My Restorative Rebellion: What Lit the Fire in Me
- Aug 28, 2025
- 3 min read
By Dani Bicknell
The fire didn’t start with a big moment. It crept in quietly, like a survival instinct kicking in when everything else falls away.
It was the moment I moved from thriving to just trying to survive. I had just been laid off, my child was starting an expensive preschool, and we were still navigating an uncertain, chaotic world. I had done everything “right”: I earned the degrees, climbed the ladder, and worked in respected institutions. But suddenly, there I was—exhausted, unsure, and financially stretched, trying to hold together a life that no longer fit.
I started working for myself and answered an inner desire to write again. So I wrote. Not for strategy or success, but to reclaim something that felt like mine. I wrote through the fog of uncertainty, through caregiving, through the constant mental math of time, money, and meaning. At first, I wasn’t sure anyone would care. But what I found through that process—and eventually through publishing The Restorative Rebel—was that I wasn’t alone. The fire lit up when people began saying, “This is what I’ve been feeling too.”
What lit the fire in me was that moment of reckoning: the realization that capitalism forces us to be scrappy, to over-function, to rely on ourselves, especially when the systems built to support us fail—because they were never really designed for us to begin with. And by us, I mean women. I mean Black, Indigenous, and people of color. I mean caregivers and anyone who has been systematically excluded from power but still finds ways to build, heal, and lead.
Women have always had to be resourceful. We’ve always had to lead under pressure, solve problems without recognition, and carry emotional and structural burdens while being told to be grateful for the opportunity. In business, in government, and in healthcare, we’ve often been shut out of decision-making rooms, only to be called in later to fix what those rooms broke.
That’s what late-stage capitalism doesn’t understand: that the very people it tries to overlook are the ones best equipped to lead us forward.
We know how to adapt, organize, and create restorative rebellions. We’ve been doing it for generations. And while I don’t wish survival mode on anyone, I do believe that those who’ve had to survive within—and in spite of—this system are the leaders, healers, and innovators we need now.
Because what we’re living through isn’t just inequality—it’s creeping capitalist fascism. The kind that privatizes care, hoards wealth, and blames individuals for the crises created by systems. But I won’t give in to it. I won’t shrink myself to fit within a structure that was never built with women, and so many others, in mind.
The fire in me is fueled by refusal. Refusal to play along quietly. Refusal to believe that healing, rest, or joy must be earned. Refusal to accept a system that pits us against one another and calls it ambition. But it’s also fueled by hope—by the vision of something better. A world where we measure leadership not by profit but by impact. Where collaboration is more valuable than competition. Where women don’t just survive these systems, but lead the work to dismantle and rebuild them.
At first, I didn’t want to write a book. But that calling said, do it for yourself. It was my way of reclaiming voice, agency, and clarity in a world that often tries to strip those things away. And now that the fire’s lit, I’ll keep using it to warm others—so we don’t just burn out, but burn brighter, together.
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