We recently connected with Melony van der Merwe and have shared our conversation below.

Melony, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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.

It was a calling I realized. As much as I came up with the idea, it was more about me meeting it when I was meant to. As it was just waiting for me to arrive. I consider myself a Nomadic Epicurean and I have been traveling towards myself for as long as I can remember. After graduating colleague with a Bachelor in Science Degree, I did not know what I want to do with my life because when I was a kid, the environment I lived – as a so-called “Colored” child during apartheid in South Africa – your parents only wanted the best and safest choice for you based on how they defined success. I wanted to make clothes, beautiful dresses, perhaps copying the fact that my mother was making a lot of our clothes and she was what they called then in our schools, a needle work teacher. However I clearly remember this one moment from my childhood, and I don’t recall many, where my mother told me that I was not going to be successful in making dresses and that to be successful you need to be a teacher, a lawyer or a doctor. Which in a young child’s mind unconsciously robbed her of her dreams, however not intentionally done so by a caring and loving parent doing the best they can based on what they know. I was left confused and from then on always followed the path of the applause as I say, what others thought I was good at and based on their reactions to what I was doing. Come post university graduation and I was left unmotivated and disconnected from where I was now supposed to go. I remember setting an intention for myself that I was going to go through life ticking off all the jobs that I thought I should pursue until I find what I was meant to do. About 10 or 12 years after this, in my early or mid 30’s after divorcing my husband who I married in South Africa and moved to New York with a few years prior, plus after a 2 year relationship that left me emotionally distraught and relatively alone, I set an intention to build community in New York. To find my tribe and to try to find the essence of family as I was far away from mine. Although my family is not perfect, where we always felt connected was around a meal, especially Sunday lunch or weekday dinners. Now, our parents never told us they loved us, but we felt it through the food and gatherings with their friends and their families that always had food as the connecting factor. Those moments tasted like love to me. So I felt my way towards feeling this in New York and started hosting Sunday lunches and dinner parties at my apartment in Brooklyn, where I was fortunate to have a lot of space to have more than 10 people over. New friends would invite others and as it is the case in most international cities, people were from everywhere and else in the world. All I suppose called to my table as they too needed nurturing, community and deeper connections. I would facilitate conversation through what I called “What is eating through your world”. Each person would share around the table. Now I did not have that growing up as we never spoke about our emotions. We were always spoken to. My parents were young parents so they did what they knew. And back at my table in New York, I also felt the need for a spiritual practice and I was not connecting with the idea of church or Christianity which is what I was raised in. I always disconnected from the experience of going to church and when attending Sunday School. So the “Divine” within led me to create a dinner experience following a lunar calendar – as the moon called my attention at the time – where I cooked a 3 course meal and I asked everyone to dress in white. Every course was presented and consumed with intention, reverence and presence. The dessert course would conclude in either a ritual of letting go what has come full circle or igniting your intentions, whichever one was based on the lunar phase. It all became clear that I wanted to nurture community and your journey navigating change, reminding you of the power you hold that creates your own reality. And this is where Manna Moon was born through and which is the essence of what it is in service to.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Lol, I think I covered most of this in answering the previous question. However I would like to add that I got here because of a need to live a life by my own design, and in my most authentic, highest self. I am someone who needs to feel emotionally satisfied to invest my time in. What moves me is cooking and nurturing community. There was a need for people to be “mothered” and after thinking that I was going to have children of my own, that course was shifted when I no longer felt connected to that idea, and I decided to not have children, and instead to nurture or “mother” those who came to my table. There are so many women – and men – who think that they need to have a child born from or through them to be a mother, a father or a parent. And when that does not come the way they imagine, they feel like outcasts, less than everyone else. I felt that way. And then when you realize the essence quality of that thing that you want can come through various forms, you realize that you have always had everything you wanted inside of you. Again, this is why I do what I do with Manna Moon, I want you to realize that you have it all, you just have to find what it feels like and everything feeling the opposite is for your to practice recognizing it and deciding to pivot your energy and attention on the part of the scale that serves you. I am proud of the fact that I surrendered to this journey for myself and practice what I preach as it got me here today. I did not depend on anyone but myself and did so with a practice of letting go of what no longer served me (which is always a gift), and practiced shifting my attention towards what I wanted to feel instead.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I worked full time running another business which was being an independent consultant and representative promoting luxury boutique hotels and eco tourism lodges in Africa to travel agents and operators in the Americas that plan private, luxury travel. When I came to the idea for Manna Moon, I was working full time in this role and would do the dinners and events on the side. It took me years and consistently doing the dinner to come to the name, register the company, developed the brand identify and organically growing the audience and following through friends and friends of friends all through trust and authenticity. I invested all of my own money – which was not much – to build this “home grown” business. I recently left my consulting work which expanded into developing strategic partnerships for a travel and sustainability tech company, to invest my expertise and skills full time in my business and have focused on collaboration to support the growth of the business and am on the brink of drawing financial investment from investors from my community who have been a witness to my journey and believes in me and the mission and vision (to help recalibrate the energetic balance of the planet) of Manna Moon.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

As someone who’s navigated her own way in life and did so by her own design, I had to unlearn to not carry my burdens on my own. That by asking for help and sharing my challenges, I learn from others not just about what options I can pursue to move forward from a challenge, but I also receive market feedback of what others need from what I was building. I also learned that there are others who are values aligned on the same journey as I was and in need of momentum through partnership to move their business forward. And so realize I did not have to build success on my own. The irony was that as a Partnership Specialist in my consulting business, I also had to unlearn that those skills did not belong to the client I was working for, that it is mine and that I can apply it to my own business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mannamoon.com
• Instagram: @mannamoontribe
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melony-van-der-merwe-359baa11?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

Image Credits
Ashley Turner – for the hero image and the additional 3rd (day time setting the table looking sideways) 4th photo (black and white one with all raising glasses) uploaded