We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful NaSwana Moon. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with NaSwana below.

NaSwana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I realized I wanted to pursue Acting when I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2013 under Operation Enduring Freedom. I had an AHA moment, in the form of a question. Why am I willing to risk my life here but unable to pursue my dreams due to fear?
Being in a war zone and living through fear daily helped me realize that the fear I felt only had the power to hold me back if I allowed it to. And it’s something that I have to remind myself of daily.

When I returned home I started saving money and searching for where to start. I applied to the Savannah College of Art and Design and was accepted. Before then I had never acted before, all I had was my passion and belief that I could do it. I ended up transferring to the University of North Carolina Wilmington because tuition at SCAD was crazy. But knowing that I got into a prestigious Art School really set the tone for the beginning of my dream to become an actor.

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?

My name is NaSwana Moon (the S is silent) and I’m an actor, model, singer, songwriter and writer. I’ve always been artistic, but I started my formal arts education at Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) and finished at UNC Wilmington. My focuses for providing creative works to the world are via acting and modeling currently, but I’m also working on a book of poems and often write songs that, to date, I’ve just shared with family and friends. You can also find me singing Karaoke whenever time permits.

What sets me apart from others is the time and effort I put into my craft. I was taught early on, by my first agent (Jon Menick) who has since passed away, that preparation is key to success. I spend hours studying background of companies, characters and settings for scripts I receive, even when the parts may be small. I think this leads to me getting a better understanding of the character and what a company, brand, director or audience wants. I do the same work when preparing for Theatre or modeling and I believe it makes a big difference. You get out of things what you put in and I put in everything I have.

I’m most proud of my journey and my family. It’s been a long road to get to where I am with many obstacles (which you’ll read about in my other answers) and it feels good to see the effort beginning to pay off, which leaves me hungry for more success. My family is my rock and I rely on them for support, feedback and most importantly the joy I feel when talking and spending time with them.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was constantly trying to please people. My biological father wasn’t a part of me or my sister’s life growing up. I held onto that as a child and I felt like I wasn’t good enough. Those feelings carried over into my adulthood.

Growing up, I was a bit of an odd child. My mom said I marched to the beat of my own drum. For example, my favorite outfit was high water pants and holey socks. And as we all know, kids can be brutal. It always made me feel like an outsider in school and that carried into adulthood as well.

When I was around 12 my whole world was rocked. My mother’s battle with drugs pulled her away from me and my sister and we had to leave everything we knew behind. We were moved from our hometown and placed with our Aunt and her young son, who we had only met 2 or 3 times (Thank god for her, love that women to death). My mother’s disappearance really solidified my unconscious need to protect myself.

Because of all my experiences and circumstances, I had unconsciously learned that in order for people to stay in my life and to love me I had to be perfect; I had to be likable. So, I played basketball, ran track, joined JROTC, was on the drill team, color guard, in the literature club, the Spanish club, and a volunteer program. I hid parts of myself so that more people would like me and so that the people I cared about most wouldn’t want to leave me. This need to be what everyone else wanted continued throughout my life.

Fast forward, my mom beats her addiction and she comes back to us, but she doesn’t stop there. She gets her Associates degree in social work, then her Bachelors, then her Masters. She is now a Crisis Consulting Licensed Professional and we are so proud of her. That being said, it was still a journey for the 3 of us to learn how to build a new relationship. We accepted her back into our lives with open arms, but the trauma of her abandonment was still there. It was, and still is, something that we acknowledge and talk about.

From all these experiences, as well as societies expectations of women period, I conditioned myself to please other people, to have no boundaries, and to hide parts of myself. It was a defense mechanism that I built to make people want to stay in my life and it was absolutely exhausting. It wasn’t something I was consciously doing and wasn’t easy to recognize until I started therapy (which I recommend for everyone). I didn’t change overnight, but I started consistently working towards saying no to people, creating healthy boundaries, and marching to that beat again. I’m definitely a work in progress, but aren’t we all?

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

There’s a superstition that if you make a wish at 11:11, 2:22, 3:33, etc., those wishes will come true. I make wishes all the time and encourage everyone I know to do the same. My wishes are my goals and are almost exactly the same every time. I want be a famous actor with a platform so that I can bring more awareness to mental health and other disabilities within in the entertainment industry. I want to make bank, like bank bank, to takes care of my family and buy my mama a house. I want to love myself unconditionally and irrevocably. I want to travel the world. I want to continue to learn and grow to become a better actor and human being. These are the things that drive and push me in my creative journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://naswanamoon.wixsite.com/actor
• Instagram: naswana_moon