Episode 31: The Seastar Goddess of Occupational Therapy & Best Friending; Melissa Neagles
Occupational Therapist
Melissa Neagles is Mel Rose's first friend. They met in Kindergarten. After Melissa moved away in second grade, the two tried to keep in touch but life got in the way. Social media and email didn't exist back then. WILD! Imagine. The good old days right? Well, fast forward 20 whole years. Both were looking for each other. Melissa got married at 22 and had a different last name and Mel changed her first name to Mel Rose. No luck. Then Mel went and did some crazy stuff called Reality TV. And luckily Melissa saw Mel on TV and thought to look her up as she seemed familiar. She realized it was her old friend by the love of artichokes on one of her pages..not one of the fake wannabe Mel Rose's. And there were many. Mel is grateful she took the time to search through all of them! The rest is history. They picked up right where they left off and their friendship hit it's 10 year mark with this episode!
Melissa is an occupation therapist. Curious what that job is? Listen in! It is a field that combines mental and phsyical wellness and creativity to get people back to functioning normally. Melissa explains it better than we do. Melissa went through a lot to get to the point of knowing exactly what she wants to do with her life. That happens to be a CHT. That stands for Certified Hand Therapist. Mel stumbled upon this career path by accompanying her mother to an OT appointment for her trigger finger. We hear it a lot on the podcast. That many people just happen to find that thing that calls to them by living their life. Melissa is an inspiration and goddess all around. She is also the best friend anyone could ask for and Mel is grateful for her to be back in her life!
Mel2 as we like to call these besties covered a lot of topics. One was how being stagnant in your daily routine is toxic, see this article for the danger of not getting physical activity daily. Also, just in case you cared, People who work out have more and better orgasms. Just saying. The thing is about OT as a career is that it is complex. It merges physical with mental and is a very diverse and creative field. Which is why it is so hard for people to understand what it is. What we know is that Melissa is going to be a game changer in this field, we just know it. When you mix genuine care with high intelligence and a willingness to want to grow and evolve your industry, you have magic and Melissa has all of this.
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