From a task chair in her home office, Cremonlyn Morris-Frazier (better known as Crem) has her feet propped up on a two-drawer file cabinet. Light streams through two huge windows of her University City apartment while she relaxes in comfy joggers and a faded old Q Fitness and Wellness T-shirt.
Morris-Frazier is enthusiastic about discussing her joy for fitness and what life might look like in the future. The About Page on the Q Fitness and Wellness website describes her as the founder and mastermind behind Q Fitness and Wellness.
A veteran in the fitness community with over 20 years of experience, she has owned multiple fitness studios across the east and west coast, worked as a personal trainer, fitness director and just about every job in-between. Her life’s passion, the description continues, is helping people live their most vibrant lives.
What more is there to say? Plenty.
Let’s begin with how she ended up in the Queen City.
The eldest of three girls, Morris-Frazier has been living in Charlotte for almost two years now, though she’s lived here before. Although she was born in Orange, New Jersey, she claims army brat status and says she was “raised everywhere,” including Charlotte, 17 years ago.
Both of her parents were in the army, her mother eventually settling in Charlotte over two decades ago. The first time Morris-Frazier left it was to pursue a fitness career in California. At that time, she thought, “I’ll never come back. But things change. I got older and things that became important to me changed. I wanted to be close to my mom as she got old and I missed my nieces and nephews. It was the best decision ever.”
A typical day for Morris-Frazier starts with “getting up at about 6:30 and taking a look at my to-do list first. I live and die by my list. If I don’t have it written down, you can forget it. Then I take a look at my client’s progress. After that, I check my email account to see if there’s anything that needs to be addressed right away. And then, I have breakfast my wife will make for me if she’s in town. It’s the same thing every day, steel cut oatmeal and turkey or chicken sausage.”
Morris-Frazier excitedly talks about the woman she plans on spending the rest of her life with.
“She’s awesome,” she exclaimed. “We’ve known each other for 10 years now and have been married for over a year. We met online when I lived on the West Coast in Portland. She lived in Seattle. It was a long-distance relationship at first and she would come up to visit me every few weeks. Back then I was tough to tie down and played hard to get. But I didn’t want to lose her, so I moved to Seattle and here we are today and I get to be married to my best friend.”
As for those intermittent breakfast meals, she continues, “She travels twice a month and works for a national organization – keeping low-level drug offenders out of the criminal justice system. It’s a diversion program working with police departments to give people with drug dependency and mental health issues options outside jail and prison sentences. It’s great work, but of course, I miss her when she goes away.”
However, during those times, Q Fitness and Wellness keeps Morris-Frazier quite occupied. “Q stands for Queer. It’s almost four years old now and started in Minnesota. We offer fitness; group and personal training, on demand fitness classes, nutrition coaching and meal planning.”
The best thing about it, aside from being an affirming safe space for those in the LGBTQ community, she says, “What I know it can provide. Meaning that we will give you above and beyond what you expected. There’s a lot of care in what we do. It really comes from the heart and we work hard to give you the best experience you can have. It’s not coming from a numbers standpoint. It’s me taking everything I’ve learned from the fitness and diet industry and making sure everyone feels great and no one feels unaccepted, without having to comprise the service or quality of big box fitness organizations.
“Fitness is so much a part of my life, it’s much a part of who I am, it’s my identity,” she continues.”You really can’t have one without the other with me, from a personal and professional side, it just doesn’t exist.”
The Q Fitness and Wellness founder explains her love for fitness goes beyond assisting others in reaching their goal: it extends to her consistently challenging herself, as well. One of the ways she does this is through martial arts, another love she’s nourished for years. “[Currently] I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but I started out as a boxer at Charlotte Boxing Academy and then transitioned into MMA [Mixed Martial Arts]. I love martial arts. It just gives me so much from a standpoint of being well rounded and yes, I can kick someone’s butt. However, that’s not what drew me to it, the ability to hurt someone.”
For a woman who is all about fitness and rising to the next challenge she’s set for herself, many just might find it surprising to learn she has what she refers to as her nerdy side, as well. “I love anime and I just love comics, I’m a huge graphic novel reader, and sillier than people would probably realize.”
All silliness aside, when it comes to her future, say 15 years from now, Morris-Frazier has put plenty of thought into that. “I’d better have my wife and a beach house by then or I’m in trouble,” she says matter-of-factly. “We love water and have talked about a beach house or a lake house. I see myself hanging with my best friend, having a cocktail on the beach, having a good time. I don’t know if I’ll [ever] know what true retirement is. I’ve been an entrepreneur since child[hood]. I had a bike wash at 12. I think it’s healthy to be doing something, so I hope whoever I’ve left my company to by then will allow me to have some input and that I will have made a real contribution at that age to a large bunch of people.”
Excited about returning to Charlotte and delighted by the support of her partner and the city’s growth, she left us with a final thought. “It’s one thing to be a business owner, but I wanna’ make sure I’m a steward of the community – part of impacting change in this city.”
We have no doubt she will.
This sounds so beautiful!