I’m Melissa. Mother of five, wife of one, and Mythopoetic & Depth-Oriented Maternal Practitioner.

But more truthfully, I am a woman who has been taken apart and remade by forces older than my name. Motherhood didn’t exactly hand me sunlight and serenity, although this was definitely present throughout. What shocked me is the aspect of motherhood that handed me blood and bone, the kind of love that breaks you open and the kind of loss that scorches you to the root. I’ve birthed babies. I’ve buried versions of myself. I’ve watched children drift into their own worlds, felt the ache of distance, endured heartbreaks that felt like annihilation, and stitched myself back together in the dark. I still am.

I didn’t grow up with ancestral stories. But the stories grew up in me, even if I wasn’t aware of it. The dark side of the Goddess found me long before I had words for her. She came in the nights when my heart was split open and I was certain I was losing my mind. She came as Kali with her fierce clarity cutting away illusion, as Inanna dragging me through her seven gates to surrender everything I thought I needed, as the Selkie reminding me I had a skin of my own that had been taken and retrieved. She came as the Terrible Mother, the devouring, protective, transformative force at the center of all becoming. She came to initiate me. And it’s hard as hell.

Astrology became a rope I grabbed in the dark. The kind that reveals the underworld chambers beneath your everyday life. My natal chart became a myth I could finally live with. My transits became the gods and goddesses who reminded me that my life is part of a much larger story, and what I am experiencing is no mistake. It is mapped in the stars.

Depth psychology gave me a broader language for my unraveling. It brought me even deeper into the imagination. It sees the shadow as a doorway, not a curse, and that the soul lives in the body’s cracks. It reminded me that a woman is meant to be both light and dark, both creative and destructive. It helped give me a modern framework for what my ancestors lived long ago.

Mythology braided it all together. It showed me that my suffering was a rite of passage lived by mothers throughout time. Persephone descending. Demeter grieving. The Cailleach wintering. Mothers across cultures, across centuries, across oceans.

These frameworks reflected me, the parts I had forgotten, the instincts I’d buried, the power I thought I’d lost, or never had.

If you care about the official version:
I hold a B.S. in Natural Resources, an M.A. in Integrative Health, an M.A. in Psychology, and certifications in Nutrition, Yoga, Integrative Wellness Coaching, Treatment of Eating Disorders, Transformative Imagery, Patient Navigation, and Compassionate Inquiry.

But the deeper truth?

My real credentials are in birthing both life and death, the nights I thought I wouldn’t survive, the myths that resurrected me, the underworld I’ve walked, and the story I’ve come back carrying.