METRO WEEKLY: Let’s talk about your earliest years and what your family was like as a child.MELANIE WILLINGHAM-JAGGERS: I was raised by a single mother.
She was single by choice, and a mother by choice. There’s some complexity here, because I actually come from a really big extended family.
I’m number 18 of 25 of my grandmother’s grandchildren. So I’ve got 25 first cousins, probably 75 second and third cousins, just on my mom’s side.
And everyone was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the time, or most people were. Then when I was 11, my mom got a job out in California and we moved out there.