About Darla
Who Am I to Know That?
Hi, I’m Darla. I’m here to be a speaker of Truths that want to be spoken. I speak truths that clarify intents, purify energies, and reveal a person’s inner wisdom to themselves.
I was the kid that hid shyly behind the leg of the most available adult when meeting new people, and who’s mother ordered for her at restaurants until well beyond when she should have.
My closest adult cousin used to tell me, “I’m going to start calling you I Don’t Know,” because I so often gave that response when asked what I wanted to do or what I wanted to eat.
So it’s no surprise that when I started to receive guidance about the life that wanted to live through me – about the transformational work I was here to do in the world – I was confused.
WHO AM I TO DO THAT?
WHO AM I TO Know THAT?
These questions became a common refrain in my head.
I experienced a lot of change in my childhood, and there were many things unsaid about what was happening. My parents divorced when I was young and the circumstances of the divorce and events that followed were often talked about in hushed tones. There were things I remembered happening that were never spoken of. And things that were spoken that I JUST KNEW were not true. I was kept in the dark about things big and small even though I was a bright kid who was picking up so much.
In practical terms I was shuffled from house to house often without knowing where I’d be going next or for how long – an aunt, a friend, a neighbor, my father. It didn’t seem important to anyone to inform me where I’d be going next, let alone ask me what I wanted.
At a certain point I gained weight. I believe I was numbing out what my body was feeling. Once I was fat I was no longer allowed to decide what I wanted to eat.
Net, I never learned to consider what I wanted.
I didn’t get to have boundaries.
And I certainly was never encouraged to know and trust what I knew.
Behind my degree, my “Senior Engineer at Procter & Gamble” title, my spreadsheets, and my powerpoint slides, I felt safe.
Until the knowing began.
I was trained as a coach at P&G and in the process something began to open in me. I began seeing and knowing things that I couldn’t explain. Things that my colleagues with the same training didn’t seem to be seeing.
While others were learning the steps and the principles, I felt I was tapping into a higher truth about the patterns at play in humanity that were getting in the way of our effectiveness, our happiness, and our joy.
It was all so clear to me, I couldn’t believe more people weren’t shouting from the rooftops about this. Because I thought everyone else saw it too.
But it wasn’t their life mission, it was mine.
And while I felt DRAWN to do this work of transformation, I didn’t trust myself to create a business doing it. So I waited. And I waited, reading books by other experts (who were not actually yet talking about the truths I now knew), and hoping that someone else would start a company doing what I felt called to do, so I could work for them.
Behind my degree, my “Senior Engineer at Procter & Gamble” title, my spreadsheets, and my powerpoint slides, I felt safe.
Until the knowing began.
I was trained as a coach at P&G and in the process something began to open in me. I began seeing and knowing things that I couldn’t explain. Things that my colleagues with the same training didn’t seem to be seeing.
While others were learning the steps and the principles, I felt I was tapping into a higher truth about the patterns at play in humanity that were getting in the way of our effectiveness, our happiness, and our joy.
It was all so clear to me, I couldn’t believe more people weren’t shouting from the rooftops about this. Because I thought everyone else saw it too.
But it wasn’t their life mission, it was mine.
And while I felt DRAWN to do this work of transformation, I didn’t trust myself to create a business doing it. So I waited. And I waited, reading books by other experts (who were not actually yet talking about the truths I now knew), and hoping that someone else would start a company doing what I felt called to do, so I could work for them.
Cultural conditioning had told me that as a young female from a small town in Minnesota, I was not the type of person who could do that. Who could KNOW that. Companies, futures, rules… these were built by old white men from the East coast.
And clearly my familial conditioning had taught me not to look for the truth within, or even to know what I felt. I was actively discouraged from knowing what I knew because it was painful for the people around me to be with.
Because of this it took me a long time to align with who I came here to be as one to sound a Clarion Call for Truth.
It took me a long time to learn to call in the people who want to hear this. To own my own magic. And to form a business around it. And I love using this gift to help others to do the same.
