Episode 270: Skating Across America to Break the Silence | Melissa Skeet on MMIP, Healing and Speaking Out
Melissa Skeet is a Diné advocate and speaker who’s using her own story of survival to bring awareness to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP). In this episode, she and Kara talk about skating across the country to break the silence, finding purpose through pain, and using your voice even when it's hard. They explore trauma, advocacy, and what it means to heal in public.
“A lot of natives and non-native on social media are speaking out for MMIP, but when is a primary media source going to? When are our civic leaders going to seriously investigate these crimes?”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
(00:00:01) – Why Melissa Is Skating Across the United States
(00:03:10) – From Survivor to Advocate to Athlete
(00:07:30) – How Roller Skating Became a Healing Practice
(00:11:00) – Understanding the Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons
(00:17:30) – The Role of Law Enforcement, Media and Systemic Erasure
(00:22:00) – What the Red Handprint Really Means
(00:27:00) – Generational Trauma and Cultural Recovery
(00:34:30) – How to Support Her Mission and Why It Matters
That all stems to how colonization has changed our entire world, beginning from the first settler that came in to now, there's that systemic genocide that continues to keep happening. That's the scary part is systemic genocide. They don't like to talk about these types of cases.
That's Melissa Skeet, I'm Kara Duffy, and this is the Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Welcome to the Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Awesome. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
I am very excited to talk to you today. Your story is fascinating. What you're doing is incredible. Let's tell everyone your name, where you are in the world and what it is that you're up to.
Yes. SYá'át'ééeah my name is Melissa Skeet and I just said hello in Navajo. So I'm Diné from the Navajo nation grew up at the Grand Canyon national park. And now I live in Washington state. So I am a ultra trail skater slash victim advocate slash professional and motivational speaker.
There's so much in that.
So I want to first talk about. The huge skate that you're taking on. So you're going to be roller skating from Washington to Washington, DC. So Washington state to Washington, DC, across the U S you're doing this on roller skates, are you doing this by yourself? Do you have a team?
So right now. Yes, I do have a team.
I do have my fiance, Nate, who is going to be the individual who is going to be driving slash at times he'll probably be biking to keep an eye on me to make sure I'm okay. Um, he's my athletic trainer as well. He used to do athletic training as a profession. So he kind of makes sure that I, my body you know, gets what it needs.
That includes if I have an injury or something, he knows how to tape up my ankle or something. So he'll be with me. He usually comes with me and a lot of, you know, events that I do in my skating events. And he's one person who. I shouldn't say recently. It was kind of like a couple of years ago now, 2021, we did a similar skate, but we only reached 192 miles to go across the Navajo nation.
And he was, he biked with me the entire way. So to make sure that, you know, I had my nutritional needs necessities, you know, foods, whatever I needed on that skate and I had a skater with me. Her name is Daisy pretty who actually is interested in roller skating with me. Maybe for about partial way on this great skate tour, but, there's a lot of different groups and when I say groups, it's a roller derby teams that are wanting to come out from Canada different states that we hit up those local roller derby teams want to come out and hang out with us and skate with us and just root us on a lot of them are coming out to, to help us out with, you know, for safety reasoning and safety purposes to make sure that we get to that specific destination within that Within that day, should I say, or within that week, so I guess you can say it's, you know, it's myself and my, or, you know, my fiance, Nate, but we do have a lot of people coming in, I guess, I want to include them on the team as well from different states, yeah.
And so why are you roller skating across the U. S.?
So I am roller skating across the U. S. to raise awareness to missing and murdered indigenous persons and to further promote health, wellness, and healing. The only significance and the only intriguing part about it is that I'm doing it through roller skating.
And, you know, I've gotten a lot of different responses about why aren't you doing it on inlines? It's a lot easier. And. The part about roller skating, I think that a lot of people miss is what it brings to the table for me and how I want to help inspire others with their own healing journey and my own healing journey actually started with.
Roller skating and roller skating turned into well, actually, it started from roller derby and then it started to transition into trail skating. I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with being out on the outdoors, putting on my headphones, listening to my favorite music and just going, just getting on some random trail or even a road.
