The Grand Commencement with Melissa Muganzo

What a joy to spend time with our guest for this episode. Melissa Muganzo is an entertainer, entrepreneur, educator, and media producer based in Sacramento, California. She's a professor at Sacramento State, the founder of Mindy's Kitchen, a professional actress, and an award-winning entrepreneur and social justice documentarian. She was also raised inside a very particular kind of not-enoughness: not West Indian enough, not Afro-Latina enough, not Kenyan enough, and — according to plenty of people around her — not Black enough either.

This conversation goes everywhere. Melissa walks me through a childhood shaped by a Seventh-day Adventist mother, a Kenyan father with an entirely different spiritual inheritance, and the quiet math of a kid figuring out what it takes to be seen as good. They talk about what happens when the answer to every question you ask is "you just have to believe," and what it costs to keep editing your hair, your voice, your major, your whole life to keep the approval coming.

They also talk about the body — Melissa's affirmation that your body has been showing up for you the entire time you've been mean to it, and the therapist's line about what you're really saying when you criticize the features you inherited. I share what I have learned about vertical and horizontal morality and Melissa offers the frame of "the good girl". 

If you've ever wondered which parts of yourself you're still editing to make other people comfortable, this episode is for you.

CONNECT WITH MELISSA

Mindy's Kitchen:

• Website: www.mindyskitchen.com
• Instagram: @mindyskitchen_ca
• LinkedIn: Mindy's Kitchen of California

Muganzo Entertainment:

• Website: www.muganzoentertainment.com
• Instagram: @muganzoentertainment
• LinkedIn: Melissa Muganzo

Also Mentioned:
Vertical vs. Horizontal Morality: Why It Matters for the Workplace Today

If this is your first time with OTC, check out  EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram!

Our True Colors is powered by The Culture Crucible. Go to THE HUB to learn more!
Consider joining the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association!

Transcript

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Intro  0:06 
Welcome to Our True Colors, hosted by Shawna Gann. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, an ethnic enigma, and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in.

Shawna  0:25  
Hey everyone! Welcome back to our true colors. Marcel couldn't join me for this conversation, so today it's just me and a very special guest, Melissa Muganzo. Melissa is an entertainer, entrepreneur, educator, and media producer based in Sacramento, California. She's also a professor at Sacramento State, the founder of Mindy's Kitchen, a professional actress, and an award-winning entrepreneur and social justice documentarian. She grew up between cultures, with a Kenyan father and a West Indian and Afro-Latina mother, surrounded by different languages, spiritual traditions, and ways of understanding the world. But honestly, Melissa is one of those people where her bio doesn't quite capture the whole story. Our conversation went everywhere: family, religion, and spirituality, blackness, colorism, queerness, belonging, body image, self-worth, creativity, and what happens when you start questioning the rules and expectations you've inherited. We talked about what it means to stop being the good girl, to stop editing yourself, to fit other people's ideas of who you should be, and to finally realize that you don't have to become someone else to belong, so settle in because this one is a conversation about becoming more fully yourself. Melissa, welcome to our true colors. Hi, Melissa. Welcome. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. You have got a rich, rich background and life, girl. All the stuff that you're doing is amazing, and I love that you're doing all of it. I don't know how you are, but that's you know the magic of it. You're not

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  2:14  
alone in that thought.

Shawna  2:16  
It's so cool, and we're gonna dive into it. I want to ask you about these things that are such a major part of your life, but before we get there, can we start from the beginning a little bit?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  2:27  
Yes.

Shawna  2:27  
Once upon a time, tell me, tell me what it was like for you growing up.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  2:34  
I always tell people when they ask me where I'm from, I say, "Well, I'm from the cosmos by way of Orlando, Florida, and in 1987, a gym was born. I was born December 30th, so I barely made it in, but I made it. And I also like to tell folks that both my sister and I were really, really large babies for our time. Now we would probably go viral on TikTok, but then we were just like anomalies. So I was 12 pounds at birth, and my sister was almost 14 pounds

Shawna  3:05  
at birth.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  3:06  
And I was born two and a half weeks early, and my sister was born two and a half three weeks early. She was projected to be 17 pounds, and I was projected to be, I think, 13 pounds.

Shawna  3:16  
Oh my goodness! And

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  3:17  
so I always joke and say I came out being like, "Mom, suck, you know, where's the steak? You know, I just came in hot and heavy. I was wearing two tee at birth, where people are wearing, you know, like newborn, and I'm like, I'm a muscle builder as a baby, you know. So that's how I stormed into this life. I'm very proud to be a Capricorn, and I was born to two people that have a background in struggle. So I, I, I like to always give people that insight into why the creative arts really saved my life and gave me like voice and expression because I was literally born into a situation of like high stress, high financial stress, high racial stress, high immigrant stress. Like there was a lot going on in Florida at that time. My father from Nairobi, Kenya, made it to the United States to go to school on a student visa. Fell in love with my mom in an accounting class in college, so to be a professor now, I look at the students like you all are going to get married and have kids one day. And as a child, you know, I grew up watching my mom be very, very creative. So she had a singing group called RCM with her best friends, which was Renee, Cynthia, Melinda, she also used to be a part of these traveling gospel choirs, where they would go over internationally. My father really introduced a lot of cultural music in our house because he learned English by watching MTV, the music videos. So, for the listeners out there that are like, "What is MTV? Because I have to remember that MTV no longer exists. Music telling. Oh my God, you're

Shawna  5:09  
right. You're right. That is. It doesn't exist anymore. It

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  5:16  
doesn't exist anymore. But there was this channel on cable that played popular music videos, and it would also give people not born in the United States a sense of what they felt living in America was like. You know, so whether that was like you know hip hop when it was budding, or if it was like rock and roll, or you know Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson were on fire at that time. So like all of that, so my dad was like, you know, getting a sense of American culture by watching these music videos, and so that was what my house was like filled with, on top of these like different spiritual understandings too. So my mother and my father met at a HBCU that was Seventh Day Adventist based, so okay in Alabama, and I think it's the only Seventh Day Adventist HBCU in Alabama. It's called Oakwood University now, but at the time it was Oakwood College, and my mother was a very devout Seventh Day Adventist, like play the organ for the Seventh Day Adventist Church, sing at the choir. I went to Seventh Day Adventist preschool, daycare, early elementary, but then also had a father from a different country with different spiritual beliefs that was not Seventh Day Adventist all happening at the same time. So my foundation was so mixed.

