel like it was right. It didn’t feel like it was enough. Which is why I ended up creating two different businesses. One was The Wellness Collective, which is that holistic healing center that I have, because I wanted a space that people could come to whether there was multiple options. You could do Shadow Work, you could do yoga, you can do Reiki, you can talk to a licensed psychotherapist, you can talk to a couple’s therapist, we have all of those things in-house. And then we also know who all the other people are in the area so that if there’s something you’re looking for that we don’t have, we can connect you with the best person for it. So that was pathway one.

The other pathway was the SELF(ish) Philly conference. And the conference is like The Wellness Collective on steroids. It’s like 50 plus wellness businesses in the Philadelphia area and the surrounding suburbs. It’s the most amazing speakers. It’s a sense of sisterhood and camaraderie. We’re partnered with the American Cancer Society to charity, fundraise for them. And it’s a day that’s all centered around knowing who your people are when you’re healthy, so that you’ll know who they are when you’re not. That’s the purpose of the conference. And that was my way of really rectifying some things that I just, they didn’t sit well with me when I was going through my process. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: It’s it’s amazing what you’ve created. And, you know, I think as women when we try to raise our voices for our wellbeing in ways that are unconventional, that’s outside the box, that’s outside of traditional medicine, let’s say like, you can be met with some pushback.  

DANIELLE MASSI: Oh, yeah.  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Right, like so you’ve created these other spaces, and in fact, safe spaces for women to explore these different modalities, right, which I think is really bold and brave and awesome. But tell me about like, did you get any pushback? Were people like, “wait a minute, you’re you’re right, like…?”  

DANIELLE MASSI: Oh, yeah.  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: What is it? Like? How did you stand strong in your path? 

DANIELLE MASSI: Yeah, this honestly scared me a lot when I first started, especially because my background is in cognitive neuroscience. So I come from a research background and my colleagues, the people that I used to work in the lab with, I was afraid of what they were going to think when I said, “I’m doing Shadow Work and I’m hosting this big conference around like, holistic wellness and treating the entire system all together”. I knew that people were going to have a hard time with it.

And so I built it slowly but steadily, and I really looked to people who understood what I was trying to do to get support, who bought into the entire idea behind it because that sense of camaraderie in it was a lifesaver in those early days when I was trying to get momentum behind some of the things that I was doing. And still, like there are spaces where people don’t really get it. And then there’s other ones where they do.

Like, this past weekend I spoke at an expo The Holistic Health and Healing Expo that my friend Shay runs and when I was done with the talk, okay, I gave a big long talk about Shadow Work, I did a full Shadow Work meditation with a group, it was about 40 people in the room, a guy comes up to me at the end, he’s an older gentleman, and he pulls out his card and goes, “I’m a psychiatrist. That was fantastic. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for”. And the same thing with, yeah, it’s amazing when you like, give people the opportunity to just try the different things you don’t know who is going to reach.

Same thing with, a lot of the people have come through my group Shadow Work programs, I attract in a lot of therapists, because they see, I think, just like me, they’ve gone through their own therapy, because most good therapists have their own therapist, they’ve gone through their own therapy, they’ve been the therapist, and there gets to be this point with therapy where it feels like we’ve gone as far as we can go. And I’ve never felt that way with Shadow Work. There’s never a point where it’s like, “we can’t go any further,” we can always go further. And we can always make it so that you feel like you’re leaving healed.

It shouldn’t feel like you’re raw, and bleeding and walking out, hoping that it gets better over time. That’s not good enough, not in my opinion. So therapy is incredible for what it does. But Shadow Work does more, and being able to advocate for it and show people how effective it is and really raising my voice up and being that person who speaks on a consistently without wavering has changed my life because it’s made me become the voice of Shadow Work, where every time there’s an article being written about it, I’m the person who gets reached out to. So I think you have to really stand true in what it is that you believe. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Yeah, like I mentioned, you know, major outlets are calling you to talk on this. But it sounds like it was a journey for you to kind of find your voice confidently to you know, especially as someone who sounds like had a more traditional training and you know, kind of standing, can you can you give us a little deeper of a window into like, if I was to do a Shadow Work session, like, that would feel like yeah, give us a little more of a of a peek. 

