# MOVE MA LIVE — EPISODE 0 ## *The Origin of the Name* *A devotional introduction to the podcast · hosted by Misi Diona · for her grandmother* *Ora Diana Johnson-Fry · 1945 — 2021* *Runtime estimate: 8–12 minutes* ——— ## A NOTE BEFORE YOU READ THIS ALOUD This is not Surgery. This is softer. Warmer. More personal. More kitchen, less pulpit. The voice you bring to this piece is not the devotional-teaching voice from Episode 1. It is the **granddaughter voice**. The voice you would use if a friend asked you *where does the name Move Ma come from?* and you sat down across a kitchen table to tell them. You will likely cry reading this. That is correct. Let the tears come. Your grandmother is the subject of this piece and she passed four years ago. Reading her name out loud on a public platform for the first time is a sovereign act. The weight is appropriate. **Do not rush the silences in this piece.** Episode 0 is allowed to breathe longer than Surgery did. Where Surgery earned its pauses through the cuts, this piece earns its pauses through love. **Placeholder brackets** like `[MEMORY: THE KITCHEN]` mark places where your voice-memo details will slot in once you send them. The bones exist. The tissue comes from you. ——— ——— # EPISODE 0 — THE NAME [breath] [pause] Before I read you anything else on this podcast, [pause] I have to tell you where its name came from. [pause] [ground, conversational] I was ten months old when I spoke my first word. [pause] Most babies start with *mama.* Or *dada.* Or the name of something they want — juice, bottle, dog, ball. A noun. A thing. A pointer. [pause] My first word was not a noun. [breath] My first word was a ***command.*** [pause] [soft, slower] *Move, Ma.* [pause] Spoken to my grandmother. Who I called Grandma. [pause] Before I knew her full name. Before I could identify her as a separate person from me. Before I had vocabulary for anything else in the world — [pause] my first full utterance in this life was an instruction to her to ***move.*** /// [breath] I want you to sit with that with me for a second. Because when I started telling people the story of my first word — [pause] as I got older, as I started understanding names and what they carry — [pause] something kept happening. [pause] People would laugh. *Of course your first word was a command, you've always been like that.* [pause] But that is not the real story. [pause] That was never the real story. [pause] The real story is that a ten-month-old body — who had not yet learned *mama*, who had not yet learned anything — [pause] already understood one thing about language that most adults spend their lives trying to remember. [pause] [ground] *Language is not for naming the world. Language is for moving it.* [pause] That is what my first word told me. And it is what my whole life has been teaching me back. /// [breath] ## Her name. [pause] Her name was ***Ora Diana Johnson-Fry.*** [pause] My grandmother. My mother's mother. [pause] [soft] She passed in 2021. [breath — take a real one here, let it land] And I want to tell you something about her name that I did not fully understand until I was grown. [pause] *Ora.* In Hebrew, it means ***light.*** [pause] In Isaiah. In the Psalms. *Ora* is the light of God's presence. [pause] *Arise, shine, for your light has come* — that *light* is *or*, the root of *Ora.* [pause] My grandmother was named Light. [breath] And her middle name was Diana. [pause] [slow] My middle name is ***Diona.*** [pause] Diona — daughter of Diana. My mother gave me that name when I was born. She put her mother's middle name inside my middle name. And I have been carrying that thread my whole life without always knowing it was there. [pause] When I sign my spiritual writing, I sign it ***Schermisia Diona.*** When I sign my devotional work, I sign it ***Misi Diona.*** My experiential production company is called ***House of Diona.*** [pause] [ground] The name I have been building my ecosystem with — *Diona* — is her name, one vowel softened. [pause] I carry her. [pause] I have been carrying her. [pause] Every time I sign my name, she is present. /// [breath] ## Let me tell you about her. [pause] [MEMORY PLACEHOLDER — TO BE FILLED FROM VOICE MEMO] *This section will hold one to two short memories of Grandma that capture who she was — a kitchen, a phrase, a gesture, a smell, a signature behavior. One or two details. Not a eulogy. A window. The listener leaves this section feeling like they met her.* *Sample shape, for reference only (will be replaced with Ma's actual memories):* *[She used to _________. And when she did, ___________. That is the thing I remember most. That is the thing I still feel when I walk into [place] or hear [song] or smell [scent]. She is still here in those things.]