Today we’d like to introduce you to Savanah “Vanah” Blankenship.
Hi Vanah, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Hi! I’m Savanah Brook Blankenship, also known as Vanah. I’m 26 years old and Nashville born and raised. I grew up in a small unincorporated town just west of the city called Fernvale, and as I got a bit older, I discovered an interest in a notepad, a camcorder, an upright piano, and a bookshelf full of fantasy.
Because of that, I’ve always dreamed big, and storytelling has always been connected to everything I do. I grew up loving music, writing, filmmaking, traveling, and all the little things people tend to overlook. For a long time, I thought I had to choose one path or be one thing. I didn’t realize yet that all of those pieces were just different ways of doing the same thing.
Music was my first love, but it was something I eventually stepped away from for a while.
Part of that was much more personal than I understood at the time. I struggled with my weight and self-image for years, and somewhere along the way, I started believing I had to look a certain way to deserve to be seen as an artist. Music is extremely vulnerable, and I just wasn’t brave enough yet to face myself or continue baring my heart and soul in an industry that often cares more about your image than what you have to say.
I became much more comfortable creating behind the scenes than allowing myself to be the person standing on the stage.
And because of those self-image issues, I fell into TV and film.
In film, you get multiple takes. Everything happens for a reason. You’re scripted. Someone is perfecting your makeup, your hair, your look. There’s very little room for flaw or error because you’re trying to create a frame that feels perfect.
Getting into TV and film felt like the greatest gift because it became a safe creative outlet for me. You see, it’s much easier hiding behind the camera or pretending to be someone else.
I started in background acting after my grandmother told me her sister had found an ad in the newspaper looking for extras. I submitted right away, booked it overnight, and the rest is history: that first film set was the moment my life completely changed. From one set to another, I met more and more people who opened different doors for me, eventually landing a PA gig working the CMA and CMT Awards for several years, something that somehow still kept me adjacent to both the music and film industries.
Eventually, all that grinding led to recurring work as a stand-in on major productions across Tennessee, spanning everything from 9-1-1: Nashville to Hallmark.
Ten years later, a simple newspaper ad had somehow become a snowballed career for me.
But still, something was missing.
I had stopped writing and recording music altogether. I had become a shell of who I used to be, and although I genuinely loved TV and film, I was still using it as a shield to hide from who I really was.
It’s safer to tell someone else’s stories than tell your own.
Then, of course, COVID happened and shut down the entire entertainment industry right when I felt like I had finally built up the most momentum.
I stepped away again, went back to school, and jumped straight into what most people would call survival work. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. It just felt like what everyone else expects you to do in order to appear successful.
Creatives, I feel like, are often labeled a flight risk. Looked down upon. We’re told we won’it succeed. We’re constantly flooded with judgment and doubt.
It takes true courage to fight back against that stigma and chase your dreams anyway.
During that time, I reached an entirely new low. My health was declining significantly, especially my mental health. I got really sick while abroad in Italy, so sick, in fact, I had to have surgery upon my return to the U.S. My tonsils were abscessed from the illness I caught and my voice was literally taken away from me. On top of that, my weight was fluctuating even more, my body shocked into a significant amount of weight loss, and I genuinely just hated my life. Everything I had worked so hard to break into had suddenly been stripped away.
No film.
No music.
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
But I guess sometimes you have to strip everything away to get to the root of who you are.
After finally graduating college, I took what was supposed to be a soul-searching trip. Somewhere along the way, I met a piano bar entertainer who, for reasons I still don’t completely understand, trusted me enough to invite me onstage with him.
And suddenly, something started changing.
Suddenly, I started to heal.
Suddenly, it wasn’t so hard to be seen by other people.
Suddenly, I just didn’t care what others thought about me anymore.
I missed music.
And I loved it.
And I was starting to love who I was.
So slowly but surely, I found music again.
A huge part of returning to it has been unlearning everything I once believed about needing to look or be a certain way before I was allowed to create. I realized I didn’t need to become some perfected version of myself before I was allowed to make art.
I just needed to start making it again.
And now, flash-forward to the present, my life looks completely different.
I’m able to make a living full time doing creative work that I love. I live in a van, which gives me both financial and creative freedom. I’ve healed so much of my relationship with myself, and I’m the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been, both mentally and physically.
Most importantly, I finally understand that I don’t have to choose between writing, singing, filmmaking, acting, or storytelling. I don’t have to choose between anything!
I can do all of it.
I can be all of it.
Because it’s me.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road had absolutely not been easy! I think most creative careers look much smoother from the outside than they actually are. People think the lifestyle and the work is so glamorous, but they don’t see that creatives make the same sacrifices, if not more, as everyone else trying to make it and survive life.
A lot of my biggest struggles have been hidden from the outside world. For years, I dealt with self-image issues and convinced myself I had to look, sound, or become a certain version of myself before I was allowed to fully chase anything creative, especially acting and music. As sad as it is to say, I just did not find myself beautiful enough to do anything but hide. I didn’t think I deserved to be seen by the world.
It also doesn’t help when you have industry professionals telling you that your biggest fear is true: “Man, you’ve got the talent, now you just need the image!” Yes, this was actually said to me.
That kind of scrutiny made me terrified of being seen by others, which is difficult when the thing you love most requires you to stand in front of people and be vulnerable.
My fear of being seen became so severe, especially because of the constant self-hatred surrounding my weight, that I developed a panic disorder in high school. It was debilitating. I stopped making it to classes. I would hide in the bathroom, too scared to move. I started going to therapy provided by the school, even sacrificing some of my creative classes for it, but at the time, nothing seemed to help.
