Shauna Marie O’Toole’s memoir, Da Rules: The First One Hundred Plus Lessons I Learned in My Transition, offers readers a guidebook of transformation, bullet-point style. It’s a compact yet profound tour of her journey from confusion to confident womanhood, distilled into lessons learned.
As the book’s description invites, “As you read through this book, you will see a glimpse of how this journey has changed me. I would like to think that these changes are for the better. … I started out confused … suffered through Puberty 2.0 and 22 months of couch surfing. Lastly, I emerged as a confident woman who is strong. Self‑assured. Unstoppable. Da Rules is my journey in bullet form. Come journey with me!”
Shauna begins with the messy uncertainty that often precedes self-discovery, to acknowledge confusion as the first step.
In her Heroines interview, she reflected on feeling lost until that "accidental" moment of coming out sparked something profound inside her, awakening, honesty, a sense of direction. Da Rules captures this transformation as a lesson: embrace the confusion, because it signals that you’re headed somewhere real.
Among the notes she jots down are moments capturing the awkwardness of what she calls “Puberty 2.0”, when hormones kick in again, reshaping how you look and feel. These pages are unfiltered and occasionally funny, but also deeply human, a reminder that transition isn’t a single event, but a process of becoming. Then came the raw hard years: 22 months of couch-surfing, financial insecurity, and emotional strain. Yet these hardships become part of the empowering arc Shauna draws. Each bullet point underlines a lesson in resilience and reclaiming agency.
From that rocky middle emerges a narrative of triumph. Shauna’s rules map onto her ascent: learning confidence, developing tenacity, and grounding her strength in vulnerability. By the end of the book, the reader walks alongside a woman who stands, quietly fierce, self-assured, unstoppable.
In her interview, Shauna’s resilience matches this arc: “Those two years honed me… It tempered my backbone into steel and gave me a firm resolve to do whatever I can so that no one else would ever have to go through this, and worse.”
What makes Da Rules shine is its structure and sincerity. The bullet-list format gives bite-sized guidance ideal for reflection at any point in your own journey. Shauna’s voice sparkles, wry, honest, unapologetic, never pedantic or self-referential, but grounded in her lived experience. The book acts as both a mirror and a map: readers early in transition might feel seen; others later in their journey may find a companion or fresh perspective to guide them forward.
O'Toole uses Da Rules not just as memoir but as toolkit, leading readers toward self-discovery and bolder living. It fits seamlessly with her later works like You Can’t Shave in a Minimart Bathroom, Exodus, and her political activism via the We Exist Coalition and her senate campaign. She invites her audience not just to read, but to walk with her, grow, and then help others do the sameIf you’re at the beginning of your journey, stuck in that place of confusion and fear, Da Rules is a companion and cheerleader in compact form. And if you're further along the path, it's a powerful reminder of how far you’ve come, and how confidence and courage are learned, moment by moment. On every page, Shauna seems to whisper: your womanhood is yours to define… and once you own it, you become… unstoppable.
Available via Amazon
Photo via The Heroines of My Life.
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