THE ART OF STARTING OVER WITH NANA MERIWETHER
If you’re anything like me, you’ve held onto a lot of fear about major life choices. What’s the “right”or “wrong” move? When’s the “right” or “wrong” time to make that move? If I go left, will I regret that I didn’t go right? When I was contemplating leaving my job at Bazaar, I kept trying to set deadlines for myself for when I should quit. Each self-imposed deadline would come and pass me by, and I would be so frustrated with myself that I kept dragging the whole thing out. I was the one holding myself back. I was frustrated that I couldn’t just take the leap of faith, and my inability to do so meant I was delaying the next phase of my life. I was missing out on something else. Now, looking back, I wouldn’t change a damn thing. I know everything played out the way it was meant to. All those opportunities that I thought I might be missing out, still came to me when I was ready.
Change is scary; starting over is scary. No one can tell you what the right decision for you is–but if you find yourself constantly questioning whether you should leave your job, or a relationship, that's probably your intuition telling you there's more out there for you. So often, we get caught up in thinking that our lives are supposed to look a certain way. We’ve been sold this idea that life follows one path: go to college, meet your spouse, find a job, be loyal to that company and work your way up the ladder, buy a house, have a kid, work some more, then retire if you’re lucky. Sure, some people's lives may follow that trajectory, but it certainly doesn’t mean that life path has any more or less value than people who take a different route.
That’s what I find so inspiring about today’s guest, Nana Meriwether. She's not afraid of starting over—even if that means interning at 30 or going against the med school route her parents wanted for her. With every career change and new chapter, she sets a new challenge for her personal growth. I met Nanawhile we were both working at Harper’s Bazaar. I was a digital editor and she was the assistant to the Editor-in-Chief, Glenda Bailey. Our paths didn’t cross much in the office, but we had an unspoken bond as the only Black women in the office.
From her reign as Miss USA to playing professional volleyball, walking away from a dream job after being denied a promotion, and launching her company Cale from her mother’s kitchen—we discuss what it’s like to keep starting over again and again.
Read the edited interview below, or you can listen to our full conversation
Starting off with the obvious (well, the obvious to me), you are an actual beauty queen. Can you tell me about how that happened?
Nana: I’ve lived many lives. The lead-up to it, I grew up in D.C, and I went on to Duke where my dad was the first African-American to attend their medical school. So, he was like, you must fulfill my legacy! I didn’t enjoy my time there, so I transferred to UCLA. I was on the volleyball team, I ended up becoming an All-American, we made it to the Final 4 my senior year. I was recruited to train for the Olympics and also played professionally in Puerto Rico. Then I did post-grad at USC. I was on my way to medical school, and as I was studying, I missed competing in something. A friend of mine suggested I compete in Miss Malibu. It was happening in two weeks, so I said sure! I’d never worn makeup, I sewed my own gown. But I won! Which led me to Miss California. There’s like 300 girls competing for that state title, and I lost. I competed six more times, I got as high as second place. I finished school, and I went home and competed in Miss Maryland. I ended up winning, which led me to Miss USA.
How did you go from Miss USA to assistant at Harper’s Bazaar?
Nana: After my Miss USA reign, I just knew I wanted to work in fashion magazines. I started applying to jobs, but no one would hire me. The industry can be quite nepotistic. So, unless I was somebody’s daughter, I wasn’t going to get in without starting from the bottom, regardless of anything I’d done in my past life. I got an internship at Bazaar. I went from riding in black cars, walking red carpets, and being on private jets to booking those for my bosses.
All the other interns would ask me what year in college I was, and I was 30! I then interned again at CR Fashion Book, and while I was there, the assistant to editor-in-chief at Harper’s Bazaar opened up. I applied with experience, and relationships built, and landed the job.
I really admire the fact that you weren’t like, I’m too old to start again. I think a lot of people get stuck in that mentality.
Nana: I really aspire to these things that are huge. For example, Miss USA. I could’ve just been a Miss USA, and that would’ve been a story I could tell the rest of my life. But I also played sports, worked at Bazaar. With all those experiences, the door didn’t just fly open. I had this understanding that I had to work for it. Even if that means lugging clothes around the city. I was working towards something and that’s what fueled my days.
So your position as the executive assistant, what was that like?