DANIELLE MASSI: So a true Shadow Work session is to meditate to the point that you reach something called a theta brainwave state. When you’re in theta, you are so relaxed, so calm, so at peace, that it’s almost like you’re in a walking daydream. Like, you could get up and answer a phone call if you wanted to. You’re fully conscious, but it feels very relaxed. So when I’m 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: This sounds very good to me right now. 

DANIELLE MASSI: It’s nice. It feels amazing. When you’re in that state, it’s like, yeah, everything’s calm. I see it in people’s bodies, like, you see, the shoulders go down, you see the heart rate slow. And those deep breaths, you see their whole face, like you know how sometimes when you’re really paying attention, your face kind of does these things where you’re like scrunched up and you’re paying attention, you’re really listening. When you’re in theta, everything relaxes. It’s like everything just kind of melts. And that’s 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: You also have a very relaxing voice. What do you all think You’re listening, doesn’t really? I just I’m getting so calm, just listening to Danielle, right? I see the whole thing working very well, yes. 

DANIELLE MASSI:  It’s so funny. My graduate school professor — we’ll come back to how you do this. But I had a graduate school professor who at the end of our training, wrote down one word that describes each one of us. And she said, “this is going to be your gift to your clients, it’s going to be the thing that you give them that they can’t get anywhere else.” Because your relationship with your therapist is the biggest indicator of success in a therapy session, more than a training, more than their own viewpoints. It really is, Do you like your therapist or not? And my word was “Calm”.

And I was pissed off, so mad. So I was like, I have all this energy and like, I’m such a go getter. And I’m always going to be working to like, make sure that people feel amazing. So I asked her afterwards, I was like, “What do you mean by calm?” And she was like, “it’s your voice. It just has this soothing effect. Like it doesn’t really matter what you’re saying. You could put me into this state where I feel so at peace,” and I think she’s right. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: And that’s that’s part of it, what is the voice? How does the voice make one feel make others feel?

DANIELLE MASSI: Which is, when we got on today, I thought to myself, “Karen’s got such a great podcast voice.” Like it’s so good. And  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: I appreciate that.

DANIELLE MASSI: It’s true. I’ve done so many podcasts and sometimes I’m like, I don’t know if I can listen to this person. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: It also helps to have a nice, velvety mic. Thank you, EV RE 20. Please sponsor us. Shout out. Yeah, shout out, EV. But yeah, I appreciate that. But so, so we’re going into this very meta brainwave state, right, ideally with your voice in our ear. And then what happens?  

DANIELLE MASSI: You hit theta, what happens is, there’s three levels to your consciousness, you have the conscious mind, which is the part of you that knows everything that’s going on all the time, like, you know that you’re listening to this podcast right now, that’s a conscious awareness. Just below that is subconscious awareness.

This is the stuff that’s more automatic. But if someone brought your attention to it, you know that it’s happening. So this is like, some of the patterns that you have in relationships that you do without thinking. It’s blinking, it’s doing things like waking up, picking up your phone and starting to scroll without realizing that you’re doing it. It’s just like, it’s automatic. Or, driving, getting to your destination and being like, “I don’t really remember how I got here”. Those are all subconscious, we want to go deeper. And when you get to theta brainwave state, what happens is you actually reach what’s called the unconscious mind. And that’s the level of your brain’s neural capacity, where all of your memories are stored— those long term memories.

The thing with the unconscious is that you do not know that it’s there. But it shapes everything about the way that you see the world. It’s the moments when you were three years old, and you heard a bunch of kids in your class making fun of your outfit. And you’re in daycare, pre K, you’re not even old enough to really understand what it means. But something happens to you, when you hear that, like something triggers emotionally, that sends a message down to your body that makes you feel heavy, it makes you feel sad, makes you maybe even feel a little bit worthless. And that creates a neural pathway in the brain. Now you don’t remember that moment, but it still is very active and present, both neurologically and physiologically that if you hear people talking, you don’t need to know what they’re saying, you assume it’s about you.

And that whole reaction kicks into gear when you feel heavy, and you don’t know why. So with Shadow Work, what we do is we reach that unconscious mind through that theta brainwave state. And all we do is set the intention to see something. Sometimes we’re very specific, like, “show me a moment where I felt anxious,” “show me a moment where my relationship with my father was solidified,” whatever it might be. And what will happen is just as easily as daydreaming, the memory will just float back up to the surface of your awareness. And you’ll be right back there.