And skating that brought so much healing to myself and to my well being and I want to be able to inspire others to let them know even the skating world even others who you know I'm also including people to come out who are just wanting to walk who are wanting to run bike even inline skaters skateboarders to come out and say hey like we'll skate with you let's Bring an entire community together and just do something important to help out with this, this cause or this, you know, to bring awareness to something that continues to be silenced.
You talk about working through your trauma. You have an assortment of traumas to choose from. What should people know about you and your trauma to give context to how much skate, like roller skating has healed you?
I love that question. Beginning back, you know, when I was a child, I saw I was raised in a domestic violence family, and that was normalized and I didn't realize growing up that I would see myself mirroring my parents relationship. And to me, that was the type of relationship that I needed to be like, or to have, or the only thing that I really knew and recognized. So once I started, you know, getting older and dating different individuals, I ran into an individual, excuse me, I ran into an individual who almost tried to take my own life.
And. We started dating for a bit and then it just, there was a lot of red flags that I caught because during this time that I was in this relationship. I actually was a, an employed official victim advocate who worked with victims of sexual assault and sexual abuse domestic violence, but domestic violence was my main topic, my main crime that I worked mostly with and I loved it.
I really loved it. So during that time, I was a victim myself and the abuser tried to strangle me. And that's when I knew he was trying to end my life and it was the aftereffect that really, really stuck with me because I lost family members. I lost friends and I even lost my job, my job, who I, Out of all groups and people that I trusted, I thought they would be the one individuals to support me and there was probably like one or two individuals within that eight victim assistance agency that actually cared.
The rest were victim advocates who say a lot of. Gross unacceptable things that a victim advocate should not ever say in a line of work that they said to me, or that they said behind my back, or that they ostracized me and made me feel like I shouldn't be doing my job. So that was another huge emotional toll and the fact to of losing friends and family is.
What does that look like? It's when your own family members and friends actually blame you and think that you were the problem or that you were the issue or that you have family members who are like, why are you leaving this individual? Why are you? Why shouldn't you go back to him? And then others are seeing it as you've tried to leave so many times.
How come you're going back to this guy? And then you get, it's pushed away because people think that you're the crazy one. So after all of this I, you know, during that time I was actually competing, why should I, should I say I was actually trying out for the high altitude roller derby team in Flagstaff, Arizona.
And I, once I started really, really competing on, on this league in general, I realized that the family dynamics within this team was. What I was missing and what I, you know, brought me to just stick around to these powerful, strong, empowering, like women and men. And I realized these are my people, they are who I want to be around and they basically saved my life during that time.
And after that, being a part of trail skating, you know, that turned into something bigger. So, how I want to bring the message about my own healing journey for others to just say, Oh my gosh, you know, Melissa, aka Skeet Fighter, she, her healing journey is so unique and she talks about it. I mean, Can you imagine going to a conference who talks about child abuse or sexual abuse or domestic violence, and they read on one of the sessions, like a breakout session from that conference that says my roller skates have a story to tell.
I'm sure a lot of people are like, what the heck does this person have to, you know, do with your, I don't know why, why are they here at this conference? What does roller skating have to do with this conference? And when people show up, I'm like, This is my story that I'm going to tell you guys. This is, you know, I'm going to talk about being a survivor of generational trauma to a child Being exposed to domestic violence at a young age to seeing and realize or experiencing domestic violence and abuse to where I almost lost my life and then turning it into this is my roller skating.
My roller skates actually saved me. So that's, it's very unique.
It is very unique. And I love that in one of the videos that you have promoting what you're doing, you're talking about how the abuse in your home was, was common. The statistics are crazy high for domestic abuse in native communities. And you also talked about how the loss of your culture that was reinforced by your father after being sent to the residential schools and him buying into that concept.
So it's, it's such a multi layered removing of your identity and your power that I also think speaks in such a bigger way because. What part of you wasn't impacted by what you experienced in your home? And it's, most people have one of those boxes checked. And you have, you know, for the, the silver lining is having these, you can talk to so many more people about all of these things.