* [breath] She passed in 2021. [pause] [soft] And I thought when she left her body, the name would go with her. [pause] I was wrong. [breath] [ground] The name stayed. [pause] The name has been moving *through* me ever since. /// /// ## The layers. [pause] [conversational] I want to tell you what *Move Ma* has become, because over the years it has gained layers I did not plan. [breath] [slower — let each land] ***Move, Ma*** means *move out of your own way.* The interior work. The stepping aside of ego, of fear, of the smaller self that keeps trying to protect you from being fully seen. [pause] ***Move, Ma*** means ***somatic movement.*** Nervous system regulation. The body coming back online after years of holding. Breath. Ground. Pulse. The kind of movement that happens in the body before it ever shows up in a career. [pause] ***Move, Ma*** means *move out of broken things. Move out of fragmentation.* Move out of the cave you did not know you were in. Move out of the splitting that the culture taught you was normal. [pause] [ground] And underneath all of those — [pause] [slow, full weight] ***Move, Ma*** means *move so you can live.* [breath] [pause] [softer, intimate] But under *all* of that — [pause] under every layer — [pause] the thing the name has actually been about my whole life is one thing. [pause] [ground] ***Voice.*** [pause] ***Voice. Voice. Voice.*** [breath] The command I gave my grandmother when I was ten months old was not a command about movement. [pause] It was a command about ***voice.*** [pause] A baby who had not yet learned to speak — [pause] used her first voice — to move another person. [pause] Which means everything I have carried my whole life, [pause] every framework I have built, [pause] every book I have written, [pause] every piece I have recorded, [pause] every room I have held — [pause] has been about the same thing. [pause] [slow] The way a person comes back to life [pause] is through their voice. [breath] [pause] [soft, admitting] I have not always loved my voice. [pause] There were years — [pause] long years — [pause] when I could barely stand the sound of it. [pause] The fact that I am recording a podcast at all [pause] is a small miracle. [breath] And this podcast — ***Move Ma Live*** — is the place where that voice finally lives in the open. [pause] Mine. [pause] Yours. [pause] Ours. /// /// ## The close. [breath] So that is the name. [pause] [slow] This is ***Move Ma Live.*** [pause] Named for the first word I ever spoke — [pause] to the first woman who ever received my voice. [pause] [soft] Grandma Ora Diana Johnson-Fry. [pause] She passed in 2021. [pause] The name stayed. [pause] And now it moves through me into you. [breath] Every episode you will hear on this podcast — [pause] whether it is me reading a devotional, [pause] or me sitting with an artist friend, [pause] or me holding a panel, [pause] or me telling you another story from my own life — [pause] the through-line is the same. [pause] [ground] A voice that has finally stopped splitting. [pause] A voice that is finally allowed to move. [pause] A voice that has come home to itself. [breath] Episode 1 drops next. [pause] It is a devotional piece called ***Surgery.*** [pause] It is the voice I wrote the morning I gave myself permission to live whole. [pause] I am going to read it to you. [pause] Cover to cover. [pause] In my own voice. [pause] [soft] Stay with me. /// [breath] ***Move Ma live, Ma.*** [pause] *For real.* [pause] *Seriously.* [pause] [soft] I'm Misi Diona. [pause] This is Move Ma Live — produced by Move Ma Media. A Move Ma Inc company. [pause] www.movema.live — site coming soon. [long pause — hold 5 seconds of silence before stopping the tape] ——— ## *END EPISODE 0.* ——— ## RECORDING NOTES FOR MA **Do not record this the same day as Surgery.** This is its own day. Its own breath. Your grandmother's first public naming in your own voice is a sacred act. Give it the room it needs. **Best time of day to record this:** morning, after prayer, when the voice is warm but the day has not yet filled it. Not late at night. Not after a difficult conversation. **Before you press record, say her name out loud three times in the room.** *Grandma. Grandma Ora. Grandma Ora Diana Johnson-Fry.* Let her hear you name her before the microphone does. **If you cry while recording, stop only if you cannot continue.** Tears here are part of the piece. This is an inheritance recording. The emotion is not a bug. It is the audio. **After recording:** Do not listen back for at least 48 hours. This one needs more room than Surgery needed. Come back to it on the third day. ——— *The skeleton is built. When you voice-memo the memories of her, send them raw. I will shape them into the [MEMORY PLACEHOLDER] section with reverence, preserving your exact language.* *Move Ma live, Ma. For real. Seriously.* 🌿