About Melissa
I spent a long time just getting through life.
I became a mom at 16. By 25, I had lost my mom, who was my best friend and a huge part of my support system. Ten years later, my dad died. We didn't have a close relationship, and losing him came with a different kind of grief. It meant having to accept that the relationship we never really had was never going to have the chance to become something different.
For a long time, I didn't think much about whether I was building a life I actually wanted. I had a daughter to raise, bills to pay, and life to keep moving through. So that's what I did.
I put my head down and figured things out as I went.
I got pretty damn good at surviving.
What I didn't know yet was how different life could look when I stopped just getting through it and started getting curious about myself, what I wanted, and why I kept doing some of the things I did.
Then 2020 changed everything.
When COVID shut down the travel industry, I suddenly had a lot more time to question where my life was going.
Around the same time, years of anxiety I had mostly learned to live with finally became too much to ignore. I told my partner at the time that I needed professional help, and I started therapy.
Within a few weeks, I made another decision that would completely change the direction of my life.
I started a podcast.
There was no master plan behind it. I had listened to a podcast conversation about finding purpose, and something clicked. I realized how much I loved having real conversations with people and making people feel seen and understood.
So I followed that little thread.
I had absolutely no idea where it was going.
One choice started leading to another.
The podcast introduced me to a world I knew almost nothing about before then.
I started learning about human behavior, relationships, habits, fear, limiting beliefs, emotional regulation, mindfulness, and why we do the things we do.
Once I started learning, I couldn't stop.
I read. I listened. I asked questions. I tried things in my own life. I started noticing my own patterns and getting curious about what was underneath them.
Eventually, those conversations started creating opportunities I never could have imagined when I recorded my first podcast episode.
Since 2021, I've had more than 100 long-form conversations with experts in psychology, relationships, mindfulness, behavior change, and personal development, including Drs. John and Julie Gottman, Dr. Richard Schwartz, Sharon Salzberg, Dr. Kelly McGonigal, Ken Honda, and many others.
I've gotten to sit across from people whose books I was reading and ask them the questions I genuinely wanted answers to.
I've learned a ridiculous amount from those conversations, but they've also made me even more curious about people and why we do what we do.
Especially the stuff underneath the obvious answer.
My own life started changing too.
Not all at once. I just started making different choices.
In 2022, I walked away from a seven-year relationship and started over without having the next chapter neatly figured out.
In 2023, I became a Certified Life Coach and started my coaching business.
Along the way, I've gotten better at setting boundaries, saying what I actually think, making decisions without needing to know exactly how they'll turn out, and noticing when fear is trying to make a decision for me.
My life today looks almost nothing like it did six years ago.
I'm doing work I genuinely care about. I'm in the healthiest relationship I've ever had. I've built relationships and had opportunities I never would've believed were possible for me. I've done things that would've scared the absolute shit out of an earlier version of me.
Sometimes I think about what the version of me from 2020 would think if she could see my life now, and I genuinely don't think she'd believe me. 😂
My life isn't finished. I'm still figuring shit out and making changes as I go. But when I look around at what I've built over the last six years, I'm really fucking proud of it.
That's a big part of why I coach the way I do.
When someone tells me, "I know I want to do this, but I can't seem to actually do it," I don't assume they need somebody to tell them to try harder.
I get curious about the but.
What's happening there?
Is it fear? Pressure? Perfectionism? Overthinking? Other people's opinions? Are you waiting to feel certain before you'll let yourself move? Are you procrastinating because you don't care enough, or is there something underneath the procrastination that we haven't looked at yet?
Sometimes the thing getting in our way is obvious.
Sometimes we have to peel back a few layers before we can see it.
That's the part of coaching I fucking love.
Not telling you what to do with your life. Helping you slow the whole thing down long enough to see what you might not be seeing, ask questions you may not have thought to ask yourself, and figure out what actually makes sense for you.
Because one of the biggest things I've learned from changing my own life is that you don't always need the whole map.
Sometimes you need to understand what's keeping you standing in the same spot so you can make the next choice.
Then you make another one.
And eventually you look around and realize those choices have changed your life.
What I bring into the room
I'm a Certified Life Coach, speaker, workshop facilitator, and host of The Bright Side of Life Podcast.
I also bring years of learning about human behavior and personal development, more than 100 conversations with experts who have spent their careers studying this stuff, my experience coaching actual humans through actual messy life situations, and a whole lot of my own life experience.
But none of that makes me the expert on your life.
You are.
My job is to listen closely, ask really good questions, help you notice what's happening underneath the surface, and give you a place to untangle things without adding another voice telling you who you're supposed to be or what you're supposed to do.
Sometimes you need space to figure things out for yourself. Sometimes having the right person there to think it through with you can help you see something you couldn't see from inside of it.
And if you're ready to figure out what's getting in the way of the change you want to make, that's exactly what we can do together.