But there's a lot of depth for you to bring your story to. We've had other women on this podcast who are advocates for missing and murdered indigenous women. We've had Rosie fish on, and she's been running to you know, make sure that people know what's going on. I think it's important that we revisit some of the About what's happening.
So for people who aren't as informed as you are about what's going on with missing and murdered indigenous women Like what do we need to know and what are some key facts that I think will show people the magnitude of what's going on
yeah, and Rosalie Fish. It was, I think it was a Rosalie Fish phenomenal person and the work that she continues to do.
I follow her on Instagram and actually my, I think my fiance does too, especially with her running and in general, I just love what she does. So with missing a murdered indigenous person. So first started out with missing a murdered indigenous women, and it's a grassroots movement that started out a few years ago.
It started from Canada working its way down into the United States, but a lot of these cases in general have for a long time since I can remember, you know, growing up, one of my cousins was murdered and to hear that and then to hear your family say, let's Just don't talk about it. It kind of stems back to growing up with secrets that you find out with your family and why we had to keep these certain things private.
And the thing with that is. Speaking about it and talking about it is, is one thing. And with these types of cases, you know, this grassroots movement you know, starting from Canada, working down to United States. I don't think it was taken seriously. It was kind of seen as, you know, the stereotypical norm of it was native people are just a bunch of drunks and they, you know, Abuse alcohol, they get into drugs and that's just the way it is.
And then they put themselves into these positions of, well, you're, you're kind of asking to be killed. You're kind of asking to be sexually assaulted or, you know abused by your, your partner. You're, you kind of set yourself up in these positions. So that type of stereotype is passed on to the police department and that police department kind of looks at them as this is just a typical res, you know, the reservation or tribal lands and to have that type of.
What I say and what I think is a negative outlook on the indigenous people that is not our way or that is not our traditions of violence that was passed on from the colonization that was brought onto this onto our lands and for the Navajo people that the net people, we were forced off of our land.
Our lands from Arizona to walk about over 300 miles into New Mexico by the government, and many, many people were killed. Many of them were starving. Many of them were killed because they were sick, and the weather conditions were horrible and terrible, and they walked that entire way. And the government, trying to take over their land, they Completely demolished their crops.
They killed off their crops there. You know, the animals like the sheep, which we call it the best in Navajo killed them off. And because they wanted basically this was genocide. This was to try to kill off the indigenous people because the government wanted their land. The government wanted their land.
Money, it was just that's all it's really ever been about. There's a lot of other different stories. This is one story out of thousands across the entire nation going up to Canada. Where a lot of tribal you know, different tribal lands and tribes fight for their land, but the government just keeps on poking and poking and poking trying to push them back and say, no.
Like we have these policies. No, we can do whatever we want. No, this is going to be our land. And the tribe, you know, the tribe is like, no, this is our land. We know what the treaty says, this is what's happening. And then they just keep fighting back. And then there's this violence, this violence that is brought on by the police, you know, the military, they just come at the tribes like this, and the tribes are standing their ground.
And a lot of them are being killed. So, you know, It's, it goes along too with, you know, water is life, you know, what is land back? That all stems to how colonization has changed our entire world, beginning from the first settler that came in to now. There's that systemic genocide that continues to keep happening.
That's the scary part is systemic genocide. And the media plays a part in it where they don't like to talk about these types of cases and I get that because should I say, every time that I try to get, you know, partnerships or collaborations to help out with this great skate tour to help promote this even further to talk about this ongoing epidemic that continues to keep being silenced, these Organizations and businesses are just completely ignore it and they don't want to have anything to do about it. Or even with it, they tell me, Oh, it's too newsy. We don't want, we don't want to stir up trouble. It's like, okay. So, and that's another thing of why I want to bring about all of this. And there's a lot of cases right now that are being thrown under the rug or they turn into coal cases. So coal brings plenty is a recent case that, you know, everybody is talking about.
If nobody knows about it right now, I recommend to Google Cole Brings Plenty. And he's a native American who actually was just recently killed. They're saying there's no foul play, but it's a very odd that of course he had his, this is really, really, this disturbing part is where his braids were cut off.