Eventually, I had to withdraw from high school entirely.
And ironically, the only F on my transcript to date was in theatre… the very subject that eventually led me to the work I do now.
There were also plenty of external setbacks. I spent years building momentum in entertainment only to watch the industry shut down during COVID. I lost everything. I went back to school, worked miserable jobs, dealt with financial stress, and questioned whether chasing a creative life was even possible anymore because I had heard some version of that message, “you’re just going to fail,” so many times.
I think creatives are often expected to justify why we keep choosing an uncertain path. You can work incredibly hard, if not more than others, and still be told to “find a real job” or treated as though you don’t even have one. That kind of doubt can get really discouraging if you let it.
There were periods where my mental and physical health suffered too. I felt disconnected from the person I had been when I first started making music, and at one point, I genuinely thought I had lost that part of myself completely.
But looking back, I think every setback forced me to get closer to what I actually wanted.
I stopped trying to build a life that looked successful from the outside and started building one that I wanted even if I looked a little crazy while doing it.
That has probably been the hardest lesson to learn, but also the most important.
Success does not have to look perfect to be real.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My work is a little unconventional because I don’t really fit into one box, and honestly, I don’t want to.
At the core of everything I do, I guess I’m a storyteller.
I work across music, film, writing, acting, and creative media, and all of those worlds tend to overlap for me. I’ve worked on sets as background, stand-in, main talent, crew, and production support. I’ve performed and written music, modeled and worked as a brand ambassador, studied communications and journalism, penned novels, and spent years creating stories in different forms.
For a long time, I thought those were all separate careers. Now I realize they’ve all been teaching me the same thing: how to make people feel something.
Currently, I work as Kimberly Williams-Paisley’s stand-in on 9-1-1: Nashville for her 9-1-1 dispatch character, Cammie Raleigh, and it has been such a gift to be part of that world. The cast and crew are phenomenal, and one of the best feelings in the entire world is finding a workspace where you truly feel like you belong. It’s probably my favorite creative job I’ve ever had.
Most people don’t really know what a stand-in does. I jokingly say we’re the stunt doubles without the liability. Essentially, you follow the lead actor’s blocking, hit their marks, and assist the camera and lighting departments as they build the scene. A surprising amount of the job is learning to be still and be seen, the very two things I have struggled with the most in my life.
There’s something beautifully ironic about the fact that a behind-the-scenes job helped teach me how to stop hiding.
Aside from stand-in work, music is becoming the biggest focus of my life right now. I perform under the name Vanah, and I’m developing a sound and visual identity inspired by warmth, simplicity, timeless nostalgia, and storytelling, while still writing about modern life.
I don’t want to recreate the past exactly. I want to bring back some of the things I think we’ve lost along the way: handwritten letters, real instruments, storytelling, community, slower moments, and music that may not always be the happiest or most upbeat, but hopefully the most true to life.
A lot of my work is also tied to memory. I’ve always been drawn to the little things people overlook: old photographs, family stories, four-leaf clovers pressed in glass, places that hold meaning, and the way a certain song can bring an entire chapter of your life back in seconds.
That idea is also behind a project I’m hoping to build called Voice for the Voiceless, which I hope can eventually become a way of turning everyday people’s stories into songs. I love the idea of creating music not only from my own experiences, but from the experiences of others who may never otherwise feel like their story matters.
What I’m most proud of, though, is probably that I finally stopped trying to stay within one identity.
I used to think I had to choose between music, acting, writing, filmmaking, and all the other things I loved. Now I see that the thing that sets me apart is exactly that.
I don’t just want to release songs.
I want to build worlds around them.
I want the music, the visuals, the films, the writing, and the stories behind everything to all feel connected.
If someone hears my work years from now, I think the best feeling in the world would be knowing it helped someone learn how to feel again.
I want to make people remember the best moments of their lives.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
The quality that has probably mattered most to my success is resilience.
Definitely not the kind that means forcing yourself to keep going no matter what, but the kind that allows you to change yet still keep the heart of what you love intact.
For most of my life, I’ve genuinely had no idea what I was doing next, but it’s all kind of randomly worked out. So much is out of our control!
I was working at a restaurant with a 55 health score throwing my non-slips shoes in a dumpster out back one minute and standing on a soundstage holding a script in my hands within less than 24 hours after.
I was in a hospital having surgery with no voice one minute to singing on a cruise ship just a few short months after that.
Life is impossibly impossible and yet everything is possible, and every time something fell apart, I found another way towards something better.
I think that willingness to pivot has saved me more than once. I’ve learned that changing direction doesn’t always mean you failed. Sometimes it means you’re finally following the path you’re meant to walk.
Creatively, I also think curiosity has played a huge role. I’m always interested in learning something new, whether that’s a different role on a film set, another instrument, a new way to tell a story, or an entirely different creative medium. I think being willing to stay a beginner has opened a lot of doors for me.
More than anything, though, I think success has come from refusing to give up or completely abandon myself. At least not anymore.
Even when I stopped making music, the storyteller in me never really disappeared. Even when I thought I was starting over, I was still collecting experiences that would eventually become part of the work I’m doing now. All the pain was worth it!
So much suffering becomes art, and I think there is something really special about taking something ugly and turning it into something beautiful.
Anyways, if I had to choose one characteristic, I’d say resilience: the ability to bend without completely breaking, and to keep becoming yourself without losing yourself.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanahblankenship
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/19DkKA3WuA/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@vanahblankenship
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/jVaaRbGlducm7k23Gz
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7FWyGeMgod7d8matwydstx
