MoMo Ward
Social Media Creatrix, InPower Institute
MoMo (Ze/Zir/They) is focusing on therapeutic healing practices from a black womanist perspective and artistic expression. MoMo shares with InPower the emphasis on children, teens, and young adults healing. Through somatic bodywork such as dancing and yoga, MoMo believes movement is an art and a way that younger people can find identity, empowerment, and voice.
MoMo has served in higher education for 8+ years, working closely with former foster youth, first-generation college students, and marginalized scholars. What brought them back to school was serving the LGBTQIA+ plus young people and being a high school counselor. They noticed that scholars were dreaming about their future but battled with anxiety and depression. Creative coping skills through music, poetry, and art became part of MoMos’s practice. Shortly after working as a high school counselor, MoMo was called towards becoming a yoga practitioner. Their yoga training is focused on social-emotional learning for educators and teachers. Currently, their yoga practice is for all bodies, including fat bodies and chaired bound people.
MoMo brings a California, Bay Area perspective and is sensitive to being a visitor of the greater St. Louis area. Attending California State Monterey Bay and receiving a Bachelors in Collaborative Health and Humxn Services with a focus on Social Work. Before that, MoMo participated at a local community college Solano, where the passion for education, foster youth, and poetry collided. MoMo brings an empathic and contextual understanding by being adopted, trauma healing, and first in their family to attend and graduate college.
They take every opportunity to attend spoken word events, collaborating with local STL activists and artists. If you ask MoMo what brought them to STL, they often say, “Their ancestors and spirit brought them here!” In their spare time, they visit black-owned eateries and drink a lot of tea with honey. If MoMo had unlimited time, they would create art through their fashion, buy plants, and rap to their two cats!