About Melanie

I move through the world from the earth upward, through the dance of instinct and passionate heart. Through art in motion. Through dance and play in flow. Through fluid evolution of change.

I am a second-generation Sicilian-American. My ancestors came from a layered land of ritual magic, spell casting, fiery volcanic eruptions, cyclical transformations of rock, salt, and ash, salt-water baptisms.

My grandparents made efforts to resist cultural assimilation, keeping their umbilical attachment to their land and eventually returning to lay their last breath upon the soil of their birth. My father stayed, gave seed to me in the PNW, and in my childhood naivety, shame put a mask on me that I did not consent to. Now, in my power, I am taking it off because I can and it is safe for me to do so. My beauty of origin and sensitive connection to land and mammal has been preserved by my ancestors in the cathedral of my bones. I am my own buried treasure.

I’m a grief-weaver. My mother kissed me with the gift of swedish death cleaning and devotion to family and community. I lead with my soft open heart, gentle femininity, sensual pleasure, and maternal intuition. I weave between the binary patriarchal pillars because nothing is pure and my empathic art is ethereal. My language is heart language, symbolic poetry, filled with both the profane and the divine.

My life is my art and there are no grave mistakes, every brave brush stroke on life’s spiral is meaningful to the full expression of me.

I paint and write to make passionate love to my shadows and invite life and love to flow through me.

I mother my two children because my legacy will be my vitality.

I hold degrees from the institutional world of study: RN, BSN and BS in Communications because contrast is a teacher.

I am generously held on the sweet lands of the indigenous Multnomah.

I have been held in the practice of yoga, the potent works of Tara Brach, and the brave voices of truth in so many books and so many artful expressions that I can’t possibly name them all.

I trust in abundance and possibility.

I value a growing capacity for presence, vitality, truth, love and pleasure.

I am here on this earth to love deeply and broadly.