A conversation with Dayna Del Val, professional speaker, writer, and personal systems disruptor. Dayna recently left a 13 year career as the President and CEO of The Arts Partnership in Fargo, ND, an umbrella arts nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating community through the arts.
Dayna Del Val is on a mission to help others (re)discover the spark they were born with through her extraordinary blog and newsletter, professional talks and the (re)Discover Your Spark retreats she leads. She helps people not just identify and articulate their dreams but develop a framework to get going in the pursuit of those dreams.
Dayna shared that she was an actor from a very young age, doing her first community theater production of the Sound of Music at the age of six! Acting was the thing that lit her up and used all the skills she was naturally gifted with at birth.
Dayna's son was born very shortly after she graduated from college, and so she did not realize her dream of moving to Hollywood and becoming a movie star. Instead, she used the skills that served her so well as an actor to support her in her role as President and CEO of a nonprofit, The Arts Partnership.
Dayna recently retired from that role, after close to thirteen years, to found Dayna Del Val and the Discover Your Spark experience. She expects that her skills will continue to serve her well in her new role as entrepreneur.
“I believe we are all born with a spark, something that lights us up, and a lot of times we are not raised in a way to discover it or to foster it or to grow it.” - Dayna Del Val
Key Takeaways:
- Know your strengths and your gifts. Dayna knows that she is a natural-born performer Whether on camera, on stage or at a cocktail party, she thrives on interaction with others. She also has strong listening skills, which enables her to connect people with ideas or resources that will be helpful to them.
- Build your life around your values. Dayna noted that money was never her focus; time was her focus. As a single mom, she wanted time with her son. As a performer, she wanted time to act. She continues to prioritize time for relationships that matter to her.
- Don’t shy away from difficult conversations. Dayna described her marriage to someone who suffered from alcohol addiction, and the out of control feeling she had as each of them avoided important conversations: about his drinking, about her spending. Noting that the most important conversation we need to have is often with ourselves, Dayna said journaling was cathartic during her husband’s addiction and recovery journey.
About the guest:
Dayna Del Val is on a mission to help others (re)discover the spark they were born with through her extraordinary blog and newsletter, professional talks and the (re)Discover Your Spark retreats she leads. She’ll help you not just identify and articulate your dreams but develop a framework to get going on the pursuit of those dreams—today, in the next few months, and for the years ahead. She’s at the intersection of remarkable and so, so ordinary, and she bets you are, too. Join her on the journey.
Linkedin:-https://www.linkedin.com/in/daynad/
Facebook:-https://www.facebook.com/daynadelvalextraordinary
Website:-http://daynadelval.com
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Dayna Del Val: I believe we're all born with a spark, something that lights us up, and lots of times we're not raised in households that encourage us to discover it. Or to foster it or to grow it.
Welcome to Making Change With Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves.
Now, here's your host, certified financial planner, Laura Rotter.
Laura Rotter: I am so excited to have as my guest today, Dayna Del Val. Dayna is on a mission to help others rediscover the spark they were born with. Through her extraordinary blog and newsletter, professional talks and the Rediscover Your Spark retreats, she leads, Dayna's core belief is that we all have a spark but identifying it and taking the first step is often the hardest part. Dayna loves being the guide to help us uncover what that spark is. So, Dayna, welcome so much to the Making Change with Your Money podcast.
Dayna Del Val: Laura, thanks for having me. I just am really thrilled to be here.
Laura Rotter: And I am thrilled to have you. I am gonna start with the question I've been starting my interviews with, which is Dayna. What was money like in your family growing up?
Dayna Del Val: So, money was very interesting. My parents got married very young. They were 19 and 23, and my mom did not finish college until I was much older.
And so, my mom stayed home and my dad was a teacher, and so my dad made all the money, and by all the money, I mean my dad made the salary and my mom managed all the money. So, I grew up in a household where while we didn't have a lot of money, my mom was like a bean counter extraordinaire. And so we got to do a lot of very unusual things for a family of five, where you just have one parent working and not in a high paying profession. Because my dad's from New York, we traveled a lot and we just, we were able to do a lot of things like that again, because my mom really managed that money, but I grew up with this understanding that one person holds pretty tight to those purse strings, and that's just the way it is.
So it was an interesting place for me to enter into adulthood with, because that is, I am the antithesis of a bean counter extraordinaire. I could give two hoots about the beans. So, it makes my mom crazy. And it has made for some interesting personal accounting as an adult.
Laura Rotter: That's so interesting. I mean, women often do, in households take the primary, not bread breadwinner role, but allocating a fund's role.
And it sounds like your mother really enjoyed that role. And in what way do you feel like that affected you? Because you just said, Dayna, that that's not who you are.
Dayna Del Val: Well, this is probably the best, most embarrassing example. I lived at home during college because my mom, my parents got divorced when I was 15, and my mom and my youngest brother and I moved about 45 miles away so that my mom could go back to school.
