The Slow Lane

There was a time when sharing parts of my life online felt as ordinary as talking over a fence with a neighbour. A photo, a glimpse behind the scenes, a small moment from a day in which nothing much happened. I never gave it a second thought.

I want to begin with that time, and with the good, because there is a great deal of it. The internet has handed ordinary people a reach that once belonged only to companies with marketing departments. A woman on a rural property in Eastern Ontario can build a brand from her kitchen table, find customers in every province, and meet women who love the same things she does. That is how Canadian Huntress began: no investors, no agency, no debt. Just an idea, a good many late nights, and a network that put me in touch with people I would never otherwise have met.

Some of the best people in my life arrived by way of a screen: women who signed up for an event after seeing a post, customers who became friends, strangers who wrote on a hard day to say something I had written stayed with them. And when you share your work, you get to follow it out into the world. A hoodie turns up in a photo from a duck blind in Saskatchewan. A first-time hunter comes to a ladies’ event and books her own hunting course the following spring. You send something small out the door, and now and then it comes home larger than it left.

That is what I love about this work, and what I intend to protect. Because somewhere along the way, the fence-line ease disappeared, and I cannot point to the day it went.

When you step into public view, you surrender the right to choose your audience. Most people who follow along are lovely. Every so often, though, someone appears who is not following so much as studying. They note what you post and when, whom you tag, where you have been and what you were wearing. They notice the smallest changes. They never engage. They only observe.

I have had a few such observers over the years. I will name no one; this is not that kind of entry and never will be. I will say only that being watched so closely changes a person, whether she consents to the change or not. My mind is not built to overlook things. I notice patterns, small shifts and details others might never register. It is part of what makes me good at the work I love, and it is also why none of this has ever been easy to ignore.

Once you begin to worry about unwanted attention, the smallest decisions grow complicated. You hesitate before posting a photo. You think twice about mentioning where you have been. The unease does not leave when you put the phone down, either. It follows you through the day and begins to govern how much of yourself you are willing to let anyone see. There is a difference between being visible and being exposed, and it took me years to understand it.

What unsettled me most was the fear beneath all of it: that if I ever spoke up about behaviour that made me uncomfortable, the story might be turned around until I became the one in the wrong. That fear is a large part of why I withdrew from public life online. I never stopped creating. I grew far more protective of the parts of my life that were never meant to have an audience.

About a year ago, I sought professional guidance to help me make sense of the anxiety and PTSD that had accumulated over years of this. It was not an easy step, and I have not discussed it publicly before. But this Journal is meant to be an honest account of how I have navigated this industry, and leaving it out would make that account incomplete.

It was through that guidance that I first encountered the term DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender, a concept introduced by psychologist Jennifer J. Freyd in 1997. It describes a response that can occur when someone is confronted about harmful behaviour. They deny it, attack the credibility of the person who raised the concern, and cast themselves as the one who was wronged. The original concern is lost, and the conversation turns instead to reputations, motives, and whether the person who spoke can be believed at all. A boundary can be recast as an attack; self-protection as cruelty.

Learning about concepts like DARVO was never about assigning blame or putting a label on anyone. It was about understanding how certain experiences can keep shaping us long after they’ve passed. Working with a professional helped me recognize and name patterns I hadn’t understood before, and that brought a clarity I didn’t know I needed. It didn’t change the past, but it changed how I carry it. Sometimes understanding what we’ve lived through is the first step toward no longer letting it define how we move forward.

Moving forward has looked different from what I once imagined. My business is my passion project, and for a long time it was the one place I could share what I loved without hesitation. I have since pulled back sharply from posting anything personal, and when I do share something on my business page or YouTube, it is often weeks or months after the fact. It is a caution I never imagined needing, and if I am honest, it saddens me. Nobody should have to deliberate over every photo before she feels safe putting it into the world.

I have written about stepping back before, when I described the changes to From the Field and the health challenges that forced me to slow down. What I did not mention was this other, more personal reason.

For years I believed that building something meaningful meant showing your face, telling your story, and letting people see the person behind the work. I do not regret the years I spent offering that. But visibility carries a price, and I am no longer willing to pay it at any cost. So I made changes. I am more selective about photos, personal details and the everyday parts of my life, and I have grown comfortable letting the work speak without being the face of everything I make. Some may read that as withdrawal. To me it is a boundary. My business can be public without my whole life being public, and I can keep creating without granting unlimited access to myself.

