ABOUT
Hi! I’m Melanie
You could say I’m a very specific kind of life coach.
I work with women who’ve dedicated a great deal of effort to healing from early in life wounding, have made tremendous progress, but are still coming up against trauma-based limiting beliefs that are keeping them from living the way they want to.
Whether it’s in the realm of their careers, the money they make, the quality of their relationships, their ability to enjoy existing in their bodies or their sense of purpose, there’s one thing most of my clients have in common:
At some point early on in life, they internalised that had they been enough, the painful things that happened to them wouldn’t have.
I help them dismantle this assumption, shed responsibility for a past they are not responsible for, create enough safety that their core wounds can be properly grieved, powerfully advocate for their needs, and take back what trauma took from them so they can recover their access life as THEY want to live it.
This is my story too… I experienced severe complex developmental trauma, and for the greater part of my life I felt like a mistake on legs.
There was a way I wanted to live at every level (work-wise, relationally, financially, sexually, Jesus… existentially), but it kept spitting me out like the pit of an olive. There was always a whisper in the back of my head saying “Not you, Mel. You’re not good enough and way too broken.”
Carrying that core belief was constant heartbreak. It kept me falling for the wrong partners, doing LOTS of work for free, allowing people to trample my natural boundaries, and settling for crumbs of kinship, tenderness, and good behaviour from others.
I could put up with all of it because I felt certain it was temporary, someday something would happen that would change everything and earn me a pass to life as I wanted to live it. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that would be choosing to start living in alignment with what’s true for me, starting NOW.
My life today is radically different than it was for the better part of my life.
I feel welcome in it and to it, I don’t censor what’s true in and of the soft animal of my body, I quit smoking and drinking alcohol (which kept me small, tired and self-loathing but OMAGAWD I loved doing); I don’t jump through hoops to deserve my right to do, be, have, earn, contribute, love, say yes, say no; my relationships are healthy and honour my body, heart and mind; I do meaningful work that fills my soul. I have impeccable boundaries that make the core of my heart feel safe, seen and holy. I moved to a hill outside Florence, Italy at 37 (instead of later when…), became fluent in a new language (by 39). I started driving a car after a paralysing fear of driving; I reach for the support I need (rather than telling myself it’s too much). And each day, my nervous system settles a little more into its original baseline; the list goes on and grows each day.
I don’t negotiate my worth, my right to advocate for my peace, abundance, sanity and love, or my desire to THRIVE while I still have a pulse. I’m in it body, mind and soul and it’s pure freedom, pure truth, pure possibility.
Has it been easy? Waddaya think. No, pancake! It hasn’t, but it has been worth every single stretch it’s taken to a life-saving degree, and I’ll tell you what else; it’s been a lot easier than staying in the “waiting to be worthy before I get to live” place.
If you’ve been on an intentional healing path for (what feels like) forever, but still feel stuck when it comes to actualising the life you want, you are in the right place.
it’s been my life’s purpose (I mean that, this has been the air I breathe for a VERY LONG TIME) to figure out how to forge a path forward that doesn’t feel like an extension of childhood (unworthiness, dysfunction, despair, powerlessness… pick your poison), has strong roots and brings results you can measure and lean on (I loath fluff and personally resent approaches that don’t account for the realities of overcoming complex trauma and the foundational work to make measurable thriving possible), and feels GOOD and FOR YOU from square 1.
My mission is to get you off the healing hamster wheel and help you see (clearly and once and for all) where the conditioning complex trauma set you up with has kept you believing this big lie: “You’re not enough to live the way you want to.”
It’s not true, I’ll show you exactly how so it can never bamboozle you again, and I’ll be there to support, guide and root for you as you close the book on that old trauma paradigm and start one on your own terms.
The BODY Cure
blends:
SOMATIC REFLECTION:
Learning to be with, feel, understand and honour what you’re really feeling.
SELF INQUIRY:
Noticing trauma-based habits of thought, feeling, and belief that keep you in chronic fear and unworthiness.
+ INTUITIVE
PHILOSOPHY:
Using your body as a guideline to know the difference between what’s thought and what’s alive, so more and more you can choose in favour of life.
Why the BODY cure?
Because your body is the hub of your literal life.
It’s the space and time of YOU. While it keeps the score it’s here and now, not then and there. It’s where all your power is, what you do anything you do with, where the quality of your life unfolds, where you feel anything and everything you’ll ever feel, what holds your wounds, what heals or doesn’t, where anything that’s true for you is true at all.
Your body holds what trauma seemed to cost you: self-evidence, is-ness, instincts, the unadulterated truth of you, the home of your truth and your power.
Your body never lies to you about itself, and it’s in your body that healing, freedom and peace must register if they’re to be real.
By returning to the self-evidence of your life in your body, you reconnect to your inherent legitimacy, validate your authentic needs, meet your wounds where they are, and recover power, integrity, self-advocacy and truth. It’s a BFD.
Trauma is invalidating in nature and leaves us with a wall to wall feeling of not being real, doubting our lived experience, and thwarting what’s authentic and true for us out of fear that it’s wrong or not enough.
The body’s where this dynamic continues to play out long after the original trauma has passed, and it’s through the body that it can be lifted.
This is how we turn the healing process from “idea in my head” to a real, sustainable shift in sensational baseline. This is what moves us move from chronic survival mode, to thriving mode.
“Working with you has been waking up, you always bring me back to what is, and it’s astonishing to me to realize how much of what held me back was an unconscious choice and how I was always looking for what wasn’t here to save me.
I can’t imagine not having done this. It’s scary how close I came to staying where I was. This has been the most important investment I’ve ever made. I’m grateful beyond measure that with so much out there, I found You and The BODY Cure.”
You should know, I’m a coach, not a therapist.
I got certified as a sex, love and relationship coach in 2018. The program ultimately didn’t resonate with me and I don’t use the framework it teaches, so I choose not to mention it. Coaching is an unregulated business in the US, which means exactly what you think it does; every Tom, Dick and Harriet can offer their services as a coach, and they do!
More than ever, it’s important you take your time getting know who you’re thinking of working with and getting very clear on what results you want, before you trust anyone with an investment of any sort. From personal experience and speaking to many people who’ve walked out of containers that were supposed to help them thrive, but ended up being something they had to heal from (some of whom were therapists and psychiatrists, by the way),here are a few questions that can be real life savers when choosing the right support for you (but honestly, these are good questions to check in with all the time):
-Is this person helping me feel better, freer, safer, steadier, more empowered AND CLOSER TO MY GOAL? (excellent sign) OR…
-Are they making me feel worse, trapped, anxious, wobbly, powerless and further away from my goal, under the pretense of getting me there after I do what they want me to?” (red flag)
If it’s the former it’s a good sign, if it’s the latter… I’d walk away. Yes, doing this level of inner work is inevitably uncomfortable and confronting, but your coach is there to help you feel and develop safety as you face the hard stuff, feel the discomfort, and take steps beyond what your conditioning told you was for you.
If my approach is clicking for you and you want to get a really good feel for me before you apply for a program, download my ebook at the bottom of the page, read my emails, find me on Instagram @the_body_cure, and book a free 1:1 UNBOUND coaching session. I’m here to answer your questions, and if you feel that what I offer is what you need to help you get to where you want to be, I’m here to support you.