The following podcast is a deer media production.

Hi friends and welcome to the papaya podcast. I'm your hostess,

Trine Hermosta, Sarah Nicole, and each week I'm going to be dishing out some sweetness mixed

in with some seeds of wisdom or something like that. So get ready to get inspired,

get candid, get real because we are all in this digital space together.

All right, welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself. I'm so excited to have you here.

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I'm Monique Melton. I tell people all the time

when I'm doing my IG lives. Monique Melton, first and foremost, always in forever from the inside

out from the bottom to the top. I am a whole human being. And from the bottom to the top is an

anti-joke with my cousins. So nobody else probably really gets that which is okay as an anti-joke.

But so I do anti-racism work as an educator. My work is really centered around black liberation.

And so anti-racism is one of many tools that we use to pursue black liberation. I'm the creator of

the Shrine Bryce School where we have a number of classes and resources and learning experiences

for folks to learn and to commit to black liberation. And I'm also a podcast host. So that's the

Shrine right and together podcast. And I'm an author. So I'll be over here writing stuff,

speaking, consulting with brand. And I'm also married to my high school sweetheart.

Our saying is because we met in weightlifting class. And so our saying is that we've been

spotting each other ever since. Oh my gosh. And then we have two beautiful black children together.

So that's a little bit about me. Now you every time I get into like replying to your DMs and

stuff, you're like, oh yeah, I used to be a makeup artist. And I've just been like, what is I do

this thing where I follow people and I don't create a backstory for them. I just start like,

oh, this is where life began, right? This is who you are. This is what you did. And I don't even know

...