Shawna  6:40  
Yeah, yeah. Can you give like just a few sentences about Seventh Day Adventist and why why it might be different than something that someone's familiar with, like say Baptist or Pentecostal or you know some other denomination?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  6:53  
For sure. So Seventh Day Adventists believe that Saturday is the seventh day of the week and also is the Sabbath, which is like the day of rest, and so you have from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. That's considered this like seventh day in the seven days of creation that we are taught that the world was creating in this day, and then by this day there was a rest period, and so they honor this seventh day, this Saturday, this Sabbath, as like a rest period by going to church and being in community. But leading up to that, there's all these things. There's like prayer meeting in the middle of the week, sometimes twice a week. If you are involved, like my mother was, there's choir rehearsal, there's praise team rehearsal, and then there's Sabbath school, so these all these things that lead up until the actual service on Saturday, and it just becomes a way of life, and it's a very strong network. Like the Seventh Day Adventist Church actually moved my family from Florida to California.

Shawna  7:56  
Wow!

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  7:56  
By way of this conference office my mom worked for, so it's a very tight network. You also get free tuition to any Seventh Adventist college if you are a pastor's kid, and graduate education. Like it is, it's kind of a good thing if you're into that type of organized religion. But as we're probably going to get into that, slowly faded away from me. All right. Well, why don't we get into it? Because you've also mentioned your father's spirituality. So, what was that like? And then let's talk about what that meant for you. For sure, my father came out to the United States on a Seventh Day Adventist Missionary Scholarship. That's how he got his student visa. A missionary from Oakwood College went to Nairobi, Kenya, and was like, "I have $3,000 to take you to the United States. What's up? And he and my grandmother were like, "It's lit! Like we're out. Do what you got to do. I think the missionaries were there for like a summer, so they charged my grandmother with like raising what she could, and when she did, they matched that with the $3,000, and that is how my dad got to the United States from a missionary trip.

Shawna  9:09  
Okay,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  9:10  
but my father is the the oldest of three to a mom that is the third wife of his father. So okay, wait,

Shawna  9:22  
wait, wait, wait, wait! I

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  9:23  
know.

Shawna  9:25  
All right, I got it. I got it. I got it. Third wife, she had three kids. She's the oldest of those three.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  9:32  
Yes,

Shawna  9:32  
got it. Okay,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  9:34  
yes. So that and my father's culture, my paternal grandfather, I believe, was Kikuyu, and then my paternal grandmother was Luo. So even he had like this like mixed tribe identities, spoke multiple languages, there was different heritage and honoring, and then to bring that to the United States and saying. Okay, I was raised under this African heritage, but we were also kind of raised Catholic because of colonization. But I'm going to take this Seventh Day Adventist scholarship to go to this Seventh Business School. So this is why I enjoy talking about spirituality, religion, the ways in which all of us try to make sense of why we are here and what feels best for people. And I'm always open to conversations because my foundation is rooted in everybody just trying to figure it out.

Shawna  10:28  
I mean, that's all we all are trying to do is figure it out. So, yeah. So, okay, you hinted at it. You said things might be a little bit different for you. Oh

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  10:38  
yeah.

Shawna  10:39  
All right. So, tell me, what's the T on that?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  10:41  
You know, for me, I feel like in learning about my identity and who I am, and like the ways in which my family all were just trying to figure it out. Yeah, and by the time I got to college and started questioning things, I realized that everybody was telling me the same thing: you just have to believe. There was not like this really strong of like a plus b equals c, and this stands the test of time. That didn't happen for any of the spiritual backgrounds that I was raised under, and so I began to really decolonize from anything extremely organized, especially once I started to do research on the founding fathers of these belief systems, and I thought, well, when you created these systems, you were not thinking about anybody that looked like me. You were not thinking about anybody that remotely identifies like me. You weren't honoring any of the ways that my heritage shows up globally when you were creating these practices. It was very much like we need one train of thought to move these bigger systems along, whether it be capitalism, patriarchy, you know, funding different harm and genocide, and that for me didn't sit well, and I just begin to slowly lean back into what felt good inside of me instead of leaning on these other belief systems to get me through. So, what feels good inside of you? What feels good inside of me is believing in ancestry and believing that I am not disconnected from higher source. Like it's all this big, huge energy, and we are actually more powerful than we think if we tap into ourselves, I believe that our past selves, present selves, and future self are always working on behalf of one another. I believe that you can speak life into your future self, and your future self can give you signs that they're looking out for you.

Shawna  12:35  
My family was quite spiritual, but also religious in that I I went to a Christian preschool, a Christian school. I'm from Anchorage, Alaska, but we moved to Pennsylvania for like five years. And during that five years, I started in a public school, but I ended up going to a Catholic school just to finish out that one school year. Not Catholic, so during mass and stuff, there was this trailer outside, and there was like three of us kids at the school that weren't Catholic, and we had so much fun. Like we had so much fun while they were in there genuflecting. We're like outside the trailer doing our own like talent shows and stuff. And so then after that year, we relocated again, but within the Pittsburgh area. And then I ended up going to another Christian school until I was in 10th grade. I was getting to this point in those days where I was really questioning religion, religion, religion, doctrine, doctrine.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  13:32  
Yeah.

Shawna  13:32  
Now spirituality is a different thing,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  13:35  
totally different.

Shawna  13:36  
I don't go to church every week. I don't go church. I don't go church. Let me just put period at the end of that. But I do pray. I do talk to God. I do have my conversations. I do feel a connection all the time.

Speaker 1  13:49  
Yeah,

Shawna  13:50  
and it's more real than anything I experienced with a pastor standing up in front of me. You know,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  13:55  
for myself, I think that my fusion of spirituality was really connected to the arts, because my mom, even though she was very, very much Seventh Day Adventist, it was always this creative arts, and I, I think I don't ever really separated the fact that like I'm a hardcore Seventh Day Adventist because I was in these dance groups, I was in these choirs, I was in these singing groups, I was doing this artistic stuff, and so I didn't even realize until I went to college that people were like, "Girl, everybody, just calm down. Like you are not the chosen one. Like relax. And I had no idea, but wait, what does that

Shawna  14:32  
mean? You're not the chosen one. What?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  14:34  
So Seventh Day Adventists are raised that 144,000 people are going to heaven.

Shawna  14:39  
Oh, and so

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  14:40  
we feel like this, like

Shawna  14:43  
how many?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  14:44  
Only 144,000, based on the 12 sons of Judah. Oh yes, it is a whole thing, girl.

Shawna  14:51  
My face, y'all. I'm listening, like I'm like, it's

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  14:53  
not possible, right? But this is what is taught, and so the idea of like being. In that number, if you've heard that, you're like, "I want to be in the number.

Shawna  15:03  
Yeah, when the saints go marching. Yeah,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  15:06  
that's right.

Shawna  15:07  
That's what that came from.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  15:08  
That is what we were taught. This indoctrination.

Shawna  15:12  
When the saints go, I want to be in that number.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  15:15  
I want to be in it.

