It was a routine Monday last August when Dana Spinola, founder and CEO of a chain of Atlanta-based clothing boutiques, sat down for lunch with her recently hired chief marketing officer.

Lisa Dimson was worried. She had only been on the job for a few months and feared she may get fired, but she had something important to say to her boss. She leaned in and asked a simple question.

Are you OK?

Dana’s eyes filled with tears. No, she definitely was not OK.

For weeks, Dana had been all tension and nerves. She jumped from one meeting to the next without being fully present. She sent emails at all hours of the morning and night. Routine tasks such as ordering inventory for the boutique had turned into a major production.

“She was trying to do everything,” Dimson said. “You can do bursts like that, but you can’t do it for as long as I felt like she had been doing it.”

For 15 years, Dana, 43, has been working virtually non-stop — building a fashion brand, raising four children and becoming an advocate for women and orphans. Slowly, quietly, she was hurtling toward a breaking point.

“I could see how anyone would be scared to have that conversation with me,” said Dana, “but I never felt so loved. I don’t think many people think I needed somebody.”

On the outside, Dana had all the polish one would expect from someone in the fashion world – sleek hair, slender frame, unique style. Inside, she was drained and running on fumes.

“You think you are serving others and it feels good, but you look around and you haven’t gone to the gym in a year, washed your hair, made your husband dinner or taken the dog for a walk,” said Dana.

After talking with Dimson, Dana decided to step back from the company she created. She needed to figure out how to get her life back into balance.

Search for meaning

Structured religion was not part of Dana’s upbringing, but she’d always wondered about it. As a teenager, the first thing she did when she got a car was drive herself to a church service.

“I was always curious, but I didn’t know what I was curious for,” she said.

After hearing about Buckhead Church from friends, she and Angelo attended one Sunday. They arrived to find a converted grocery store filled with folding chairs. Dana dragged Angelo to the front row. It wasn’t at all like the churches she had seen in the movies, but Andy Stanley was talking her language.

“All I have ever wanted to do was to figure out how to help people and make the world better,” said Dana. “I wanted to know God and what he thinks of me and what he wanted me to do with my life.”

During a service following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Stanley called the congregation to attend a mission trip. Dana loved the idea of being on the front lines. They had two young children at home, but she and Angelo decided to go.

In addition to rebuilding homes, their mission was to help out at an orphanage. Big black gates topped with barbed wire surrounded the orphanage where 40-50 children slept in cots on a dirt floor. The couple slept above the orphanage, and each night Dana could hear the babies crying below.

During a church service they attended with the children, Dana felt a flood of warmth run through her. The service was in Haitian Creole, but Dana heard what she thought was God saying, Why not you? Here amid the devastation and disaster, she knew she had finally found God.

Early in their marriage, Angelo had suggested the couple adopt a child, but Dana had been opposed. Being in Haiti changed her heart.

I think we are going to adopt, she told Angelo.

I know, he said.

“She experiences things at this emotional level and she just has no choice in the matter,” said Angelo, reflecting on Dana’s motivation to help others. “She sees something that is wrong and she can’t leave it alone. She will go full steam and she will wreck herself to make it right.”

But in this case, Dana had to be patient. She would later learn that she was pregnant with their third child, and a crackdown on international adoptions at the time meant the process could take three years on average. They had no choice but to wait.

In 2011, Dana took her Fab’rik team on a mission trip to Kenya on what would become an annual tradition for the company. When they returned, she wanted to create that same sense of purpose they had felt on the trip so she gave Fab’rik a new mission statement: High style with heart.

“I was in this transformation of feeling that we have to do stuff for people outside of the stores,” she said.

For several years, Dana was on a high. She was doing what she loved, her family was thriving and she felt she had found her purpose. At one point, she flirted with the idea of appearing on Bravo’s reality TV show, “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.” She viewed it as a platform to share her beliefs and lead by example, but after a few casting interviews, it was clear the show producers had something else in mind.

She passed on that opportunity, but there was no shortage of attention coming her way. She was, in her own words, “getting a little too big for my britches.”

“I remember thinking, life is good. I am feeling good,” she said. The feeling scared her. For the first time in her life, she physically got down on her knees and prayed for humility. A few days later, Angelo surprised her with a vacation to Harbour Island in the Bahamas. The trip would end abruptly and leave her deeply humbled.

5
Forced to slow down

As soon as they arrived in the Bahamas, the Spinolas crammed their first day full of activities. Jogging, yoga, massages, lunch at the waterfront, dinner that evening. By nighttime, all they could do was crawl into bed.

Angelo was up first in the early hours of the morning, dizzy and sweating. Then Dana began to feel the same sensations, most likely, they later determined, from dehydration. A wave of nausea sent Dana to the bathroom where she apparently fainted. The next thing she knew, she was regaining consciousness on the bathroom floor. As she came to, she saw blood everywhere. Dana had smashed her face on the toilet basin when she fainted, shattering her jaw bone. Her teeth felt like grit in her mouth. It took almost 24 hours for them to get back to Atlanta.

For three months, Dana could not do anything. She ate through a feeding tube and lost 40 pounds. She was afraid to be around her rowdy boys, who at ages 2, 4 and 6 could have accidentally sent her back to the ER. It was a blow to her confidence and the first time she had been forced to slow down, but Dana learned an important lesson.

“When you have your mouth wired shut, you need to listen. I had to slow down and feel the love of the present moment from all the beautiful things in my life,” she said. Unable to talk, she began to find happiness in silence and mindfulness. Though she didn’t realize it at the time, the experience was preparing her for the next phase of her life.

A few months after her recovery, Dana got a call from the adoption agency and an email with the picture of a baby girl dressed in pink. After almost four years of waiting, a child was available for adoption in Ethiopia. Eight months later, in August 2014, Dana landed at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport with 1-year-old Asher in her arms.

From day one, Dana set out to make sure Asher knew she was loved. Angelo worried he would spoil her rotten. Neither of them could stop the hurtful comments from outsiders. The first time it happened was in a grocery store.

Why don’t you take care of your own? said a woman in the check-out line as Dana held Asher in her arms, with her three boys in tow.

“In my head, I was trying to craft the perfect answer,” Dana said. But Hudson beat her to it.

We are, he told the woman.

As usual, the changes in Dana’s personal life soon blended into her professional life. Fab’rik launched an in-house clothing line called Asher that features a hang tag with a baby picture of Asher. Each Fab’rik location is matched with a baby. When customers purchase items from the Asher collection, a portion of the proceeds goes toward the child’s care until he or she is adopted. Team members are also encouraged to support the baby in other ways — communicating via Skype and learning his or her personal story.

Dana didn’t want to stop there. She talked about building an orphanage in Africa, a complicated process that involves a lot of red tape and resources. She decided to begin by developing relationships with other orphanages and establishing deeper ties in the countries she was considering, Kenya and Ethiopia.

She was spinning on all wheels when Dimson began to sense that something was off.