You’ll be three years old, you’ll be sitting in it. And when you’re there, the trick is that we actually want to interrupt how it’s stored in the brain, because your neural pathways are formed through something called a subconscious feedback loop. So it’s the sensory experience, like what you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste, all the sensory stuff. It’s the emotions, the chemical reaction that starts in the brain, it’s the physiological reaction, like, what’s your heart doing? Where’s the oxygen going, where’s the blood pumping to?

And then finally, is your thoughts, and your thoughts come up through the enteric nervous system from your gut. If we can interrupt one or more of those four, we break down the way your brain is storing it, we get rid of the old neural pathway, and we replace it with a new one. That process actually takes about four to five hours after the meditation’s done. So we’ll do the meditation. And let’s say we’re interrupting on a physiological level, because I find that to be the easiest one. So we’re changing your breath. So as we’re seeing a moment that maybe made you feel very anxious and like, your heart starts to beat like crazy, your breathing starts to get shallow and you start to have like, shoulders come into it, your brain gets fuzzy, you start to have your stomach feels like it’s doing flip flops. What we do is we breathe differently.

We slow the breath, we move you into a space, where when we’re changing your breath, we can stop the production of adrenaline and cortisol, we can slow it down and switch you into rest and digest. So if you’re seeing something hard, and you’re resting as you do, where it doesn’t feel like it’s heavy in your body anymore, your neural pathway basically like fizzles out, like it doesn’t know how to resist anymore. So it’ll break down, and it breaks down over the course of about four to five hours.

So you’re a little spacey afterwards, like you might be kind of like floating through the rest of your afternoon afterwards. So like the eyes will just kind of go back and forth. Or it’ll be like one pupils kind of shaking. It’s a sign that it worked. And it’s doing exactly what it needs to but we can see it neurologically change. And when it’s gone, you can replace that memory, that moment in time with something that’s less maladaptive, something that actually reinforces what you believe. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: That’s really incredible. Thank you for giving us a window into this process.  

DANIELLE MASSI: Of course,  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: It took you a minute to kind of get your confidence to be the expert on this, to be a thought leader, to be an authority. And I’d love to hear a little more about that. Because I feel like you know, even to teach, to write a book, to create a course that many people have now, you know, participated in. It takes it takes, you know, hutzpah as we would say it takes confidence, you know, so  

DANIELLE MASSI: That’s what my grandma would say, a little bit of hutzpah,  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: It takes a little hutzpah, right?! And you know, you are continuing to kind of build your empire, which I love. You have a wellness conference, in Philly, called SELF(ish), Philly. But tell us about how you got the hutzpah to create a whole conference around wellness. It’s so cool.  

DANIELLE MASSI: Oh Gosh, yeah, that was kind of crazy. I think that was one of those moments where

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: It’s a little bit of crazy too, hutzpah and crazy!   

DANIELLE MASSI: Everything I’ve ever done. I look back on it a few years later. And I’m like, “what the hell was I thinking?” but I’m glad I did it. That happens to me over and over and over again, where I get this idea in my head and I’m already 10 steps into the process before I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have started. But I’m glad that I did.

And that’s exactly what happened with the conference. When it first started it was actually me and a group of women kind of sitting around going, “this is something that the city needs”. And the conversation began because of my cancer where I felt like there needed to be a space like this. So I recruited someone, they recruited someone, that person recruited someone. And then there was like a roundtable of women. And we just talked about it for a while. And over time, each one of those women dropped off. Because, the undertaking of putting together a conference, it’s like trying to plan like a five star wedding in six months time. It’s insanity.

And being someone who, I always feel like there’s a way like you can’t tell me no, because I will always find a way, I was the only one at the end who stuck with it. And I’m so glad that I did because it is so much more than I could have ever dreamed it would be. It’s grown to be massive, it makes a gigantic input on the city of Philadelphia. And something that always makes me keep going with it is the feedback I get in the weeks and months afterwards where people tell me, “I haven’t been to a doctor and like six years, I finally got up the courage to go because of what I heard at the conference, it turns out that I have something that if I didn’t treat it, it could have been like, life-altering. So thank you.”

