She was born into a peasant family as one of nine children. Today she recalls that until she was 10 years old, she wanted to be a boy.
According to a rural tradition, girls were not allowed to walk on fences, ride motorbikes and climb trees.

She finished her education in elementary school when she was 14 years old. She helped her parents in the household. She did not want to have such a difficult life as her parents had. She dreamed about leaving the village.

She was the only one from her large family who managed to do that. She left for Gdańsk when she was 19 years old. She worked with no permit in a flower shop. She earned just enough to live by. She always wanted to have a large family. She started dating a young electrician who worked in the Gdańsk Shipyards. His name was Lech Wałęsa.

They got married in 1969. At first, they did not have enough money, but with time they came up on top and they could live a very modest life of an average Polish family. Danka tried to open her own newsstand, but when she became pregnant for the first time, she stopped working for good.

Danuta says: ‘I thought he was more experienced. Since I am younger, my husband is the leader and I just do what I am asked to do. Today, I have to admit that I was wrong.’ Lech supported the family; she took care of the household and children. They led separate lives.

In December 1970, Lech got engaged in the shipyard strikes. Danuta found out about it on the first day of the strike when there had already been blood on the streets of Gdańsk because the authorities had opened fire. On the next day, Civic Militia came for her husband. He left her with his watch and wedding ring so that she could sell them if she ran out of money.

Lech was released after a few days, but at the same time he became permanently involved in the opposition movement, an activity that made him the leader of the Solidarity movement and later, the President of the free Poland (1990 -1995). In the 1970s he was dismissed from his job many times and often incarcerated for 48 hours. He never explained anything to his wife. She never asked. They
did not talk about politics. She learned to live despite reprisals aimed at her husband and his constant absence from home. He was secretly meeting other opposition activists, printing and distributing leaflets, organizing the opposition. She took care of their eight children.

The turning point came in August 1980 when Gdańsk and the whole country followed a more-than-a-month-long strike of the shipyard workers. The strike committee, which was led by Lech Wałęsa, was able to win liberties, e.g. free trade unions. Afterwards, everyone in Poland and abroad repeated Wałęsa’s name.

In 1983, the Nobel Committee announced that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Lech Wałęsa. Wałęsa feared leaving the country since it could have been impossible for him to go back to Poland. He decided that Danuta should go to Norway to collect the prize.

This was quite a challenge for her. She decided that she was not going there only as a housewife, Wałęsa’s wife, but that she represented women – ordinary Polish women who were raising their
children, helping their husbands and trying to live by in these difficult times. The very moment when she read out Wałęsa’s statement in Oslo was a life lesson for her. She became more confident, got rid of her inferiority complexes and fears that she was not able to do certain things. She claims that it was the moment when she started being less dependent on her husband.

In 1990, Lech Wałęsa announced publicly that he was running for president. He did not inform her about his decision, she learned about it from a third party. However, this time she was indifferent
to the fact that Lech wanted to become the president. She did not take part in the campaign. Only when she became the First Lady, did she understand how much her and her family’s lives were about to change.

She decided to stay in Gdańsk with the children instead of moving to the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. Lech came home on weekends. She had her own security guards and diplomatic tasks of a first lady. She was not impressed by the meetings she had with the most important people in the world. In 1995, Lech Wałęsa lost in the elections. They built a house in the suburbs. Lech gives lectures in different parts of the world, runs his own foundation Lech Wałęsa Institute. She socializes and takes care of the family.

In 2011, Danuta Wałęsa came out of her husband’s shadow for the first time. She published a comprehensive autobiography ‘Dreams and secrets.’ In the book, she described her relationship with Lech
Wałęsa in great detail. She showed that Wałęsa’s presidency was not good for the children. From her autobiography, Danuta Wałęsa appears to be strong, resourceful and full of fortitude. She seems to be a woman who was not fully appreciated by her husband, who was never treated as an equal partner. In her book, she wrote: ‘For the whole life, I was alone.’ The book became a bestseller. She commented the book in press on many occasions. A film and a theater play were made on the basis of the autobiography. Some malicious people claim Danuta had real pleasure being in the spotlight.

Regardless of her current attitude, Danuta Wałęsa is a brave woman who, as she claims herself, has paid a high price for a relationship with a man involved in ‘the damned politics.’