We were lucky to catch up with Dina Rodrigues recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Dina, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I found my goals, my purpose, in my passions and dreams and in motherhood. Motherhood encouraged me to show my children who I was, so that they themselves could grow up accepting who they are, what they like and what they want to do. I found my purpose in the freedom to accept myself, to express myself, in the right to do what I believe in. I believe that by sharing what I write with the world, for example, I’m telling them that we all have a deep part, and it shouldn’t be ridiculed or hidden. With my children I found the courage to change professionally and live more in accordance with my essence. I want them to have this reference for life. Basically, I’m trying to show them that they can be whoever they want to be and make a living from it.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m creative/art director at Wood Madeira creative Store. My main job is to design/write projects in which I want to tell different stories. These stories come to life through teamwork, where different artistic languages come together.
When I look back over my career, I think I’ve always done this, indirectly, in a context of social intervention with different audiences. I was a coordinator of social projects through the arts and my passion was to make things happen, until my health broke down and motherhood made it necessary for me to stop.
I stopped for seven years, during which I explored other forms of myself and other ways to make money from my art and survive . It was a period of reflection but also of co-construction and creative adrenaline that led me to put together everything that is now built. I let myself be carried away by what was flowing out of me and at the same time I was looking for practical ways to operationalise a business. After many attempts, ups and downs, everything came together as if by a puzzle effect. That’s how I felt. Every door closed and something new was created. And then I felt relieved that those doors had closed and that what was being built was part of a path that I needed to follow.
Along the way I began to read between the lines, to be grateful for every little step, every little achievement. Today I leave my studio with an inexplicable sense of achievement and gratitude. The place where I can do what I love and still earn money from it, helping to ensure that my family doesn’t lack anything. It’s a very intense feeling of fulfilment and gratitude. Today I feel that I am a capable woman, a strong woman who expresses herself in poetry, but also through hard work, producing several t-shirts and tote bags a day. As well as creating, you have to produce. We’re a small team, and everyone is aware of the flexibility of the work, but also of the dignity of doing any kind of work to make everything work. My children’s father is my right-hand man. Mums who work late rely on their dads for the daily routines. That’s what women have to deal with too. With the consequences of time passing. Being responsible for a project imposes challenges on many levels. It’s a constant attempt to balance, even more so when you’re a mum. Without the unconditional support of those by your side, it becomes impossible. And I also owe it to them to be able to realise this dream.
I come from a humble family and life has never been easy. I’ve always had to work to make ends meet. I lost my mum to cancer at a very young age and I’d just started university. My father had abandoned my mother, so my brother and I were left to fend for ourselves. My mum taught me that strong people don’t cry, and in fact I only saw her cry once. She is my inspiration for life. She was a super mum who was very creative in order to cope with difficulties. I cry more than she did, I’m very emotional, even though I’m tough in life, when it comes to what needs to be done.
The main life lesson I took away from my mum’s death is: you have to transform circumstances into a more beautiful way of getting round them. That’s the way I live and promote life around me and in everything I try to do.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Credibilising who we are is fundamental. Throughout my life I’ve had people make me feel ridiculous for the way I felt, expressed myself or wrote. I’ve also had other people who really encouraged me to value the way I expressed myself. The moment I decided to give myself credibility, to normalise myself, to express myself without fear of the critics, was the decisive moment for everything to start flowing.
Losing fear, gaining courage. One of the phrases I’m selling in Wood is ‘fear only exists to make our courage grow’,
and it was with this motto that it all began.
It was launching oneself into free flight, not looking down because the fear and risk were there, as is obvious.
The third premise of my journey is: If you think that what you do can add beauty to the world, or activate good things in others, positive feelings, then share it with the world. If you feel good about what you do, perhaps others can feel it too. And also accept that there may be people who don’t like it. Accept that first, or don’t even go ahead.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
At this moment, and after two years of an active and intense project, with many stories told and obstacles overcome, I feel clear. Clarity to see a more consistent future, with a small team that understands me, that adds to me, that also builds itself as the project grows, that challenges and overcomes the challenges of the project. We lack practical pieces, fine-tuning technical processes and many other resources, but we feel an enormous creative fluidity. We accept the circumstances, but every day we evolve into something new. Day-to-day life is challenging, but at the end of the day we only see beauty.
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