Success Through Scars
Success Through Scars is a podcast for growth-minded people to get inspired to move through fear, take action on their goals, and become the person they’ve always wanted to be. Hosted by 3x business owner, opera singer, and business mentor Annie Calvaneso, this show is for aspiring or current entrepreneurs looking for inspiration on their journey.
Success Through Scars
16. Dana Lynne Varga’s Story of Burning the Rulebook: Gastric Bypass, Divorce, Sobriety & Radical Reinvention
In this episode, I interview my dear friend and one of the most badass women I know, Dana Lynne Varga. Dana is an accomplished career coach, singer, voice teacher, and fierce advocate for singers. But beyond her career, she’s a woman who has walked through fire and come out blazing.
In this episode, we dive deep into her journey through gastric bypass, divorce, sobriety, and the powerful reinvention of her life, career, and sense of self. Dana shares so openly about the pain she endured, the shame she carried, and the freedom she found in rewriting her story on her own terms.
This one is for anyone who has ever felt stuck, silenced, or like their life no longer fit. Dana’s story is raw, real, and wildly empowering. You do not want to miss it!!
Find Dana here:
https://www.theempoweredmusician.com/
@theempoweredmusican
Dana Lynne Varga on Facebook
Thank you so much for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you could leave a review. Be on the lookout for new episodes every Wednesday!
For coaching services, visit: anniecalvaneso.com
Welcome to Success Through Scars, the podcast where we turn our most painful struggles into our greatest success stories. I'm Annie Esso, a multi-passionate entrepreneur, business mentor, and professional singer who's overcome anorexia C-P-T-S-D, depression and anxiety. Each week, you'll hear powerful stories of resilience from people who have transformed their deepest pains into testimonies of strength. If you are feeling lost or broken, but have big goals, you are in the right place. Whether your scar comes from a traumatic past, a breakup, a near death experience, or a mental health struggle, remember this, your scars are proof that you survived and scar tissue rebuilds and repairs itself, and you come out stronger on the other side. I hope this podcast can bring you the hope you need to keep going. Let's walk this journey of finding success through scars together.
Annie:Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Success through Scars. Today I am talking to literally one of the most badass women I know, Dana Varga. She is a dear friend of mine. She is a renowned voice teacher, an entrepreneur, a career coach and opera singer, and she's a badass. Dana's journey includes navigating weight stigma in the classical music world, choosing sobriety. Going through a divorce, parenting neurodivergent, children with fierce love and resilience, and dana has reinvented herself time and time again, and I think that's really the through line of her story. I think this episode is going to be so empowering for you. If you can see yourself in any part of Dana's story, and I think that hearing this is gonna be so helpful for you. So, hello, welcome Dana. Thanks for being here. Hi. Thank you for having me. Can you go through your story and share with our listeners everything about where you've been and where you are now? You've had such an insane story and life journey and you've been through so many things. I know I listed some of those things. I don't even know if I covered all of it. I
Dana:think
Annie:you
Dana:hit some of the big ones. I grew up in Westchester, New York and my parents, my mother is a linguist. She speaks five languages and she also ran her own business when I was a child as a typist.'cause you know, back then you needed people to type things for you. And my father was a professional jazz bassist for many years. And then, you know, post children the Grind of New York City late nights became overwhelming. He became an entrepreneur as well and opened up a business as a base maker and lu of the upright base. So I grew up with two very self-sufficient independent parents who, you know. Know how to be their own boss and know how to run things. But I also grew up with two parents who were relatively weight obsessed. You know, this is the eighties and nineties, so this was the culture at the time, I don't hold any resentment towards my parents for this anymore after a lot of work and healing because, we don't know what we know until we know better. But I came up during a time where weight obsession was real. Calorie counting was real, and the diet foods that were offered to us were. Actually, you know, making things worse because they were full of chemicals and not nutritious in any way. And so, you know, love hate, really difficult sort of family dynamic there with, respecting what my parents do. Loving my parents, growing up in a happy place in a beautiful neighborhood. And then also having this sense of not being completely safe in my