Those are the reasons why I do it. I’m getting goosebumps now talking about it. That’s why I do it. It takes everything out of me. It is easily the hardest thing that I do. And in terms of finances business-wise, is the thing that is the least responsible financially for me to do because it costs a ton of money to put that conference on — we’re talking close to $100,000 to do it. And I like, barely make it back. And I would do it again. And again. And again. Because I know the impact that it has, I know that this is going to be my legacy. And I know it’s what people need. And so I won’t stop. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: I love that. I mean, thank you for your honesty too on all and all fronts there. Because that’s that’s the real talk. And there’s something about that safe container too. We were kind of talking about earlier, where women can talk about their health and wellbeing, talk about it in a way that you may not be able to with your doctor, I, just going back a little bit to that conversation. You know, even I had mentioned something about new nutrition to my doctor. And sometimes it’s a little embarrassing to mention something like not medical, non-traditional, and you feel like you hear things, you read things.

We’re all trying to figure it out and navigate our wellbeing, especially as we get older as women. So I think it’s awesome that you’ve created a space where women can come together and have these conversations. Tell us a little more about what the experience is like when people come to SELF(ish) Philly. 

DANIELLE MASSI: Thank you 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: The name! How did you come up with the name? Because yeah, it’s really interesting. 

DANIELLE MASSI: The name really comes from the idea that whenever women try to take care of themselves, the people around them call them selfish. And this is something that the research shows does not happen to men.

So, men are encouraged to go golfing with their buddies, to get a beer after work, to take time to go to the gym. They’re encouraged to have some me time. And it’s not something that’s really negotiable. Like it’s kind of built into the contract. Whereas women are not granted that same ability. And it became very apparent during the pandemic, where women are like carrying the mental load for families, for couples, for themselves, for relationships, and they’re also usually now the people who are the breadwinner in the family.

So they’re pulling in more money, they’re doing more work. And they’re also holding on to that mental load. And they don’t have time to do anything for themselves. And we need to see a shift because I think so many people during the pandemic recognized that and either divorced or it took a hard toll on their mental health or their relationships, sometimes both. It is something that I think looking at it now in 2023, it can’t be a negotiable thing anymore.

It has to be something that is built in and spoken about. So the idea with the name was instead of letting selfish be a bad thing, I really wanted to take that and flip it on its head and make it into a good thing. That yeah, Mommy is being selfish, or wife is being selfish, girlfriend is being selfish or, individual who is all by herself is being selfish. Because why the fuck not? She should be, she should be taking that time to take care of herself. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: I love claiming that.

DANIELLE MASSI: Yeah, I needed that reframe. I needed it for me. And I needed it for all the women in my life and beyond. And it’s become something that is like a spark where other people are really clinging to this idea. And I see it all the time with people 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: A lot of selflessness with women, and not as much selfish. So let’s own you know, own the selfish, I love it  

DANIELLE MASSI: We have to. We really do. It’s for our health. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Just want to hear a little bit more Danielle about your life, day to day. Give us a window into your life. And you know you’re obviously juggling a lot of amazing activities and doing amazing things like how do you make sure you integrate your own self-care or your own wellness practices? Give us a sense like you wake up you do this like how’s it all going down?  

DANIELLE MASSI: Yeah, so I have two kids. They’re six and eight, and a husband. So I Mom-mode in the morning and in the afternoons and evenings some. Business hat goes on sometime around 9 or 10 am and then it comes off at 3. So my average day looks like waking up and getting my kids ready for school, getting them out the door and taking like an hour-long bath. That is not an exaggeration. Like I sit in the bath for too long. I think it was a mermaid in a past life, like I just like to chill in there. It’s so relaxing. I like candles I put on like, I get detox salts and things I put on energy healing music and I just chill and it’s so nice. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: I love, so you drive, you get the kids off and then you get in the bath for some me time. 

DANIELLE MASSI: I do it every day!

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: We should have a screen shot photo of your best setup, 

DANIELLE MASSI: I will, I will absolutely do that. I do it all the time. I post about it all the time on my social media. Because I spent so much time in there I might as well share like what it looks like. That was where I spent most of the money when I was building my house was in that bathroom. So that’s how I start my day every day. And then I like come downstairs, I’ve slowly eased my way into the work day. And I do have a lot of businesses to juggle.

I’ve got SELF(ish) Philly, I’ve got The Wellness Collective, I’m an author so I always have writing projects that I’m working on, whether it’s articles or books that I have to get done. I have meetings with my team. So I’ve got a PR team, I’ve got marketing team, I’ve got assistants, I’ve got OEMs, I gotta meet with everybody and make sure we’re all on the same page. And then the SELF(ish) Philly team. So we meet, we talk about the conference and start planning it. Literally one week after the conference happens, we start planning the next one.

