Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Parker-Fisher.
Hi Melissa, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story is one of triumph and overcoming. I was raised in a military family and later went on to join the Air Force. Due to my intense childhood and military traumas, I went on to develop PTSD, bipolar disorder, and Alcoholism. I always wanted more for my life so in 2016 I got sober and started to take back my power. I became an Esthetician and was focused on providing healing and nourishing facial treatments. Little did I know that getting into skincare would start the healing of my soul. With a heavy focus on Self-Care, I have been able to work in the business realm for four years, be sober for six and in remission from PTSD for three.
There have been so many magical helpers along the way who have really contributed to my success and healing and I am pumped to give back in such a deep way.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This was certainly not a smooth road, but at least it didn’t lead to nowhere. I spent time in foster care, and residential treatment centers and lost my mom in a Christmas Eve car crash all before 15 years old. I graduated high school from the famed orphanage Boystown, for which an academy award-winning movie was made. I went to Iraq and turned to alcohol for years. I suffered a mental breakdown so severe, nurses and doctors had to teach me how to make facial expressions once again. Statistically, I shouldn’t be alive to tell this story. I truly believe angels carried me.
After I got sober, I had a spiritual awakening really helped me clarify my goals and started me in the direction of the work I wanted to do on this planet. I opened my first skincare business FaceXPRESS in December 2019 with the pandemic looming 3 months in the future. To my great fortune, I had started a pretty solid morning routine involving reading, journaling and meditation in September 2019 that carried me through the rough times ahead in 2020.
I closed the door to FaceXPRESS in April 2019 and went to virtual skincare consultations. When that wasn’t gaining traction, I went into life insurance sales for a few months to make ends meet. When I received my first vaccination shot, I felt I had a new lease on life and ventured to open a new skincare business called Total Skin Wellness. While I enjoyed skincare, I found my true passion was in connecting with people over their lives and how they take care of themselves. I found skincare was a path to my healing and uncovering the real mission of my life connecting with people and empowering them to change their lives. I use my story to teach as I even lost 90 lbs. in the midst of it all.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
After working in skincare for close to 6 years, I decided I wanted to do deeper work beyond the first layer of skin. I am a Self-Care coach, using my esthetics license and personal training certificate to help guide me in creating comprehensive plans for nourishing the mind, body, and spirit. The work and research I conducted into my own healing serve a compass to guide others on their paths.
Once a person settles their physical body and begins to reduce or effectively manage stress, their capacity for life and achievement grows, I help people do just that.
What I am most known for is being able to help people make connections between how to do something and the internal why of doing the thing.
I have a story that covers many areas of the human experience that gives me the capacity to hold space for what anyone is going through.
Currently, I am teaching busy professionals a class called Craft Your Self Care Checklist. This helps take the guesswork out of what to do to care for Self. I also guide individuals to check in with the Self they are caring for. Making internal connections creates a strong desire for change and personal evolution.
How do you think about happiness?
Dancing makes me feel most like myself and creates an energy that spills over into other aspects of my life. I am not the best, but I have rhythm and like to move. It creates an aliveness in my cells and spirit. How can you be angry after dancing?
I also love hearing my 7-year-old daughter laugh! It lets me know that she is experiencing childhood in a much healthier way than I did.
Helping others creates something beyond happiness which is fulfillment. To know that something I have said could alter the trajectory of someone’s life for the positive is endlessly satisfying.
Also Comedy! I love sitcoms and stand-up specials. Comedy takes what is dark into the light and flips it on its head, giving you permission to see trials and troubles from a different light. Laughter is healing!
Contact Info:
- Website: melissaparkerfisher.com
- Instagram: @melissaparkerfisher
Image Credits
Noelle Williams Photography