So, my mom graduated from college the year I graduated from high school, and then I lived at home because we didn't have much money. She was brand new into her career. And she threatened to kick me out because I bounced six checks and really didn't care. So, I was very much a money in, money out. I don't, uh, whatever.
I'm an artist. I can't be bothered. Which is unfair to say of artists because I know many artists who are really good with money. But that was sort of my philosophy. And then I had my son, also young, not quite as young as my parents, but young and. Suddenly, even though I didn't really care about money, I had to care about money, but that, that bean counting chart of accounts, you know, because my, when my son was born, this was pre- debit card.
So, you were writing checks at the grocery store, and you know, my mom was putting everything into her record thing and she was subtracting and she always knew how much money was in her accounts. I never did that. I can't subtract fast enough to do that. I just, I have a very intuitive sense of money, which works fine if you have enough money to be a little bit loosey-goosey with it.
If you are down to the penny, which is where I was when my son was little, it doesn't work because your intuition can be off by $10 or a hundred dollars. Well, if you only have $9 in your bank account and you write a $10 check, you're in real trouble. So, it took me a long time to get to a place where my intuitive sense of money served me really well.
I had to start making enough money for it to work. So probably a real acute math person or money person would say, uou don't really have a sense of it still. You've just figured out how to make it work, which is fine.
Laura Rotter: So Dayna, can you walk our listeners through? I guess how you got to that point where there was maybe $9 in your bank account. I know that you were an actor, you perhaps still are an actor in many ways, so how, at what age was that a passion that you started to pursue and how did that evolve?
Dayna Del Val: Oh gosh. I did my first play when I was six, community theater production of the Sound of Music that both my mom and dad were in. That was 44 years ago, and it's really only been in the last five or six years that I've utterly, entirely set it down, and I certainly would still do. I still do some voiceover work, some commercial work, that kind of thing. But it just was the thing that fed me, that lit me up, that utilized my skills, that energized me, that seemed to take everything that I naturally was gifted with at birth. And this, the tools and the skills that I was developing as I was getting a theater degree and, and becoming a professional actor. It, it took all of those things and it, it just gave me a place to utilize what felt like my best gifts to offer the world for a long time, even though.
Again, I had my son very shortly after graduating from college, so I did not move to New York City or move to Hollywood and really try to pound the pavement and beat it out. But when you consider that I live in the middle of the country, the most flyover of flyover regions, I actually have had a pretty remarkable professional career because most people go to the coasts.
So I've been able to kind of ride out the. Maybe, maybe you think of it as like a attrition kind of thing. People as fewer and fewer actors stay in my area and I'm still here, it has given me some great opportunities.
Laura Rotter: So please share where you are.
Dayna Del Val: So I'm in Fargo, North Dakota, and yes, here, let me answer the questions. Some people do talk like the film Fargo.
Laura Rotter: I lo, I love her accent.
Dayna Del Val: Yeah, she's, she is unbelievable. In that film, the woman who gets wood chipped, Kristin Red Root is from Fargo, is a friend of mine. We have the actual wood chipper at our Convention and Visitors Bureau, so if you ever come to visit me, Laura, I will take you there.
There's a whole bucket of winter hats and a leg sticking outta the, outta the shoot. It was not filmed in Fargo because North Dakota does not have a tax credit for films. It was filmed in Minnesota where the Cohn brothers are from it. To my experience, it is not as violent as the film or the TV show, but it is absolutely as cold.
Laura Rotter: And you mentioned that your parents were in the theater that you had your first role in.
Dayna Del Val: So was that part of Yeah, my, my dad did just that one show. He played Captain Von Trap. My mom did a number of community theater productions. My mom was a music teacher. And so I think it's not terribly surprising that the arts were a big piece of my life.
Uh, certainly my parents were very supportive of me getting. Of me being in the arts, they were not thrilled that I was getting a theater degree, but they were, they didn't work against it. Let's just leave it at that,
Laura Rotter: Which is quite a big deal, especially in a family that sounds like was aware of money.
Dayna Del Val: Absolutely. Yeah. I, I do not come from a family of upper middle class I, we were a very middle class family, and by today's standards, there's no way my family could have existed the way we did in the eighties on my dad's single salary. I mean, it's just that era of one parent income at that level, I think is really over in this country, which is a shame because there were a lot of gifts to having an at-home mom and she wanted to be at home for those years.
So it, I don't want people to feel like they need to stay home, but if you wanna be home, it was a real gift as a child to have her there when I got home from school and all those other pieces. But I don't think that's possible today.
Laura Rotter: So Dayna, I love the fact that you, you used the term my gifts. Several times so that it sounds like it's something you've reflected on.
Like what are your strengths and what are your gifts? So what would you say they are that you brought to acting and then into the next stage?
Dayna Del Val: First of all, I have a very present presence, which I've always had. I've always been aware of my environment. I've always understood how I fit inside it. I've always been comfortable in front of other people.