And some person did that to him, a non native. And that is very, very, their hair is very, very sacred. Our hair is very, very sacred. So given that information, and then they found him where his sister was killed about six months ago in the woods. I don't know how law enforcement or, you know, the national policy makers, the media do not see that this is an issue.
Who's going to have the frickin balls to come forward and say this is wrong? So a lot of different social media outlets or a lot of different Influencers are talking about it and bringing it forward Oh, I've seen a lot of non natives on tik tok and Instagram talking about and saying this is fucked up And I agree, this is just another one of those cases that, you know, is an example of what's been going on and why MMI P is a big thing that we need to talk about and given the fact of, you know, we do have the red handprint, right?
So the red handprint, people ask what the heck is that? I've had people come up to me, especially in, in, you know, a recent skating race that I did last year, I had individuals making fun of me saying I put on my makeup wrong. I had an announcer literally just say very inappropriate things about my, the handprint on my face as I'm, you know, short, like strolling through the finish line and just saying inappropriate things.
Instead of that, why can't they just come to me and ask me what that means? I had a Elder come to me a non native elder come to me. He was, I don't know what age he was. He was probably in his 80s or something. And he comes up to me. He's like, you put on your makeup wrong. And I was like, actually, no, this stands for missing and murdered indigenous persons.
And I started talking about it. And he's like, oh, and he walked off 5 minutes later. He comes back and he says, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Do you mind telling me a little bit more about that? I'm like, yes, sit down and let's chat over some tea. So we did that. He just sat with my fiance and I, and we just started talking and he's like, I didn't know about any of that.
I am so sorry. He's like, It says us white people, man, we suck. I'm like, well, thank you so much for, you know, allowing me to share that with you because a lot of people don't want to hear it. And that goes along with our history. Our history was not talked about. It was not provided within our education format when we went to school.
And given my history. I don't know my language very well, because in one of my classes, the teacher got mad that I was speaking Navajo, told me to go to the principal's office, and I got a detention. They specifically told my parents, she cannot speak Navajo, she needs to talk English. So, my parents had to enforce that on me, and make sure that none of my family members taught me Navajo.
And as an adult Trying to learn it and relearn it. It's the hardest thing ever. And I get it. I get a lot of You know, indigenous elders saying you need to learn your language. You need to learn it. I'm like, well, I'm kind of starting from scratch here and as an adult, it is not as easy as when my brain was a sponge at a, at a toddler's age. You know, I'm doing whatever I can to relearn it. Just give me. So it's given all of this information. There's a lot of information. If a person sees a red handprint on my face and they like down the road, you know, while I'm skating and they go on their phone and they Google it and it says, you know, they can ask what does the red handprint on the face mean?
And right away, I guarantee you, you will hit MMIP or MMIWP or MMIW. And. That is a start to me. That is a start. My mission is to bring forward about the education and awareness of missing and murdered indigenous persons because murder is the third leading cause of death. A Native American women, the youngest missing a murdered indigenous persons case is an infant in the oldest.
And the elders, it's about, I think it was like 80s or 90s individual and we don't have a huge amount of like a big population of Native American individuals. Of course, colonization tried to wipe us out a long time ago, and we were trying to repopulate, but whenever we try to have a voice of our own and say, this is who we are, this is who we are.
We want to speak about these cases. We want to speak about the mistreatment. We want to do this, this, this. It's like we get shut down. We get hit hard by the government or, you know, media at times or like certain, like the criminal justice system and we're not idiots. Indigenous people are not stupid. We are, we literally know what is going on here.
And when we bring it about, when we bring it up to them, or we bring and speak to them. You start talking about it. They just look at us like you guys are crazy. That's where the gaslighting starts. You guys are crazy. You guys are a bunch of drunks and alcoholics, whatever. And you don't know what you're talking about.
It's like, actually, we do. So, and there's that stereotype, too, where people see Indigenous people as what they have seen in movies. From, like, movies. Gosh, those old black and white movies. And they see us as like, Oh, where's your bow and arrow? Or do you still live in a teepee? Which by the way, these are actual literal questions that I've been asked by non natives and they'll ask me if, you know, I thought natives looked a little different than they use Indians.
