Hello!
My name is Melody Ross and I’m so grateful you’re here. I believe in you . . . I believe in all of us.
Who am I and why do I do what I do? It’s simple, I want you to see yourself as a soul. So I’m going to tell you how I have learned to see myself as a soul. THIS is the page where I’m gonna tell you a little bit about me – because one of my biggest goals in life is to inspire you so much about YOURSELF that you’ll feel compelled to do some deep soul-work. And, you wouldn’t want to dig deep into your soul with someone you don’t even know, right? On this page, I’m gonna share my soul with you in an effort to inspire you to know your own soul.
Your soul is a vast and beautiful place that you may have forgotten about. I want you to know yourself so authentically that nothing can shake the foundation of who you are, because a whole lot of life is trying to shake you right now, isn’t it? When you know your soul, the storms of this human experience won’t be able to blow you over.
My goal is to coach you through finding your truest self again — your soul. I KNOW the power of radical self-inquiry, it works. It’s only fair for YOU to get to know ME on a soul level if I’m asking that from you. So, allow me to introduce myself and let you know who I am, why I do what I do, and what I want for YOU as you discover the power of doing your soul-work.
What is soul-work? Well, it’s simply investing the time and space it takes to really KNOW who you are, what you believe and who you want to become at this time in the world. It’s finding the ability to fly above the chaos of life so that nothing pulls you off of your own path. It’s making the time to heal from what’s happened to you so you can move forward and create a better way. A better way for YOU, and also for everyone else we share this planet with. It’s remembering that YOU DO have the power to create a better way, and to even create a truer version of YOU. Soul-work is peeling away everything on the outside to be able to truly see what’s on the inside, and it’s letting go of any parts that are NOT you. It’s finding your own truth and the courage it takes to live it.
Soul-work the most important work you’ll ever do because you are truly THE ONLY ONE who can ever do it. No one can do it for you.
This world is a tough place to be right now, and we need all the strength and grit we can muster-up. We need all the love and compassion we can muster-up, too, no matter how difficult things are. You have this resilience inside of you, even if you’re having a hard time accessing it. Once you know who you are and what you are here for, life starts feeling doable again, even joyful! You are important. Your life is too important to not make time to really know yourself on a soul level. I want to help you remember and know yourself in this way.
I love you, beautiful soul. You are so easy to love. I’m happy and grateful you’re here and that we share this complicated time in history on this beautiful planet. I hope we get to be soul-to-soul very soon.
xoxo
melody ross
I AM A SOUL WHO IS STILL BECOMING
I’m still trying to figure life out, just like everyone else. One of the truths I guide my entire life by is the fact that we are all souls having a human experience. Being a human is hard! Thank goodness LOVE makes it easier – and so does remembering the part about being a SOUL. We are not defined by our experiences, we just get to learn from them.
I AM A WIFE, A MOTHER & A MIMI
My husband, (who I am madly in love with) and I met when I was in High School. We decided to have our family while we were young so we could have them as part of our life for as long as possible. We have been married more than 30 years, we have 5 children and 5 grandchildren – they are our biggest gifts and our greatest teachers!
I AM A WRITER AND AN ARTIST
Creating has been my purpose and passion from my first memory. I decided I wanted to be a professional artist when I was in Kindergarten. I started creative writing when I was 13 years old. I now study neuroscience and have learned so much about the power of imagination and creating your life with your thoughts! I believe in designing your thoughts as a way to design your life.
I AM A TEACHER AND A COACH
I am known for asking deep-dig questions until the treasure is found. I love our human family and the deep well of unique experience and wisdom that is inside of every soul. I guide you through radical self-inquiry; using strategic questions and compelling creative activities. My books and courses come from questions I’ve taken myself on the adventure of asking and answering. I don’t teach it unless I have lived it.
I AM A FREEBIRD SOUL-SEARCHER
I am a bona-fide free spirit. I am not a fan of convention or the status-quo and I’m always looking for new discoveries, unique perspectives, interesting people and all manner of oddities. I know that EVERY soul alive wants to be free. I value personal freedom above just about anything else – I want that for everyone.
I have been making commercial art for more than 25 years. I have designed fashion apparel, home decor, art and craft supplies, fabric, book illustrations and more for companies all over the world. But my real reason for making art is to have a conversation with my soul. I make art to show my soul that I am listening.
In 2020 I made a goal to climb 100 mountains before my 50th birthday. I am just about halfway to 100. . . it has been one of the most gratifying goals of all my life!