own body. My parents ended up divorcing when I was in eighth grade, which was very difficult for me and would be difficult for any child. Although I, I really respect them for making a choice that was right for them. I do think it was the right choice and they probably should have done it sooner. But of course, as a 12, going on 13-year-old, I was like, are you kidding me with this? So that happened and, I became a little bit of the rebellious tween. I hung out with a fast crowd and did all the rebellious things you did in the nineties and wore all black and all that fun stuff for a while. I started smoking when I was 12 years old. Just anything I could think of to assert my independence. But what I didn't know. Was over the next four years I gained close to a hundred pounds. At the time I did not know this'cause how could you when you're this young, but I didn't recognize that was parental punishment. Subconsciously I was like, how do I punish my folks for not only the, the weight obsession throughout my childhood, but also the divorce. Well, what would make them the most upset? Here it is. Now looking back, I truly believe that's what drove the weight gain, which of course to gain a hundred pounds, you essentially have an eating disorder, right? You're a binge eater at that point. You can't gain a hundred pounds without having an eating disorder. So I developed an eating disorder in my teens it was scary because it felt out of my control. I didn't know what to do about it. Nowadays I give a lot of grace to that person who went through that. At the time, it was just full of shame and sadness. But now I give a lot of grace to that person who was just coping as best they could with the situation, unfortunately, because the weight gain was so aggressive, I developed type two diabetes, which runs in my family and then had to go on insulin and my blood sugar was crazy high. All these health problems started to come forth as they do when you. Gain that kind of weight in that rapid succession. So definitely was a difficult challenge. So I would say in my earlier childhood, you know, the, the weight gain, the divorce, the environment in which I came up, which of course many of my peers did as well, we were all surrounded by diet culture. I was in Jazzercise at age 11. This is just how it was. In a lot of places and especially a place like Westchester, New York, which has that, keeping up with the Jones' vibe to it. So, you know, looking back, I understand how that 16, 17-year-old ended up where she ended up, but it was certainly a mixed childhood. One that had a lot of happiness and also some great struggles. So that brought me to my teenage years in an obese body, which also runs in the family. So like gaining a hundred pounds wasn't hard because genetically that is what we are predisposed to. So all you really have to do is let go of the steering wheel in our family, and then the obesity happens. It is what it is.
Annie:So at that point you were already deciding that you were gonna sing as a career, right? And I know you had a gastric bypass surgery. When did that happen? What was the whole journey with that?
Dana:I. Discovered singing in eighth grade, which is just before my parents divorced, some choir director at my school was like, you seem to have a very good voice. Would you like to audition for the solo? And then that sort of set all the wheels in motion.'cause I was originally a cellist. I excelled at singing and my mom put me in voice lessons with this Broadway lady and she kept trying to get me to belt and I just. Couldn't and didn't want to. And so one day she was like, I think you should go see the local opera teacher. And I did. And I was like, this is it. This is it for me. It was just so obvious. I had actually not made the decision to study voice yet. I decided to go to college for psychology with a minor in music. I finished high school at 17. I was young for my grade. I think one of the two youngest in my grade. So at 17 here I was in this obese body. But my big talent was singing, and I was known for it. And I had a lot of friends, I was fortunate in that I was not bullied. I had a lot of friends. I was well respected. I got straight A's, so it could have been a lot worse. But yes, I made the decision to study psychology because of what I had been through at that point. But I knew I wanted music to be part of my life. So I went to Northeastern University for a year and I had a very hard time there. I was 17 years old, you know, in this new city or things were really different in Massachusetts than New York. I discovered quickly that psychology was a love of mine, but probably not ultimately what I wanted to do for a living. Sometimes these days I question that decision, but I was really struggling at Northeastern and it was so expensive for my family as well. So I ended up transferring to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. And I switched to music and had a very wonderful experience there, with the exception of the fat shaming, which is a theme