In fact, I would say I kind of crave it when, when people say, said to me during Covid, oh, I just cannot do another zoom call, the zoom fatigue, I would think, what are you even talking about? I, I just, I don't, I don't understand getting tired, being in front of people, it's, it's not that I'm such an extrovert, it's that I am an absolutely natural born performer. And so where does a performer need to be? They need to be in front of people. Whether that's a camera or a stage or a cocktail party. It doesn't really matter to me. It's about the interaction. So I think that's a big piece of it. And then I think what I learned, which has served me so well as an actor and served me well as a, um, president and CEO in the nonprofit sector, and I hope will serve me well in my new entrepreneurial world is that I'm a really strong listener.
And what comes of being an active listener in conversation is that you are then able to make meaningful connections so I can connect. People to people, people to ideas, people to resources in ways that hardly anyone I know does as well as I do. And I think it's because I don't spend much time thinking, oh, I have a great answer for that stop talking so I can talk. I really listen. And then answer.
Laura Rotter: So it's interesting given that, that you casually mentioned that it served you in your role as executive director at a nonprofit. So can you please share Dayna? How did that come about?
Dayna Del Val: Uh, yeah. So I really had one goal after my son was born, and that was, uh, to never take a full-time job because I believed.
So wholeheartedly that I was going to be a movie star. That, aside from parenting, which I will say I was devastated to be pregnant, and then once I realized I was bringing this little person home with me in January of 1996, I never, ever, ever questioned whether or not I should be a mother, whether or not I loved this little person he was and is the gift of my life.
So, That's an important caveat, but I needed to be flexible and available for when I had the opportunity to watch my star ascend to where I believed it was supposed to go. So a full-time job would've absolutely prohibited that. So I, um, I went on to get a master's degree and I adjunct taught and I did freelance writing and I did a lot of commercial work and voiceover work and when Quinn, my son was little, I babysat and I did all kinds of things just so that I could get to an audition so that I could be available. And I will say this about my family. I think they worried about, they certainly worried about their grandchild. So I have, there's three sets of grandparents because my parents are divorced and Quinn's Quinn's dad's parents were very involved.
His dad and I never got married, but we all just decided we loved this little person, and so we would all just be in this boat together. And I, I have to think that at many different times, all three sets of grandparents thought, what in the world is she doing? She should go get a real job. She should provide something better for that child and be done with it.
And to their credit, they never really raised that criticism with me. They just kind of let me do what I did, which was the right choice, because I would have travelled up and died in a cubicle. I always knew that about myself. Money was never my focus. Time was my focus. So this job came up and what do you know?
I got that freaking job. And it did end up being full-time. But I said to them, cuz I'm nothing if not, uh, able to think quickly on my feet. I said, so it's full-time. I think it's really important that the President and CEO of an arts nonprofit be a working artist. So when I have auditions, unless they conflict with board meetings, I will be going to the auditions.
Because how can I represent artists if I'm not going through the art of being an artist too? And they agreed. So I had the perks of full-time. I mean, in the nonprofit sector there are not a lot of perks. But you know, I had the perks of full-time and I had time, which was the really the only reason I said yes to the job.
So I have been in that job since July of 2010. And we'll only be leaving it finally April 28th of this year. So I've been there almost 13 years. And I can tell you, Laura, that they were also concerned about my financial background. They said to me, you know, what's your background with like profit and loss statements?
And I said, yeah, I don't have any background with profit and loss statements. I can tell you that I run a tiny little household of two and I feed my son every night, so I must be doing something right. And they decided that you can teach someone to read a profit and loss statement, which I am testament and here to say, yes you can because I can read them.
Now. That's a learned skill. You don't need to be born with that to do it well. So that's how I ended up as president and CEO.
Laura Rotter: Thank you, and I love that you articulated that time is a scarce resource. Money is a scarce resource. Of course, so is time and so is energy. Our lives are all about finding the balance, which shifts over time, shifts at different ages, but knowing.
That time was just as important to you as money. Is a gift a word that you've used? Because not everyone does. And then you wake up one day and you go, oh my God, I have money. But where are the relationships? Where are the meaningful activities? So Dayna, I know there was. A big event in your life and in a relationship that has helped change the trajectory.
So can you please share with our listeners what that was?
Dayna Del Val: I feel like I've had three or four big events. I didn't wanna go down the road.
Laura Rotter: Oh, well, free to share others if, if you feel…
Dayna Del Val: So, um, Just, just for backstory, in August of 2001, I was up sweating it out in my income-based department, 45 stairs up with no air conditioning, and a good friend of mine was supposed to come over and watch a movie with me, and he didn't come.
And he didn't come. And about 11 o'clock the phone rang and he said, you should come down to this bar that was down the street a ways. And at this point, my son is five and a half years old, so he puts this man on the phone. Who's drunk. I mean, not like fall down drunk, but slurry. And I'm thinking, what in the world?
