Today we’d like to introduce you to Janet Damon.
Janet, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Growing up in a military family, we lived in Germany, Korea, and Panama, sprinkled in between were places like Louisiana, South Carolina, and Colorado. I loved celebrations like Mardi Gras, Carnival, Fourth of July, Juneteenth, and the many cultural festivals from my own cultural background as a biracial woman of African American and Korean descent. My parents shared a deep love for nature and most of my youth was spent exploring wild places, taking long drives, and weekend fishing trips.
Years later, I was in college, raising a daughter and often bringing her to classes and conferences, juggling my school work, a joy, and motherhood was incredibly hard. At that time, I learned how to ask for advice and support from women in my circles. Women shared stories and advice with me, tough lessons learned at a cost. Some focused so much on their marriage that their friendships fell apart. Some let stress tear down their health. Others suffered from depression and never sought help until the despair almost overtook them.
These stories began to shape my beliefs about balance and motherhood. I learned to balance my motherhood with three core values: family, fun, and friendships. These are the guiding principles of my life, allowing me to create space for a new paradigm for my own success as a woman, a mother, and a friend.
MixMomma is my pursuit of mixing up motherhood and I have spent almost thirty years as a mixologist of motherhood. Over the years, I’ve learned to mix up local festivals, girls nights, lots of family travel, spiritual health, and self-care moments on a small budget but with big impacts. Denver offers an incredible array of events that we can curate to meet our family’s needs. Using research-based approaches, I ensure that my social networks are nourishing, my children are grounded in culturally-sustaining narratives that promote a healthy self-concept and that we engage in the work of social justice while also respecting our mental and physical self-care.
Has it been a smooth road?
Social media, gun violence, declining rates of empathy, increasing rates of chronic loneliness, all of these issues make motherhood very challenging. According to the 2015 Health Kids Colorado Survey, nearly three in ten middle and high school students in Denver indicated that during the past 12 months they felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that they stopped doing some usual activities, which are symptoms consistent with depression.
Empathy is declining; in one study, the average American college student in 2009 scored as less empathic than 75 percent of students in 1979. This suggests that we are losing our care for one another and that our culture is shifting to one that feels disconnected. Our children and youth feel this disconnect and the loneliness that accompanies it.
In 2018 Cigna released a report based on a survey of 20,000 Americans and they found alarming findings. Only around half of Americans (53 percent) have meaningful in-person social interactions, such as having an extended conversation with a friend or spending quality time with family, on a daily basis. Generation Z (adults ages 18-22) is the loneliest generation and claims to be in worse health than older generations. Americans who live with others are less likely to be lonely (average loneliness score of 43.5) compared to those who live alone (46.4). However, this does not apply to single parents/guardians (average loneliness score of 48.2) – even though they live with children, they are more likely to be lonely.
My goal is to pull mothers together for gatherings that expand their social networks and help provide the nurturing circle of women that helped me navigate my transition to motherhood years ago.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
MixMomma offers a space to reimagine our experience as mothers. We are mothering in a time of new challenges and opportunities. How do I ensure my children are culturally competent? How do I nurture relationships that are both fulfilling and generative? How do I celebrate my passions while helping my children explore their own interests? How do I manage my mental health and cultivate mindfulness in my life? Am I having fun? Are we experiencing joy? How do I curate these essential experiences in our lives?
MixMomma helps with all of this. Not because we solve for all of them at once but we explore the questions and let mothers answer this for themselves. The goal of the blog and the social media strands is to celebrate motherhood and the process of raising culturally resilient children who are connected to nature, curiosity, and the joy of human connection. Our audience is predominately mothers of color and mothers who are seeking a community that centers joy and connection.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
As a festival blogger, Colorado is the perfect home base. Colorado has surpassed the rest of the nation in arts performance and exhibition attendance, according to a survey by the National Endowment for the Arts. The study collected data from adults over the age of 18 from across the U.S. The Denver-Aurora-Lakewood area leads the top 35 metropolitan statistical areas with a 76.8% attendance rate at performing arts events, compared to a national average of 48.5%. According to the NEA, more Denverites went to plays, concerts or dance performances than anyone else in the country this past year. There is a passion for fun in our city and MixMomma helps folks navigate this scene.
I blog using a #DenverCultures hashtag and one thing I hear over and over is that finding these festivals and cultural events are a huge challenge. I hope the city continues to fund and celebrate our diverse creatives.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://mixmomma.com
- Email: mixmomma@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mixmomma/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mixmomma/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mixxmomma
Image Credit:
Janet Damon, MixMomma Blog
Suggest a story: VoyageDenver is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