Nana: If you’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada, it was exactly like that. I felt like I was watching a documentary of my life. The experience was wonderful though, I learned so much. I was at Bazaar when the magazine turned 150 years old. So around that time, beyond just assisting Glenda, I had the chance to dabble in special projects. I helped to project Bazaar images on the Empire State Building. I even got to put together a global book tour for the 150th anniversary. We went to Paris, Milan, and London. I got to meet creative directors like Victoria Beckham, Giorgio Armani. One day Christian Louboutin walked Glenda and I around Paris. It was kind of unreal. Glenda is very much a brilliant creator and empowered creatives, but also really great at business. I learned a lot from her.
How did you know it was time to leave?
Nana: After 3 years my life in the office became so automatic. I was doing the same thing every day, almost on autopilot. My inherent nature is, I enjoy challenges because it makes you grow—and I was no longer growing, no longer being challenged. As they say, working women in the corporate world should ask for what they want. So, I compared notes, I wrote down what I had done for the magazine, especially during the 150th anniversary, where I wanted to help take the magazine and support different teams. I walked into her office and pitched her. My plea was, at least can I have a title change beyond assistant? She listened to me. A couple weeks later, she informed me my request was denied. I hit a ceiling. I don’t think she had much control, but I knew I had to leave.
You were also embarking on a spiritual journey as this was going on, how did that begin?
Nana: My expansion into the spiritual world came because I hit a rock bottom. I was denied any growth in my job, so work was arduous. My health had taken a turn, and I didn't realize. One month I read my horoscope, and it said I should go see a doctor by the end of the month. So I booked a physical, and a week later, they marked my blood sugar was off, and if I ate one more donut, I would be in this realm of chronic disease. I was in my early thirties, and I was faced with my mortality in a sense, a reminder that this isn’t all forever. I began to ask these grand questions, what am I doing here on earth? What is the point of all this? What is the meaning of life type questions? When you start being aware and start asking these questions, it's prime time that your consciousness is trying to expand. That you're ready to reveal the magical things that can be about being human. In 2018, I started a year-long column for myself in order to heal. I started to teach myself health—tangible ways to change your health and mind and lead yourself to more happiness. So, I wrote every week about a topic in wellness. In a beginner’s mindset, what is meditation? What are you trying to achieve in that? What is yoga? Why should we eat low-carb? What is tantra? I would back them with science studies and what the East was saying. I continue on, it's a lifelong study of how to be well.
Unhealthy things are laden in the culture. Our food is filled with sugar. We’re encouraged to be on our phones all the time. You are encouraged to work 24/7. These are not healthy things. Not saying you shouldn’t do them, but you need to learn balance between ok, I’m going to be ‘doing’ all week Monday through Friday, but I need balance on the weekends. If you don’t find balance, your life could fall apart. That's what happened to me.
Where did you go after resigning from Bazaar?
Nana: When I decided I needed to leave, I wanted to look at the industries with the most growth, where I can do anything. Tech was one. Especially in this new sector called Blockchain. At the time, people were learning about Bitcoin and digital currency. I started to self-study. I found this company in Brooklyn, it was a Blockchain accelerator—if you had an idea in Blockchain, we would fund you. I got the job, and we’ve since become more of a software company. We were a really young company. People were really excited and energized to be in this new affluent space that was primed to change the world and still is. So I would see 22-year-old boys running around, getting their companies and projects funded. So I was like, wait a second, I can do that too. I didn't know what it was to grow a company, or incorporate, or make a marketing plan and pitch deck. But just watching and observing, something woke up in me, and I was like, I will one day do that, I will be a start-up founder.
How did your company come to be? When did you get the idea?
Nana: In 2018, as I started this wellness journey, at the end of the year, I took a trip to Costa Rica and lived on a Permaculture farm. The founder of the farm took me around and taught me about plants; that they’re medicinal, you can brew them, and they’re an ancient practice to heal through botanicals and plants. It’s a field called herbalism—which I didn't know existed until this trip. So I came home, and I started apprenticing with different herbalists around the city and in the Catskills. They would teach me about the medicine in plants—and within that knowledge and study is something called herbal wine. I think of it as a cousin to kombucha. Since ancient times, whether Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or Chinese, they have fermented herbs and botanicals to make wine. Something lit up in me, so I started researching it.