I thought Indians looked like this. This is from, you know, like the John Wayne movies or whatever. I'm like, no, just, just a human. Look like this and it's, it's just, it's just amazing. And just, it bothers me to still see that people perceive us in that way. But for those who want to learn a little bit more about who we are and, you know, what MMIP is. I hands down give it to them and say thank you. Yeah. navajo for wanting to learn and to be Provided this education that wasn't provided to you in school
Does it feel empowering knowing that? Right now in time, especially in the U S there are so many minorities saying the same thing of you're not listening to us. You're not investigating our murders and our people who've gone missing. You're gaslighting us. You're trying to take away all of our rights. You're trying to get rid of us. Like, I don't know a community that isn't saying that right now from the female community, the black community, the Asian community, like you name it. The LGBTQ plus, like everyone's saying the same things. And when you add up all the, you know, minorities of America, like It's the majority. Like, it's, it's such an old story that America has become, because it wasn't always, a white population. It didn't start that way. It's not that way now. I know California it's not the leading race in California. And it's like, it doesn't even matter. Like you said earlier, we're humans. Anyone who goes missing, anyone who is murdered should be a problem for the entire community because I don't know when we lost taking care of our neighbors and remembering that we are our neighbors. Like, This this idea of an us versus them is so it's being held by people that I don't have relationships with.
So, like, I can't even understand why it's still existing.
Yeah, no, you're, you're golden on that. Yeah, you're definitely right. And, you know, I, I do, I hear that from not just from my relatives or from my, you know you know, indigenous, like other indigenous tribes. It's, it's individuals who are a color, of color, LGBTQ.
You know, two spirit, they're all seen as, you know, you guys are not a part of our, you know, our crew or cool man's club because God says, this is this or because the Bible specifically says this and that's one thing of colonization that they brought to the lands was to kill the man and save. You know, or was it kill kill the Indian save the man that was their model that was their local basic, basically their logo of trying to turn a Native American child into a white man, because to them that was the way of life that was the way that we, they needed to be trained to, you know, to be civilized.
That went along with, you know, erasing their culture, their traditions, who they freaking are, and that, I see it, it, you know, going back to your question from before of like my father or your statement before it was my father, I saw every, you know, a few things that he. Had gone through of understanding that it could have been fear to that if he went outside of his belief system of Jesus Christ and the Bible and whatever came along with that and teaching my Children that if I went away from that, am I going to get abused if I went away from that?
You know, my what's going to happen to me? So I don't want to speak for him. I don't know and understand like Where, like, why? Because I don't want to be that person that is seeing negativity on anybody's religion, but for it to be forced on a person, that is not right. And for me, my brother and I, I, Myself, I, I am not, I am more spiritual, you know, I believe in my culture and my traditions, all of that.
And growing up, I didn't have what's called a Kenelda, and in Navajo, that is a woman or a young girl transitioning into womanhood. And they have a big ceremony, like a celebration for her. So she can walk in beauty throughout her entire life to have that protection and strength. And it's, it's a. It's a very, very awesome and amazing and intense ceremony.
My father did not want me to have that. He basically mentioned that it belongs to the devil. Was that him saying it personally inside? I don't know. But to me, it sounded something I would hear in a boarding school that he went to. So, this is generational trauma. And I do, I do see generational trauma on, you know, a lot of elders, or they will talk about it.
Not all of them will. And for them to talk about it, they are setting themselves back into that trauma and don't ever want to go back there again. But a lot of that and the trauma, you know, they weren't guided of how to take care of their soul or their, you know, who they are. It was just, you know. I'm going to grab a bottle of vodka or I'm going to grab some, you know, beer and I'm going to chug it because it's gonna make me feel good or, you know, getting into substance abuse.
And it's just, I feel like. You know, my father wasn't guided or my mom, same thing wasn't guided. She grew up in a very abusive home as well. Both of them did. And I think that was just normalized too. So, but I didn't start learning about all of this until getting, you know, just in my thirties, my twenties, I was kind of like, whatever.