throughout my entire undergrad and grad school. Now, I don't wanna make it sound like people were like hyperaggressive about it. It was daily microaggressions, you know, people commenting, the, you'll have a hard time having a career. Comment started, as young as 18 and on and on and on. The worst peak of it being during my master's, I went to New England Conservatory, I won't name names, but during my master's program there were very pointed, fat shaming comments in front of my peers on a regular basis. I did confront some of those people and we did make some headway there, but of course, this is 2004 when this was still widely acceptable in the conservatory system. It just, you know, fat was not okay and it needed to be rectified immediately, and I bought into that dialogue. I was able to advocate for myself in that. I said, please don't say things about me in front of my peers. It's not appropriate. But I also drank the Kool-Aid of it's not okay for you to look like this. You need to fix it. And of course, throughout my life to that point, from age 16 to 2004, I was 22, I think. 23, I had tried everything. I mean, truly, you name the diet, you name the exercise program, you name the starvation station. I had visited all of them. Right. And again, when you first of all are taking insulin that makes you even more resistant to weight loss and family genetics, metabolic issues mental health issues. It was a journey. At that point I had really tried everything and it was like, the harder I tried, the more people kept insisting that I needed to lose the weight. I'm like, you think? Do you not know that I'm trying? And I talked myself into the gastric bypass in 2004, and I have mixed feelings about that because I did feel like my hand was forced, but I also don't regret it. So it's a little bit of a tricky thing. Looking back, had the gastric bypass in December, 2004, and my whole life changed because you lose that a hundred pounds and everything about your life changes. My singing changed. I was fortunate to have a very good teacher who was able to navigate the weight loss with me, and to anyone listening who is a singer who does navigate a massive weight loss, be aware that for me the number one most important thing was to sing every day. Because if you don't sing every day in a changing body, the changes that happen become shocking. And then. Your technique can really take a beating if you're not adequately paying attention to the changes that you feel on a daily basis. But I was okay, but my voice changed. You know, the fatty tissues in your face change, your support system changes the way you feel. Your skeleton changes. My relationships changed my friendships, changed the way people treated me changed, I hold a lot of anger inside me to this day. Knowing how differently I was treated after that surgery and still untreated, it's miraculous to see the change in human beings from being somebody who's a hundred pounds overweight to not so. It was joyful and beautiful and exciting to get all these new clothes and get all this attention and suddenly be deemed acceptable for the industry and suddenly deemed acceptable for society. But it was also very anger provoking and filled me with resentment and, you know, I battled those things to this day.
Annie:Thanks for sharing that. And so I know you had people who. Were on one side saying that they were basically happy that you lost the weight. Did you have people on the other side who were shaming you for the other way as well?
Dana:No. Never.
Annie:Okay.
Dana:No, I didn't. You know, it's such a different world now. Fat positivity wasn't a thing. Body neutrality, which is what I strive for. I have accepted that. I'm never gonna love. The way my body looks because I went through a hundred pound weight gain, a gastric bypass, two births of human beings.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:So my body, even as a regular exerciser, is never gonna look the way I want it to look without significant amounts of surgery.
So
Dana:this whole body positivity thing is a nice idea, but I strive for body neutrality where I say. This is my body. I accept you, you're strong. You do what I need you to do. I don't like looking at you very much, but I accept you.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:So I like the idea of body neutrality, the answer is I can't think of anyone in my life who was like, why did you do that, Dana? It was just generally wow, you lost a hundred pounds. Amazing. Great, fantastic.
Annie:Yeah, that makes sense. Well, in all my time that I've known you, which I know hasn't been that long, it feels like we've known each other longer than we have. Yeah. You have never been someone who identifies with your appearance, in a major way. You are not a surface level person to me. I've always seen you as someone who identifies as being empowered and strong and resilient, and compassionate and loving. And your appearance is the least interesting thing about you, and I think you know that too. Yeah, totally.
