Recently, I was fortunate enough have a powerful young woman in my seasonal colour analysis chair and she left an indelible impression on me. Den B, a gifted young singer/songwriter is a woman of many talents. Not only is she an innovativesongwriter who specializes in Spanish language reggaeton and country rock and who participated in X Factor, she is also a published poet and an impressive professional photographer and videographer. Her animal portraits created during her travels to Africa are like something right out of National Geographic and she directs and produces her own music videos. To say Den B is a Renaissance woman seems like an understatement.
But what impressed me even more than her many outstanding talents and abilities is her unique resilience and unimpeachable moral integrity. As an adolescent she faced a series daunting personal challenges but they have only fortified her tenacity and determination.
Having been diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic disorder, doctors told her that by age 30 she would be confined to a wheelchair. Instead, she became a European champion of martial arts and still leads an active lifestyle to this day, traveling the world for work and dancing to the music she creates in the videos she directs.
Recounting one of her physical rehabilitation episodes when she had just received her devastating diagnosis after a year of tests, she told me how she was lying in her hospital bed feeling shattered . There was a curtain separating her and the young man next to her so she wasn’t able to see him but she heard his response when the physical therapist asked him how he was doing: “wonderfully”. Because he had been able to walk from one side of his hospital room despite the fact that he had the use of only one leg due to his condition. In that moment, instead of feeling despair at her own diagnosis or bitterness at the prognosis, she was filled with immense gratitude and joy for the life she had already lived in that moment and that gratitude made the future feel less dire.
That fortitude has served her well in her musical career as well. MeToo may have accomplished some seismic cultural changes but judging by some of the experiences Den B has been subjected to, it unfortunately doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact in the music business. Despite enduring the vicissitudes of that industry, Den B has never compromised her principles or made a Faustian bargain for an expedited route to success. For that, I admire her endlessly, and I have faith that she will attain the success she deserves on her own merits. Den B is the kind of young woman who inspires me and whom I hope my daughter will emulate. Long may she continue to use her unique voice and her many talents and may she continue as she is : indomitable.
