Sugar and Water for Her Lemonade

Diane Michel Canada is a fascinating case study in faith. Like many, she had to reach what she calls “rock bottom” before fully igniting it—but the result has been rock solid. The culmination of this is Lady Up America, a business she founded dedicated to self-improvement for Christian women.

Canada's business is based on her own life experience, which hasn't been easy. However, the struggles she's overcome—and continues to manage—are what made her find what she feels is her ultimate purpose. We spoke about the long road to where she is now, and how she transformed her negative experiences through her faith.

LEMONS

Raised in a “traditional pastor's family,” Canada grew up in Florida with a very structured life until the age of eight. That's when things began to change for her, as her pastor father abandoned the family for another woman. Her mother lost her faith, and home became a much more chaotic space.

Suicidal at the age of seventeen, Canada married a man seven years her senior and soon had a little boy. She had been desperate to find an escape from home, but her troubles only became more complex. Her husband was a recovering alcoholic, and there were serious problems now in the new life she'd built. Canada explained how she felt trapped, saying, “When you're in that situation, you don't realize you have a lot of options.”

They tried counseling but ultimately decided to divorce. Canada wanted the process to be amicable, so she didn’t hire an attorney. But this turned out to be a problem: Her husband had a lawyer, and he wanted full custody of their son. It was crushing for Canada, whose main reason for avoiding an attorney herself was the desire to avoid “a tug of war” over their child.

“I remember tearing my house apart,” recounts Canada. “I put my fist through a wall.” She had hit her absolute bottom. “Everywhere I went I would see kids my son's age and fall apart crying,” she adds.

SUGAR AND WATER

It was now 1991, and Canada remembers a pastor asking her a question that would change her life: “Has the world beat you up enough, Diane?” She decided it had, so she rejoined the church.

Canada began undergoing extreme changes in her attitude around that time. She resents the phrase “everything happens for a reason,” remarking that it is “the worst thing you can say” to someone who has suffered. However, she has an alternative: “People hurt people. It wasn't God's will.”

Armed with her reinvigorated faith, Canada fought for five years to get her son back—to no avail. Luckily, she eventually found herself with a job consulting businesses that were in crisis. At the same time, she worked as a waitress. These two jobs allowed her to fly across the country every six weeks to visit him. Canada says she saw “every spelling bee, [and] every school play.” While waitressing, she even got busy with a small music career after a customer heard her singing karaoke.

In 2020, Canada decided to run for office in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Her brother—a military veteran—had died, and she was single-mindedly focused on helping others. But she couldn't campaign on a single issue. As she puts it, she “began hearing everyone out” before settling on a set of traditionally conservative Christian values—values that caused her friends in music to cut her off, as well as her now-adult son.

But Canada still had her faith, and the wild ride she was on didn't deter her from pressing forward. “For all the valleys, there have been incredible peaks,” she states. “I had a long road back to God. That's why I'm so fierce in my faith at this point.” She was resolved to find her purpose, and suddenly the pieces began to fall into place.

She wanted to “bring peace and calm to hostility.” Through her deep turmoil and the multitude of experiences, Canada felt that “God started revealing to [her] that he's been teaching [her] all [her] life to handle these situations.” Through the loss she experienced, she had wisdom—and so she began writing and podcasting to “share this hard-won wisdom with women.” This was the start of Lady Up America.

“To finally get to a place where it all makes sense is satisfying but bittersweet,” says Canada. She is not hopeless, but certain that “God repurposes all that pain for good.” That trust carries her through every valley she encounters. 

Last July, Canada traveled to her son’s town and gave him an open invitation to meet her at a coffee shop. While he didn't return her text, he did show up and the pair spoke for about two hours. “I wanted him to see that there is still love in my eyes for him,” says Canada—holding a firm belief that regardless of differences, “eventually love will win.”