Darlene DiBona Chesko, owner of Odyssey Wellness Tattoo, has built a space where tattooing meets healing. For Darlene, opening her own studio was about more than just independence—it was about creating an environment where clients feel safe, comfortable, and supported during their tattoo journey.
Her specialty lies in wellness tattoos, which she describes as any tattoo that fulfills a deeper need. This includes nipple reconstruction, scar camouflage, and permanent cosmetics—services that help clients reclaim their confidence after medical treatments, surgeries, or personal hardships. She emphasizes how something as simple as restoring eyebrows after chemotherapy can provide a sense of normalcy and self-assurance, greatly impacting a person’s emotional recovery.
What inspired you to start your business and what was your journey like?
I decided to start my own business because I needed more privacy to do the work that was really interesting and important to me in tattooing, so that was kind of a necessary thing, like for me to go out and find my own space, craft it the way I knew it needed to be for people to feel safe, have privacy, be comfortable, be warm. I mean, a lot of people don’t have a lot of clothes on when they’re, you know, working with me, so they need to be warm and comfortable.
What do you mean by wellness tattoo?
So this concept of the wellness tattoo, to me, it’s a tattoo that fills a need. Specifically, I do think that any tattooing is a wellness tattoo, like tattooing is a wellness practice, whether you are aware of it or not, or whether you want to push that to your clients or not, or, you know, highlight that.
A lot of people use tattooing so they don’t do other things, you know, particularly people in recovery from stuff. Tattooing takes a place in people’s lives, not like a place of reverence, no matter what type of tattooing they’re getting. But specifically, to me, the wellness tattoo is nipple reconstruction tattooing, any kind of medical tattooing, scar camouflage tattooing.
Permanent cosmetics can be a wellness tattoo. Women lose their eyebrows when they go through chemo and they’ve been treated for breast cancer, and they don’t always grow back. It just makes you feel like—you know, it doesn’t make you feel good to look in the mirror while you’re going through treatment and feel like you look all washed out.
Yeah, you literally lost a part of yourself.
Yeah, you lose a part of yourself, and the wellness tattoo can give it back to you. So a lot of people feel a lot more fulfilled, happier. I’ve just heard a lot of times, specifically with the eyebrows—which I did not realize when I started this journey—how important eyebrow tattoos would be to people. It is just really settling and calming on the inside for you to look in the mirror and feel like you’re not falling apart. And if your eyebrows are only half there, people feel like they’re falling apart, and that impedes their recovery.
How do you see women shaping the future of your industry?
How do I see women shaping the future of my industry? I think a lot of people, specifically in regards to medical, paramedical, and reconstructive tattooing, prefer to work with women. Or at least that’s the intelligence that I have received from many, many, many of my clients.
They’re just more comfortable, and I’ve met a lot of women who have been through breast cancer and full reconstructions, and it’s just a long, long, long journey. And, you know, I think it’s nice for them to have a woman help and bring them over the finish line.
Have there been any women who inspired you or mentored you along the way?
Yeah, so many. Well, I mean, the woman who gave me the opportunity to even tattoo in the first place, Karen Roze. She’s a huge mentor for me. She continues to be a mentor for me, and we’re really dear friends, so that’s amazing.
Vyvyn Lazonga—she is one of the first women that really started doing this kind of work. You know, she’s the very first woman who ever owned her own tattoo shop in the United States, and she’s still practicing today. She’s a friend of mine, and I feel very fortunate and really blessed that I have her, that I have access to her. I can ask her things, we can share ideas, things like that.
There are so many women who came before me who were just badass and so good at what they do. They bring different stuff to the table, and all those things combined help me. I feel really fortunate.
There’s Deb Yarian—she’s been tattooing for 35 or 40 years or something. There’s Annette LaRue down in Virginia, she’s very dear to me as well. These are all women who have been tattooing longer than I have, and they all teach me stuff every time I talk to them.
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