Shawna  15:17  
Look what you taught me. I didn't know that.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  15:20  
And so, imagine me going to a college where barely anybody I knew was Seventh Day Adventists, and we're all roommates now. And I'm trying to convince them that they need to go to church on Saturday, and like they need to tighten up. You got to tighten up. We're trying to be in that number, and they're like, "Girl, you're 18. You need to relax. You know. So there was like this entitlement. It's almost like

Shawna  15:41  
trying to go shopping on Black Friday in 1992. Like everybody trying to be in the front of the line. There are only there are only 12 laptops, y'all. That's it. Actually, were there laptops in 1992? There's only 12 word processors, y'all. 12

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  15:56  
typewriters. 12 typewriters. That's it. So you know, I'm just saying, like trying to be in that number, trying to be in that number. But I did not know because having a singing group and doing hair and being a choreographer for this dance company and being in these traveling choirs and me myself even being part of missionary trips to Mexico, I was just like, oh, this is my social life. This is my normal environment. This is how I express myself. This is actually how I get paid. I was doing people's hair in church as a teenager. We were all so I didn't even associate that my Christian identity as in the Adventist was made up more than my identity than I realized until I was out of that environment and was like, whoa, whoa.

Shawna  16:42  
So it was going to school and meeting people that kind of opened your eyes to this other way of life or other things out there. I guess for me, I was just a heathen. I was like, I just feel like, just feel like there's got to be something. I love that you were like that, though. I don't know. It's not the best way to be. I'm not saying that. I did not force my children to go to church. I don't know. I just I have issues with rules when the rules don't make sense. You know how you said A plus B is not equal in C here. It's not equal. You know, from the time I think it started. You know what, Melissa? I think it started from when I was six years old. My mother also sang in the choir. Okay, but she we was Southern Baptist. Mama up there in her robe. You know, I don't know how they do it seven days. It is, but you know that's how. And I was always in the congregation with my grandmother. So after church this one day, like I went to run up to my mom, as a six-year-old would, right? Because she was talking, she was taking too long. Basically, she was up in the choir, like talking to her friends, and I was like, "This is it's time to go. And so, like, I ran up there, but I ran behind the pulpit to get to her, and I did not know, but I learned that day that females were not to be behind the pulpit. Oh yeah, because some deacon was like, "Young lady, you do not good blah blah blah, and that was the moment I was like, "I mean, are you serious right now? Like, it's a podium, dude. Like,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  18:17  
that's it. That's right.

Shawna  18:18  
I did not obviously, as a six-year-old, internalize or understand sexism or that sort of discrimination that could happen, even with like men in the. I'm not trying to say this for this is not the blanket.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  18:33  
Sure, sure.

Shawna  18:34  
Okay, but there is kind of a power thing about like sister so and so could say the announcements from over there on off to the side, but thou shalt not be behind this pulpit or within this area, and no one could tell me why. Okay, Mister Deacon, sir, why can I not? Like what?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  18:53  
I believe this is so much.

Shawna  18:56  
Yes. So when I was like, we go back to Alaska, and I get to go to East High. I'm out. Yeah, yeah. I dress. This store does not exist anymore. But Jay Jacobs was my store. Like all the things. I I was pretty. I'm still a pretty good kid. I just it's the doctrine, and I think like if you you pull those reins in so tight, you're going to want to bust out. It's oppressive.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  19:27  
I am here for people to be able to self-discover, and I feel like for a number of people, we we don't realize how much we are being controlled or programmed or lied to until this is form of combustion, where you're like, wait, why didn't I question that? Wait, why did I? Why did? Why did I just believe that? I didn't ask any questions because why wouldn't

Shawna  19:50  
you? The people that you trusted the most are the ones that tell you, right?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  19:54  
Yeah, based on your, you know, survivalhood, right? Like, if I know in this house, in order for me to. Eat and sleep and have a place to shower comes with being under the good guise of these two people. Like they have to see me as good, then I'm with whatever's going on in this house, right? And if I rebel from that, I'm also potentially sacrificing my ability to have housing, food, transportation. Like I've been doing this work with my therapist recently about the idea of being a good girl. Like, what what is a good girl? A good girl is someone who assesses her home environment and goes, "What does it take for me to survive inside of this environment? Oh, I have to let's say for my environment grades. Grades matter in this environment. When my grades are a certain way, then I am deemed as good, and then I get rewarded with applause. I love yous, gifts, food. If I don't have a certain grade, then I get rewarded with frustration, something being taken away, maybe a cell phone, maybe time out with friends, and so you kind of condition yourself to survive. That can happen at work. That could happen in social spaces when you are deemed someone that's unproblematic. When you are deemed as someone that's always so kind, always down for whenever. When you are someone that people can predict, you're deemed as like this good, safe person. But when you are someone that questions and doesn't just allow things to be, then you're deem as a rebel, frustrating. You're hard to deal with. You're

Shawna  21:33  
intense,

Intro  21:34  
intense,

Shawna  21:35  
passionate,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  21:36  
intimidating, intimidating. Oh yes, scary. Like you're the people you. these other words to shame you not being someone that can be controlled. And I feel like what we're seeing now, in sometimes good and negative ways, are people saying, "I didn't realize I was being lied to. I was told that this was the best decision, and now I realize that I was being lied to. I also see people realizing, like, I actually don't want to be deemed as good anymore. Like, I don't want to be deemed as this like perfect, good, unproblematic person because I have feelings too.

Shawna  22:15  
So, what's the alternative if you're not good? What could you be that is still positive?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  22:21  
I think good and bad are just these these words that are based on a spectrum of who's in charge. I don't know if there is an alternative. I think there is just a sense of being and people being allowed to be free and allow that freedom to take them where they're supposed to take them. I think this idea of like controlling the masses is a falsehood, and it's gotten us into a lot of trouble as society over and over and over again.

Shawna  22:47  
You know what you're saying reminds me of the morality argument. So I had this student when I was teaching at Bard University up in New York. Her name is Stacy. Stacy, I'm giving you shout out. Hope you're listening. Is

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  22:59  
that right?

