Guest Profile
Danielle Aitken
As a highly experienced nurse and midwife, I’ve spent over twenty years working at the cutting edge of IVF in Australia. Now a counsellor and clinical hypnotherapist running a successful private practice, I assist people to move through trauma and crisis by helping them to discover their inner strengths.
When I’m not writing, I’m passionate about empowering people to achieve their goals and reach their true potential by working with the principals that are explored in the latter part of Sarah’s Story.
Sarah’s Story, is a work of fiction based on the cumulative common experiences of countless numbers of women and men that I encountered over twenty years of working in the area of infertility. This story is an inspirational narrative about self-discovery and transformation. It’s a powerful story of love, life and resilience that leads the reader from the innocence of naivety through the emotional turmoil of unexpected despair and grief, then emerges out the other side as it skilfully illuminates human potential to triumph over adversity.
After working in the infertility industry for over 20 years I have experienced first-hand the devastation that infertility can wreak on individuals, couples, friends and extended family alike. It can often be an insidious and unrelenting issue and there are many relationships that do not survive the experience. I have utilized the insight and knowledge that I have gained on my own journey and sensitively displayed this throughout the pages of Sarah’s Story.
I am blessed to be a mother of three beautiful children and grandmother to three beautiful girls, and I never take this privilege for granted.
I have now created my own publishing house, in which to publish my second novel, thus, Project Heart Publishing was born. The Ripples, my second novel, based on the relentless impacts of suicide, immediately went to #1 on the Amazon Hot New Release list, and #1 on the Amazon Best Seller list in its category. This speaks to me of how important this subject matter is and it fills my heart with joy, as I believe this will be the catalyst for many needed conversations about suicide and mental health awareness.
I now reside in the idyllic seaside village of Kilcunda, Victoria with the youngest of my beautiful children Rachel, my husband Phil, happily accompanied by our family dog, lorikeet and six alpacas where I continue to run my business and write my books. Both my books highlight the enormous impacts of mental health issues, through compelling fictional stories around these very important issues.
My “why” in writing, is to use the power of the written word to shine a light on social issues, with the intention to start important discussions. I seek to educate and to validate those on these journeys, and to assist in the discovery of personal potential and possibility; to shine a light of hope in the darkness that illuminates the possibility that sometimes amazing outcomes can be born out of the deepest despair and each and every experience can provide us with valuable wisdom from which to create a new beginning.