Dana:I enjoy beauty things from time to time, but it's certainly not high on my list. I love wearing gowns and, getting all dressed up for performances and that kind of thing is very enjoyable to me. But as far as the body itself. You know, it's just something that I live with and I accept, and I, I, these days, especially as a, woman in her forties that's probably approaching perimenopause, I'm just grateful to be healthy.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:When I get that blood work every year and it's all. Beautiful. I'm just grateful.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:From a health perspective, it was all worth it.
Annie:Yeah. And you and I are very similar with a lot of our ways of thinking too. So, I'm curious to hear more about. The identity shifts. When you lost the weight, I know there was a huge identity shift. And I also know recently you've shared a little bit of your sobriety journey I know we skipped some life chapters, but I know you've talked a lot about your sobriety journey and losing friends during that part of your life. Was that similar to when you lost the weight and losing people in your life too?
Dana:Yeah. One thing that happened when I lost the weight was I gained a lot of people. My career was starting then. My singing career started then and I had, a very robust singing career. I was a hard worker. I'm not gonna say I was lucky'cause I was a hard worker and enjoyed a very robust singing career and a very robust teaching career. Got my doctorate, had tons of friends. In that period between, grad school and the end of my doctorate, I partied a lot. This is a thing that happens with people with gastric bypasses. There's all these studies about it. You know, you lose all this weight, you've also not treated the eating disorder.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:You can't eat that much'cause you'll throw up and be sick. But you haven't treated from a mental health perspective, the eating disorder. And so the disorder transfers somewhere. For everyone in some way. And for me, it transferred into all kinds of things. I wouldn't say that I drank more than your average party girl who goes out on the weekends, but, but when I did go out, I, I like to drink with my friends and, some of my addictive things translated into shopping obsessively filling my calendar refusing to be alone and constantly socializing in an unhealthy way. So I collected a lot of people, my compulsions that were never treated that used to be mostly driven towards food. Were just scattered around my life. It's very interesting. You can't just take away a major crutch like that. Without being properly treated.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:And I wasn't really, I mean, I always had a therapist, but I wouldn't say it was fully addressed. So then yeah, I think I'll get to the sobriety journey via the story where as a party girl, as someone who did like to drink on the weekends, as someone who was very social and also performing a lot around, a lot of singers, going to a lot of events, getting a lot of attention. You know, I dated a lot. I just was like a wild child, you know? But I was also this overachiever from a career perspective, so I, I did a lot, I feel like by this day. Today April 30th, 2025. I feel like I've lived three or four lives. I feel like I've been alive for longer than I have been alive in real life.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:I ended up meeting my ex-husband in 2012 and getting married in 2014 and my life calmed down a little bit, as it tends to when you. Quote unquote, settle down, did all the things I was expected to do. You know, this is only 10 years ago and I was a totally different person. I was still insisting on sticking to societal standards in my weight, in my marriage, in my. Decision to have children in my decision to be a homeowner in my following the prescribed path in the music world, I went to young artist programs, and got my doctorate so I could get into higher ed. I did all the things I was told to do.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:I had not turned into who I am now until about 10 years ago. So I got married, I bought the house, I got the dog. I started having children, and for a while that all went pretty okay. And then a couple years into that, I just started to really look around and be like, what am I doing?
Whose
Dana:life is this? It was like everything was a giant checklist, and I was going through and checking boxes because I was supposed to. And all of a sudden the other side of me just burst out and said, what are you doing? This isn't who you are. Unfortunately, that made my life really uncomfortable because I had painted myself into all of these corners, now, don't get me wrong, having babies was a beautiful thing. My children are the most gorgeous, amazing, brilliant, spectacular humans ever. I have two boys. They're six and eight. Having babies was a beautiful journey and I certainly don't regret having my babies, but I don't know that I would've had them. If this version of me existed, then, you know. I love my children very much, but I think that was one of the check boxes And so then in, you know, a couple years into marriage, couple years into children, I also, my second child was a traumatic birth experience, which I won't really get into, but did affect things. I was very uncomfortable because I started to realize that this wasn't actually who I was, and here I was living this life and trying to make the best of it. My compulsions in some ways got worse because, you cope with your life the way you need to cope with your life. And some of that was with wine, and some of it was with shopping, and some of it was with, the hyper socializing. The overachieving is a big compulsion for me. It always has been. I like to say I have the resume, the CV of like a 70-year-old woman. The number of jobs I've held things I've accomplished in my lifetime degrees that I have. It's, unreal, honestly, and I'm proud of myself. But at the same time, I do recognize that a lot of that overachievement was driven by compulsion.