Boundaries come with their own worry. I have caught myself wondering whether expressing discomfort would be read as aggression, or whether speaking up would simply become a debate over who had been hurt. That is where DARVO struck a chord. There is a particular exhaustion in feeling you must always explain yourself, and sometimes silence seems the safer road. Silence has its own cost, though. When you become less visible, people fill in the blanks themselves.

But stepping away from visibility is not the same as stepping away from your purpose. The work continued, the business continued, and so did I. Sometimes silence is not an ending. It is a decision to carry on without an audience.

Somewhere between the anxiety and the understanding, my vantage point changed. I stopped feeling hunted and began to realize I had an excellent seat.

There are plenty of circuses to choose from these days, each with its own big top, floodlights and three rings running at once. Ambition is not the problem. I have plenty of my own, and I will never fault a woman for building something. The trouble begins when the building stops and the performance takes over, when the point is no longer the product or the people but “look at me.”

Then there is the question of originality. Trends spread, industries share common ground, and creative people naturally influence one another; most similarity is no more than that. To me, originality has always been about developing something that reflects your own experiences, ideas and convictions. Authenticity cannot be manufactured. It accrues slowly, out of the lives people lead, the choices they make and the convictions they hold when no one is looking. The lesson is the same for all of us, myself included: none of it works unless it is yours.

As for me, I have settled into the slow lane, and I am in it by choice.

I post less and share later. Most of my life never reaches the internet at all. When something does go up, it is because it is finished and worth your time. Some people take that for falling behind. I take it for the reverse.

The slow lane is where I get to be fully present: in the field at first light with coffee going cold on the tailgate, walking the fence line at Stonehaven, sitting at the kitchen table writing something I care about rather than something an algorithm requested. Every notification on my phone is turned off, and I do mean every one, and the phone itself lives on silent. Nothing pings, buzzes or lights up to summon me. I am not half here and half on my phone, checking how a post is performing. I am here, and I love every minute of it.

That is a luxury in the truest sense. When everyone is expected to be available at every hour, the freedom to switch off entirely, to live first and share second, has become one of the scarcest things a person can own. I did not inherit it. I chose it, and I guard it carefully.

And it works. I am calmer, clearer and far more creative when I am not performing. A steady, deliberate pace earns a kind of trust that constant noise never will. Customers know what they are buying, and event guests know whom they are spending the day with.

That steadiness shapes the brand, too. Canadian Huntress is a clothing brand for women who love the outdoors: women supporting women, through the clothing, the events and the stories of the women who wear it. It is not about me, and it never has been. This Journal is different by design. From the Field is the one corner where I am permitted to be a person rather than a brand. If you want to know me, you will find me here. Keeping the two apart keeps the brand uncluttered and the writing honest. I never have to turn myself into content to sell a sweater.

Clarity has its limits, of course. You cannot control how other people choose to see you. Not every disagreement is manipulation, and not everyone who disputes a concern is engaging in DARVO. Two people can remember the same moment very differently. But there should always be room for people to voice discomfort and set boundaries without being treated as the problem for doing so. I have tried to hold both truths. I have also learned that defending your perspective over and over only prolongs the situation you hoped to resolve. I have become more selective about the conversations I take part in, and I no longer feel obliged to defend my experiences indefinitely.

Choosing what to share is not the same as being silenced. I may post less and keep more of my life to myself, but my story is mine to tell, from my own perspective, in my own words and in my own time, and this Journal is where I intend to keep telling it.

I used to believe the watching would eventually stop. I no longer believe that. Anyone who puts their work and life out into the world learns sooner or later that there will always be people who take an unusual interest in what others are doing. What has changed is that it no longer troubles me. I will not answer noise with noise. That is how you end up in a clown suit yourself. I would rather keep my boots laced, my head down and my message clear.

None of this has soured me on the internet. It still lets us build businesses, share ideas and find our people, and it has introduced me to women I would never otherwise have met. Somewhere along the way, though, we came to accept that being online means being available: to be watched, questioned, analyzed or contacted whenever someone feels entitled to our attention. I do not think that is a fair expectation of anyone. I have found real freedom in realizing I can take part without revealing everything. I can create without performing, share without explaining, and keep a public business while living a very private life.

So if you find you are seeing a little less of me online, it is not because something has gone wrong. It is because a great deal has gone right. I am out living the life this brand was built from: hosting events, traveling with my family and friends, planning our second annual ladies’ pheasant hunt, writing when there is something worth saying, and spending far more of my time present than posting.

The circus is welcome to its tent. I will be out here in the slow lane, precisely where I mean to be. What matters most is the life behind the work.

Outside Looks Good On You™

Dana