For the summer of 2019, I began product development out of my mother’s kitchen and realized I wanted to bring this to market. In 2020, I got an apprenticeship at Matchbook Distillery on the North Fork of New York, it’s woman-owned. I would work alongside her and learn from her, and she would inform my work and teach me how to formulate these herbal wines. Late 2020, I found a winemaker to scale this and bring it to production. I launched my fist herbal wine in February 2021, a hibiscus wine. I have a new wine coming out this fall. It’s very much a wellness company as well because they're super low in alcohol, sugar, calories, and sulfites. I personally call it my weekday wine, when you need a little buzz or a little respite, but you have things to do in the morning.
My aspiration is for Cale to be a wine alternative. Life is about balance. I do enjoy my glass of mezcal on the rocks on a Saturday night. But on weeknights, when I want to be super productive, and I’m mindful of my health, I look to herbal wine to help satisfy me.
When you got the idea, how did you actually make it all happen and find the people you needed to help make it a reality?
Nana: It’s not only finding the people to brew the wine, but the building of the business part: the legal, the design, social media. The building of business is very much about problem-solving. All day I problem-solve and remove hurdles that allow my business to grow. So, especially because herbal wine is an ancient practice, but new to the modern day, I would write to Napa winemakers, like hi, I want to make wine out of flowers, you do it like this, it's from Egypt. I got a lot of no’s. It’s a very old school, very stoic culture. Not a lot of people wanted to work with me, until I finally found the right partner.
It was the same for different aspects of my business building. When it comes to marketing, especially coming from Bazaar, I wanted to tell stories. I wanted my feed to inspire people to live well, not just partake in herbal wine. I had to find a designer that understood this was going to be about storytelling. You have to learn about all the different things— incorporating, finding a bank to do business with. All of these were lessons. Startup entrepreneurship is very much an exercise in personal development. As you’re faced with problems, you have to get over stuff within yourself in order to have the energy to persist. It’s been fun but one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.
I love this ongoing theme of not being afraid to try something new. I think that’s really inspiring for people who feel trapped in what they do. I even felt that way, you get so attached to the brand name you work for, the amount of years you’ve put in, people know me as doing this particular job. It does feel scary to separate yourself from these things, like, am I going to be able to stand on my own two feet?
Nana: That’s where the personal work comes in because all these things youthink you can’t do, it’s you telling yourself that story. We can literally do anything on this planet. We’re inherently creators. Inherent healthy human state is that ideas are just coming out of you. You have this energy that you want to bring things to life. It’s tapping into that through things like meditation, eating well, that you get the energy to break these stories. You can break out and do anything at any age.
It's the self-limiting beliefs that a lot of people have that stop us at some point or another from trying something new. We all have doubts. But much like you said, I’ve always felt this responsibility, this purpose—I am meant to do great things in life. Sure, everything I do might not be a huge massive success. But I think people get really scared to try things. There’s the fear that it might fail. But you have to ask yourself, what’s worse? Not ever trying? Or trying it and saying, okay it didn’t work out, so I’ll adjust things, or try something else.
Nana: Honestly, there’s risk everywhere. Even Jeff Bezos has risk. It never ends, you just have to keep going and keep challenging yourself. Yes, there's days I have self doubt, and then I go to sleep and wake up and I’m like, okay, I’m going to do this. We’re here, this is it, this is life. Let’s do this. That’s my mindset.
What is the balance like between maintaining a full-time job and your own company?
Nana: Having a full-time job and a side gig makes for long days. The first half of my day is taking care of my full-time job, that is my priority. It’s when I feel comfortable that not only everything is taken care of in my day job. What I learned from managing the Editor in Chief of Bazaar, you have to anticipate things that may go wrong, or anticipate what someone may ask of you next. So I'm even a step ahead. I make sure I'm positioned right in my day job, then I feel better mentally to move over to my startup, Cale.
Balance is really big for me. I am adamant about allowing for work/life balance. It’s a must. I’m persistent in this. I do not believe in working into the weekends. I really try to end work around 7, go for a walk, before I come back, feed myself, and settle into the night. I need hours to recharge. It’s an honoring of the idea of feminine and masculine, yin and yang. What I've learned from spirituality, that in order to be complete and healthy, you must inhabit both sides of doing things, and simply being. So, I balance my work with things like kundalini yoga and hugging trees on the weekend, playing with herbs and botanicals in my kitchen, I love to write, I do breathwork, I meditate. I partake in these really soft things in my off time. I would be drained if I didn’t. There is no virtue in always being on. That’s something our culture has celebrated. You can be more powerful if you set boundaries.