Annie:But some of it's also your natural personality, just being a badass.
Dana:Totally, I don't think I could ever not be an overachiever, you know? And there's also anxiety, I'm an anxious person. Most of us are, but a lot of the overachieving was driven by anxiety. Some anxious or depressed people, they hide. I do the opposite. I feel anxious and depressed. So I have to do things that's how I cope. Yeah,
Annie:but you're also extremely intelligent and probably easily bored, so Oh, get bored. That has to go over it too. I get bored so easily,
Dana:When I take a day off, I'm like, what do I, how do I, I would do this, you know? It's very hard for me. Definitely very difficult. Well, so a lot of married people who. Either, either, you know, people are growing apart or one person has a major epiphany like I did. We tend to do what I call magical thinking. And so my ex and I engaged in the magical thinking that when we get the bigger house and move to the better town. And have a little more money and this and this and this, then everything's gonna be fine. Our marriage will be fine. So we sold the house, made a profit. You know, we were doing well in our careers and moved to our dream town for the school district got a bigger house with the yard and the nice place, you know, all the, all the things. And five days later the state of emergency was called for covid. So here we were, we had made the move and we were like, this is gonna fix everything. And then we got locked in a house together for however long that was. So, yeah, so that's when you know in, in a lot of ways I'm grateful for the pandemic it was a horrible time and it's still traumatic to think about what we went through as a nation, but in a lot of ways I'm grateful for it because it accelerated my coming into myself, realizing my true self and getting out of the marriage. It accelerated it, and I'm grateful for that because that probably would've been a long, slow, harrowing process. Just, but when you get locked in a house with. Two very young neurodivergent, high needs children and a spouse that you love, but you don't want to be married to you move faster. So I, I started to really come into my fully empowered self during the pandemic, fully recognize my needs, recognize that they weren't being met, recognized that I had done this checklist.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:At the same time, I knew I was blowing up my life. There was no other choice, but it was also very scary. During the mid pandemic is when I noticed that my daily alcohol consumption was getting to a level where I was borderline concerned. One of the problems is that society normalizes this.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:Society normalizes this, and especially for moms. S you'll see these, these things like at TJ Maxx or all over the place like mommy needs her wine or let's have a wine and wine night. You'll see it on pithy phrases on aprons and stuff. There's this real mommy wine culture thing like, mommy had a hard day give mommy this giant glass of wine. And I played into that and was like, well, there's a pandemic and I'm blowing up my life. So of course I get to have this gigantic glass of wine. And then another one. And it's what a lot of people in the sober, you know, in the sober world called gray area drinking. And a lot of people are gray area drinkers, but society has this idea that drinking is black and white. They have this idea that you either have a problem or you don't. Mm-hmm. And that's very much not the case for a lot of people. A lot of people live in this area where this is not a healthy amount of alcohol to consume, but society has decided that it's a normal amount of alcohol to consume, especially for a mom who's stressed or whatever. Does that make sense?
Annie:Mm-hmm. And when you started that sobriety journey, and I guess even during your divorce, did you lose a lot of people in your life? And what was that process like?