Shawna  23:00  
I was teaching a leading change class in an MBA program, and so we're you know talking about all of our different frameworks and models of change and all this stuff. And Stacy's in the back raises her hand. I was like, you know, I saw this TikTok about horizontal and vertical morality. Horizontal and vertical morality are both this idea of what's good. That's what we talk about. Morality is right, but it's like according to whom. So if you imagine a vertical line, vertical morality points up to like a higher one singular group or entity or power authority figure, right? So that could be collectively the church. It could be God. It could be the pastor, whomever. Right, and whatever they say is good. Using your word "good" isn't "good girl. That is what you follow because up there says this. That's the authority says this. It's good if I do this because they said so. Horizontal morality is what's good for everyone across the people. And when I went to Christian school back in the day, they preached against humanism. That's humanistic. And then later on, I was like, "Well, hold on a second. We're humans. We not. Why would we not? And so the fear was that we would worship people or ourselves or whatever versus the one singular upward God versus care for all? So just think about the kinds of arguments that we have. Like take abortion as a topic. Yeah, example. Okay, so a person following the vertical morality would say abortion is bad because thou shalt not kill him because God said that, and because the preacher said that was a sin, and we cannot do that, and whatever. Nobody can do that because that's who said it was bad. The horizontal morality is well. What's good for the people? What if this is the situation? What if this is the situation? So it's about the people. Never mind that God. I was trying to have people off their sons all the time and altered.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  25:03  
I remember I had a conversation with a friend. We were at happy hour, and I told her I had recently spoken to a medium, and I was so excited about it. And me and the medium had like this really beautiful moment, more so of me being in awe because I came in as a big ass skeptic. I was like, "There's no way this random lady gonna tell me anything. She rocked my world, Shawna. She rocked 30 minutes of world just being like rocked like a cradle. I remember telling my friend, and I was like, "Have you ever thought about going to meeting? She was like, "I don't know. Want to know anything about the future? I said, "I don't believe that you mean that. And two, that's television. You are talking about the television medium. You're not talking about someone that feels like they have this understanding of these different ways of connecting with spirituality and afterlife and all of these things. And she was like, "Well, you know, I don't know if I believe in ancestors. I was like, "Well, Jesus is an ancestor. If you believe that Jesus was human at one point, and then died. But you pray to him and talk to him. You're talking to an ancestor, and the way in which you saw her mind go, oh,

Shawna  26:13  
I said, so you do actually believe in connecting to your ancestors, and I just thought that was such an interesting concept of like the way in which we are taught about just connecting with spirituality versus religion and and not really understanding what we're saying. That is a really interesting framing. I hadn't thought about it that way, but yeah, it makes total sense. And I think that's what it is. That's what's so interesting. Like what we're talking about is like sometimes if you just stop and think about what you're being taught and why are there these limits, but then again, sounds like you and I are the same whether it's the questioning. I mean, like I was in trouble in school asking the questions, but you know, because things like religion are such a part of our culture, it's a huge part of our identity, and then it's like, well, what happens when you change that? You know, people will say like, nobody changes, people don't change. I'm like, I believe people change. I know I've changed. I am still the Shawna I was largely when I was six years old, getting in trouble for running behind a pulpit. But I also have grown. I have grown. I have evolved, and I will continue to do so because with every encounter, me meeting you, you know, talking to you today, and all of these things are going to contribute to which path am I going next? Where is that going to take me, and how am I going to grow next?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  27:32  
Right,

Shawna  27:33  
and I love education. I am such a nerdy nerd.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  27:37  
I love that.

Shawna  27:38  
Like I am huge nerd, and I get excited about knowledge. I get excited about knowing. So knowing doesn't always have to be from a book. I love the idea of knowing because I've met someone who gave me a new frame of thinking, or knowing because I now have a new perspective. Of course, I've traveled to this place, and it's such a major part that I believe our identities are fluid and shift and move as we grow. What are your thoughts on what blackness is for you, and has it shifted at all for you over time?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  28:30  
Oh, absolutely. So, at eight years old, my parents got a divorce, and that's how we went from Florida to California. And I was instantly put into like the single parent home raised by my mother, and I instantly started to challenge what it meant to be black because my mother and I are different complexions and different heights and have different tones. So my mother is more of a beautiful caramel. She's five one. She could sing soprano and alto, and in my mind, I was raised to see that as like feminine. And then for myself, I am chocolate skin. I am. I've been this height. I'm five eight and a half. I've been five and a half since I was 13, and I always had a lower register voice, which is like down here, so I was like in the alto and tenor range. Yes, you know what I mean. My hair was thicker than my mom's, and so I always didn't feel feminine enough in the ways in which I was taught about blackness and femininity being this like one big thing, and I always felt that I was like, "Gosh, I'm so black. That's how I felt. Gosh, I'm so black because my mother's a different complexion, but she's the beautiful black, and I'm the unbeautiful black girl as a chocolate girl. That's how I felt.

Shawna  29:55  
Right now,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  29:56  
this is real. This is just honest, and I think there's like a. Surges of reclaiming blackness and complexion, but in my time growing up, being a chocolate black girl means you were like unworthy, unpretty, unattractive. You weren't the caramels and the beautiful warm vanillas. You weren't the actively sought after. They were. They had the longer hair. It was like a loose curl. They were deemed attractive. They had beautiful bodies. They were deemed feminine, and so I remember really growing up having a hard time with my complexion in wanting to be seen as pretty and soft and beautiful, but still be black, especially being African, all of the African booty scratcher comments were still there, and you know Tim Book Two, Joe, African booty

Shawna  30:50  
scratcher. What is that?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  30:52  
Yeah, so you know this is also during the time where we had those commercials in the arms of an angel. You know that remember that

Shawna  31:00  
donate to

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  31:01  
Africaness. That's right. The kids were starving. They're really facing famine, right? And and but we put this like angelic music over it. We were like, "Oh, you're an African booty scratcher, like those starving kids in Africa. And I just

Shawna  31:16  
never heard booty scratcher. Like, what does that really? Oh,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  31:19  
talk to the Africans. They'll tell you. Talk to my fellow Africans. They will tell you. People would say you should go back to your hut. You're like a monkey. You're different. You're not black. You're not black. You're you're just not.

Shawna  31:31  
So that's so interesting. Okay, have you ever listened to Code Switch on NPR? There was this one episode where they talked about JBs. I talk about it sometimes. I was like JB. JB is just black, so there's this difference between African immigrants coming to the U.S. and going to college, much like your dad, right? And I don't know if this is true for your family, but a lot of immigrants who came to go to school were told by their parents not to associate with the American Black folks,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  32:02  
correct, correct, and

Shawna  32:03  
so there is like a difference between being African American and being just Black, which was the JBs. Those of us who've been here because you're a descendant of the enslaved peoples that were brought here, and so when you said people from Africa being told you're not Black, that's like the opposite of what I was thinking because of the JBs.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  32:23  
Yeah, it's I lived in this like not enoughness. I wasn't West Indian enough. I wasn't Afro Latino enough. I wasn't Kenyan enough. But I also was not black. And then I'm tall, in my mind I'm dark, which means I'm unattractive. My hair is thick, and I have a deep voice, so my sense of blackness is rooted in low self-esteem, low vibration. I didn't have a sense of pride because I was raised under don't associate with those black people, especially those that are not Seventh Day Adventists. It was just very toxic, very anti-black, very xenophobic. It was it was so much. There was so much going on to be able to go into a space where I started to question and go to a predominantly white institution where black communities there were so tight knit because they were so small in number that my sense of like pride in being myself and being black, being African American, being Kenyan, being Muslim, and being all these things, being queer, all of those things came out of being in community with people that are like we're all we have in this predominantly white space, and we don't care what shade you are. We're just proud to have you, and let's learn about the complexities of who you are, and let's celebrate that and amplify it and protest on behalf of it and have a celebratory day. I went to a university that also had black graduations. You know, I went to a university where I lived on the black resident hall floor, where my sense of pride really came from other people that were like, "There's not a lot of us, but we're here. You know, we're not backing down. And then learning about like the social construction of race and how it's rooted in religion and you know control and capitalism and global colonial like learning all of that and decolonizing from all the ways that I was negatively taught about who I was and how I present and express life changing life