And then he starts to talk and I realize he has an accent. And turns out that Maz is Irish, but grew up in England and he's been in America at this point for nine months. So I finally said to him, Maz, I, I guess I should go. And he said, all right, last, I'll speak to you soon. And I thought, Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
I'm done. I'm done. Okay, so that was August, September 11th, 2001. The world turns upside down. I had had a dinner event that I had to go to, and so the same friend, Peter, is over babysitting. Quinn and I come back from this event and things are so. Even, even from Fargo, North Dakota, things are so distressing on that day.
And I have a brother who lives in New York City and we knew by then that he was fine, but there just, it's so awful that I think maybe I just need to meet Maz. Maybe the world is ending and I just need to go for broke. So I had Peter call him and he came over that night and he was one of the very last flights to get back from his original location.
He left France that morning. And landed in Fargo about two hours after the twin Towers had fallen. He didn't even know anything was happening. They didn't announce it in the airspace. And so we sat up all night long and we talked about where he had traveled and his education. He's a plant cell wall by a chemist, and he is so frigging smart.
It's just insane. And we've been together ever since. Okay, so that's 2001. We got married in 2008 and we never lived together. So he'd always told me that he had one whiskey a night, and I grew up in a household of zero alcohol. So, okay, we get married, we're finally living together. And he's not just drinking one whiskey a night, and then that just progressively gets worse and worse and worse until by 2017, things are very, very bad.
I do think it's important to note there was never any abuse to either me or Quinn. We were never unsafe. And because I was so naive about alcoholism, I just thought, well, he is never gotten a D U I. He's never crashed his car. He goes to work. He's kept his job. He must not be an alcoholic. And, um, February 1st, he woke me up in the middle of the night and said, you have to take me to the emergency room.
Something's really wrong. He'd had a nose bleed for about 14 hours and I walked into the bathroom and it looked like something had blown up in the bathroom. And so I took him to the emergency room. And long story short, he was gone for six and a half weeks. So two and a half weeks in, uh, the hospital, including six days in intensive care in a medically induced coma, and then four weeks in inpatient rehab, and then I think about eight or nine weeks in what I call daycare rehab, where he would go during the day and he has been sober ever since. So he just celebrated his sixth year of sobriety, February 1st, 2023. And I think the reason that this story matters is because one of the things that really suffered while he was drinking, and it wasn't just because he was spending a lot of money on alcohol was our finances.
So we were both professionals at this point making, I don't know, over, we were making over a hundred thousand dollars, which for some listeners is not a lot of money, but for us it was good money. Um, we live in a very modest little house and you know, it was good. And yet freshman year of my son's college, we were there for parents' weekends.
So this was 2014, and I happened to check. Our checking account and we were overdrawn and I had to borrow money from my 18 year old so that we could take him out for dinner, which was truly mortifying. The reason that I, I said it wasn't just that Maz was drinking away all our money was because I was also sort of out of control spending.
So like I would go down to this great little boutique. Downtown and I would come home and I would say to him, I had to have these three dresses. They were $700. $700 is a lot of money. And I wasn't doing it weekly, but I was maybe doing it three or four times a year. And I mean, I have had a job where I needed a lot of cocktail dresses and those kinds of things, so it was never totally unreasonable, but it was pretty unreasonable.
And so we were often in real money trouble. And we couldn't have any conversation about it because he heard me accusing him and I heard him lying and both things were true. I was accusing him and he was lying and we were out of control about money because we could never just say, could we be honest about this?
He, you know, I would see a $60 ATM withdrawal and I would say to him, what are you doing with all that money? And he would say, I'm buying sandwiches and I would say, what kinda sandwiches cost $60? And he couldn't answer it. So it was just this, like when Quinn was little, money felt out of control because I had none.
Now we had some, and it was equally out of control, and it was worse because it wasn't just me spending it and I couldn't get to the bottom of it. And it felt like we were never, ever, ever gonna get away from it. It didn't matter what kind of raises we got, it didn't matter what money I would sort of secretly set aside in an online account.
There just was never enough money and that was as bad as the drinking because it was so, I was just frantic about it all the time, and I just felt like I was never gonna get a handle on it. And the minute Maz got sober, We were able to have real conversations about it. I lost all interest in spending $700 on three dresses.
I haven't really shopped since 2018 because I don't care. I don't need to exercise control somewhere, and so that's where I'm doing it. I have control in every place in my life. Now that matters. And so that external stuff is irrelevant and that's one of the great, great gifts to his sobriety.
Laura Rotter: Thank you for sharing that.
You described, right. This event that I asked you about is changing everything, but it didn't necessarily have to Dayna, right? People can can go through a lot and then resume their old patterns. So what do you attribute both your abilities to change? And where has that led you?
Dayna Del Val: I always say we had a nurse who I actually think was probably an angel sent to me.
