The Michelle Majors Show

What happens when the world decides who you are before you’ve had the chance to define yourself? And what does it take to reclaim your life when the systems around you are designed to take away your power?

In this episode of The Michelle Majors Show, I’m joined by Mpingo Uhuru, author, poet, spoken-word artist, and founder of Zuri World Studios, for a powerful conversation about identity, dignity, freedom, and the courage to rebuild.

After spending 28 years incarcerated, Mpingo emerged with more than a story of survival. She brought with her a vision, a creative body of work, and an educational framework called Restoration as Architecture, which challenges us to examine not only what needs to change within ourselves, but also the systems and environments that shape our lives.

We talk about the importance of telling ourselves the truth, taking our futures seriously enough to build something different, and the complicated journey from surviving to rebuilding to truly living. We also explore what it means to reclaim softness, peace, and personal agency after years of having to protect yourself.

Because our past may be part of our story, but it doesn’t have to be the definition of who we are—or who we’re becoming.

What happens when you stop waiting for someone to acknowledge the harm they caused—and start trusting what you know?

In this episode of The Michelle Majors Show, I’m getting personal. I open my new affirmation book, I’m Leaving Now: The Breakup & The Becoming, and land on a subject I know all too well: narcissism.

I’m sharing my own experience with the confusion, manipulation, and emotional conditioning that can leave you questioning your own reality. I talk about why recognizing patterns matters more than assigning labels, why your healing cannot depend on someone else’s accountability, and why you have to learn to trust your own truth.

I’m also challenging something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: the expectation that Black women must continually prove our strength through suffering, surviving, and overcoming.

I’m done with that.

Maybe this next chapter isn’t about overcoming anything. Maybe it’s about yielding to softness.

This episode is about reclaiming our peace, trusting ourselves, and deciding that we’ve carried enough.

Sometimes the hardest thing to confront is, I was wrong.

In a previous episode, I shared some pretty strong frustrations about my new neighbors. I made assumptions. I aired judgments. And I did it publicly. Since then, I've learned things that completely changed my perspective.

o this week, I'm doing something that's uncomfortable, but necessary. I'm holding myself accountable.

This episode is about judgment, humility, and grace. It's about what we miss when we assume, what becomes possible when we ask, and how even small moments of care can change someone's life.

And maybe, it's just a reminder- Everybody's carrying something. And sometimes, accountability begins with three simple words: I was wrong.

Love, Michelle

What does it mean to truly take care of yourself—not after the work is done, not once the crisis is over, but as part of how you live?

Dr. Michelle Majors sits down with resilience strategist, author, and two-time cancer survivor Savio Clemente for a deeply personal conversation about exhaustion, recovery, leadership, and what happens when life forces you to reconsider the way you’ve been living.

Savio shares his experience of facing cancer for a second time, undergoing a life-saving stem cell transplant, and realizing that survival wasn’t simply about getting back to work—it was about learning how to live differently. Together, Michelle and Savio unpack the pressure to produce, the baggage we carry, the difficulty of giving ourselves permission to rest, and the courage it takes to listen to what our bodies and lives are trying to tell us.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about making your life count—not by doing more, but by becoming more intentional about what you carry, what you release, and how well you care for the person carrying it all.

Sometimes the lesson finds you in the most unexpected place.

Last week, mine found me on the back of a horse.

What started as a surprise day of horseback riding became a lesson about freedom, trusting what I know, and keeping my eyes on where I’m going instead of constantly looking back at what might be coming after me.

I talk about what Bass—the horse I rode—taught me about listening to myself, moving even when I’m afraid, and making peace with the fact that I cannot control everything happening around me.

Some things are hard right now. Some things are still unresolved. And still, I am deeply grateful. I am free. And I’m learning that my job isn’t to keep looking back.

My job is to keep going.

In love,

Michelle

This week on The Michelle Majors Show, I’m sitting down with my friend Marlon Brown for a conversation that hit closer to home than I expected.

Marlon and I both built careers around work that changed almost overnight. DEI/Equity and while I’ve talked a lot about what comes next, Marlon gave me language for something I hadn’t fully considered: sometimes you have to grieve the life you thought you were going to have before you can build the next one.

