Hello! Welcome to the Growth Guide
Why the Growth Guide?
My intentions with the Growth Guide publication, for you the readers, are:
Expand your understanding of how humans actually work from the inside out and inseparably from others.
Build your confidence to be in the driver's seat of your whole person well-being.
Lay out an approach for living well, in your context of life, that is consistent with human nature. Only then can we stop creating more, and often bigger, problems.
See the dynamics within you to more effectively design the systems we create for healthy functioning of all – from relationships and families to companies, institutions, and AI. A healthy, growing world will happen from the inside out.
AND for me:
To have a safe space for my personal development as a writer. This is new to me! Exciting and scary. I’ve always been curious and an avid learner. Yet it was always to get/organize information for someone else who was in charge, giving implicit feedback to what was right.
So my growth challenge has the following root discomforts to grow through:
1. 1. Write about MY ideas, MY synthesis of the hundreds of articles, reports, and books I’ve read through my unique lens. I’m 3 years into listening to my own ideas without judgment and criticism. Loving others' ideas and research – as equal, not superior.
2. 1. Write with simplicity about the most complex creatures on the planet – humans – without dumbing it down. I believe in your capacity to handle complex ideas; it’s in you even if the world squelched it.
3. Write with a GENTLE tone so it can be heard and held, even as readers start to see how they are contributing to the problems we’re stuck in. It’s usually unintentional and hiding in plain sight.
4. Write with an INVITING tone that makes it safe to explore new ideas without expectation. I loathe the predatory and fear-based marketing tactics. Hence why I’m on substack.
This is about natural growth and development for you and me, the way it naturally happens. No marketing, no hooks. Natural interactive harmonized growth.
Once you get the hang of the notion that health is about dynamics of growth, fluidity, and expansion, it’s super simple. The challenge is getting your whole being into that paradigm! Medicine, marketing, media, and expertism have us swimming in the soup that we are broken, dependent on others' answers, and woefully inadequate as we are. I call bullshit!
Everything about you is a testament to your perseverance and adaptability. We are endlessly amazing when we can stop putting ourselves into some made-up box of perfection. The paradigm of broken and needing fixing is a huge contribution to our unhealth. It’s a burden and makes things so complicated. AND it is natural that we’ve landed where we are. It’s fascinating! It’s time to change the dynamic back to growth.
Your thoughts, feelings, physiology, and energy need to first be in harmony within you. Hence the framework of harmonized growth.
And you will discover something about you or your life that you deeply desire to change. Naturally. This is the internal felt spark for growth. Our potential for change, in the whole person growth paradigm, is limitless. No more fear of it, AND no pressure that it already be done.
Feeling intrigued? Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and (eventual) publication archives.
Who is Shelly Melroe with this unique perspective?
First and foremost, a human traversing life's ever-changing context. With over five decades of lived experience through ups and downs, expansions and contractions, light and darkness; I’m still going!
Second, I’ve settled into my growth trajectory. I’m at peace with the many things about me and my life that societal norms would deem ‘failure.’ Expanded my own capacity for discomfort, regret, and all the feels necessary to sort the learning from the trash.
Thirdly, a lifelong seeker/holder/integrator of diverse information. It started as the middle ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘parentified’ child. Then it continued as I felt the pressure to do what others thought was best for me AND tweak it to hang on to a bit of me.
So professionally, my lens uniquely envelopes:
Master of Science in Statistics from a public university which led to various corporate positions supporting research, quality assurance, leading Six Sigma and root cause processes in petrochemical and food industries.
Various roles, within corporations and as an external consultant, where I designed and facilitated strategic planning, systemic change initiatives, innovation processes, leadership programs, and long-term science and technology roadmapping.
Until people started making no sense. True to my internal tapes, their dysfunction and lack of follow through was my fault…so…
Master of Arts in Family Therapy from a seminary - the only program available to start “now” at the time! Ironically, the amazingness of the program, despite the first impression of that context, filled the gaps I needed to understand dynamics, natural in and between humans.
Trauma therapist, first in community mental health and then private practice, with an emphasis on root cause problem solving so clients could restore and heal, not rely on coping and managing through their day. That was not living! This is what led me to hundreds of research articles – old and recent – to continue putting together the pieces of an edgeless puzzle. It’s been and continues to be fascinating.
I now appreciate the tremendous growth benefits of being just a support role in all those phases:
I always had to learn enough about what the client was doing, their language and perspective to be able to do my job. My capacity for complex thinking continually expanded.
Second, it was often my role to hold and present back synapses of conflicting and diverse perspectives for client groups to process. My capacity for seeing the ‘AND’ and appreciating the context of information continually expanded.
I was continually expanding, not changing my profession. It’s time to bundle it all together and create content so
You can be a kick-ass problem-solving growth-oriented driver of your wellbeing, sparking growth in all that you touch…just like nature intended!
What to Expect-
The posts shared via newsletter will come twice per month and include:
Articles to expand your understanding of current hot topics to get out of confusion and the negative spiral weighing you down. Stress, trauma, ‘mental’ health, codependence, gaslighting. We keep creating meaning and labels that are leading down unhelpful paths!
Previews to sections of forthcoming books, Harmonized Growth Guidebooks, with knowledge and roadmaps to address chronic health conditions, mastering personal change, parenting for healthy development, and leadership for healthy organizations and healthy systems.
In the Notes, I’ll share a link to a specific research study, a harmonized growth concept, or a work-in-progress visual to get your early feedback and questions. Notionally, one per week.
All content is free. Writing is a growth area for me! I am looking to get ideas out of my head and into a shared space for you to ponder and wonder. I have no desire to convince you to buy something. Simply explore it and help me sort out its usefulness. If there’s enough of value, the financials will unfold.
The Chat is open for curiosities, questions, and other gently-presented perspectives. I look forward to our conversations.