She, she was extraordinary, and I mean, she is a real person. I'm still connected to her, so she's, so, she's not, you know, she's not Clarence from, um, it's a wonderful life. But she did for me, what Clarence did in that film, the day that Maz finally went into that coma, she brought me a journal. This was day three of his hospital stay and she and I said, I, what is this?
And she said, you are going to need this. She said, you don't know it yet, but I know you're going to need this. So just keep it with you and start to write when it makes sense to you. And so we moved up to the intensive care floor and I started to write and I wrote about 80 pages and I just said, Absolutely every single thing I'd been thinking for years.
And I, I raged and I cried and I ranted and I just, I did everything. And when I was done, I certainly wasn't done, but I had purged the, the toxins that were living in me the same way. Literally Maz needed to physically detox. I needed to detox too. So when he woke up five and a half days later, As I said, we, we weren't fixed at this point.
We had a lot of work to do, but I was able to be in a place where I had at least let go of past anger and sadness and frustration and shame and all of that. I'd let go of that stuff and once he kind of really got into the work of rehab and had his moment where he also started to let go of that. Then we kind of found ourselves in a new place where we had never really been and we were on equal footing in some ways for the first time in our lives.
Because what I brought to the relationship when we first met was just. Substantively more. I brought a child, I brought my country, my culture, my family, my apartment. I bought this house before we got married. It was all my stuff that he was coming into. And all his stuff was 6,000 miles away in England.
And for the first time ever, we were both at this place where neither one of us knew what going forward looked like. I think because we individually worked through a lot of that anger, we could come to the new place of examining anger and shame and frustration and all of that because that needed to be examined together.
We could come to that place fresh, and if you were to read that journal, you would see exactly what you just asked me throughout the hopeful parts of it, which there are some of you see me saying, I'm so afraid that you are going to get fixed. And I'm just gonna shift my focus of criticism from this to something else.
What if that is all I am? I will be forever proud of the work that we did individually and together and grateful for it. Cuz you're absolutely right. A lot of couples just don't get to that point cuz it's easy to fall back on old habits and hard to decide to disrupt that.
Laura Rotter: Yes. And you mentioned journaling and you mentioned a nurse.
Was there, were there other facilitators or resources or you were just both two very strong people.
Dayna Del Val: I told very few people. I will say again, my family stepped in in really beautiful, supportive ways. I mean, when I called Quinn to tell him Maz was in the hospital, he was a junior in college, and he said to me, I could, I could quit right now. I could drop out right now and come home. Which moved me and I told him not to. I said, let's wait and see how things play out. But that, that was an incredible, incredibly generous thing for him to set himself aside and think about. I, I didn't really have a lot of other people because I told so few people.
I called a friend one night who was also a professor, just because I started to think about. Oh my gosh. Is Maz gonna lose his job and what is that gonna look like? I remember going into the hospital finance office one day, I was panic-stricken that insurance was not gonna cover this. So I had called our insurance agents and she told me that our plan did have hospitalization and rehab for addiction, which I, I remember almost falling to the floor in gratitude, and then I thought, yeah, but how much will they cover? So I went to the finance office, and I mean, we're talking about between, between the hospital stay and rehab, we're talking more than $250,000 worth of bills. And we ended up spending about $6,000.
Laura Rotter: Yeah. It's interesting when we realize, and it doesn't have to be as dramatic a situation as you just described, Dayna, where we realize. We're not victims and we actually have a role to play and we bring something to dysfunctional relationships. Everyone brings something to dysfunctional relationships. Uh, I don't, but everyone else,
Dayna Del Val: Well, I don't anymore either, Laura, so we're in good company. That was a one-and-done for me.
Laura Rotter: So I'm wondering, as you describe the story, what role did faith play?
Dayna Del Val: Well, I am, so I grew up Methodist, which is, you know, a pretty milk toast, uh, Christian denomination. It's a lovely denomination.
Um, but it is not straight up mainstream. United Methodist is not. Uh, fundamentalist is not, you know, crazy. It's really like hymns, grace and potlucks. That's really been my experience in the Methodist Church. So I grew up around that and was quite active in church until probably 10 ish years ago when I started to feel like this isn't really resonating for me anymore. And so I have stepped away from organized religion and, and I'm not
Laura Rotter: asking a question at all about that kind of…
Dayna Del Val: Right. But, but I say that because what I am is I am very spiritual. I do believe in angels. I do believe the universe has an active role in our lives.
I believe the universe can be what you want it to be. I don't care. You can see God with the long flowing beard. You can see, I don't care. Somewhere between mysticism and. Organized Christianity and physics and spirituality as a new age thing is where I live, and I live there very, very comfortably.
Laura Rotter: So what happened three years ago that made you go from telling hardly anybody to going very public when Maz came home?
