As 2024 ends, I’m reflecting on the moments that shaped me—like finishing my memoir and attending a transformative writing retreat. This year reminded me that extraordinary doesn’t always look big; it’s found in small wins and facing challenges with courage. What are your reflections? What are you proud of? What have you let go of? As we look to 2025, I’m excited to flourish—hosting Spark events in Florence and launching Brave Middle Ground. Here's to closing the year with gratitude and stepping into a new one with purpose and joy!
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Embrace change: Work toward your Spark in May
2016 Dayna Del Val would ruefully laugh in your face if you showed her this blog post. That year, only months before Mazz got sober, I was, again, contemplating how to leave him, how to walk away from what felt like an endless, slow, sad spiral to a bottom I couldn't see and didn't understand. There was no indication that anything was going to get better or ever be different.
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Birthing your dream
My carefully constructed blueprint might not have all the details I will discover or dream up. Plans I'm sure will work now might prove to be unusable when tasked with carrying this memoir from start to finish. Hopefully I'll conceive of ideas that are more valuable than anything I've yet imagined at this early juncture.
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Join the Spark movement: Let’s collaborate and grow together
For close to four years, I've been offering various opportunities for people to say yes to Spark work. I've loved the hundreds of people I've worked with in all these many ways we've engaged in this joyful work together, but it's time for me to change it up.
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Eat. Drink. Spark! and the (re)Discover Your Spark retreat is coming to Hopkins, MN in October!
Calling everyone in the Twin Cities area to an #extraordinary Eat. Drink. Spark! dinner + 1-day Discover Your Spark retreat coming OCTOBER 20 AND 21. When I met Kathleen Crandall earlier this summer, I knew I was going to like her, but then she suggested we work together with our programs and offered to host a 2-part, three-ways-to-engage opportunity, and I’m so excited! I can’t wait to see you there! OPTION ONE: Eat. Drink. Spark! FRIDAY DINNER What: The Eat. Drink. Spark! Dinner experience includes the beginning of Discover Your Spark work, a sumptuous 3-course meal prepared by a chef from Minneapolis-based chef Jo Seddon’s team, complemented by three exclusive Spark cocktails or NA cocktails, if…
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Asking for and receiving answers
I was in another one of those weird funks I get in when I don’t have a book I find engaging. We went to the library, and I was scanning the new nonfiction books, looking for the covers that would grab me. This is the way I find nearly all the books I read, unless someone else recommends something specific. I am a great believer in judging literal books by their covers. I wasn’t having much luck, so I asked the Universe to guide me to whatever book I needed most to read this week, and I kept wandering, searching for something to draw me in. Then one word, “Illogical”…
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Grant funded (re)Discover Your Spark virtual weekend retreat for ND-based artists & makers now available
Fargo-based arts leader welcomes North Dakota artists and makers to attend virtual retreat focused on personal exploration OCTOBER 20, 2022—Two years ago, a spark of inspiration ignited a shining new vision for The Arts Partnership President and CEO Dayna Del Val, one that has since helped her—and many others—rediscover passions, projects and purposes that have long since fallen into the shadows. But first, she had to walk into those shadows. Del Val recalls the moment the idea for (re)Discover Your Spark hit her where she needed to feel it the most: right in her head and her heart. “In September 2020, I was awarded a two-week Artist in Residence with…
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I hear you, Universe, and I’m grateful
I feel that way about these extraordinary signs, too. Perhaps they were just by chance. Maybe I'll start hearing "My Favorite Things" on all the Christmas channels I stream, and maybe spin class will continue to play songs from movie musicals about ancient Jewish miracles, but I don't think so.
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I’m coming home at last
What if the role of David Helfgott had been open 10 years earlier? Mr Rush would likely have wanted to go up for the audition. But, he wouldn't have been the right age to play him; he might not have had enough lived experience, have worked with the right acting coach, had the agent who could get him in the room or fill in any number of blanks to play that role. And had he not been cast in Shine, it's entirely likely he might not also have been cast in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Shakespeare in Love, The King's Speech and so many other memorable films with…
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Now I’m married to an American?
I hurt his feelings terribly one day when I said, "Become a citizen, but you'll never BE American anyway." What I meant was that he will never have our Manifest Destiny propaganda, I mean spirit; he'll never tromp through the world with our sense of clueless, boisterous entitlement. He'll always have a sense of empathy for the underdog because his dad had to sleep on a park bench when he first arrived in England because no one would rent a hotel room to an Irishman. He'll always be comfortable with multiculturalism because, for all their ongoing struggles with race, England does seem to better embrace it than America does. He'll…
