When we are born, we are signing up for the things that come with being human. We unintentionally sign a spiritual waiver that we will experience a lot of joy, heartbreak, tough times, and depressing moments that will shape the person we end up becoming and embracing. Being a human entails that we will all have our own unique experience that makes us stand out amongst a large group of people with who we share a lot of physical similarities, but ultimately, what’s inside is very different.
Life has this funny and cruel way of challenging us for a variety of different reasons and causes. For some, it is more traumatic and life enduring than others, but we as humans are all destined for some sort of struggle as we try and navigate and try to fulfill our purpose.
Going through your childhood, for the most part, you have this sense of hope and uplifting energy that the world is yours to take on and concur with. However, after a divorce and watching your support system change and diminish is tough to grapple with for any child. It can change our perception of love and what the norm of a relationship is supposed to look like.
Then what if you acquire a life altering disease that makes you question if your life is even worth living?
This was the reality that Danika Brown, 20, also known as her stage name DANKAA, had to face and overcome. When she was 13 years old, her body started to eat away at itself. She would sleep for a few days at a time then build the strength to go shower, eat, and get the school work that she had missed, and then would go back asleep for a couple of days. This was a vicious cycle that would go on for 3 years straight.
“I got this disease when I was 13 called Graves’ disease and I went to sleep for 3 years,” DANKAA said. “I was asleep from the time I was 13 all the way until I was 16. Basically, my body was eating itself and it couldn’t properly distribute energy from any part of my body. So, I kind of just laid there for 3 years and went to sleep.”
It was a depressing period for DANKAA where she didn’t feel like she could do anything. She was 6 foot and weighed 99 pounds. After three years, she got her thyroid taken out and was put on synthetic hormones that she will have to be on to regulate her body for the rest of her life. After going through the procedure, she finally felt whole again.
“All of a sudden I woke up and I was able to be a human again and live in the world and I feel like that really drives me as a human being and everything I do because I understand what it’s like to not be able to live and now that I’m awake. Everything I do, I do it to the fullest,” DANKAA said.
From Alaska to Edmonds
DANKAA grew up in Anchorage, Alaska with her mom, little sister, and dad. Once her parents split her mom found a new guy. Just when things were already bad dealing with a divorce and her disease, she says her stepdad was just more fuel to the fire. She explains he was very abusive, physically towards her mom and little sister. She watched her happy and hippie-like mother lose all the joy and become miserable. She remembers he was also verbally abusive and created a toxic environment in the house. They were together for eight long years before her mother left him and DANKAA finally got the version of her mom back that she had been missing and longing for.
“Honestly it’s been so inspiring just watching her break away from the toxicity that like a narcissistic person can have on you and watching her grow into a better version of herself,” DANKAA said. “She’s so strong and awesome and glowing now.”
After dealing with her dark upbringing, she found a passion for volleyball. It was one of the few things that brought her some sort of light in her life, that she would move out of Anchorage when she was 18 to Edmonds Community College in Washington with a scholarship. She quickly rose to captain, All-American, and was nationally ranked.
Then just as she seemed to find her purpose and fulfillment, another dark chapter was just beginning to unveil itself before her very eyes.
The Beginning of a Long Road
In September of 2020, something dark and twisted started happening to DANKAA. She started to hear demon-like voices in her head.
“It was like my brain was tapped into a radio station that wasn’t me and it wasn’t my head,” DANKAA said. “It was like an incessant dialogue of just all these different things talking to one another all the time. They started out pretty light, but I went through some traumatic things, and in those traumatic things happening the voices turned very dark and self-inflicting. Literally from November 2020 all the way to May 2021, I’m not even exaggerating every single second of every single day there was a voice in my head and it was so dark and it would be like ‘kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself.’ Like every second of every day.”
As the thoughts became too much to bear and ignore, DANKAA started having severe panic attacks.
“The minute I woke up and heard the voice I would just be shaking and sobbing because I was just like, ‘I like myself, I don’t want to die’ but after it just went on for so long I was just like maybe there’s a reason it’s telling me that,” DANKAA said.
She was supposed to move on to the next level in her volleyball career and play Division 1, but the voices were ultimately a hurdle she couldn’t overcome or move around. Every time she would step onto the court, she would have a panic attack and couldn’t get her mind focused as the thoughts had her in a deadly chokehold.
The day before the final game of her sophomore season, she checked herself into a mental hospital as she tried to find any hope of getting control of her mind back. She felt she was very close to caving into the thoughts and doing something very harmful to herself.
Mental illness unfortunately runs in her family. Her dad goes through his own issues as well as her little sister, who first tried to kill herself when she was 11 and has since tried several more times.
“Having dealt with my sister trying to kill herself a bunch of times I just understood that I needed to reach out and get help because I didn’t want to hurt the people who love me in my life like that,” DANKAA said.
