Photo: Danyelladotcom via instagram
Author : Nia Mccarney
When a former charity worker and lifestyle coach unexpectedly became a single foster carer in her 40s it gave her the inspiration to rediscover her love for music and gave her a tool to connect with her foster child.
Dannyella always wanted to foster but not necessarily at this time in her life. But when she unexpectedly became a single kinship foster carer in her mid 40s what followed was isolation and a struggle for connection with her son.
However, it was through rediscovering her love for music that building her connection with him was possible and in the process found a community that could support her as she navigated parenthood and started to think of her dream career as music as a reality.
“I’d always wanted to foster but not necessarily at this time in my life.
“But I couldn’t say no,” she says. “So I decided to fully embrace the experience and it’s been the most rewarding of my life.”
Though Dannyella cannot share much due to fostering data rules she says she had struggles in the first couple of years of fostering trying to make the emotional connection with her child.
“Music was the bridge between us and this created harmony in our relationship.”
Since Dannyella was 9 years old she loved music and going out dancing. “Music has always been in my DNA. I could hear a song and my whole body would literally light up, and I was thinking there has got to be something in this, but I’m not sure.”
That isn’t to say that her relationship with music has always been easy, Dannyella spent decades being told that music was not a viable career.
“I didn’t think I could sing! I was surrounded by people telling me that I was just not a good singer.”
So, she spent her life doing charity work and lifestyle coaching across London, helping others.
“I was just focusing on my day job, not pursuing what I thought was an unreachable dream.”
But her journey with music really started with her playing guitar for ten minutes a day every day, hoping that her fostered son would hear.
“I picked up the guitar to teach them a growth mindset by illustrating it,” she says.
“He’s going to hear me sounding really bad making loads of mistakes, but with a growth mindset in mind because I knew with consistency I was going to get an output.
Dannyella says that their relationship is what inspired her first song.
“Let my love lift you up was the song I wrote for him and ‘Tomorrow’ was the song that encouraged the emotional connection we were reaching for.
“I used music as a tool to literally ask them to Let my Love Lift you Up! And it did,” she says.
Despite music being a tool for Dannyella to connect with her son, she found the first couple years of being a single foster carer to be an isolating experience. But it was also through her journey of music exploration, she started joining choirs to experience a community of likeminded joyous people.
After joining three choirs Dannyella found herself surrounded by incredible and inspiring people, which has helped her grow her own confidence in making music.
“What I was missing, seriously, was gospel music in my life,” she says. “I was searching for this energy, and I seem to have found it.”
Dannyella now uses her music to inspire and help others; she did a gig at a fundraising event for domestic abuse survivors, a “real milestone” for her in realising how she could use music to help.
Photo : Danyelladotcom via instagram
In her mid-40’s Dannyella started a whole new life; while approaching the age that many musicians look back at their careers, she was just beginning hers, reclaiming parts of herself that she had hidden for years.
She created a set list that showed the journey of “going through the anguish, right through to healing and finding those wings.”
“That’s what I am trying to push through my music, going back to what it did for us in times of pain or hardship.”
The music that Dannyella creates speaks for itself and brings dignity and empowering messages to those who need to hear it.
Dannyella has said that making music has left her ‘rich in life’.
To keep up with her journey, follow her on Instagram here: dannyelladotcom
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