As we prepare to turn the page on 2015, it is a great time to stop and take stock, to acknowledge all of your successes and hard work over the past year. Look how far you have come! This reflective pause is vitally important in our culture of distraction and forward momentum. There are endless… Continue reading Pause to Celebrate Your Successes
Author: Melissa Eppard
I am a professionally trained and certified Life Coach with personal experience overcoming cancer as a mom in my mid-30's. After a diagnosis in 2014 I began blogging as a way to communicate with my family and friends, but it soon became much more than that. Writing was my lifeboat and connection with the outside world while immune compromised and healing from surgery.
Now I’m using my personal and professional experiences and living my dream of supporting others as a Healing Hope Cancer Coach. I help my clients understand their options, develop the best care team and a supportive network. Together we unpack the experience of having a cancer diagnosis, processing the emotional impact of a cancer. I offer stress reduction techniques to help manage fear and uncertainty, and coaching to support healing on all dimensions. After treatment ends, I help people find their personal roadmap through the pain and uncertainty, to a life fueled by clarity, personal strength and a connection to their unique life purpose. From diagnosis, through treatment and recovery, no one should go it alone!
I draw upon 10+ years of work immersed in holistic health and wellness. I was born and raised in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York and live there still with my husband and son. My survivorship blog Melissashealinghope.com chronicles my healing journey. You can learn more about my work as a coach at MelissaEppardCoaching.com.
Am I Fit for this World
There are tons of support networks and websites and organizations designed to assist and support women as they go through breast cancer treatment. But what happens when treatment is over, when you are handed back your license to resume “normal” life? I have fallen into this vacuum where my pre-cancer life doesn’t fit. It’s like… Continue reading Am I Fit for this World
The Magical Mermaid Sisterhood: How I was Healed by Play
The strip malls and megastores pumped cars past the sludgy underbelly of the Hackensack River as I made my way down the Jersey Turnpike. I didn’t want to smell this water as the traffic carried me towards my destination ‘down shore’, as the natives call it. I hoped, dear God, that this water wasn’t spewing… Continue reading The Magical Mermaid Sisterhood: How I was Healed by Play
Coming Full Circle
It was a happy reunion, a completion of a circle, to come back round to the Omega Institute again. The Women's Leadership Center hired me to help with the pre-event Faculty Support and hosting logistics, a post I had held there for 3 years some time ago. I was tasked to help prepare for the… Continue reading Coming Full Circle
Why I fell in love with Life Coaching
I was introduced to Life Coaching while working at the Omega Institute back in 2006. Here I was immersed in a great community, doing work that served a higher purpose. I was lost, disconnected from the core essence of myself, mired in endless details, feeling overly responsible for everything and everyone, and frankly burnt out. I… Continue reading Why I fell in love with Life Coaching
My ReBirth Day
The most outwardly feminine part of myself, I took to the altar and offered up to the gods. I bargained for my life. When I could finally form words into a semblance of prayer, it was “Take my breasts, but let me live to see my boy grow into a man. Please!” I was the… Continue reading My ReBirth Day
As Good as it Gets
Where have you gotten lost and given up hope? Perhaps that place is so small, so stuffed down that you have nearly forgotten it all together. You know it though, that twinge of sorrow or regret, a little sigh of "maybe tomorrow ". For me this came up in the form of, "This is as… Continue reading As Good as it Gets
One year ago today…
There is an ache that spreads and feels good like a scratch set to an itch. It's the burn right after a long day in the garden. Lifting, reaching, pounding a hammer, cinching and tugging the rodent fence, wire cutters clamping, dirt in my sweat and sawdust in my eyes. I revel in a good… Continue reading One year ago today…
From There to Here
My spirit has been around the block. She is a tough old bitch with a pack of cigs rolled up in her sleeve. On the other hand, my body is new. How fascinating that each and every cell is filling out with newness, puffing up with each mitochondrial breath. I am getting to know this… Continue reading From There to Here
