Meet Dana O

We were lucky to catch up with Dana O recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dana, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

A resilience born out of necessity for survival, to not lose myself fully when I had so much life to live ahead of me. I was 21 years old and sitting in the doctors office, my heart pounding in my chest and my palms sweating because I felt a shift coming, one that would change the course of my life so drastically from what I had envisioned for myself just a few years before. I was in the doctors office waiting for a follow up appointment because I had miscarried the week before and needed a check up and I needed to make a plan for my future that did not include getting pregnant again with my then husband. This miscarriage although difficult at the time was one of those life altering moments that gave me a second chance. I drove home from that appointment, walked in the door and told my then husband that I was leaving him and he couldn’t stop me. The relationship was doomed from the start but young, hopeful and dumb were the cards I played at that young age, as so many of us do. The marriage was tumultuous, at times violent, and although he never laid a hand on me, there were holes in our walls and doors, broken personal items, and broken hearts. Hurtful and harmful words were thrown around easily and often and at times I feared for my life. I had to get out of this situation because I did not want to live like this for the rest of my life. The day I decided to leave it’s like a switch just went off inside of my head that said, you don’t have to do this anymore and so I didn’t. He tried so many manipulative, gaslighting things to get me to stay and nothing worked because by that point I was so far gone emotionally and mentally from that situation that nothing, thankfully, could pull me back. This experience was the first time that instant switch in my brain happened and I’m so grateful it did because from that point forward, although not always easy it’s happened multiple other times in my life and I feel as though those moments are what has helped to lead me to where I am today. Those sudden moments of clarity have helped me through so many incredibly tough times in my life and I attribute it to that one day over 20 years ago that gave me the strength to know that I can do incredibly hard things. Thankfully my resilience has grown stronger as I’ve grown older and I consider resilience and resourcefulness to be two of my strongest traits. I also believe that creativity was born from that resilience and so here I am at the age of 43, creating art and telling parts of my story. If you would have asked that 21 year old where she thought she’d be 20 years from then she most certainly would never have said that she’d get to create for a living but I’m so grateful that path of resilience has led me here. I think that broken 21 year old would be so proud of me now, because I’m proud of me now.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I call myself an accidental artist. In March of 2020 while the world was plunged into a collective trauma delt from an invisible and terrifying pandemic, my job as a bartender was non-essential so our venue closed. At that time I was at one of those cross roads where I was no longer happy with my job and where I was at in life, so I took that time that we were closed and tried to keep myself busy with art and taking online classes. I hadn’t really touched my creative side for about 20 years but one day while drinking a middle of the day, covid margarita creation and scrolling through Instagram I was inspired by a resin artist. The algorithm caught on quickly and from that point on my social media was inundated with other resin artists and their beautiful creations. So inspired by Instagram and tequila I began my resin and art journey. My love for nature and our beautiful plantet or “Big Mama” as I like to call her, has further inspired the direction my art has gone. I feel so fortunate of this silver lining that the pandemic brought to me but am not blind to the fact that it was a very dark time for a lot of people. I love creating beautiful works of art that make people happy and have also guided resin classes in an art as therapy type of setting. Because seeing art and creating art can invoke so many emotions, being able to use it as an outlet for those emotions and showing people how to help channel those emotions into something beautiful can be such a gift. I believe that everyone has a creative side and sometimes we could all just use a little guidance sometimes to find those things within us that we don’t know are there!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Looking back on my journey I just feel like opening your heart and mind helps you to try new things. Being ok with not being perfect or even great at first, just being good with being perfectly imperfect will take you to great places. Own the skill of making mistakes and learning from them. Be ok with admitting you only know what you know but be willing to learn more and ask for help. We’re all a work in progress and there should be no end in site for what we can become!

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

Art and fear is currently my biggest challenge. I have so many ideas in my mind for new art I want to create and directions I want to go but there’s always this fear of implementing it and not having it be received well. So with that being said I guess I should take my own advice from the previous question and implement those things myself! I also have some art and creativity books lined up to help guide me to my next steps but really I think I just need to get over that fear and create!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://oliverandroseart.com
• Instagram: oliverandroseart

Image Credits

@hilaurenkay