My name is Melissa Rae Risdon and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I was born and raised in  here and my parents still live in the house I grew up in.  I have an older sister Jamie who also blogs: http://jpd.typepad.com/ she’s been an inspiration to me in starting this and has been encouraging me to do so for over one year.

My parents have been happily married for over 42 years.  They are great parents to my older sister and I.  Growing up we always were laughing, having fun and enjoying ourselves.  We ate dinner together most nights.  I grew up playing soccer and softball and we went on a family vacation every summer to the Russian River for two weeks.

I went to the same middle school and high school as my parents.  I received an AA degree from College of San Mateo and a BS from San Jose State University.

I’m 35 years old, I own my own coaching business and I have the luxury of working out of my home.  Before becoming a Life Coach I worked in corporate America for over 10 years.  I worked my way up the ladder at SAP America, Inc. from front desk receptionist, to Contracts Administrator to a Sales and Distribution Consultant.  After working for SAP for over 5 years I moved on to NVIDIA Corporation where I was a Business System Analyst.  I left my secure job 2 years ago to take some time off, enjoy life and start my own business.  I’m now a successful Life Coach helping people have more loving and fulfilling relationships.

I’m writing this blog to share with you my own personal experiences of the relationship advice that we hear.  A lot of times we read the advice, we know what we are supposed to do but actually doing it is a whole other story.  I’m going to share those stories with you through my blog.

I’ve already posted some blogs that aren’t necessarily about relationships but they are about me.  They are things that I felt necessary to post.

If you want to learn more about my business please check out my web site at: www.RAEcoaching.com

I wish I could tell you there are 12 easy steps to follow that will take you from beginning to end on the self-discovery process.  Yeah, I wish.  If I can make that happen I might as well promise you I can sell you the magic pill, it will make you younger, smarter, thinner, firmer and tan too!  If you realize it’s a process then welcome to the process or better yet, welcome to my process.  Self-discovery is a process it’s not something that just happens overnight, it is something that happens daily over time.

Sure there are things that happen, change actually happens in a heartbeat, but how long it took to get to that moment is a whole different story.

I began my conscious self-discovery process 4 ½ years ago when in the first day of therapy as I’m crying about my divorce my therapist says “It’s about having a relationship with yourself.”  To be honest I didn’t know what she was talking about.  I’m thinking, uh does she want me to masturbate or something because if that is the case, I’m out of here.  It’s funny to think about that moment now because the truth is, life is about having a relationship with yourself.

It’s about knowing and understanding your emotions.  Learning how to make improvements in areas you want to change, asking yourself better questions.  I had no idea when I walked into therapy how helpful it was going to be.  Did you know that anger is a secondary emotion?  Well at the time I didn’t, when you’re angry it’s usually due to some other emotion.  With me it was all about fear.  Now when I get angry I ask myself “What are you fearful of?” this usually leads me to the truth of the situation.

There are lots of questions I ask myself now and I’m going to continue blogging about them.  Below are some of them that I’ll be talking about in blogs to come:

One of the worst things that has happened in my life has been my divorce.  It has also been one of the things I am now most thankful for in my life.  When I say this to people their heads cock to the side like a dog that is confused and their faces tighten up in disbelief or confusion.  Yet this is true, for me.  Going through a divorce was painful, all my dreams, my desires, my wants were yanked out from under me.  After we mutually agreed that this wasn’t the right relationship for us I sat on the couch for 3 months and ate ice cream.  I was depressed.

About 3 ½ months after the final decision I saw a friend of mine, I hadn’t seen him or talked to him since the final decision.  He asked how I had been and I told him about the divorce.  My voice was sad, my face was sad and he looked me right in the eyes and said “CONGRATULATIONS!”  Now it was my turn for my face to tighten, my head to cock to the side, the sound of Scooby Doo “Huuuu?” going through my head, looking at him in disbelief.  He saw this look on my face and said “No one who’s ever gone through a divorce has said they should have stayed in the relationship longer.”  Now I have no idea if that is actually true, I’m sure some people would argue that, yet for me it hit a nerve.

I knew I had made the right decision to end the marriage, I knew that I had done the best I could do, we both had.  Yet we both knew it was time to move on.  Hearing “CONGRATULATIONS!” at such a point in my life was exactly the words I needed to hear in order to start a new chapter in my life, it prompted me to turn the page on depression and writing my new life.

The pages were blank, the ideas were fresh, I was curious, I was scared and more then anything I was determined to have the life that I knew I deserved and wanted.  That was one of the first moments when I realized that going through the divorce was going to end up being a very good thing for me (and for him too).

It’s now been over 3 years and my life is completely different then it was back then.  The shifts, the changes, the growth I’ve made in the past 3 years has been extraordinary.  Going through the divorce was one of the hardest things I’ve gone through at this point in my life and it’s one of the things I’m most grateful for because it’s put on this path I’m now on and I love the direction I’m headed.

Change happens in a heartbeat.  It does, it truly does.  Think about the things in your life and all the things that have changed.  Think about decisions you’ve made, decisions you’ve made that have changed your life.  Some things have changed your life slightly and some have changed your life forever.  The decision, the moment, the change…..they all happened in a heart beat.  How long it took you to get to actually get to that point of change is a whole other question.