Experience

Mpowered Interactions with “The Cross Over Guru”

Elton Campbell Layout Designer

Donaree Muirhead is a youth activist, motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and self agency coach. She grew up in the rural community of Summer Hill in the Maroon Town area, within the parish of St. James, Jamaica. She has honed her people skills and built her confidence through community involvement as a youth, assisting in her parent’s grocery shop, located in the central square of her home community. Muirhead has been involved in professional community advancement for almost 20 years, and is the founder of the organization “Mpowered Interactions.” Through her organization, many businesses, organizations, teams, families, and individuals in Jamaica and globally have accessed her services. She is frequently hailed by the media, her clients, friends, and people from all walks of life, as a woman with the gift of guiding and inspiring others. Her ability to encourage positive and realistic change has earned her the title of, “The Cross Over Guru.”

In 2012 and 2013, Muirhead felt as though she was losing herself. Trusting her intuition, she made the daring decision to resign from her job at the National Centre of Youth Development in Jamaica. Months later, she faced severe financial issues and various other challenges, and was gradually moving towards homelessness due to her continued unemployment. Despite these hardships, Muirhead managed to remain persistent, eventually conceptualizing and launching her organization, Mpowered Interactions. Dropping the first “e” from “empowered,” and stressing the “m” to reference her surname, she found a way to represent herself within the name. “Mpowered Interactions was for me…I believe that in all my interactions, it must be empowering. Either I am empowering you or you are empowering me…I was challenging how my mind is versus how the external world was beating me badly,” Muirhead stated on the Being Broadtail podcast, aired on YouTube in April 2022.

Mpowered Interactions does not just offer motivational workshops and developmental sessions; her initiatives have helped to improve businesses, and manifested countless success stories through her Ultimate Vision Board sessions. Muirhead is confident in the sessions she facilitates, because they do not focus on the materialistic and mendacious themes that many vision board exercises uphold today. These sessions have assisted many participants in rediscovering their purpose, core values, and guiding principles. The desire to produce aesthetic presentations by cutting glamorous photos out of magazines and adding them to large boards takes a backseat in Muirhead’s sessions, which are rooted in detailed self-assessments in order to unearth each participant’s purpose. “Resolutions are supposed to be solutions after you’ve assessed who you are. Where your weaknesses are, where your breakdowns are. What you’ve gone through that is not serving you…A resolution must come from deep down inside. A resolution isn’t external to the world. It’s about a decision that you’ve made to fix a part of you, to move you into your greater purpose,” Muirhead articulates on the podcast Live with Dara, hosted by Dara Smith on Instagram and YouTube in January 2022.

While a selfless empath who be- lieves in expressing gratitude, Muirhead nonetheless remains mindful of the possible consequences of imbalanced relationships. On Live with Dara, Smith asks, “People have this to-do list of things that they should be getting done…what if you don’t have one? What if you’re just living?” Muirhead replies, “Why are you just living?...Living means that you’re receiving because once you’re alive you are receiving. So, where is the reciprocity in your existence?...nature gives and take…In autumn, the trees dem fall all of the leaves… and the leaves fall to the ground…those leaves turn manure in a deh earth fi feed back the same tree…The earth gives nutrients to the tree so that the tree could bear some fruits and have some nice leaves out there and look pretty during spring…then it fall (leaves) in autumn…those same leaves are what the tree give back to the earth to say thanks…Yuh can’t always a take, a reciprocity this name…You can’t put off the balance because if you’re always taking it means at one point in time its gonna go empty…it’s a cycle…” Muirhead remains cognizant of the fact that many people are just living out their existence without true contemplation. Though not a psychologist or psychiatrist, she aims to help others move beyond just living, all while neatly avoiding the role a practitioner might play. Muirhead is currently working on a journal that will contain affirmations, tips on working through emotions, journaling tips, and a guide to checking in on oneself. She frequently speaks out about the importance of acknowledging one’s emotions as being natural, including happiness, sadness, and anger. However, she also encourages individuals to find healthy outlets to express their emotions. For example, paying attention to your breathing, as good breathing exercises have personally helped Muirhead to reduce her anxiety and panic levels. She also mentions the benefits of partaking in meditation to deal with certain challenging emotions.

To experience Mpowered Interactions with Donaree Muirhead, you can find her on Instagram at @donamuir.s or @mpowered.interactions, or on Facebook at Donaree Muirhead Mpowered Interactions

Mother?

Amanda Kadima Contributor

“What are you going to do once you graduate?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“You’re not getting any younger. The time to have children is now.”

“It’s better to have them now than later. You don’t wanna be an older parent like I was when I had you.”

“What do you mean you don’t want kids? You don’t want to get married? What are you, selfish?”

“You don’t believe in love and marriage?”

“You’re being extremely selfish and you’ll regret it when you get older.”

“You’re going to end up dying alone. No one’s going to take care of you when you get older.”

These are just a few examples of the reactions I’ve witnessed from society when young women have expressed their desire not to marry or have children. Women are socially conditioned from a young age to want marriage and children; we are taught that being a wife and a mother will give our lives meaning, a sense of purpose. So when a woman expresses a contrary opinion, society deems her to be undesirable, selfish, and not a real woman. Personally, I haven’t decided if the roles of mother or wife are ones I want. I never fully identified with my girlfriends growing up, who have dreamed of being mothers. It’s simply not on my radar at the moment. Beyond that, I grew up in an environment where adults struggled provide financially for their children at times. Even as a child, I saw the stress of not being able to consistently provide. I was forced to parent to my younger siblings while still a child, at an age far too young for the task. These are all reasons why I remain undecided, and less than keen on the idea of raising a child. However, never say never.

I remember being questioned by a female family member, who has four children. She didn’t understand my hesitancy and confusion about being a mother. In her view, women are supposed to go to university, get their degrees, get married, and have children — that’s just what women are supposed to do. It worked out well for her; therefore, I should follow the same path. The conversation started out respectful, but soon shifted into a fierce debate around the benefits of being a childless woman.

Even though I grew up in a generation that believes in freedom of choice, I have realized there’s still a large swath of people uncomfortable with the concept of women choosing not to have kids. The life of choosing to become a wife and a mother is one that more and more women are opting out of, and a reality that society cannot cope with. I hope that society stops asking women when they’re going to have children. It’s extremely invasive in the first place, because you don’t know an individual’s medical history. Can they even have children? Have they been trying to conceive for a while, or have they recently miscarried? Moreover, we must remember the slogan of “my body, my choice.” I pray that one day, society stops its shaming and guilt-tripping of women who desire a childfree life. Society needs to move past the idea of every woman as a nurturer, and reach acceptance of the dreams and desires of every woman, instead of a singular future for all.