I am an obsessive observer, student and solution-seeker for the things that cause humans to suffer inside, and then what might ease that suffering . . . I am constantly writing words that feel like medicine to my own soul. Once the words are strung together in ways that feel like love, I put them out into the world for anyone who may need them. We all have medicine inside of us that is meant for us to share with the rest of humanity. What is yours? I’d love to help you figure that out!
It’s not always easy to find places and people that help us feel like we can be who we are. It’s not always easy to find places that feel like love and places where you’re met with kindness. I believe in easy-love . . . not making it harder than it needs to be to make sure that others know that they are loved just as they are. I believe in creating places, products and experiences that feel like love, kindness, acceptance, encouragement and truth.
This is who I am:
I am a lover of life. I am a soul in a human body… just like you are. I am as imperfect as they come, but I do my best and I gain a little more life experience every day. I also look for the AWE in the everyday.
I love to learn. I love to seek. I love to share the good things I have learned and found. I love hard science and I love the holy nonphysical. I study both obsessively.
I love my people most of all. My family and friends are the most important parts of my life. I have been married to my best friend for more than 30 years, I am the mother of 5 epic souls (plus 3 bonus so far) and I’m a blissed-out grandmother of 5 magical littles. We have a unique, diverse and passionate family, each soul with their own journey and their own way of doing life. We have unique, diverse and precious friends all over the world, too. I love to know everyone’s differing perspectives and beliefs . . . they are beautifully diverse because there are so many ways to be a thriving human. All of these people are the best part of my life!
I love adventure. I love trying-out and acing (and sometimes failing at) what I’ve been told is impossible. I love wildflowers, forests, road trips, funky clothes, garden-fresh tomatoes, green smoothies, big trees, rocky rivers, playing my guitar, making up funny songs, being in the mountains, making art, lying in the grass, brainstorming with dreamers, deep conversations with thinkers . . . and really good crushed ice.
I enjoy human beings who have mastered kindness. I live for a good come-back story. I root for the underdogs. I appreciate artistry of all kinds. I love understanding what people are devoted to. And . . . I really really love a roaring campfire with the people I love sitting all around it – telling stories, laughing and singing. I really love to laugh. Funny people are one of life’s greatest gifts.
I also love to create tools for soul-searching because I absolutely love what I do! I almost always feel grateful to live the life I get to live and that I get to do the work I do. It has not been without enormous challenges, but there are always so many gifts on the other side of those challenges, mostly in the form of new perspective.
And speaking of challenges, I have had lots of them (you probably have, too!) . . . and they are where my best work has come from – the lessons I’ve learned on several trips through painful life experiences. I made a video to tell you about what I’ve learned from difficulty:
“I have lived through days and years I didn’t think I could survive. But these experiences shaped me, taught me and grew me. I learned how to overcome, (and even thrive) inside of just about any circumstance. When I remember that I am a soul having a human experience, hard times feel like opportunities to grow my soul and connect with other souls. So most of the time, I am grateful for my experiences . . . even the painful ones.”
Here’s what I want for you. . .
I want you to love your life. Does that feel impossible in this uncertain world?
Well, I want you to remember who you are and what you are capable of. As a society, we have forgotten how to hear our own wisdom and that our hearts are highly intelligent. We each have sophisticated technology built into us to help us FEEL and KNOW what is right for our unique lives. We often look outside of ourselves and our own higher power for validation, permission and orders. We are not meant to live this way! NO ONE can know you better than you know yourself.
We have also forgotten that we are each individual and unique souls, each with a very different journey. Your life is different than any other life, so you are going to get different answers about what to do with your life than any other person. And YOU are the only person who can find those answers, because they are already built inside of you. I’m going to say it again – no one can know you better than you know yourself.
But . . . we get tricked and we get distracted. We are barraged constantly with conflicting masses of confusing and polarizing information. This information is often presented as ABSOLUTE TRUTH even though we each have a completely unique life journey that requires finding our own answers – again . . . answers that are different for each of us.
Over-information from the nonstop media cycle, over-stimulation from everywhere and over-expectation leave us paralyzed. Too much photoshopping and editing and narrowing-in to avoid seeing or valuing the reality of the whole leaves us feeling fragmented. We are meant to feel whole as exactly WHO WE ARE.
Do you find yourself conforming to a life full of things that don’t really matter to you and doing things to try to prove your value or earn your place? Do you go through the motions, living a life that feels like self-neglect rather than self-respect? Are you finding ways to numb-out so you don’t have to even be IN your life anymore?
You’re not alone, friend. But I promise you that you are not powerless. Are you ready to stop feeling so powerless?
YOU. ARE. SO. POWERFUL.