Dayna Del Val: Maz came home in March of 2017, and one of the things that. Had not happened for much, many, many years is we hadn't really traveled in part because he was really hard to travel with. So we hardly did any of that well after he got sober and we kind of felt like we ran into a money tree. We started to travel a lot in 2017, 18 and 19. I was in England or parts of Europe four times a year. Plus we were in Hawaii a couple of times, some other major traveling and because everything was so much better in our lives, my social media feed went from like Maz being largely absent to Maz being very present. And people started to say to me like, what's going on in your life?
And there was always this like, um, both happiness for me and kinda. What, why do you get to have this? And so I realized that Maz and I were presenting the highlight reel was sitting and reading, and I just had this idea and I went out to the kitchen where he was and I said, all right, I'm gonna ask you this one time and if you say no, I will never ask you again.
Which is so unlike me cuz I'm sort of a terrier. If I get something in my mind, I'll gnaw my own hand off to get it. And I said, I think maybe we should go public with this because. I don't think people understand, cuz they don't know why things are so incredible in our lives. And I said, this is your story.
So if you say no, we won't do it, and I think we should do it on February 1st, 2020. Because that was his three-year sober-versary and he asked if he could have some time to think about it and I said yes. And he came back an hour later and he said, let's do it. Which shocked me. So we wrote nine blogs. And then we turned it into a 27 part series, which we launched, uh, through my website and my little website went from about 800 views a month to 25,000.
I had no idea that almost everybody can say, oh, I have addiction in my life. I had no idea. So then we finished that up in April of 2020, which was crazy to do it through Covid. I mean, so interesting. And then in July of that year, we started a daily live stream called Daily Dose of Dr. Mary and DeeDee, which we just ended in December of 2022.
So 384 episodes, which still live online, all around addiction, recovery, and sort of restoring a joyful marriage because so few marriages make it through this kind of thing. It was so healing for us. If it had done nothing for anybody else, I would still be glad we did it because we had conversations we never would've had any other way.
Because when you gotta show up and present 15 minutes of content, every single day you talk about everything. I cried, we laughed. We were angry sometimes. I mean, it was, there were hard conversations in there. And we also know that we saved. We literally helped save lives and every time I would think, ah, maybe we should be done hardly anybody's paying attention out of nowhere.
A complete stranger would approach me in the grocery store, or Maz would call the registrar's office at the university where he teaches to ask about a student grade, and the, the person on the registrar line would say, I just want you to know how important your call your program is to me. Or, I mean, it was unbelievable.
The people who. Reached out and it taught me that the real tragedy to addiction is the shame in isolation that we all, and as soon as we dispelled that, Then I felt no shame at all in saying, haha, here I am back in England. Haha, here I am in Hawaii. Haha, here I am on a bike ride with my fantastic husband because everybody also knew the terrible that we had been through.
Laura Rotter: Thank you. And it, it's just resonating. Because in so many areas of our lives, again, it doesn't only have to be addiction. People struggle with shame and isolation. It's one of the reasons I'm starting this podcast because people going through big transitions feel like I'm the only one. Everybody else is happy everybody else is settled and it's not true. And, and as you know, money brings up so much shame.
Dayna Del Val: Well, I was gonna say, one of the things that I find so attractive about you is that. On paper, you had an incredible life. You know this great big, powerful job on Wall Street like that's so impressive.
Particularly for those of us who have this perception of what Wall Street looks like. And to be a woman at that level is so impressive. And yet, I know that you did not love every moment of that, and that you must have felt isolated and frustrated in a lot of ways. But how do you express that when so much of what other people think is true is not true, it's, it's really hard, to be honest, hard to be honest about how bad you are with money or whatever.
So I agree with you. A addiction happens to be the demon that lived at my house, but boy, we all have 'em and we all try to hide them. We're all mostly trying to make the lump under the rug a little bit flatter so that nobody looks at it and questions it.
Laura Rotter: So now where are you taking your gift of talking truth and authenticity? And I just love, I've told you, Dayna, I love the word, you know, rediscover the spark. So tell us about what that is.
Dayna Del Val: So I think actually I completely ignored your last question, which I completely forgot about until you just said that. So I'll, I'll go back cuz it's all tied together. In September of 2020, I was on a two week writing retreat and I thought that I had gone to, um, read through my grandparents courtship letters.
They, they fell in love. By letter from 1949 to 1951. And as far as I know, and as far as my mom knows nobody, but the two of them has ever read the 500 or so letters, which live in two big boot boxes now in an extra bedroom of mine. And I thought, you know, I should read those. And maybe it's a screenplay, maybe it's a novel or I, I wasn't sure what.
So I applied for this solo writing retreat. I was by myself for 14 days out. In rural, rural North Dakota. I was 30 miles from the nearest town, uh, by myself. I started to read those letters and they were incredible. They were flirty and charming and sassy, and my grandma was so accomplished for a woman, she was born in 1913 and had a great big job and all these kinds of things, and I loved meeting them as. Mid 30 and mid 40 year olds. But I realized really quickly there was nothing in that for me, now. There may be some day later, but not now. So I set those down and I just decided to get curious about what was I gonna do.