Shawna  34:15  
that's so interesting I appreciate you sharing that Melissa because you know when I think about my own past when I went when I moved to Pittsburgh, I was hardly accepted by Black folks in my community. To them, I wasn't Black. I'm not biracial, but they assumed that I was, and I was like, I'm not. And no matter how hard I tried to fit into that community, I was rejected. Like it was so bad, and so when I think about like, damn, like it would have been so cool to be part of a school where there was a black community like that, or I gone to an HBCU. But then on the other side, there's a little fear, like, but maybe I dodged a bullet because I probably wouldn't have been accepted, or it had

Speaker 2  34:56  
been like

Shawna  34:57  
they did that to Kamala Harris, you know, like. You know they were questioning her blackness and questioning her Indian identity, and like

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  35:05  
so to

Shawna  35:06  
me, I'm like, girl, I get it. Like she, girl, you be listening. I get it. I get it. That's how it felt, and I'm not even of two distinct races or ethnicities. I'm so mixed up. I did an ancestry DNA girl. I got the most colorful of colorful wheels. I love that. Well, I love it now, but growing up, I didn't because there wasn't language for it. There wasn't tolerance for

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  35:33  
it. We all just wanted to be friends. Everybody just wants a friend.

Shawna  35:37  
Listen, I just recently reached out to some folks on LinkedIn. Everybody's skeptical on LinkedIn. I don't blame them though, because I get some stuff too. And this person was like, "Okay, but why? Why did you reach out to me? And I said, "Well, why not? You know, elementary school, we used to make friends on the playground at the swings. We don't have the swings anymore. We're like, so we have to be intentional. Nothing has changed from the time we were 678, years old to now, we're 3848, 58 years old. We still want to belong. We still want community, and so that that hasn't changed. But I think the way it feels and the way we've had to go about it has, and also we, like I said, we change. So right, it's like right settling into ourselves. I guess that was going to be my next question to you. Really, is like, have you settled into who you are? A good sense of who you are. Do you feel like you're still moving? You're still evolving.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  36:32  
I'm so happy you asked that because for the first time in my life, I finally feel like, oh, I'm not waiting for anybody's approval. Yeah, for the first time in my life, and I don't. My aunt, I have an aunt who I look just like, and she is always telling me, "Girl in your 40s, girl in your 50s, girl in your 60s. She's like, "There's this

Shawna  37:00  
Melissa. She's she's okay. I'm there. This is the best time. This is the best time. She's not lying.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  37:08  
Okay, I love that. She's like, you are going to become unbreakable, and for me, that's been like I was married and divorced, and I took a leap of faith to be the person I always was supposed to be inside to become this entertainer. And I think the radiance that I'm exuding is based on me following my dream that I always thought I was little. I also have been doing a lot of work around self worth and beauty, like really digging deep into the middle school and high school heart space of mind that needed some love. I think little me got enough love, and we're cool. And future me, she's bullying me, so we're we're locked in. You know, she's like, girl, come on, we got stuff to do. But I don't think I ever addressed middle school and high school me that was rooted in like rage and disappointment and rejection and isolation from the ways in which my foundation taught me about who I was supposed to be in this world, and I just recently had like a whole conversation with my therapist about going back to hug her and love on her and remind her like, look, we made it. You know, look at us. And so I feel so good inside about where I am mentally and emotionally and spiritually, and I'm very proud of that. And I hope to continue to be even more grounded in that. But this is literally the first time, and I don't know if this is delusional or not, but hey, we ball. But I don't see like I think younger me would be like, oh my gosh, celebrities drool, drool, I ah one day, you know. Now I'm like, oh, those are just my colleagues. That's how I see it. Have I met them? No, but I don't no longer think that the people that I admire are like so far off from me. I think I used to not humanize them in a way that it was just like all hell, you know. These people that I feel like are untouchable, and now these days I'm like, I don't know. I I'm just gonna send an email to them, or you know, I'm gonna tag them, or I'm gonna reach out to them, or you know, what makes anybody different from me? Like I, we're all human in this human experience, probably all being controlled by media. So, so yeah, I felt really grounded and really proud. Really,

Shawna  39:39  
I love that so much, I feel better in my skin than I ever have, and I never, I have always been like I'm too fat. I also, you know, it's so crazy that you talked about the voice. I hated my voice, and now,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  39:56  
and it's so good,

Shawna  39:57  
and I love my voice. Yes, and I love. Cheerio, be like I can't sing all of the Whitneys and all of that, but I can sing some Teddy swims, and I can, you know, and and I get in there too.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  40:09  
Oh, nice!

Shawna  40:10  
It's so funny that you said that because I felt the same thing about the lack of femininity because of my deep voice. Growing up, I just felt so because my God, it's so much. It's weird when you encounter people. My mother is also my mom's five two, and she's a soprano. She in the choir, and I could never sing like her. But then one day I realized I didn't have to because I got it down here. Like I can do my own. You know, like this is actually, it feels good down here. It's good. I have another friend. Our birthdays are two days apart. We're both Libras, and last year, the year before, we were texting, and she was like upset about her body. I was like, "Sweetheart, the thing is this: we are not girls anymore. We are women.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  40:59  
That's right.

Shawna  41:00  
Women are supposed to have a body. All right, go ahead.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  41:04  
I I am. I could talk about this all day. No,

Shawna  41:08  
that that was it. That was the thing. Is I was like that image that you're holding on to one is false. Just as we say, social constructs exist for time, for race, for gender, for all the things, what are we talking about? About body type, you got a body. That's your body, baby. Like, and if you want to change something about your body to make you feel good about yourself, do

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  41:33  
it. See the thing.

Shawna  41:33  
But what it is is it's you, my therapist. She was a woman from the Czech Republic. I like so was not expecting to have experience with her that I did, but she taught me how to love myself. I didn't know that I didn't love myself. I didn't know there was such a thing. I don't want to be generalizing of everybody, but the American culture generally, we are taught to have shame about our bodies.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  41:59  
Totally,

Shawna  42:00  
we're taught to not love ourselves, honestly, because we're supposed to be reaching for this ideal that isn't real,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  42:07  
right?