And thirties, I started to really grasp onto who I, to learning more of who I am. It's just, you know, I, my parents, the, you know, I honestly don't have a relationship with them right now. There's a lot of abuse and pain and all of that, that I was not wanting to be a part of anymore, but now it's. I, I want to talk further about how this has really taken a toll on just, you know, a person like myself.
And I could be one out of thousands who have a story to tell or who have, you know, they are looking for their own healing journey still. And I want to be able to just inspire and help and talk about it. And there's just the history that we just, yeah, there's just, there's just a lot.
And I think from the history perspective.
I read, I love reading about history. I love exploring different cultures, everything. And when I read a book about the westward expansion in the U S. And they had never talked sequentially about like what was happening in history when some of these things were happening, but some of the biggest land pushes West were post civil war.
And all they did was take all these guys who had come from the war. So many, half of whom had lost the civil war with all their rage and all their upset and all their, how they thought the U S was going to be, and it wasn't and turned them to be like, okay, now go deal with that problem. So it's like compounding an issue of we weren't sending like negotiators.
Like we just were like, oh, you have anger issues. Let's And, you know, we'll clean it up in a couple of centuries. Thanks. Bye. And it's like, what's like, I, I just, I think like that context of who was going out and doing these things and why, and the having a bigger picture of like all the layers of what everyone involved was dealing with.
You're like, who thought this was a good idea? Like who thought this was necessary? And I just, when you start seeing the layers of history. In full depth, it starts shifting. All of it doesn't make any of it right. It just starts shifting it to be like, oh, okay. Someone knew what they were doing and knew that that was going to make it worse than it would have been.
Yeah. It's amazing. It's a, it's like this ripple effect from, you know, they're thinking, oh, we're going to do it now. Nothing's going to happen in the future. Nothing's, you know, bad's going to happen down the line realizing that, you know, generational trauma is a real thing. And what does that look like? Oh, A lot of crap that happened in our history, you know, it's now we're starting to talk about it.
And now a lot of Government whoever else is like no, no, no don't talk about that We need to ban these types of children's history books or we need to ban these history books in these certain states So we just don't want these young children to feel bad. We don't want the non natives to feel bad about what happened It's like, you're not, you're not doing, you're not doing a great, a great job of leading.
First of all, second of all, these individuals, these young kids need to grow up understanding what is actually going on in the world, truthfully.
You have gone through this rollercoaster of trauma. You've come out on the other side. I know that trauma is something that we continue to process and it likes to show up in really fun ways, but we're not expecting it, but you've decided to.
Channel all this energy and passion you have into being a speaker and then really excitingly to doing this cross country roller skating trip. You're raising money for...
It's going to a nonprofit and, you know, indigenous organization that. We want it to help with their programs. We want it to help with their mission.
We want it to help if you know, they have programs specifically for your indigenous youth. Right now. I'm still trying to look for that nonprofit indigenous organization that is willing to work with us throughout this entire time, not just say, okay, yeah, of course we'll work with you. And then we never hear from them again, expecting the funds to come in.
So I just want this to be an actual partnership where we work closely together to bring forward this awareness, but also to talk about this organization on my platform to promote them further to anybody, you know, any indigenous folks to come out and say, yes, I want, I need help. I would love to talk to this organization.
That's my mission and goal. Is to bring more and more awareness to, you know, of course, but to this organization that I'm partnering up with and working to get these donations and, you know, proceeds to this organization is not easy and it is that is why another thing of. Doing this great skate tour to roller skate across the entire nation Is to help a non profit indigenous organization get the funds that they need So because I get it i've worked for a non profit.
It is not easy to get those funds Especially grant writing and asking for grants is not easy. So i'm like, okay Well, i'll be that person to try to help i'll just roller skate across the nation to bring this about So we are still looking for an indigenous non profit right now You my way of doing that is to talk to the individuals.
If it's the board, whoever I want to have a meeting with them, that meeting will until of what I do, who my team is, what the mission is. What our goal is and within that goal is to okay. This is how much we would like to bring in for your organization. And right now we're looking about 25 K to about 35 K to this organization.
So far. People have donated. Part of this too. We are hoping my partner and I is to get at least. 15 K to about 25, maybe less than that K to help us actually do this event. It is not cheap and we are actually thinking of, okay, we're just going to probably have to do with what we have.