So it’s just constant go, go go. And then The Wellness Collective, I got a big team over there, have to make sure everything’s up and running for. So I get into that business mode, I take a lunch break, get back into business mode, and then my kids get off the bus at three. So I stop. It’s over at that point. They usually want to like chill when they first get home from school.

And I’m all about that, obviously. So while they’re hanging out, I’ll meditate. I’ll do a little bit of like Kundalini Yoga, something that feels good, sometimes a Shadow Work meditation to just kind of like wrap out the day, anything that needs to go. And then I’m coaching my daughter’s soccer practice or I’m taking my son to his playdates or to Cub Scouts, which he’s a part of, which I don’t really understand, but all of his friends do it so we’re there.

Whatever it is that’s going on, driving my daughter to dance school, cooking dinner for the family and my husband and I kind of work out like some of those things where he’s doing all the cleaning, because I’m not cleaning, not doing it. That’s gonna be his job. But I’ll cook whatever you want, that’s fine with me. And that’s, that’s life. Then I usually like wrap it up by putting my kids to sleep having some kind of non-alcoholic bev, and then I just hang out with my husband and we talk or we watch movies. Like I’m a normal person outside of the world that people see of me online. I’m just a mom. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: And it sounds like you have very clear boundaries too in terms of your personal life, let’s say and then when you get you called it business mode or work mode, which is really interesting, because I feel like I know I struggle with and I’m really trying to get better like putting my phone away before bed, you know, and like just shutting it down. It’s so much temptation to just stay on on on all the time. But it seems like you’ve created a really strong boundary for when you’re off, you’re off. 

DANIELLE MASSI:  Yeah, I had to when I went through cancer. Leading up to that point, my day looked really different. To say it really short, I’d be up and working out in the morning, I’d drive my kids to daycare after I showered by 7:30.

Drive out to Penn State’s campus and teach get to my office by 11 or 12, depending on the day I see clients until 9:30 at night, finish up any notes or anything I have to do, get home at 10, 10:15. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t disconnecting, I was still trying to have a social media presence then. So like in between clients and like my little 10-minute break I’m like posting stuff. I was a wreck.

And it was not — I clearly, I got sick and I don’t think it was a coincidence that I did. So now knowing what I know I can there’s no other way that I can do it. I just can’t, I need that separation for my health and for my family. And now my relationships with my kids and with my husband are better than they’ve ever been. Because I have those hard lines.

And my rule of thumb is that when I’m on social media, I produce, not consume. I’m not scrolling through TikTok to watch. I am posting my content and I’m closing the app. And that’s it. I’ll spend designated time answering people’s questions and responding to comments. But I am not on there looking at other people’s stuff. And if you see me liking your stuff and going through it, I’m telling you my secret right now, that is my assistant, her name is Crystal, she’s fabulous. I literally pay someone else to do that. 

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: This is the real stuff. Well, thank you for sharing your voice and in such way, in ways that are healing and helping so many women. And I’ve just gotten so much energy from talking to you today. But I can’t let you go without asking our final question. We always ask our guests their One Tip to Rock It. You’ve already given us so many great nuggets of inspiration and wisdom. But if there’s one final tip that you would like to leave with us, the floor is yours. 

DANIELLE MASSI: Yeah, I know that this is a little bit self serving. But it’s the thing that helped me  

SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Selfish, you mean? 

DANIELLE MASSI: It’s a little selfish, it is. But honestly, doing Shadow Work has changed my life. And it’s changed the lives of all the women that I work with, which is why I wrote my book Shadow Work, where I teach you how to do it for yourself. You don’t need to spend hundreds or 1000s of dollars on all these different people to help you get to that point. If you can figure out the moment where your voice was shaped or where the blocks and the limitations came from and you bust through it. It’s going to be so easy for you to get up there and literally rock the mic as you do it.

OUTRO:

Thanks so much for tuning in to the She Rocked It podcast. I’m your host Karen Gross. This episode has been produced by Tori Marchiony with audio engineering by Teng Chen. The She Rocked It theme song is by Karen Gross and Tim Motzer. Please join us over on Instagram and check out our website at sherockedit.com to check out our Rockstar Network and check out all the cool things we have going on. Hope to see you soon!