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Creative Butterfly
I remember always being that quirky… extroverted but somehow also super introverted little girl who would try to escape the chaos by immersing herself in anything that felt creative. 🦋
From drawing, choreographing, writing plays for my friends to act in, sketching outfits, always being the one staying after class to help the teacher put the final touches on the art projects… You name it! I had a blaaaaaaast!
I always managed to do my homework, hang out with all my friends, and get A’s in the middle of all my hobbies… which, looking back, feels pretty impressive. 😀
In my teenage years, I even had a YouTube gaming channel! 😏 I met a lot of people who loved my content. 🩷 It was one of my favorite projects! ❤️🩹 I learned video editing, how to appreciate and navigate fans’ love 🥹, and how to manage my anger and impatience every time Sony Vegas would crash.
I always felt like arts and creativity were a big part of my life. They gave me Drive. If something went wrong, it would immediately soften once I started creating.🤍
HOweever!! Making a career out of the arts was never on the table, maybe somewhere very hidden in my subconscious, I thought I could, for example, make clothes as a siiiide side side side job, but it would never make enough money.
The ideal was to be a dentist. Or maybe a marine biologist, pediatrician, or psychologist. Maybe finance. Not a lawyer because I’m too smiley… Something that would make money and my relatives happy!!!! “Don’t waste your brain Diana! We’re counting on you!” - everyone at Christmas, 2006–2019.
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2003 - Lisbon, Portugal
Music as the Norm
I’ve been trying to sing Christina Aguilera songs since I was about 4. I remember my mom braiding my hair while I sat on the floor—she’d try to watch a Brazilian telenovela while I tried to hit those Aguilera notes. I cried both because I needed to shut up and because my head hurt.
Speaking of “Hurt,” my favorite song of hers… 🙈 I’ve always thought the emotion Christina puts into her songs is beautifully conveyed. I dreamed that one day I could put that same energy into my favorite covers and, later, into my own songs.
My love for music videos and, later, creative direction began even before I started school. While everyone was chatting and making food upstairs, I would spend hours and hours in a dark, slightly scary basement at a relative’s house, binge-watching MTV. Soon enough, I knew all the music videos and melodies by heart. Love me some Tokio Hotel, btw. 🙈
I got the itch for songwriting for the first time when I was 10, in the Algarve with my cousin on a lovely summer holiday. There, I wrote my very first bad song about cows and how I needed to go back to my country... It’s actually really catchy; I know it to this day. 🤣
Fast forward to my teens, I began writing heartbreak songs. My first one was in English. It’s called “my pretty broken heart,” and it’s this R&B, but make it acoustic guitar, smooth type of thing that I do like. This was when I realized I loved writing in English, even though some years later I mainly wrote in Portuguese.
2024 - Lisbon, Portugal
2025 - Helsinki, Finland
Grades on Fire 🔥
At 15, after choosing Math and Science as my main studies during high school, I decided to install a singing App. You could sing with a lot of people from all over the world. To my surprise and excitement, I gained a lot of followers in a short period of time! Quickly, singing evenings after school became my mandatory escape.
For the first time in years, school was going absolutely terribly. So much so that my math teacher had given up on me. I remember asking her about something I didn’t understand, and she’d either give me a very brief explanation or ignore me until I gave up on my question. LOL.
Even though I never particularly loved many subjects, up until this point I didn’t mind studying or doing homework because I always had at least one arts-related class, and my hobbies were keeping my soul happy. But once I got into high school, there were no arts classes, and the homework was just too much. I’d come home, try to study, but I was too sad on the inside.
“I have a test tomorrow… damn… I know 0 of this. Why didn’t you do any homework… I can’t do this right now, feeling like this…” notification - “barbara245sweetgirl just joined your duet.” “Ohhh let me listen to it! Ahhh this sounds good, okay maybe I should join one of hers,” and then 4 duets… and then 5… and then I would write a song… and then I would start recording a YouTube video… and then it was midnight. And the test still happened.
I failed my final math exam more times than any person I know. LOL. That, plus a lot of tears, sadness and pressure at home led me to decide not to pursue university but instead enroll in a Music Production course. During all these years I had written hundreds of songs and I needed to learn how to produce them or at least meet people who would like to help me. 🔥
When I started the course, I was also working at a retail store to pay for it and later I started modeling, acting and teaching to support my music project.
-> Talk about spending so much energy on everything except the thing that gives you the most joy. Yikes! 🥹 <-
Mamã e Papá
I wrote “Mamã e Papá” when I was 19, while I was still taking the Music Production course in Lisbon.
