Symphony and Josh Zawadi have a beautiful and brave mission.
To “raise carefree Black children.”
They carry it out in their daily choices leading a blended family and as parents to eight-year-olds Kahlani and Marli, five-year-old Kingston and Harlem, who’s a year and a half. And they explore it on Melanated Mama and Melanated Daddy, their blogs and social media platforms, as well as Life with Zawadi, the podcast they host together.
That Symphony and Josh are now a family is something of a full-circle moment. After attending the same high school in Milwaukee, their paths diverged, Symphony going to college and becoming an art teacher, principal and artist, and Josh joining the Army. Years later, he reached out to her on social media and, after some persistence, she agreed to go out on a date with him. This August, they’ll celebrate their second wedding anniversary.
Marriage brought Symphony and Josh a unique opportunity to start writing their own story together. They decided to both take a new last name that would represent their combined family, and they chose “zawadi.”
“It means ‘the gift’ in Swahili,” Symphony says. “Josh is adopted, and he believes family is a choice and that our family is a gift and something to take care of.”
Much of Josh’s work centers on celebrating the beauty of blended families and helping parents be intentional figures in their children’s lives.
For Symphony, her goal is to create a community and ensure fellow mothers feel seen and inspired. She identifies as a conscious parent and seeks to guide her children on their unique journeys of growing up.
“I realize my kids are little humans and I take pride in supporting their autonomy and growth,” she says. “I want my children to feel confident in showing up as their authentic selves, relinquishing the desire to control what the end result will be.”
And she’s also open about the challenges.
“Being Black in America comes with, as a parent, wanting to stick with control because we just want our babies to come home at night,” she says. “I am resisting that. I want my kids to just be kids and be joyous. Joy is an act of resistance to systems meant to keep us down.”
For the Zawadi family, joy plays out in exploring Milwaukee and Symphony and Josh experiencing the city anew with their kids. It takes the form of dance lessons and piano lessons and the kids joining Symphony in making art.
And for Symphony and Josh, joy also comes from working together on their podcast, talking through topics of parenthood and partnership and sharing lessons they’ve learned along the way.
The audio aspect of podcasting in particular also appeals to Symphony for personal reasons.
“When my mother died in 2019, I could not find any audio or video of her voice, nothing to pull back on,” she says. “The documentation of the podcast, and my social media in general, keeps me inspired. And one day, my kids can look back on it and see how much I love them.”
– Katie Vaughn
Photos by Glenda Mitchell of GM Creative.
Katie Vaughn is the editor and co-founder of Northerly. She is a University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University-trained journalist with experience as a writer, reporter, editor, blogger and author. She lives in Madison with her husband, daughter and son, and is always up for an adventure.