We were lucky to catch up with Kendall Dominique Mimi Elizabeth Carter recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kendall and Mimi, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The Joyous Black Girl Movement started with Mimi and I asking each other where Black Women hangout in Sacramento. We wanted to find a space with like minded women who were on this journey towards self discovery. Women that were bold, unapologetic, and willing to break stereotypes of the ways that Black Women show up in the world.

One day in late June 2022, we decided to take a HUGE risk and bet on ourselves. Mimi and I took the leap to fill the gap that Sacramento was missing, a space for Black Women to build community and invest in their wellbeing collectively.

We wouldn’t be honest if we said that we wholeheartedly believed that it would work. There was a LOT of uncertainty. So many mixed emotions and, at times, an overwhelming feeling of what if no one shows up? But, it still felt like our Yes Season and we just went for it. From there we just started to plan. We really took our dreams and began to execute them (within our budget of course). We said yes to ourselves, yes to everything we wanted to give back to our community, yes to the things we wished we had when we started our healing journeys and yes to being scared, nervous, overwhelmed, and happy that we did it. That one, quickly planned, picnic has given back to us more than we ever expected and it keeps getting better. After this first event was under our belt, we didn’t stop. After going over what worked as well as the lessons we learned, The Joyous Black Girl Movement was born and we’ve been watching it grow ever since. This was a beautiful risk that we are so glad that we took.

Mimi and Kendall, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The Joyous Black Girl movement was created to support Black Women in exploring joy as a tool for healing. By asking a simple question: What brings you joy?

We wanted to build an intergenerational space to hold conversations on ways Black Women can improve and maintain their overall well being. Black Women are in a daily battle against capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. It is important that they have spaces for them and created by them to process them to decompress.

Joyous Black Girls mission is to create collective intergenerational spaces where Black Women can have honest conversations, build community, and invest in their joy. That looks like hosting events that support Black Women learning new tools to invest in their joy and create space for families to connect with local resources.

We support Black women in knowing that they have the right to explore new ways to tend to themselves without the judgment of thinking that “It’s not something Black Women do!”

Have you ever had to pivot?

Recently we’ve had to shift our approach to creating space to our SistaHood. Because, at times, conversations are sensitive and expose vulnerabilities, it’s understandably hard for some folks to have the capacity to show up and also engage and connect with folks they are not familiar with. So, we made our events private. This allowed us to pace ourselves with getting to know our community as well as ensuring their comfortability with opening up about themselves and experiences. Pivoting in this way allowed us to gain trust and truly connect to and with the community we love serving.

How did you meet?

Mimi and I met when I was 6 years old and she was 14 years old. Our mothers started off as coworkers, they worked for a beauty supply chain as managers and later became best friends. From that day on we always remember being in each other’s lives. Now here we are 24 years later starting a business together and supporting other Black Women in creating strong bonds.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joyousblkgirl.com
• Instagram: @joyousblkgirlmovent
• Other: TikTok: @joyousblkgirlmovement

Image Credits
Michaela Stewart CreateHerDreams Photography IG: @createherdreams