I had 12 and a half more days of this writing retreat. What was I going to do? And so I was out walking the, the farm fields, and I had the day before, I had had this very uncomfortable all day long disrupted feeling. I felt kind of the best way to describe it is I felt like I had on a really itchy wool sweater and it was too warm, so it was kind of sweaty and scratchy, and I just decided to just sit with that and see what came of it.
And I woke up the next morning and I was through it, and I didn't really know what I'd gotten through or where I was, but I realized that I was someplace I'd never been before. And so I'm out walking. And I'm talking to the universe and I'm saying, this is, this is incredible. And I feel different, and I don't know why I feel different or what I'm different for, but it's different and I don't wanna lose this feeling and I also wanna help other people figure this out.
And I'm talking and I'm gesturing, and the birds are flying south, and it's just me in the fields and the universe so, so clearly stopped me and said, Dayna, you're a personal systems disruptor. And I stopped and I said, I am. And it said, yes, yes. And you're going to do this work for all kinds of people. And I said, I am?
And I said yes. And I was a quarter of a mile from the farmhouse. And in that quarter mile I kind of constructed this course and I gave myself three months to. Research it, put it together, market it, and hold it. And I held my first virtual course in 62 days and the name has changed now to Rediscover Your Spark.
Um, but the work is the same. The work is really this idea of what happens when you dig and you think. Oh, I, I didn't realize that I love plants and that I find them healing and that I wanna talk to them and I wanna provide them to people who are shut-ins. And that, or I forgot that when I was little, what I loved to do was make mud pies.
And I didn't really ever equate that to the fact that today when I, when I go to visit someone, I always bake them something, is there something there? Or whatever. So the point is, I believe we're all born with a spark, something that lights us up, and lots of times we're not raised in households that encourage us to discover it or to foster it, or to grow it.
I was so unbelievably lucky to be raised in a household that valued my creativity, valued my, um, sense of wonder and dreaming and. My audacity, I was absolutely encouraged to be audacious all the time. That's unbelievable. Particularly in the Scandinavian Midwest. And so I, I didn't realize that not everybody sort of spent time thinking about, what do I want?
Cuz I've always known. And so that is the work that I'm doing and I, I just now I'm launching a kind of a pre-program called Discover Your Spark, because I was with the woman who does my nails, who I love so much, and she said to me, do you wanna know why I've never taken your course? And I said, sure. She said, I haven't taken it because how can I rediscover something I was never born with anyway?
And it broke my heart because she's so outstanding. And I realized that if you didn't grow up, And have encouragement to dream, then maybe you don't know what your spark is cuz nobody ever said, you are extraordinary. Let's factor in and let's foster what makes you you. So now I'm doing these 90 minute, um, experiences just around spending some time with some big generic areas in your life just to give yourself the chance to dream and dig and see what shows up because she's right. You can't rediscover something you don't believe is there. Now my goal is to help people believe that they have something and then help them create the framework to not just dream about it, but to pursue it over the course of three days, three months, three years.
Laura Rotter: It sounds amazing. You have in the past used the term intuition. I'm sure you'll agree. Intuition needs to be cultivated and back to something you and I discussed, which is it's, you need time. I mean, you describe having those days a long, uh, alone near a farm because. We have so many voices in our head.
We've got the TV, we've got our parents, we've got our spouses, we've got, you know, social media, and you really need to just be quiet to start to tune into, you know, who's Dayna? What does Dayna want? It sounds like you've always been encouraged. And that's a gift that you recognized your family gave you. But so many of us really never sit quietly, never listen to what our bodies are telling us, how we're reacting to things.
And so if you know, to the extent that there's a framework that you can help people use to quiet down and get in touch with themselves, um, that's beautiful. What kind of people do you find are, you know, are attracted to it?
Dayna Del Val: Well, it's so interesting, Laura. I thought I was creating the program for me, basically, you know, middle-aged, middle income, middle America, white women. Just when I was imagining sort of who's gonna wanna do this work? And I have worked with a number of women who fall into that description, but there have been three additional groups that I never anticipated and have been such a delight. One is sort of that 26 to 28 year old whose two to five years out of college looking around in their career and going, wait a minute.
This cannot be what I'm gonna do now for 40 more years. This just cannot be it. So that group has been interesting. And I would say the young people in that age group who've done the work with me have made the most literally dramatic shifts in their lives. And I think some of that is because they have the least.
Number of obligations in their lives. It's a good time to make huge moves across the country or to quit your job and go back to school or those kinds of things. So that's one group. Um, another group that I never, ever expected is men. Men do this work. And what I've realized in working with them is women have a lot of places where we can get vulnerable. We do it. One-on-one. We do it in small groups. We meet for book clubs. We've got all these areas where we feel comfortable and it's societally acceptable for us to get vulnerable with each other. We have not created places for men to talk about what they're afraid of or what kind of keeps them up at night, or if they're living to their fullest desire and potential.
