Diane Canada is a Television Commentator, she hosts the national Lady Up America Podcast, speaks for Conservative women's organizations, and trains a growing community of Conservative women inside her new Virtual Book Club.
Diane was the 2020 Republican Nominee for the Tennessee State House of Representatives District 56. She is a graduate of the Heritage Foundation's Political Leadership Academy in Washington, D.C., and she is the former Nashville Political Advocate for the National Association of Women Business Owners.
Diane was recently honored with an extraordinary citizen award from the TN State Legislature and the She Leads Tennessee organization for government and community service for her Lady Up America movement, alongside Kathie Lee Gifford, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Dr. Carol Swain, Riley Gaines, and other great ladies of service.
She has served on the Mayor's Minority and Business Advisory Council in Nashville and currently serves on the Board of the American Bible Project, and the Board of the Tennesse Immigrant and Minority Business Group.
Before politics, she founded a consulting firm, specializing in launching women's businesses and resuscitating businesses in crisis. She is a professional songwriter. Her music has been placed in film and TV and her TV show, Nashville Unleashed, syndicated in 100 million US households and three countries for two years.
She authored her first book, Lady Up + Don't Quit: How To Look Any Leadership Challenge In The Eye and Give It A Little Wink in 2020. Her second book, Lady Up America: Training Christian Moms For The Toughest Spiritual Battleground of Our Lifetime was released in early 2024.
THE STORY
BEHIND THE MOVEMENT!
In Diane's Words...
"I braced myself as I logged into Facebook to share another post from the campaign trail because I knew there would be mean-spirited comments waiting. Yes, that comes with the territory, and I probably shouldn't have read them, but I couldn't seem to help it. Running for State House of Representatives in 2020 would prove to be one of the hardest things I would ever do.
Between covid mandates that polarized us, the lockdowns that were costing people their homes and businesses, the burning cities from BLM riots, and one of the most tumultuous Presidential elections of our lifetime, emotions were at an all-time high, to say the least.
Social media was where everybody was taking out their frustrations. Comments from friends and strangers alike were vicious. I was devastated as lifelong friends I dearly loved walked away simply because they "couldn't believe I was a Republican". And then, the unthinkable happened...
My adult son started joining in the chorus of public comments on Facebook. I went from being shocked that we didn't share the same values, to feeling hurt by his public show of disrespect, to being furious with him because of the destructive impact his behavior could have on my campaign.
I don’t ever remember a time in his life that I have EVER been angry at my son, much less THAT angry. I didn’t know how to handle it so I gave in to my emotions. I indulged in a meltdown.
I reprimanded him in a furious voicemail, demanding that even if he had different views, we should talk about them privately out of respect for the fact that I’m still his mom. I’ll admit heavy cursing occurred, as well. I’m not proud of that, just honest. I forgot he was an adult, talked to him like a child, and he responded in a way that I would have never wanted. He decided to stop communication between us.
The distance has been incredibly hard. I love him with every fiber of my being, and I’ve cried a river of tears. He and I have both apologized to each other and we’re slowly trying to find our way back, but it will take time. The differences in our ideologies are still there, but when I indulged in my meltdown, I lost all credibility, access, and ability to influence him. I mean I really blew it, and the emotional cost has been significant.
So many of my girlfriends have gone through the exact same struggle with their adult children. They live with the same pain, and we have comforted and prayed over each other countless times. This epidemic of political division within families, and our inability to handle it, is destroying families. I went into the deepest depths of prayer, begging God for healing, not just for me and my son, but for all the other families that were going through the same pain. That's when the breakthrough happened.
I had a divine "ah-ha moment"!
Since that moment, I've been laser-focused on developing Lady Up America. God has been revealing things to me, slowly and profoundly, in what I call the best "drip campaign", ever!
Before running for Office, I had been very successful as a former business crisis consultant. I was contracted to enter very hostile environments, where emotions were running high, and pump life back into those dying businesses somehow.
I had developed and honed signature techniques in these challenging environments, such as "learn to respond, not react", "learn to earn permission to be heard", "learn to release the outcome", and ironically, my personal favorite: "you've lost the luxury of a meltdown".
I later shifted all my focus to working with professional women, holding enchanting symposiums called Lady Like Leaders, where I broadened the concepts around my signature techniques.
Weaving in between the consulting seasons of my life, I have always had a professional songwriting career, which is a world-class education in evoking emotions that move the needle in the human heart.
The epiphany was...
All of my signature techniques that worked to help heal businesses in crisis could have been applied to prevent the estrangement from my son, and can be applied to the crisis of political division we find ourselves in today in families across America.
If only that had "clicked" sooner!
I pulled together a world-class BETA class to test my techniques and see if they truly did transfer to personal relationships. They did. Then, I put them to the test with a tour of 18 battleground counties ahead of the 2022 Mid-Terms to see if they resonated in voter and political circles. They did.
The Lady Up America movement is simply a natural evolution of what I spent years learning, cultivating, teaching, and applying in crisis situations in business, as well as carefully observing what resonated with an audience as a professional songwriter.
Now that I'm convinced these techniques transfer to the real world, I'm training Christian moms in them as fast as I can!
Let me leave you with the sobering understanding that there is no cavalry coming out of Washington...the power lies within us to turn our country back to God so that He can heal our land."
Love, Diane
