Hi, I’m Melanie.
You can call me Mel.

I’m a counsellor, artist, educator and traverser of life paths less travelled.

I help people who want to get their lives heading in a direction that feels aligned with their values, identity and hopes for the future. It’s easy to lose your way and one day realise that you are going through life driven by the needs and expectations of others, or by anxiety - or even just by habit. Sometimes, it is significant events such as illness, relationship breakdown, family conflict or workplace stress that push us to a place of feeling that something needs to change in how we are ‘doing life’. Sometimes, it is a more vague sense of losing a feeling of ‘aliveness’ to the world. Whatever brought you here, I’m guessing you would like something to change. From a broad perspective, that’s what taking the ‘less travelled’ path is - it’s choosing to do things differently, even though it can feel hard.

Yes, change can feel hard, but it is worth it.
Importantly, you don’t have to do this alone.

Counselling provides a safe and encouraging space to pause and examine what is going on for you at the moment. What’s working? What’s not?

I appreciate that while the hard stuff of life—pain, disappointments, setbacks, and losses—occurs for everyone, each person's experience of life's challenges is unique, calling for individualised therapy. I take a strengths-based approach, focusing on helping people rediscover their preexisting skills and knowledge and clarify their values to meet life's challenges with greater competence. Additionally, I can help clients extend themselves beyond their current approaches to develop more varied and flexible ways to problem-solve that build their personal toolbox. 

Our counselling sessions are a place for you to gain personal insights, expand your perspectives and experiment with more constructive and adaptive ways of responding to whatever comes your way. Through skillfully facilitated reflective conversation and practical skill development, my hope is that your new, renewed and deepened understandings of yourself translate to life-enhancing action out there in the world.