402: Dana Pake: Embracing The Detours With A Player's Mentality

Dana Pake is a Seattle-based Shameless Mom to two daughters, Ellie (10) and Holland (7). A recovering people pleaser and perfectionist, she's a work-in-progress learning to savor the present and the impermanence of life with light-hearted flexibility. She's a lot like you. Working every day to be the best version of herself while simultaneously breaking the mold of her roles as wife, mom, daughter, sister, and employee.

Everyone has a story. Hers is punctuated by turning hardships into gifts. From her parent's divorce, living on her own since she was a senior in high school, weathering her father's suicide at age 19, outrunning Hurricane Maria and helping her husband through a difficult health episode, Dana has learned to metabolize hardship for inward and upward growth.

When she's not spending her days creating in real-life moments and human interactions that matter at events as an experience designer, you can find her planning her next trip to parts unknown (whether that's exploring new corners of the world with her family or discovering new versions of herself).

Listen in to hear Dana share:

  • The impact of her parents divorce and how she became a parental figure to her sister at age 8
  • The impact of losing her father to suicide at age 19
  • How she and her family narrowly escaped Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and set off on a year-long nomadic adventure with her husband and two young daughters
  • How she’s used work to hide, escape, and avoid pain, grief and growth - and how it’s caught up with her
  • Her family motto: embrace the detours
  • The power of the victim vs player mentality
  • How owning her resilience informs her personal and professional decisions today

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Om Podcasten

Sara Dean launched the Shameless Mom Academy to help moms lead more positive, powerful and purposeful lives #everydamnday. Sara is an award winning fitness professional, author, speaker, and leadership & transformation coach who spent the last 18+ years serving moms in the fields of business, leadership, psychology, sociology, health & wellness. But, it took becoming a mom herself in 2012 to learn that - holy cow - this is hard work, and if you’re not paying attention you can completely lose your own sense of identity while raising babies. Join Sara every Monday and Wednesday as she and her notable guests dig deep into topics like creating the confidence you crave; turn your struggles into strengths, building better boundaries, and tuning into tiny habits that can change your life. Discover how why thousands of moms all over the world are turning to The Shameless Mom Academy to live bigger, bolder, braver lives #everydamnday.