She says her time at the mental hospital didn’t do anything to really help her situation. She got out four days later and was all alone in Seattle. The voices still had hunkered into her head and gave themselves a place to stay and she didn’t think they had any desire to leave, so she had to drop out of college and stop playing volleyball to go be with her family in Alaska.
She moved back with the family for a few months hoping they could rid her of her pain and the mental beating she was taking.
“I was just like I don’t want to just keep crying in front of my family nonstop every day so I went back to Seattle,” DANKAA said. “I partied my f***ing brains out while literally doing every toxic behavior, maniac whatever I could to distract myself.”
After a couple of months of partying to find ways to cope through escapism, she found her way to Reno to live with her cousin.
How DANKAA Found ‘Coping Skills’
Other than volleyball, DANKAA had found a new passion for music. Out of nowhere, music just started to erupt from her body. She started recording into her voice memos by herself in her closest. She was reluctant and shy to share with people that she started making music. It all started in the summer of 2020 as she was still playing volleyball and going through her mental health troubles.
“It was an emotional outlet for me,” DANKAA said.
DANKAA dropped her first song in September of 2020 and it got 10,000 streams and she was getting a lot of positive feedback from a wide range of people.
She used to be very shy and insecure about her music, but over the course of time, she has grown very confident in her ability to make music and claims herself as an artist.
Since coming here to Reno, DANKAA didn’t know anybody here. It wasn’t until some guy messaged her on the dating app Hinge, that she was going to find a group of people whom she would belong. My friend DJ Stanton, who also goes by his stage name Scuba DEEJ, had sent her a message, but not a typical message someone would receive on a dating app. He saw that she made music and listened to her song, “In My Nature”. Scuba was enthralled by the song. I remember when he called me freaking out about this new artist he found that lived here and he wanted her to make music with them.
Connecting with Other Musicians with their Own Struggles
Scuba asked her if she wanted to come to a studio session, that he and the Reno group Shift the Wave, a group I’m a part of, were having and an immediate bond was formed.
“I met you guys and genuinely it was so inspiring and in hearing Gip and everything he had gone through, I was like ‘Ok, I’m going to get good’,” DANKAA said.
I covered a story on my friend Jordan Gipson, J Gip, who had a dark past with his mental health that made him try to take his life on multiple occasions. DANKAA shared that meeting him and talking to him about his struggles was very helpful for her wanting to get the help she needed.
In October is when DANKAA decided to go back to Alaska and try and get her mental health where it needed to be. She was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was put on lamotrigine, which is a mood stabilizer and the voices finally stopped.
“But I literally remember one distinctive day where I woke up and I was like ‘they’re not there!’,” DANKAA said. “Once I got the medication I could finally breathe and be a human again… I still definitely have my good and my bad days, but I’m not stuck in the darkness anymore. I do understand that when I am feeling sad and when those things are happening that they’re only temporary now and that they’re not forever. There is a light waiting for me.”
“Reno is probably the best thing to ever happen for me. I’ve been given opportunities I could ever imagine if I was in a different city. Also, Reno is a city that’s full of artists and creative people. Everyone really supports everyone here and I think that’s awesome.”
A New Song and Video
DANKAA recently released a new song and video with Reggaeton artist Aghen called, “Animal Lovers” and the song has been played on some national radio stations. She is going on tour with the artist,Jazzy Jane in the coming weeks. She is currently working on her album titled, “Make Music, Don’t Kill Yourself” a direct homage to the troubles she has gone through over the recent years.
“Writing [music] is just what makes me feel ok and it gives me a place to organize all my thoughts and make them feel a little less chaotic in my head,” DANKAA said. “I just really hope in being so vulnerable and sharing those things with the world that people will feel a little less alone.”
Family Bonds
DANKAA makes music that is very heartfelt and displays who she embodies. “My favorite song I’ve ever made is ‘Coping Skills’,” DANKAA said. “I made it the first day I got out of the hospital on my bedroom floor for about six hours and I’ll never re-record that song because it is so raw and 100 percent on how I was feeling that day and that period of my life. The messages I have received from people that have heard that song that felt a little less alone, it meant the world to me.”
She has a very good relationship with her parents to this day as she is very open about her mental health to them. “I am very close with my sister,” DANKAA said. “I love her so much. I understand her and she understands me more than anyone in this world ever will. But it just sucks because she still hasn’t found her light at the end of the tunnel yet, but I hope to be like an inspiration to for her and everything I’m doing just to show her that you can.
“Above anything else with my music, I just want the platform where I can reach so many different types of people who are going through so many different things in life and I just want to project this message of love and oneness and coming together with everyone I interact with and with those who see me perform and those who hear my music. I just want everyone to know that they’re loved and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”