Dana:The divorce I was in a bad place and I was drinking too much wine and spiraling because I was shedding the old version of me and becoming the new version of me and also a little bit panicking. I had two friendships that ended in that period. Essentially for two reasons. One, they could not stand by me through what I was going through. It was too confusing and dark and chaotic for them. Also I was an asshole sometimes, I was going through a lot and I wasn't always thinking about other people. So I don't put blame on anyone. But there were two friendships that just couldn't make it through this which is on all of us, I think. Those were big losses for me then when I made the decision, a little over two years ago, to quit drinking completely, I lost a lot of friends, a lot of friends, not because, not in the same way as those two people during the divorce. This was the totally different thing. This was like a slow fade where people just stop hanging out, stop calling, stop coming around, because you realize when you take that substance out of your life. Who you're hanging out with just because they're a fun time once there's a substance involved and who your actual people are. And I did not realize how many, just like drinking buddies I had, I had no idea until I didn't drink and then didn't need that as an activity and to, to some people, I just simply wasn't any fun anymore to a lot of people. Unfortunately, I believe that I was holding up a mirror that they didn't wanna look in. Mm-hmm. When it came to alcohol. I know a lot of gray area drinkers and I knew a couple people who, were a little beyond that, so there were a lot of reasons. But also when you're sober all the time, you crave real connection. When you don't have a substance altering your mind, you only crave real connection sitting around with a bunch of drunk people is no longer appealing. You look at it and you're like, this isn't even you. This is just a fake person.
Mm-hmm. This
Dana:isn't even the actual human right now. This is the impaired human. And you don't wanna be around those people. So in some cases it was me not wanting to be around them. And in others it was them not wanting to be around me. And yeah, I lost a lot of friends and my circle's a lot smaller now. But I also gained some very special friends. So, and either
Annie:way it's painful. I think that especially for very strong, empowered women like us. Sometimes we do hold up that mirror to other people and they don't wanna see what they're seeing. So instead of sticking around and figuring it out themselves, they don't want to take the accountability so they just remove themselves.
Dana:Yes. And simultaneously, you know, throughout the five year period, particularly between 2020 and now my business exploded in a good way. My business was doing really well. The empowered musician and I was singing at a very high level. I made my Carnegie Hall debut. I worked with some major opera companies. I was publishing articles. I'm giving lectures all over the country. I'm teaching high level opera singers. I'm teaching grad students. I mean, my career in the last five years has been beautiful. Just chef's kiss. So I also lost friends because of that, some people, don't want to be around someone who's experiencing that level of success. Even if you don't talk about it at all when you're hanging out, it's still hard. And then you combine that with sobriety and I think the career success and the sobriety combined was just too much for people to cope with, I think in some ways. But then again, my career success attracted a lot of new people into my life and. More aligned people for the new, more empowered version of myself, I think.
Annie:So you just shared about how you lost a lot of people because your success triggered them in a way. Can you share a little bit about that and what that process was like? Because I think a lot of our listeners are either going through the same thing or will go through the same thing.
Dana:Yes. I think when you level up your career and your self-empowerment some people will perceive you as braggy. Some people will perceive you as vain. Some people will perceive you as acting superior. Some people will perceive you as scary. I get that all the time. Part of it's just'cause I have resting bitch face. But you know, people call me scary all the time and I'm like, people who know me well know that's not true. I'm extremely compassionate, you know, loving person. But people will perceive you in any way they want to. If they feel uncomfortable with your success and you are someone who's really helped me recognize that. The way other people react to you is not your problem.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:Oh, thank you. It is in some ways when you lose friends because you know it's a problem in that you're losing a friend. But at the end of the day, I. When people have a problem with you, it's a projection. With the exception being if you've really done something wrong, and if you have, you own up to it. And I've done that many times in my life, and I'm not someone who hides from my wrongs, but generally speaking, especially when it comes to things like. Losing weight or having success when people have a problem with you, they're projecting some weakness in them onto you.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:And I get that too. I get triggered by things all the time because I know that whatever it is the person's saying or showing is a thing that I feel I lack or I desire. Now I just live my life and be my empowered self and say what I wanna say, and other people's opinions are none of my business.