So that has been. Really, really incredible to do that work. I would love to do more work with men because I just think there's a real need for that. There's not as much need for a place for women to do this work. And then the third place that has also been a real delight to me is retirees who say, I had a great career.
I have disposable income. I do not want to work. On anybody else's schedule, nor am I ready to just watch TV all day. I want one more big, meaningful chapter that is on my terms, and I do not know quite what that is. And that group's been really delightful to work with too.
Laura Rotter: Yes, I, I love that group. I do a lot of work with that group and again, the term that I didn't make up, that so many people retire from something and don't retire to something, and that's the important question to answer. When we, when we don't need to answer to an employer and we don't need to answer to our kids cuz they're adults and, and so what's our next step?
Dayna Del Val: Yeah, that's, that's a great way to think of it. I don't know that I've heard that. Not don't retire from retire too. It's great.
Laura Rotter: So Dayna, as you've been on this journey, how would you say your definition of success might have shifted?
Dayna Del Val: Well, I think. There is no question that I have always strived for notoriety.
I've always wanted to be known and not like, like I used to say, I wanna be a movie star because I wanna be a great actor, not because I need a million Instagram followers. I, I wanna be a real whatever I am. And so, There is a piece of me that wants this work to grow to the level of I want a Netflix special and I want, um, to be on SuperSoul conversations with Oprah, and I want to write books that are New York Times sellers, best sellers.
There's no question that I want that, but more important to me, and I would say that. That the work I've done with Maz in Daily Dose has really helped me see the value of this. More important than just I wanna be a household name is I wanna do good in the world because I've had so many good things happen to me and for me and given to me that I want to be able to help other people who did not have what I had, who did not have parents who just said, yes, of course you can be that. Go be that you're incredible. If you didn't have that, how do you know that you are? So I, I want to do good. And I want to be a force for joy in other people's lives and an and an awakening mechanism for them, because even in my lowest low points, and I've definitely had some low, low points, I never questioned my value.
I never questioned my worth. I never questioned. If I had something to offer, I never quite knew, and I still don't quite know how I'm going to reach the masses, but it's not because I think I don't deserve it, and I think everybody deserves it. I am not the anomaly. I'm just the one who was gifted with the belief in it.
I wanna be able to do that for other people so that they believe that they have value and worth and have something to offer other people too.
Laura Rotter: I love hearing you articulate your mission, and I really do believe that the energy to do what you're doing, yes. You've articulated, you like to be on camera or you like to speak, you're f.
But it's coming from something deeper, from a real sense that what you are offering is important and makes a difference. You've said that you heard people tell you what a difference the podcast you had make and you know made, and you know how this has made a difference. This exploration has made a difference in your life.
I do think as we get older, our energy, right, one of our scarce resources wanes and it can't just come from a vision we had when we were younger. It has to come from something deeper. So, Dayna, if our listeners wanna learn more about you and your work, how can they find you?
Dayna Del Val: You can find me@Daynadelval.com and my parents gave me that fantastic movie star name.
Uh, but this, but the spelling is a little odd. So let me spell it for you. D A Y n A D E L V A L. Dot com. You can reach me at Dayna@Daynadelval.com. I would love to have a conversation with you. I think, I think there's just, you have nothing to lose by asking if you've got more to give and you have everything to gain.
And that's, I'm not saying it's not scary, but wow, we have one go at life and even a long life is short. So if not now, when? That's, that's really the question that drives me. If not now, when?
Laura Rotter: Yes, and you've changed your life to answer that question, so thank you so much for taking the time to be on my podcast.
I really enjoyed our conversation, Dayna.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dayna Del Val, creator of the Discover Your Spark Retreats. I'd like to share some of my takeaways. First takeaway is know your strengths and your gifts. Dayna knows that she is a natural born performer. Whether on camera, on stage, or at a cocktail party, she thrives on interactions with others. She also has strong listening skills. Which enables her to connect people to ideas and resources that would be helpful to them.
My second takeaway is to build your life around your values. Dayna noted that money was never her focus. Time was her focus as a single mom. She wanted time with her son. As a performer, she wanted time to act, and she continues to prioritize time for relationships that matter to her.
Third takeaway, don't shy away from difficult conversations. Dayna described her marriage to Maz, someone who suffered from alcohol addiction and the out of control feeling she had as each of them avoided important conversations about his drinking, about her spending. By the way, the most important conversation we often need to have is with ourselves.
Dayna noted that journaling was cathartic during her husband's addiction and recovery journey. Are you enjoying this podcast? Please don't forget to subscribe, so you won't miss next week's episode. And if you really are enjoying the show, please leave a rating and review. I would appreciate it so much.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to Making Change with Your Money. Certified Financial Planner, Laura Rotter, specializes in helping people just like you organized, clarify, and invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning. Go to www.trueabundanceadvisors.com/workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey.
Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.