When it comes to knowing the Truth, I’ve experienced contrast around this gift more times than I have space to share. These are the times I didn’t trust or act on my knowing or dare to speak my Truth. These Sourced Experiences, as we call them, include many minor but irritating mistakes in judgment, some ‘expensive’ career and business lessons, and navigating two very challenging divorces.
It wasn’t until 2017 when I lost $50,000 on an event that I made a commitment to learn to trust what I know.
As I began to explore the reason things hadn’t gone well, I could see that while some of my decisions around this event were based in intuitive guidance, many of the decisions were not. In fact, the whole idea to do a “big event” had been given to me from someone else – an outside expert.
It wasn’t my first event, and I actually had a lot of experience hosting profitable events and retreats. In fact at the time I was consistently hosting several small retreats each year that earned $200,000 on average.
Business-wise, I didn’t even have a need to host a big event. But I had overridden my own wisdom in favor of what someone else said I needed to do to be successful… to “be someone” in my industry. I gave away my own sovereignty and access to my truth, thinking someone else knew better.
It wasn’t the first time I’d done this, in fact I had gotten married because my partner thought it was a good idea, even when I didn’t. Deferring to others who may know better was a long standing pattern for me.
I didn’t have words for it at the time, but I committed to becoming Sourced. I committed to opening myself to new tools and ways of operating that would allow me to hear and know what was mine to do, and to trust it and act on it.
And to not act when I wasn’t yet clear.
Since that time I’ve been practicing living Sourced, hearing and trusting my knowing, and developing new tools and awareness about my own magic.
I’ve made friends with my body and reclaimed its ability to feel Truth that I had numbed with food as a kid, learning many embodiment practices. I can know undeniably what I know and live it in a full-bodied way. I’ve said no to many popular ideas of how they say we “should” create as coaches and thought leaders, and instead followed where I felt drawn.
Three months before the pandemic began my intuitive guidance had me create a VIRTUAL retreat for my clients to be held in March of 2020. I didn’t know why, but I had learned to trust, and I was thankful I didn’t have to make the decision about whether to cancel a planned live experience that week.
I didn’t have words for it at the time, but I committed to becoming Sourced. I committed to opening myself to new tools and ways of operating that would allow me to hear and know what was mine to do, and to trust it and act on it.
And to not act when I wasn’t yet clear.
Since that time I’ve been practicing living Sourced, hearing and trusting my knowing, and developing new tools and awareness about my own magic.
I’ve made friends with my body and reclaimed its ability to feel Truth that I had numbed with food as a kid, learning many embodiment practices. I can know undeniably what I know and live it in a full-bodied way. I’ve said no to many popular ideas of how they say we “should” create as coaches and thought leaders, and instead followed where I felt drawn.
Three months before the pandemic began my intuitive guidance had me create a VIRTUAL retreat for my clients to be held in March of 2020. I didn’t know why, but I had learned to trust, and I was thankful I didn’t have to make the decision about whether to cancel a planned live experience that week.
A year before the pandemic began I’d felt the pull to change my direction from one of teaching people how to host profitable retreats to something that felt fresh and new. It came through as this brand called Sourced, and I knew that I knew it was mine to create.
This inner guidance meant that when the world stopped hosting retreats, I was already ready to pivot from teaching retreat leaders, and to create something that would hold people through the challenging years to come and beyond.
Today, Source is my business partner, and my business has been flowing without the traditional forms of marketing I was taught I needed to have (hello – no more Facebook ads!) Collectively our company, and our community of clients, ARE shifting the field through our work.
More importantly, I truly live what I teach as I walk in Sourced Energy most of the time, knowing what I know, trusting where I feel DRAWN, and knowing that the right people for this work will FEEL me, from team to clients and beyond.
This wasn’t predictable. Letting my knowing be my gift and being paid for it was not predictable. A joyful life of freedom, and impact, and walking in truth was not predictable. And here I am, and loving it!