Curiosity
Teaching from observation, not perfection.
Melissa is interested in what sits beneath a choice:
She approaches those moments with curiosity, honesty, and grace.
She still catches herself, makes adjustments, and returns to the practices she shares.
The belief we inherited.
The feeling we haven’t named.
The familiar response we’ve stopped questioning.
Sometimes that means sitting with a difficult question.
Sometimes it means recognizing a pattern together.
Sometimes there is laughter in the middle of a serious conversation.
over judgment
”
“
a perspective
Melissa’s perspective has been shaped by education, coaching, curriculum development, work within a mental health organization, and her own experience of incarceration and rebuilding.
Confinement became more than a physical experience. It prompted her to examine the beliefs, fears, and repeated choices that had moved her further from herself.
Rebuilding meant learning to recognize those influences, reconnect with what mattered, and practice choosing differently.
She brings that perspective to the choices people face
in everyday life, relationships, and leadership.
Shaped by Experience
The Approach
This question sits at the heart of Melissa’s Practical Emotional Philosophy: the study and practice of how our inner world shapes our repeated choices and how those choices shape our lives.
She approaches that work through three connected ideas:
Some circumstances are outside our control.
This work makes room for that reality while exploring the choices that remain available.
“
Project Choose Love is the home and movement behind this work.
What are you repeatedly choosing,
and what are those choices creating?
Know your worth. Choose yourself. Choose love.
Confinement
Recognizing the beliefs, patterns, and circumstances that restrict us.
The Pause™ creates room to observe.
The What’s Next Method™ offers a practical process for considering your response, choosing your next step, and learning from it.
Clarity
Understanding what influences our thoughts, feelings, reactions, and decisions.
Choice
Recognizing where we have agency and taking intentional action.
behind the work
The What’s Next Method
”
™
working with
Come as you are.
Bring what you’re moving through.
Melissa listens to where you want to go and helps you recognize the patterns, possibilities, and resources already present in your life.
The conversation is human and practical. There is room for feelings, questions, laughter, and things you haven’t quite found the words for.
Together, you make sense of what is happening and identify a next step you can put into practice.
“
Melissa
”