Shawna  42:08  
Right. And so, when I finally learned to love who I am, that's when it all changed. And then I could look at myself in a mirror and not just look for all the parts I didn't like. And then I started to liked parts I didn't like because I was like, "Hold up, because that's me, right? You know, and so there is a power in that, and I think that comes through growth and evolving. And you know, sometimes I I say Michelle Obama's book Becoming, like I didn't understand the title. I was like, "Girl, you done been to first lady? Like, I don't know. You were a lawyer. Like, becoming what? Becoming who you already? And then I realized, like one day, I was like, "Oh shit, I'm becoming.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  42:52  
Yeah, it's good.

Shawna  42:53  
That's what's happening right now. Is I'm becoming. I love that.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  42:57  
I think it's so good in being a professor, which is also really crazy because I never aspired to be a teacher because I was like homework is disgusting. I don't even like why would I assign it? That sounds terrible. But I have this like affirmation that I made students say about like even when you don't drink water, your body is like still working for you. Even when you don't get enough sleep, your body is still working for you, even when you didn't study for a test and you come in here and you're about to cheat. Your body is still working for you, even when you forgot to nourish your body with actual food and you just gave it pure junk. Your body is still showing up for you. So how dare you attack this body that is working overtime for you to experience this? Like that is crazy. That is so wild that we are taught, especially as women are taught, like let's critique everything about you so that we can use it, so that you can, you know, be inside of this capitalist society. So you'll want to buy things from us to change yourself. You'll be so uncomfortable in your body, that you'll constantly want to bind to this way of changing yourself. But even when you're talking so mean to your body, it's still showing up for you.

Shawna  44:09  
Yeah,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  44:09  
it's still showing up for you. You know how much more coffee than actual water I drink in my life, and my body still decides to work for me on a daily basis. It's actually not okay. Like it's not okay. I navigate between champagne, coffee, and like red wine, and my body's like water any given point, and I'm like, maybe there isn't there water in all of those things. Like it's so bad. I mean, technically, technically, right? And it's still showing up.

Shawna  44:41  
Damn, that makes me want to wake up in the mornings and just thank my body,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  44:45  
kind of like

Shawna  44:47  
like thank you for showing up despite all the shit I put you through. No,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  44:50  
for real, like

Shawna  44:52  
what a perspective.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  44:54  
So I um I had a hysterectomy, and I'm so happy about it because before. That my body and I, we were beefing. Let me tell you something. We were just not in good company with each other. I was bullying it. She was bullying me. I found all the ways to never say anything nice about it. And then when I had my direct and my bodily actually like regulated, and my energy was strong because I was having these terrible symptoms. I thought, well, I can't go to the gym because I'm healing, and yet my body is still working for me. Okay, wow, I wasn't able to figure out the ways in which to get rid of my acne, but my body was still showing up for me. I was bleeding immensely, and my body was still showing up for me. I cannot believe I spent so much time being mean

Shawna  45:45  
to it. Wow!

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  45:45  
And it was still showing up for me. And then I had a therapist say, "I cannot believe you would say all these negative things to your body because if you feel like you look like your grandmother and your aunt, then you're saying those things to your grandmother and your aunt. And I was like, I would never. She's like, but you do every day. Every day when you look in the mirror, you are telling your grandparents and you're telling telling the people that help put these features on you that you are not pretty, you are not worthy, that you are too fat, that you are too tall, that your voice is terrible. That's what you're saying. You're not saying it to yourself. You're saying it to them. I shut that shit down immediately. I needed to hear that.

Shawna  46:26  
Yeah. Woo. I know,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  46:29  
right? I know. Yeah. So yeah.

Shawna  46:57  
So you've talked about the celebrities, the the work that you do in in general, but I, you know, in your intro, there's like more than just the celebrity thing going on. You've got all this stuff going on. You're business owner, and can you tell us about it all? You know, just tell tell us about what you do and why you do those things. What is that part of who You are Melissa.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  47:23  
I have been an artist since I was six. As you know, I was sharing. My mom was this really musical genius. She could play music by ear. She taught all these choirs, and when I was six, she put me on a church program and taught me this song called "I'm a Promise. And I

Shawna  47:40  
am a promise.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  47:41  
Yeah, I am a positive. Yeah, capital P. Yes, yes. And full circle fun fact: I had got a contract where I taught these kids their first song, and I taught "I Am a Promise. And I had to call my mom. I was like, "Yo, 30 years later, that song is a hit, girl. It's still a hit doing numbers, but yeah, I just I was a singer really young. I was a dancer really young. I was a head cheerleader of my cheer squad. I like was a choreographer. I I was always doing this artistic expression, and then when I was 18, I was telling my family like I'm gonna go to Juilliard. I'm gonna I'm gonna go to New York, and they were like, "Oh, that's so cute to think you have a choice. Oh my god, you're not! Wow, you're. I was like, but look at everything that I've done. Like I only went to school and had certain grades because I like to do these things. It's not because I care about any of this. I just know that this 3.5 comes with me being a cheerleader. If I just want to cheer and dance and do that, like it has nothing to be like wanting to be a doctor or lawyer. I have time for none of that. So yeah, my family was like, yeah, no. So you will become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, engineer, or business person, and by any means necessary, that will happen. And so, when I got my first credit card at 18 in middle of my senior year, I bought a one-way ticket to my college, eight hours away from my house, and figured out my orientation. And I dipped, I dipped, and I think it was then that my family was like, "Did she just run away? Like I think the process, like, "Oh yeah, like I didn't want to go to the submivinous HBCU. I didn't want to go anywhere they wanted me to go. I wanted to go far away. Now me, like a maniac, I didn't do any college tours. I just looked at the website. College

Shawna  49:44  
tours either. You did it. No. Also, like, who had the money to do college

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  49:49  
tour? Okay, no facts. Facts. I was like, the website said it's cute. I'm.

Shawna  49:55  
We get those really colorful brochures. Yeah, and that looked good. Yeah. Those

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  50:00  
students look happy. Yeah,

Shawna  50:02  
I was just saying I didn't think you were maniac. Oh

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  50:04  
well, shout out to everybody's

Shawna  50:06  
reality. Yeah,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  50:07  
and so just think with all of that yumminess, right? I get to college and I hear them in my head bullying me. So I'm like, I'm gonna study international relations. Why the hell would I choose that when my entire life I've been this artist, so I naturally don't go to class, start a singing group, start becoming a dance teacher, get kicked out of college because I'm not going to class because everything sucks. I'm taking international law econ, so of course I'm not going. But that's what all the smart kids quotations are taking, and they're talking with these big words. And I'm like, I guess I'm supposed to be smart. So I got kicked out, started becoming a waitress at Denny's, and went to community college. Fixed my grades, became a student activist, got back into the school, and really became the student chancellor and started traveling with the administration to recruit Black students to come to the campus, advocate for Black spaces. I created, I fundraised out this Black graduation in the largest facility on campus to give it an excellence-based feel. I there were like awards named after me. I was like a student leader like crazy. Like wow,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  51:20  
that's a whole separate episode. I was I was in my social justice bag. That's when I learned about queer identity and the spectrum of identity and breaking down these social systems. But that's when I all started acting. I was like, okay, I'm going to study this other thing. I think I changed like community development, and I was like, yeah, that makes me a better writer, but who I am as a dancer. So I started a singing group called Perfect Pitch. I started acting in plays and auditioning for commercials. I used to teach hip hop classes. I was the first hip hop teacher for my college, and my classes would sell out all the time. They had to like start shutting it down because they were like, "There's too much going on at the gym here, and even then, Shawna, at the point of graduation, you would think like I'm 22, I can go get an MFA because I'm grown. No, still hella feeling scared to disappoint my parents. So instead of going to at this point any school to do the stuff that I want to do, I'm like, let me further my education in this same stuff that already sucked to me. But let me go do this because this makes people happy. I get these hand claps and I get these big smiles of a. What did you say?