We talk about losing work, money, identity and certainty. We talk about faith when the plan falls apart, making peace with what happened, knowing when it’s time to pivot, and finding your way back to the work that feels like your true zone of anointing.

Marlon also shares what it has looked like to return to Seattle, rebuild Bessie’s Cakes, support his marriage through an incredibly difficult season, and discover that even after everything burns down, you still have what you need to get to the other side.

This one is about grief, faith, reinvention, humanity and rising from the ashes.

And maybe most importantly, it’s about realizing that starting over doesn’t mean starting from nothing.

I was asleep when my Ring camera went off: “You have a person in your foyer.”

I looked at my phone. Hoodie. Flashlight. Someone was inside my house.

And the first thing I thought was: Oh. My ex finally did it.

What happened over the next few minutes—and what happened to me in the days afterward—opened up a much bigger conversation about safety, brain fog, fire arms, profound overwhelm, rage, sadness, peace, and what it means to be in the middle of becoming.

Because lately, I’ve been wondering if something is wrong with me.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if, for the first time in a very long time, things are actually becoming right.

What if the reason I’m exhausted isn’t because I’m doing life wrong—but because the life I was taught to build no longer makes sense?

In this episode of The Michelle Majors Show, I sit down with my friend, author, public theologian, and founder of Emerging Human Lab, Carmen Michael Smith, for a conversation inspired by his article, The World Silently Ended: Welcome to the Post-Notification Era.

Together, we unpack what happens when the old promises—work hard, get the degree, build the career, achieve more, and eventually you’ll arrive—stop delivering the life we were promised.

We talk about grief, work and identity, AI, our addiction to productivity, and why even vacations and self-care aren’t enough when your spirit is simply fed up. As Karmen puts it, we’ve been taught to become human through our work—and now we’re being challenged to discover who we are without our accomplishments defining us.

But this isn’t just a conversation about what’s ending. It’s about what we’re building next.

What kind of life am I actually creating? What would change if we stopped organizing our lives around productivity and started organizing them around being fully human? And who must we become when the people we were trained to be are no longer enough?

This is a conversation about rest, freedom, identity, faith, intentionality, and giving ourselves permission to actually experience our lives while we’re here.

Season 55 is a walk in the sun. This feels like the perfect place to begin.

* Link to Karmen’s Full Article: https://lnkd.in/g8KdvPZN

* Karmen’s Website: https://karmenmichael.com/

* Karmen’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karmen-michael-s-a83149409/

Season 55 came in HOT.

I called the IRS about a form. That’s it. A FORM. The woman explained it to me over and over and my brain simply would not process what she was saying.

And then I started crying.

Not cute crying either. I BROKE DOWN.

And somewhere in the middle of trying to explain to this poor woman that I actually am an intelligent person 😂, I finally said it:

I’m. So. Tired.

And whew. Apparently my whole body had been waiting for me to admit that.

The divorce is over. My mom is settled. The emergencies have slowed down. And now my body is basically like, “Great. MY TURN.”

My turn to be tired.My turn to be angry.My turn to admit that I’m gutted and broke down.My turn to admit that I’m afraid of whatever is coming mostly because I don’t know what it is.My turn to stop making excuses for people because I understand why they are the way they are.

Because understanding why somebody hurts you does not mean you have to keep letting them hurt you.

So yeah. Season 55 starts with me crying on the phone with the IRS, being mad at my ex, (and myself) rethinking relationships, questioning why I’ve tolerated certain things for so long, and realizing that maybe I haven’t actually been “fine.”

And for once?

I’m not trying to hurry up and turn any of it into a lesson.

I’m just letting myself feel it.

Welcome to Season 55. Dear Lord.

Yep, Season 54 of The Michelle Majors Show is a wrap, and boy have I learned a lot.

In this season finale, I’m reflecting on a year shaped by divorce, fear, faith, freedom and some painfully expensive lessons. I’m sharing what I learned about doing the hard things, letting people be who they choose to be, refusing to measure love by how much dysfunction I can tolerate, and becoming fiercely protective of my time, peace and freedom.

Season 54 was hard—but I’m still standing.

And as I step into Season 55, I’m clearer than ever: this is my show, I am the writer, and I get to decide what happens next season—one episode at a time.