Why I built this

I’m Melissa. I didn’t build any of this from theory. I built it because I lived every part of it, more than once, before I ever put a word of it into a guide.

I didn’t have an easy start. I grew up in a house where I wasn’t safe, and I learned early how to read a room before I learned much of anything else. I became a mother at fifteen. Not long after, I lost my daughter’s father. I was young, and I was already carrying more than most people carry by forty.

I spent twenty-five years building a business from nothing. I grew it with my own hands, made it into something real, and then I walked away from it. Not because it failed. Because staying would have cost me more than the business was worth.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I found myself in not one but two relationships where I spent years doubting what I already knew. I know what it feels like to catch a lie and somehow end up apologizing for noticing it. I know what it feels like to write down what happened in your head a hundred times, just trying to prove to yourself that you weren’t the one who overreacted.

I lost my spouse to suicide. There’s no clean way to write that sentence, so I’m not going to try to make it sound like anything other than what it was. It was one of the hardest things I have ever lived through, and I carry it with me still.

After that, I packed up and moved to Illinois. Alone. I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t have anyone waiting for me there. I just knew I couldn’t keep building a life on top of everything that had happened without a fresh piece of ground to stand on.

I tell you all of this not because I want sympathy. I tell you because I want you to understand something clearly. When I say I know what it’s like to doubt what you already know is true, I’m not saying it as a professional observation. I’m saying it because I have sat exactly where you’re sitting, more than once, in more than one kind of loss.

Everything I’ve built — the guide, the journal, the way I walk people through holding their ground, the way I help someone finally name what they’ve been living — all of it came out of what I needed myself and couldn’t find anywhere else. I built it in plain language, without the jargon, because when I needed help most, I didn’t need a diagnosis. I needed someone to sit beside me and help me trust what I already knew.

That’s what I’m doing here. Sitting beside you. Not above you, not ahead of you like I have it all figured out. Beside you, because I know exactly how heavy this is to carry alone.

— Melissa