Shawna  52:34  
You called it the good girl rewards.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  52:36  
I wanted to be a good girl. Yeah, so I did, and so I got into a graduate program, and even in the graduate program, I knew that that was like, oh yeah, that's the smart thing. But I also auditioned for this traveling dance company, and then and I also had this other singing group. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, that's a day type thing, but at night I'm this. You know, I'm acting, I'm dancing. I'm doing hair. I have a. I'm doing singing. I'm choreographing. I'm starting to do a little bit of show running for festivals and shows. And but I'm still studying this other smart thing in the daytime. That's how it felt like. It was two separate lives. And finally, after graduating grad school and getting you know this first time employment, you got like a monthly salary and thing. I was like, I'm living a double life and I want to blend it. So in 2018, I went to get my business license. I was like, I've been getting paid for all the stuff anyway, but now let me formalize it so I can actually put some paperwork behind it, and yeah, in 2021, I was like, no more double life. I'm just gonna be an artist. I don't care what anybody say about it because you all have been watching me an artist anyway. You, I was already an artist anyway.

Shawna  53:54  
Exactly. Now

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  53:55  
I'm just gonna do it, and the world is on fire at this time. So like,

Shawna  53:59  
yeah,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  53:59  
yeah. I started acting in larger productions, two women shows, national campaign commercials. Started creating things myself, and I was a resident artist for a government agency locally. And I get a call from my colleague, and I'm like, "Hey, do you mind being my reference? I saw this like professor thing in theater, and she goes, "Oh yeah, girl, I'll be your reference. But remember that college you went to for grad school? They actually have an emergency opening for a professor. You down? I'm like, what?

Shawna  54:37  
Oh, and yeah,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  54:38  
and the semester was starting the next Tuesday, and that was a Wednesday, and it was starting the next week. And I get there, and I think about all those times that people told me, "Do not pursue the thing that you know you're supposed to pursue. Don't do it. Don't be an artist. You're not going to be successful. Don't be." A dancer, you're not going to be successful. You could do it on the side. It's a passion project. All those things, but it was all those things that led me to be called for this emergency opening. Because remember, I didn't get an MFA, I didn't get an undergraduate degree in anything arts related. But it was all of those career moments where I would say I was being rebellious in my own way, of like I'm still going to pursue this, and maybe I just won't share as much. But then the moment I started sharing, people were like, "We've got to have her. And now I teach the largest class in my department, and just really, really cool things that have come from me taking a risk, I said, "I'm just gonna try it and see what happens. Like, why would I tell you that you can't do something just because I can't see it? That is crazy.

Shawna  55:52  
Why would you tell yourself that? Why would you tell yourself you can't do that?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  56:11  
Mindy's kitchen. Yes, yes, yes, yes. In 2018, which actually prompted me to create my first documentary, was because I was navigating uterine fibroids, and I had been navigating uterine fibroids for at that time about 10 years, and was getting no help. You know, I had gone to the doctor several times, and they were like, "Yeah, birth control or hysterectomy. And then when I went to advocate for hysterectomies, actually told no several times because in my mind, I was like, "Oh, I know I don't want kids, and so I told them. I think I started telling people at 23, like, "You could just take this out, and they were like, "Oh gosh, no, oh no. And then at like 26, I'm like, "Yeah, still same story. Like, you could just take this out. They're like, "No, you've never had a child. You don't know the feeling of what it's like to have a child, and you've never been married, and you don't know you're going to sue us. If okay, so at 28, no, 31, no. It just kept being no, and I was constantly saying I'm frustrated. So to take matters into my own hands, I had a mentor that passed due to uterine cancer actually tell me that fibroids are these like benign tumors that feed off of the hormones from the dairy in your body. So the more sugar you intake, the more hormones you ingest, your fibers are just going to grow because they're hormone-based tumors. And so when you eliminate the synthetic hormone and you eliminate the sugar, they go away. They have nothing to feed off of. And I was like, say less, so I went raw vegan. I just like raw dog veganism. It was crazy for 90 days, and my longest period was about six months nonstop, and then for to go from that to a two and a half day period with no cramps, no acne, no back pain, no headache. I'm starting to lose weight. I'm starting to wear clothes with color again because I have your Georgian wearing black all the time. I was like, I never know I'm gonna bleed. But yeah, being vegan in 2016, 2015 is not the same as now. They have like a plant-based version of everything now. Even cheese, like the vegan cheese melts now. At first, remember vegan cheese didn't even melt. No, I don't

Shawna  58:25  
remember because I didn't.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  58:26  
So you did okay. It tastes like wood chips. It was like raw. You know, people also didn't think about oh, let's have a plant based option at like corporate meal settings. It was just like we had the chicken and the ribs, and then you can have the celery sticks in the corner, and so I knew that I'm going to create this documentary. I'm going to take it on tour, and at the end, I'm going to create this plant-based salad company for people that are on the go like me, and that's what I did, and that's why Mindy's is so important to me. It's non- lettuce-based salads for on-the-go foodies like myself that are health conscious.

Shawna  59:01  
Wow! Well, congratulations on all of these things, and it's it's great for you, but you're like helping other people, and so you're just kind of bringing that whole package. If you have a few more minutes, I'd love to do a mixed message with you. All right, I'm gonna pick one. I'm randomly picking

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  59:26  
one. Okay, I love this.

Shawna  59:28  
All right, I got one. All right, this is what it says. I grew up in Madagascar, so I asked my mom to make me American food, and that's an air. I'm doing air quotes. It's in quotes because the one time I had Malagasy food. My Malagasy friends mocked me. Also, the way I dressed wasn't cool enough because of me being half American. So I wonder when you hear that, you know what comes to mind for you. And here's a couple of questions:

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  59:53  
Okay,

Shawna  59:54  
how could fitting in require editing? Not just your behavior, but also daily choices like food and. Clothing and when has pressure to belong made you distance yourself from something that's actually yours?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:00:05  
Oh, that's so good! I like the word editing. That's so good. This reminds me of like workspaces. This is like the perfect question for workspaces because you know when you you interview for the job, you feel like what do I have to do to eat away at myself to get this job? Because I want to survive, right? So, maybe I would adjust the way my, or I would edit my hair because I want my hair to be perceived as something that is warm and welcoming. Maybe I would edit my face. Maybe I do maybe less or more makeup. Maybe I will edit the way I actually dress. Maybe I'll actually go buy a blazer that I would never wear in real life. But I'm like, I want you to perceive me as warm, welcoming, professional, smart, ready, competent.