Just like anyone who was doing a national geographic.
You have to cover the cost to make it happen. Otherwise, no one's going to be doing these things anymore. Well, we have a couple of rapid fire questions for you. The first is what does powerful and ladies mean to you? And do their definitions change when they're next to each other?
Ooh, powerful ladies together is something very, very empowering and strong.
You could take, split them apart and you just see two separate words. You can just see woman, which is you and I, and then there's powerful, like, oh, okay. Something needs to go along with what that powerful means. But when you put them together, man, they unite. It's unstoppable. It's very unstoppable.
We ask everyone on the podcast where you put yourself on the powerful lady scale.
If zero is average everyday human, and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today and on an average day?
Oh, it's like asking like when someone asked me, like, can you write a bio about yourself in third person? I'm like, and I feel like I'm bragging about myself, you know powerful.
I never realized I, I saw myself as that. But I do see myself as a powerful woman warrior and I saw this beam this meme recently that said It was a elder talking to their grandchild, and he was saying son, you're not a survivor. You are a warrior. You've gone through so much crap, but you shouldn't label yourself as a war or as a you shouldn't label yourself as a survivor.
You should label yourself and see yourself as a warrior because you're You continue to keep doing great things and I do. I see myself as a woman warrior because gone through so much shit, you know, but when you come out of that and you do phenomenal things, you know, it takes I I feel like I'm I'm not doing enough.
But it takes my fiance and others tell me holy shit woman you're doing Phenomenal things and you need to give yourself some credit
Yeah And it's important to step into your power and take up the room that you have so that other people know that they can do It too.
Mm hmm. Exactly. Yeah empowering others
Yes, so for everyone who wants to follow you, support you, donate, come roller skate with you, where can they find and follow you?
The best place to come and find me is on Instagram, which I post a lot on my Instagram, but I get it. A lot of people don't have Instagram. I do have a Facebook and tech talk and an email address. Instagram is at skeet underscore fighter. Facebook, just, Search skeet fighter and tick tock is at skeet underscore fighter and my email address is just Melissa dot skeet fighter at gmail. com.
The last question we have for you today is what's on your wish list or your to manifest list. This is a big community. How can we help you make something come true?
Oh to make this come true is right now is to get it. You know, the donations to come in. Not gonna lie. We, my fiance and I are like, Oh, like a little nervous and stressed out anxiety, but mixed in with excitement at the same time.
So, you know, it's, it's the right thing. Is just trying to get as much donations in as possible and Mainly, yes, of course for us to make this happen, but my fear is not getting enough donations in for the non profit organization and I get it. A lot of people are like we want to know that this is going to the non profit like you got it Make sure that happens So this isn't my first rodeo to be honest.
It is my first rodeo when it comes to skating across the nation but you know You We want to make sure that not only are these indigenous nonprofits, you know, getting the help that they need or the help that, you know, they need. Is further programs basically further to help their mission, but to also for the families, you know, the victims and survivors of missing and murdered indigenous persons that you do have these warriors coming and we will make sure that you're being heard.
Did I answer?
Yes. That was like, that's a perfect way to wrap this up. Cool. But just thank you so much for the work that you're doing and that you are stepping into your power, even when you have all the reasons to not and to let someone else You know, lead the way, but you know, I'm sure that you can't, you have to do this.
So thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for speaking out. Thank you for being a stand for people who don't have a voice or are afraid to use their voice. You're not alone in this fight and I just thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you for being a yes to me and of course to the powerful ladies.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been an honor.
All the links to connect with Melissa and support her skate across America are in our show notes at the powerful ladies. com subscribe to this podcast. We have you're listening and leave us a rating and review. Join us on Instagram at powerful ladies and at Kara underscore Duffy, and you can also find me at KaraDuffy. com. Next week, I'll be back with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Instagram: @skeet_fighter
YouTube: @SkeetFighter
Facebook: Skeet Fighter
Website: https://linktr.ee/skeet_fighter
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Email: melissa.skeetfighter@gmail.com
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
