Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Daniella Levy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Daniella, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Any advice for creating a more inclusive workplace?
If you had told me 5 years ago that I would not only be working full-time as a copy and content professional at a hi-tech company, but that I would fight to get there and enjoy almost every minute — I would have thought you were insane.
I am a highly sensitive person: one of the 15% of people identified by researcher Elaine Aron as having a heightened nervous system and deeper cognitive processing of physical and emotional stimuli. This is a mixed bag, especially when it comes to pursuing a career. My high sensitivity means I am creative, imaginative, empathetic, intuitive, and a deep thinker. It also means I can be easily overwhelmed, suffer from a certain degree of social anxiety, and don’t have a lot of physical stamina. For many years I thought I would never be able to cope with having a full-time job because I get tired and overwhelmed so easily and probably wouldn’t be able to handle the stress. But after a while of freelancing as a writer from home, I was noticed by MyHeritage and asked to freelance for them more regularly. I discovered to my enormous surprise that I loved being at the office and collaborating with my teammates.
Even better, I discovered that my talents and capabilities were deeply valued by the team there. They offered me flexibility from the outset, and have never been bothered by my initial shyness or aversion to crowds and noise. On the contrary, they valued my quiet wisdom and sensitivity to the needs and moods of my teammates, and the more comfortable I became with them, the easier it was for me to speak up and contribute. This, combined with a certain change in my life circumstances, motivated me to ask to join the team full-time. I honestly don’t know if I would have been able to grow and thrive so much professionally if not for the supportive environment they provided.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a storyteller by nature and a copywriter and content professional by trade. I joined the MyHeritage team after more than a decade of freelancing as a translator and writer for a wide variety of clients. I am also the author of three books — one nonfiction (Letters to Josep: An Introduction to Judaism) and two novels (By Light of Hidden Candles and Disengagement) — and my short fiction and poetry, in 3 languages, have been published on 4 continents. I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for one of my short stories.
I’ve been writing pretty much since I taught myself to read and write at age 4. The first home I remember was in Pittsburgh, PA, and I immigrated to Israel with my family when I was 9 years old. My English-language education pretty much stopped at that point, but my passion for reading and writing did not; I’ve always been a bit of an autodidact, learning most easily when left to my own devices, and I started writing novels at age 12. I wrote 5 full-length novels before the age of 20.
It took 15 years and a sixth novel before I got one traditionally published, however, and that’s a whole other story. One of the projects I’m most proud of was born from that struggle: my blog “The Rejection Survival Guide,” which explores how to pursue a creative life despite the rejection and criticism inherent to it. In the past several years I haven’t updated it much, but I already have it compiled into a manuscript and I know I’ll publish it as its own book one day.
But taking off my “author hat” and putting on my “Senior Copywriter and Content Manager for MyHeritage” hat: MyHeritage is a global platform for family history research and DNA testing, and I absolutely love working there because it combines so many of my interests and passions. It’s a high-tech company at the forefront of innovation that helps people connect to the past and to their own roots. I help the company communicate and connect with its users through the written word: educational articles, blog posts, email campaigns, video scripts, UX copy, you name it. But my favorite thing about my job — aside from working with a truly amazing team that I love and respect — is telling the stories of our users.
Our users make discoveries that literally change their lives, whether it’s reuniting with a long-lost family member or solving an old family mystery. I get to help tell their stories via blog posts and videos. I even had the privilege of writing the section of our Tribal Quest website detailing the day-to-day lives and personal stories of the Achuar tribe in Ecuador, which our team visited to help document their family history and preserve it for future generations.
I see other people’s stories as a sacred space I am being permitted to enter, and I approach them with the care and reverence of the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies. It is a high honor that I never take lightly.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I wrote my first two novels before the age of 14, and at 15, I started trying to get the second of them published. It took 15 years, 4 more manuscripts, and literally hundreds of rejections before that dream came true.
I had a lot of “almosts” in the first few years, which actually made it harder in a way. My fifth manuscript was written after a literary agent took a liking to me and my writing and suggested an idea, but when even that didn’t work out, I fell into a kind of despair about the whole thing and kind of gave up on it for a while. I went to college, got married, had kids, and moved on with my life… or so I thought, until one day, an idea I had for a novel years ago suddenly came back to me. I have no other way to describe it: the story forced me to write it. So then, a little over 3 months later, I had this manuscript and I was facing the question of whether I should try again.
I did try again. And I was rejected. Around 150 times. I started my blog, “The Rejection Survival Guide” — as I described in the “about” page of the blog — “from a place of exasperation and despair mixed with incredulity at my own stubbornness.” Why did I keep trying when I had continued to fail so consistently? I started the blog to explore that question, and coined the phrase “creative resilience” to refer to the ability to continue pursuing an art despite the continuous stream of rejection and criticism that results from trying to share it. Ironically, only a few months after I started the blog, I finally found a publisher for that novel in a totally unexpected way.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I think the hardest lesson to unlearn was the idea that I needed the validation of some kind of external authority to confirm that I was, in fact, good enough at what I do. I never finished college, partly because I found it too stressful and partly because I didn’t find it fulfilling, and for many years I carried the fact that I didn’t have a degree around as a huge source of shame. I also refused, for a long time, to consider self-publishing, because I felt that publishing your own book didn’t really “count.” It was only when I was able to let go of the idea that I needed someone else to tell me I was good enough that I actually started to receive that kind of external validation. I self-published my first (nonfiction) book, but my next two were traditionally published by a small press. And for many years I thought I wasn’t “qualified enough” to have a good, full-time job at a respectable company. But I eventually came to understand that I don’t need a piece of paper on my wall to tell me that my work is good. My work, and the response it evokes, speak for themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://daniella-levy.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniellalevy.author/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/daniellalevyauthor
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniella-levy/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/daniellanlevy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@daniellalevy
- Other: The Rejection Survival Guide: rejectionsurvivalguide.com
Image Credits
Eitan Levy, Eugene Slov, Daniella Levy, Yael Shahar