Wynne is not who I was born as. She is who I chose to become.
That distinction matters more than anything else I could tell you about myself. Because for a long time, I was building a life around who I thought I was supposed to be. And I wore that identity like armor. Then, in the middle of the night in 2022, that armor cracked open in a way I could not ignore.
The night everything stopped working
I remember it clearly. It was late, I was working in my home office, preparing for my separation trial the next day. Court documents and invoices from lawyers were on one screen and payroll for my scaling business was on another. Suddenly, my ears started ringing.
Not a little ring. The kind of ringing you cannot breathe through, cannot think through, cannot outrun. Assuming I was having an anxiety or panic attack, I ran outside. My mother always told me to step outside when my anxiety hit. Go outside. Look at the sky. Remember how big the world is. It had always worked.
That night, it didn’t.
An urgent care visit said sinuses. An ENT specialist told me the truth: I had developed Grade 2 bilateral tinnitus. The cause: Stress and Sleep Deprivation. I was told that If I did not get a hold of my nervous system, I was looking at permanent hearing loss.
A month later, I woke up to extreme fatigue, unable to move my hands. Doctors confirmed I was in good physical health, my nervous system had simply short-circuited. I was experiencing extreme burnout and exhaustion. Attempting to get a hold of my mental health, I scheduled therapy sessions leading to yet another life-changing diagnosis. Autism and ADHD.
I was, by every measure, completely out of whack.
Looking back, I think I completely dissociated from life the entire year. And when I finally came back to myself enough to see clearly, I made three decisions: close my agency, start my wellness journey, and start taking naps.
Best decisions I ever made.
AuDHD taught me who I am underneath the titles
If you asked the people closest to me to describe me before any title or credential, they would probably say I feel everything loudly. I am deeply spiritual, the kind of spiritual that is less about religion and more about believing that the universe is working with you, not against you, when you get out of your own way. I am highly emotionally intelligent, which is both a gift and a weight. And, I have been everyone’s confidant personally and professionally for as long as I can remember.
I am a protector and a nurturer, sometimes to my own detriment. I am passionate in a way that takes over a room when I care about something. And I am sensitive in a way that I used to hide and now consider one of my most valuable assets.
The AuDHD diagnosis did not break me. It explained me. Suddenly thirty-something years of patterns, of feeling too much and thinking differently and building systems others could not see, it all made sense. I was not broken. I was operating the whole time without the right instructions.
What Pilates gave me that nothing else could
I came to Pilates through my yoga and wellness practice, curious and in full experimentation mode. Three classes in, I noticed something different in my body. I felt stretched out, limber, my core was engaged in a way that felt like rediscovering something I had forgotten I had. Six weeks in, my body had changed in ways that years of other movement had not produced.
But the physical results are not the real story.
The real story is the intentionality. Pilates demanded that I breathe through every movement. That I slow down to feel what my body was actually doing. For someone whose nervous system had been running in emergency mode for years, that instruction to breathe and be present was almost radical.
I have flat feet, knocked knees, and foot issues that have caused me pain for most of my life. Pilates has changed how I stand, how I walk, how I carry myself. I have not even explored every apparatus or every level and that matters too, because a practice that keeps expanding keeps my AuDHD locked in. There is always more to discover. That is the kind of thing my brain was built for.
What I am noticing now
I’m noticing that transformation doesn’t look like a highlight reel. It looks like choosing to be still when every instinct says keep moving. It looks like boundaries that protect your energy instead of performing generosity until you collapse. It looks like mindfulness not as a wellness trend but as actual survival. It looks like leading from clarity instead of fear.
The slow path wins the race. I know that now in my body, not just my head.
Why Wynne, Why now
Three years ago, I would not have been able to write this post. Not because the story wasn’t there, it was. But because I was still in the middle of it, still trying to outrun it, still performing a version of myself that was exhausting to maintain.
Wynne is who I became when I stopped running.
She is unapologetic and fun because she allows herself to be. She has boundaries that protect her energy from being drained by spaces that don’t reciprocate. She is building something new — a consulting practice, a lifestyle brand, a product line — not from ambition alone, but from genuine desire to share what she has learned about transformation, movement, and what it looks like to build a life that actually fits you.
I am not letting my past, my mistakes, or my diagnosis define who I am now. I am using every single one of them to build something better.
That is who Wynne is. Welcome to Wynne Daily.
Wynne Dakers is the founder of Wynne Daily and Somma — platforms that explore transformation through movement, wellness, and intentional living. Through reflections on Pilates, neurodivergence life, identity, and building with purpose, she documents what it looks like to create a life that actually fits you.
