Shawn Van Daele

I’m not going to pretend I have some fabulous, fancy agent or rep who wrote this part.

This is me. This is Shawn aka SJ and these are also my words, like every other one tucked between the covers of my book. You’d think after writing nearly 500 pages about myself and my adventures that crafting this About the Author page would be easy. But, if it weren’t necessary to include, I’d probably omit it entirely because if you don’t know me yet after reading everything that came before this, nothing I write here can help you learn who I am or where I came from.

Once upon a time, someone reminded me that the question “Who are you?” is harder to define than it sounds. And the more I thought about it, the more complex and challenging it became.

Well, I’m a writer, photographer, Creative Director, and artist.

Nope. That’s what I do.

Okay then, I’m married to a fabulous guy, I have three crazy dogs, and we live in a beautiful heritage home in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada.

Nope. That’s where I live, and who I live with.

Fine. I’m a deep thinker, who overthinks pretty much everything, uses creativity of all kinds to channel those thoughts, and transform them into palpable forms that are easier for me to process and share, whether it’s by writing, or baking sourdough bread.

Still nope. That’s who I think I am and what I enjoy doing.

This is annoying. Okay, I was with my ex-husband for 18 years, we had a wildly successful photography empire, I did this thing called The Drawing Hope Project which catapulted me to global fame and then it all fell apart because of my struggle with addiction, grief from too many losses, and really – just trying to survive.

Nope. Sorry. That’s what you’ve done, and what you’ve been through.

So, you get it. This page is challenging. I can’t write it because I still don’t know the answer. So, just read the book or my blog. It’ll tell you more about the author than this page ever can.

xo Shawn