Shawna  1:00:53  
Yeah.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:00:53  
Maybe I would change my earrings from the dangles that I love to wear that make me feel like that girl to like a stud. I think those are like edits that people make all the time, but don't realize because they think like, "Oh, I'm being professional. You're actually editing yourself.

Shawna  1:01:10  
What does that even mean? And whose standard is that?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:01:12  
Oh, we because we could go there,

Shawna  1:01:15  
right?

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:01:15  
Then like even I got the access here, okay, but I don't belong here because over time, I am no longer waiting to edit myself down to a person I don't recognize. Which is, I can't talk the way that I want to talk. I I'm not respected in the ways that are authentic to me. It's all of that feeling of like I've kind of chipped away too much. I've edited too much. Yeah, but I thought I needed to do that to survive,

Shawna  1:01:41  
and what does that cost? Like, I always talk about there being a difference between fitting in and belonging. Anyway,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:01:47  
totally

Shawna  1:01:48  
right. Like, you can do all the edits to fit,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:01:51  
yeah,

Shawna  1:01:52  
but that doesn't mean you actually belong. And you can feel it. You can feel that difference. And so it's like, how can those things begin to take away who you actually are, and sometimes I would say even to the point where we don't even remember who we are, or it gets in the way of us discovering who we really are.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:02:10  
Yeah,

Shawna  1:02:10  
you know. But just like you talked about, your parents having an expectation for you to be in a certain career field, right? You had to, you edited your grades. You were like,

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:02:20  
edit my grades, I gotta,

Shawna  1:02:22  
I gotta do this. But so that I could actually do the thing I love.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:02:26  
So I can do the thing. I edited my major choice. I edited where I was going to school. You and I think now you ask me a really good question. Like, have you been able to settle into yourself?

Shawna  1:02:39  
Yeah, yeah. I

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:02:40  
think it's because I have stopped editing.

Shawna  1:02:43  
I

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:02:43  
stopped that, and I think for a long time, I just thought that maybe a little more edit will get me to the sense of approval. A little more edit, a little more edit, a little more people pleasing, a little more just letting things slide, a little more not advocating for myself, a little more just not calling things out when I see that something is problematic, just just a little bit more of that until you get a combustion and you're just like, f all this, you know. I'm I'm done with all this. There's always this like grand finale because of this editing that you don't realize you're doing over time,

Shawna  1:03:17  
but it's not a finale. You know why graduation is called commencement.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:03:22  
Tell me,

Shawna  1:03:23  
because you're commencing, you're beginning. People think of graduation ceremonies as the end of school, but it's really the beginning of what's next. So I would argue that all those things you experienced are not your grand finale. It was your grand commencement.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:03:41  
I love that. Oh, that's really good. I love that.

Shawna  1:03:48  
That's how I think about it. I've been through. I've been through a lot of things. I've lived in other countries. I've lived outside of the U.S. for 15 years. I've had so many of these starts and stops, and starts and stops, and starts and stops. That I always thought about them getting in my way until one day I was like, "Fuck! This is who I am. Like all of these things make up who I am, and they're all gifts. Why would I throw away these gifts? So what I can do with them is start anew.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:04:20  
Yes,

Shawna  1:04:20  
I'm still bringing me.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:04:22  
Yeah,

Shawna  1:04:23  
it's just a new start. It's oh, I love

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:04:25  
this. I love this. That's so good. That's so good. Thank you for sharing that. No, I love it.

Shawna  1:04:34  
I don't think I've ever said that before. But when I heard you say grand finale, I'm like, I don't see it that way.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:04:40  
It's this this opening. I like that. I like that a lot.

Shawna  1:04:44  
I'm so glad. What a beautiful conversation! It was

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:04:55  
so lively. Yes,

Shawna  1:04:57  
I just loved this. I've enjoyed you so much. While we were talking, I had to mute my notifications because Marcel just beeped in, going "How to go, and I wanted to be like, "He's still talking. Hey, Marcel, this was so good. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:05:15  
just so I'm so grateful. I'm grateful for spaces like yours. I'm grateful for people with a heart space like yours. I'm really grateful for that. That allows people to be complex and nuanced and full and becoming. I'm very very grateful for just people that just get it. You know, you have this like really full perspective on the world that allows people to feel comfortable talking to you about all these things. So thank you so much.

Shawna  1:05:42  
That's a gift to me. Thank you for that. I appreciate that because life is complex and humans are complex. And I know that I bring a lot of complexity to this world. Melissa, this has been so wonderful. I'm gonna link all the things so people can find Mindy's kitchen. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to make sure folks know.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:06:01  
Yes, you can let people know that my favorite quote, and it's from Alexandra Billings, is "You're always on the right path, comma even when the road is rocky. And I have to give that to my girlfriend. You're always on the right path, even when the road is rocky, because this is your first time being you.

Shawna  1:06:20  
Oh

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:06:20  
yeah, there's no reason to worry about the future because you haven't experienced it, and there's no reason to attack the past because it's already there. I appreciate that quote a lot, and so I feel like that sums me up as a person.

Shawna  1:06:35  
Now that's fantastic. Thank you so much.

Melissa Muganzo (she/they)  1:06:38  
Thank you. Bye. I

Shawna  1:06:52  
don't know about you, but I could have talked to Melissa for hours. What I loved about this conversation today, though, was that underneath all the stories. There is this bigger idea. We are allowed to keep becoming. In fact, I guess to me, we should expect to continue becoming. We don't have to keep editing ourselves to make other people comfortable, and we don't have to have the whole road mapped out before we're allowed to take the next step. What parts of yourself are you still editing because you think they'll make you easier to accept, and what might happen if you gave yourself permission to stop? Thank you for spending this time with us, and thank you to Melissa for trusting me with so much of her story. Please keep an eye out, y'all, because I'm counting the days. Mixed signals, a multiracial window into civility and belonging at work, y'all is on the way, and I am so excited to be able to share that with you. Along with Melissa's, you're going to find so many more stories, so many more narratives that illustrate what it is to live in the in between. If you haven't already, follow our True Colors podcast on Instagram, or you could go to culturecrucible.com, where you could find lots more information about mixed signals, along with our true colors, and fill out the contact form so that I can let you know when it's out. I'm just so excited! Thank you all so much for being here with me. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the love, y'all! I'll talk to you soon.

Intro  1:08:40  
You've been listening to our true colors.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai