Donnalou Stevens, the creator of the viral video, 'Older Ladies', has quite the backstory. This is an excerpt from her kickstarter campaign which was over %300 funded.
"I was born in Austin, TX and was a sensitive, gutsy, wildly artistic child with a will the size of a mountain!
I tried everything not to fit into the jacket of conformity that everyone seemed to want to squeeze me into. Nope. I wanted to be ME, fully expressed, fully on fire, fully ALIVE! Those things, however a calm and obedient child do not make. A creative one, yes, but far from obedient.
This is a bit heavy for a beginning, but bear with me. It is an important part of my artistic evolution and why I do what I do. If you come into my community, I want you to know me and what I stand for.
The more I tried to be who other people wanted me to be, the angrier I became and the more trouble I caused. The more trouble I got into, the more I believed there was something wrong with me. The more I believed that, the more I suffered. I latched onto my art because it was the one thing I was good at. I lost touch with the fact that my gifts were coming THROUGH me and not FROM me. That twist tainted everything. I wasn't even aware I was using my talents for something they were never intended: to GET something rather than to GIVE something. !
Life was exceedingly difficult because of this juxtaposition. I destroyed a lot of the things that were most important to me.
I left my art for awhile, much to the chagrin of most everyone who knew me and went on a long, hard journey that eventually lead me right back here, right back to my art and a passion to do it for the right (for me) reasons. I learned art is 'for-giving', not 'for-getting'.
Life has taught me through opposites what to value and what to create... art that expresses kindness, self-love, laughter, play, gentleness... all the things that were there all along, but just got covered up.
I feel like a butterfly.
Everybody's got wings, some just do not know it.
Come fly with me.
Here's how to join my community of positivity.
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