Annie:And you're self-aware enough to know that you're self-aware enough to see when someone else is triggering you and recognize it as a problem within yourself. But I don't think a lot of people are like that or I've seen a lot of people are not like that. So when you were going through your. Weight loss and sobriety and divorce and all those things. What were some of the comments you got? Was sobriety, like you're not as fun anymore? Was divorce, like you're blowing up your life? What were some of those things?
Dana:No, divorce was more like I have a lot of supportive people in my life, there were a couple unsolicited comments from people I don't know very well who, you know, maybe are like, really religious or whatever, but not important to me. So it wasn't, it wasn't that people didn't support it, but it was I was moody and sad and scared just a lot of ups and downs and some of the people in my life didn't know how to be there for me it was like suddenly our friendship was too much work.
Hmm.
Dana:And with sobriety, I live in Massachusetts in a liberal bubble of highly educated people, so there weren't a lot of people who were like, just have one or, you're no fun anymore, or just let loose or whatever. I didn't really get any of that. And I'm lucky because a lot of people who are sober curious or experiencing an alcoholism issue or. In their early sobriety, get a lot of peer pressure, which blows my mind. Like people, if you're listening, if somebody is not drinking, don't ask them about it. Don't make it a thing. Just offer them a delicious non-alcoholic beverage and move on with your life.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:And if you have a problem with them not drinking, then you need to look at yourself. Why is it a problem for you that someone else is not drinking? If it is. Take a look at that for real. So I didn't get those kinds of comments. It was more silence, just like backing away slowly. Not calling Dana as much, not inviting Dana to things.
Mm-hmm.
Dana:Luckily, I had read seven books on quitting drinking as a woman, and I knew what to expect. So none of it was news, but it was real.
Mm-hmm.
Annie:So you've been through so many different versions of yourself and it seems the through line is breaking different patterns in your life that are leading to either destruction or you not being aligned with where you are. Can you talk more about that and what would you say to someone who's going through something similar, like someone who's going through the breaking point and doesn't really see the other side? I'm sure you've, it sounds like you've been there so many different times in your life.
Dana:Yeah, I wish I had learned to give myself grace through those changes sooner. Now when I'm working on something, right now I'm working on eating less sugar, which is a challenge. A lot of people who quit drinking, they just wanna eat sugar all the time. You have to take baby steps. Everything has to be small steps. If you try to change everything all at once, then you become overwhelmed and you change nothing. In fact, sometimes you make the situation worse. So I think baby steps are really important. I'm like anti New Year's resolution, right? That's a perfect example of don't just cold Turkey something. You have to have a plan. You have to take baby steps. You have to give yourself grace. There's always the other side of these big life events and these big things that feel like you're blowing up your life, but you know. The cost of staying the same is highly greater than the cost of moving forward ultimately. You have to decide what is gonna cost you more, and it's almost always gonna cost you more to stay in the uncomfortable place for me, staying married to a cis white male in Trump era. As somebody who had suddenly discovered their true, aligned, empowered self was not gonna work for me. I am now in a long-term relationship with a non-binary person, I also came into my queerness fully post-divorce, which is lovely and necessary. My mission in life. In all aspects of my life is to help other people in any possible way to see their true selves and to honor their true selves because I. It is unbelievable. We should ourselves to death. All we do is I should. I should. I should. I should. I've heard you have this issue recently. Mm-hmm. In some ways, right?
Annie:Oh, yeah.
Dana:We all, we should, should, should, should, should. And this word, it's a dirty word. We have to let go of this word. There is no such thing as should. Mm-hmm. I talk about this in the classical music world, which is where my expertise lies. Particularly in the vocal world, there's, a specific path that academia wants you to take that the industry professionals tell you you have to take. That is not a real thing, it's not successful for most people, but it's a should and it's a dangerous one. Mm-hmm. Same thing with a lot of other life trajectories, and after checking all those boxes and then sitting and looking around and being like, what have I done? Any opportunity I have to help someone recognize. What boxes they're checking out of obligation or fear instead of checking out of alignment and self-love. That's my mission in life is to help people with that.