Do you think spirituality has helped you be a better business founder?
Nana: We’re seeing this rise of really spiritual business people...the founder of Moon Juice is very into Kundalini yoga, the founders of Dry Farm Wines speak about meditation. Founders are like, we’re gonna take ice baths at lunch. There’s now this marrying of wellness work into the workplace. I think yes, it informs my business very much. But you have to be careful, it’s a dance between, if I'm going to meditate all day long, no work will get done. You have to know how to step in and out of it. Also, use the wellness work to help fortify the energy you need to literally bring ideas out into creation. When I launched my first product in February, it was the most stressed I’d ever been in my entire life, even competing for Miss USA. I never embodied so much terror than when I was finally bringing this idea to life… what if not one person cared about it? I wouldn't have survived that era without the work. I had to have my morning routine.
Tell me your morning routine.
Nana: I wake up at 7 and I usually work out, I move my body, I go on a run or do a HIIT workout so my blood is flowing. Then I’ll start with a warm drink—in Chinese medicine they say it’s best to start with something warm. It gets all the systems inside going. Then it’s time to wake up my mind. I start with a 10-minute breathwork, then sound meditation, I listen to gongs. Then deep meditation for at least 20 minutes. I’ll do yoni egg practice, on weekends I do coffee-enemas. Along my journey into wellness, I've picked up these things that inform my morning. There’s a stark difference in my day if I don’t do these things. I just went to Napa and the first day I was like, I don’t have to meditate this morning. By the end of the day, my thoughts were so limiting. The next day I woke up extra early to do the things I needed to do and my day just flowed. 95% of the time I'm doing my morning routine. But it’s also important to have those days I don’t do it so I can see that contrast.
I think a lot of things open up for us through spirituality. Operating from a place of connectedness, and belief in yourself, your power, things just flow.
Nana: It’s almost like a secret. People like Oprah know, and that’s how Oprah is Oprah. To reach that great height of being a human, you don’t have enough energy, you need to draw it from somewhere else. And that place is the thing we called God, the universe, light. Connecting to that place—and not even in a religious sense. I get DMs from people who are like, where do I even start? For me, it started with my darkest place. I had blood sugar that was off. For me, the entrance was, what am I supposed to be eating? I started eating more healthy, my body changed, my mind changed. I was in more feelings of flow. So look at what’s darkest for you… that’s the key to it. If you're like, I have ADHD and my mind won’t stop, start asking questions about meditation. If you’re like, I hate sex and I can’t orgasm, ask questions. Go to the darkness, that’s the door for you. That’s the universe trying to be like there’s something here you have to walk in the darkness to try to find it. That’s my best advice.
I began my spiritual journey a little bit before turning 30. Also in a dark a place, I was in a toxic on-and-off relationship and just feeling my lowest, like I'm not operating from a sense of worth. This is not who I am. This just isn’t right. My tarot reader told me to read Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You, and that opened up a whole new world for me, and way of thinking.
Nana: The answer isn’t seeking external things, like if I only get a boyfriend then this and this will line up. It’s you! You are the thing. When you align yourself, that’s when manifestation happens. It’s honestly, the state that you’re in, that you have to cultivate. It’s hard work but it’s worth it.
Nana’s Most Recommended Reads
The Magdalen Manuscript: The Alchemies of Horus & the Sex Magic of Isis
because SEX. Sex will never be the same—it will show you that this exchange with another and with yourself is all about conjuring energy.
if you have ever wanted to understand men or the masculine within you, this book is bible. You will begin to understand everyone you encounter more fully.
a book about how to be THAT GIRL.
The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders
This touches upon how our emotions and thoughts, these invisible things, become physical ailments and sickness in the body. The science behind psychosomatic disorders and how to better your mind as it has implications for your bodily health.
If you find yourself wondering why everyone is meditating, doing kundalini yoga and drinking green juice all of a sudden. Especially for those more advanced in their spiritual journey, you will relate to and understand what this book is talking about.
Before You Go...
via @resetnyc