Pedro Chamorra, with whom I wrote the song, ran the course and was our teacher. From the beginning, he felt I could be an interesting addition to the Portuguese music industry, so we started meeting about how we could shape me into a fresh, innovative Portuguese star. Of course, that was exciting, but the most thrilling part for me was that we were actually producing and releasing muuuuuuusic!!!! Lyrics, melodies, concepts, writing music videos, creativity… my paradise! ✨
Even though I was pushing every day to make a variety of things happen, I was meeting amazing and talented people on the way, back at home, I felt completely unsupported in my most desired dreams.
No matter how many songs I wrote, how excited I got about them, or how much effort I put into figuring out how to make a music career thing work, it was extremely difficult to feel proud of myself. And it stayed like that for years.
I couldn’t help but have these flashy memories of little Di, despite many times getting the main character in the school plays, looking for her parents in the crowd, and never finding them. Coming home excited with amazing, funny art creations and getting dismissed every time. Getting excited about YouTube, partnerships, fans, and being constantly reminded that that wouldn’t take me anywhere. Keep getting reminded that art is a hobby and it should remain like that. Having my mom in the crowd with an expression of “not enough” every time I dared to sing in front of strangers, and my dad not even showing up.
These created a lot of doubt regarding my creativity, performance skills, and it shook my self-esteem in so many different ways, not just in arts, but in different areas of my life.
“In a few years she’ll see how she wasted her life.”
“Do you actually think you’re gonna make any money with that?”
“You’re just one in a million and this isn’t even that good.”
“If you decide to pursue this, don’t come crying later asking for help.”
When I finished high school and decided not to pursue university, my parents saw all their amazing plans for me shattered in their faces. My dad refused to talk to me for a long period of time, and I felt my mom’s negative energy even stronger.
I always felt very anxious during my teens, but after high school, I started having strong panic attacks. It was terrifying. I felt my nervous system being in this constant fight-or-flight mode.
During the course, I met amazing people and producers who felt excited about possible collaborations, and we started working together little by little to build the Diana Del Mar project. During that time I met Montemor, an essential piece of the puzzle. We would spend hours at his studio in Alhandra going around lyrics, melodies, concepts, cool new sounds, instruments, and trying to create fun and interesting songs. Later, we started adding more creatives to the team, and suddenly, we were drafting all these exciting plans.
Despite the amazing good vibes at the studio, I remember a lot of times when attempting to finish a song, my subconscious would find 1000 mistakes and make it NEVER good enough to release it, let alone finish it.
“I’ll do the vocals better.” “I don’t like my singing here.” “Let’s draft a marketing plan” (an impossible one). “I don’t know where I’ll find the money.” “I’m not sure about adding them to the team.” “I’ve been feeling so anxious.” “I’ll die if this actually works.” I found myself stuck in a never-ending, painful cycle of perfectionism.
I felt like I was either super afraid of failing or super afraid of succeeding. Ever heard of this?
My subconscious kept reminding me that it was mandatory for me to turn into this huge pop star no matter what, otherwise people would never take me seriously or truly pay attention to what I do. My parents would haunt me for the rest of my life, and then I’ll need to go get a real job.
Deep down, I was just trying to impress the two people that I wished would’ve turned out to be my supporters and main proof of unconditional love, but I always felt like no matter what I did, it was never good enough or simply enough.
“Mamã e Papá” was a way to release my disappointment about this, like many of my songs. My favorite pain relievers.
People like my best friend were a big part of my ‘’let’s try to keep on going journey’’. I remember this one time where I really thought I was gonna give up on my resilience, I called her crying and said “I thought about it and I think I’m just gonna apply for Nutrition” 🤣 and she just looked at me through the phone and started laughing… “ok, if that’s what you want, of course I’ll be here… but why don’t you finally come visit me in Finland, take a break and then we’ll see… ”.
Support is important. Now I’m very cautious about the environments I spend the most time in. 🤍
It was also very important for me to decide that if I was gonna continue working on music, I wanted to do it in a fun, more pleasant, and present way.
The panic attacks around a creative career are not something that was or is part of the dream. Art and sharing work with people should feel pleasurable, fun, and exciting. I still allow myself to feel scared because the unknown is indeed scary, but I never forget to take care of my mental and physical states first and foremost.
Now all I want to do is to hopefully help people by spreading my creative energy and see where that takes us and me.
I’m in a better place with my parents now, still healing but doing it with so much courage.
When you’re a kid it’s very difficult to understand that no matter what’s happening on the outside, you should keep on following your calling.
Despite it all, my heart always knew.
Thank you for reading ❤️
Much love,
Di ❤️