Annie:I love that. And that's honestly for anyone listening, Dana and I meet every two weeks with a group of other women entrepreneurs that are also successful and on a similar journey, I think it's so important if you don't have someone in your life like that to either hire a coach like Dana to help you to navigate those challenges. Because if you have people in your life that are always gonna tell you to follow whatever the traditional path is and not what your path is for yourself, you're not gonna be happy. So, Dana, I guess my, one of my final questions for you is, what does success look like for you now? Because I know success to you used to be married with kids, white picket fence, all that sort of thing. I guess, can you compare and contrast what it used to look like? When you were going through different parts in your life and what you think success is now? Absolutely.
Dana:The checklist was, you know, be thinner, be married, have children, own a house. Get a job at a college to work as a voice professor, have a singing career. Those were the big things, you know? Mm-hmm. And, make a name for myself in the field in that way. And now success looks like freedom. Number one, freedom to choose any time I want to choose Success. Looks like not having a boss. I am leaving academia. I am mostly independent now, but I have had an adjunct position for the last seven years, and I'm leaving that position to be fully independent. Freedom in all the choices in my life. Working for myself, running my own business, having enough money to live the lifestyle I wanna live, and also. Secure my future and be able to help other people. So I'm not someone interested in a lavish lifestyle, but it is important to make enough money to, to help my kids with college, to have an ample retirement. I help musicians with finances a lot. I think that musicians are notoriously. Poorly educated in finance, which is not their fault, but that's something that I'm passionate about. So, yeah, I like to make money and plan to make a lot more of it, but for the right reasons. And success looks like being able to make my own schedule and change it on a dime. If I decide I wanna go somewhere, go outta town. Take a day and go, you know, sit in a cute town or on a beach. I want the freedom to do what I wanna do. You'll never find me at a nine to five. It's not my thing. Success looks like to me, you know, feeling proud of myself at the end of the day of how I'm showing up in the world, feeling like I am living my own true life. And most importantly. Being a role model for my kids, to show them that they are the master of their own life and fulfillment and satisfaction and comfort and freedom are more important than anything society can make up and tell you is what you're supposed to do. I don't know if anyone listening has read the book, sapiens. By Yuval Noah Harri. But that book was really instrumental for me to really understand that everything in society is made up everything. It's all pretend. Every single thing is a construct, right? You decide how to show up in the world and you decide what constructs you wanna participate in and why.
Annie:I love that answer. That was amazing. You are launching a life coaching offer soon, right? That talks about this very topic. Do you wanna talk about that?
Dana:Yeah. So I am, historically, for the last almost 10 years, I've been a career coach for musicians. Helping in any and all ways pertaining to a music career. And that's now expanded into life coaching. So folks who work with me, and I don't just work with classical musicians, I work with musicians of all types, artists, visual artists conductors, directors, dancers anyone who identifies as an art creative type. I now offer life and career coaching so people can come for career only. They can come for life coaching only, or they can work with me in a hybrid capacity, which I have several clients who do. So that is an offering that I now have. And over the next few years, I hope to have more of that type of work as I dial slightly down the amount of voice teaching that I do, which I will always teach voice. I love teaching voice, but I'm excited. To have more life and career coaching in my day to day.
Annie:For those listening who are interested and want to connect with you and work with you where can we find you?
Dana:You can go to the empowered musician.com and find everything you could possibly want to know about my business there. I'm on Instagram at the Empowered Musician and you can find me on Facebook. Please find me and follow me.
Annie:Thank you so much Dana. Do you have any final advice for someone who is going through a major transition like you've been through and just needs a little bit of support or a little kick in the butt?
Dana:Do it Scared. Do it anyway. You're allowed to be scared, but that doesn't mean that you don't do it. You gotta do it Scared.
Annie:I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Dana, on success through Scars. I feel like we'll have to have you back at some point because I feel like we only covered like half of your story or maybe even a quarter of it. That's okay. We did the best we could. That was, that was great. Thank you so much for joining me and thanks for having me. Thank you listeners, and we'll see you on the next one. Bye.