I want you to have the resilience and strength to be awake to your life. I want you to find the courage to let go of what no longer serves you. I want to see you embrace and focus on what matters most to you so you’ll be super motivated to go out and create a life that excites you – one that you would never want to just sleepwalk and numb yourself through! I want you to dance through life, even when it’s difficult. I WANT YOU TO LOVE YOUR LIFE.
You really can create and organize a life of spending your minutes and hours doing things that deeply matter to you. I want to see you living out a beautiful story that you WANT to be the main character of.
We aren’t meant to check-out and live in fear, exhaustion and overwhelm. We aren’t meant to live in our own little cubicles, ignoring and forgetting about each other; or worse yet, fearing each other. Life is meant to be a forward-moving experiment, filled with exciting adventures, risks, radical changes, discoveries, learning, growing and becoming. TOGETHER. We are meant to move, grow, change and transform. TOGETHER. We are meant to be transformed by our experiences. TOGETHER. We are meant to ENJOY our lives and help others to enjoy theirs.
Are you ready? I AM!
“I believe that self-respect is the gateway to self-love and self-care. Once we learn to love and respect ourselves, we naturally love and respect others. Soul-respect is the deep love for every human alive, including yourself.”
“I believe that we find what we are looking for. We MUST make time to find and listen to our own souls, and we must stay on a path of seeking-out and seeing not only our own souls, but the souls of others. Being a human is hard for all of us.”
“There is a lot to heal from in this human experience. It’s not always fair, but we are each responsible for our own healing. It is worth the work it takes to heal because it sets us free – and everyone is meant to live free. We need to make sure others can be free, too.”
“Each of us on this planet are here to share this human experience together. I believe we are here to do life collaboratively, to help and teach and love each other. We need each other, and each of us has great gifts to share. We will be happy when we help each other.”
Some Other Stuff I’ve Done
This is my professional biography. I’m a big dreamer and I’ve never been afraid to take risks, so I’ve had some pretty epic adventures in my career. I’ve had big failures and I’ve seen big beautiful dreams come true. Both the wins and the failures have given me a whole lot of degrees in the school of life! If you’re interested . . . here’s a timeline of my professional career:
MELODY ROSS PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY:
Melody Ross has been a worldwide known teacher, artist, author and entrepreneur since her twenties, building one of the most collected and sought after brands in the designer paper, gift, fashion, and home decor industries, creating thousands of products over her 25+ year career and winning countless awards. Melody has authored and published over 20 books and written and taught more than 50 courses focusing on living a meaningful life and developing grit and resilience to overcome life’s challenges. She teaches and coaches both in-person and online to students all over the world. Melody and her story have appeared on countless television programs and in countless magazines and blogs.
As an entrepreneur, Melody has created 2 other international, multi-million dollar companies aside from melodyrossmedia.com – she is the founder and creator of Chatterbox, Inc, a designer stationery company from 1997-2009 and the founder and creator of Brave Girls Club, a worldwide women’s self-development company from 2009-2019. Melody and her business partner closed Melody’s Soul School in 2020 during the Covid 19 Pandemic and Melody created a new way of home-learning through self-guided workbooks and YouTube videos centered around creative soul-searching.
Melody and Marq have been married for more than 30 years, they have 5 children and 5 grandchildren and enjoy time with their family living the outdoor lifestyle of the West. In 2019, they gave away most of their belongings and set out on an epic adventure. Melody writes, creates and makes videos while visiting all sorts of beautiful places as she and Marq travel to see and collaborate with old and new friends from all over the world.
Some of the Products I've Designed Over the Years
I have been designing products and inventing tools since my twenties, both for my own companies and for other companies. I LOVE to create and design products that enrich the experiences of people who are focused on leading a meaningful life.
-1990 Marq and I got married
-1991 Started selling original paintings and original painting patterns
-1991 Had my first baby
-1993 Had my second baby
-1996 Had my third baby
-1997 -Started Chatterbox, Inc. from my kitchen table and garage with my husband, Marq- it became an international, multi-million dollar company within a few years. Selling to mostly independent retailers worldwide.
-1998 Spokesperson for Sakura Gelly Roll pens
-1999 Awarded Best 10 Products of the year from Creating Keepsakes Magazine
-1999 Awarded the prestigious Innovations award from national Craft and Hobby Association for the invention of the Journaling Genie
-1999-2006 Appeared on HSN and QVC to sell Chatterbox product lines
-1999-2006 Appeared on HSN and QVC to sell Chatterbox product lines
-2000 Had my fourth baby
-2001 Had my fifth baby
-2003 – Sold products into major retailers and chains – Michael’s, Target, Sam’s Club
-2004 Marq sustained a traumatic brain injury and I took over all operations of the company
-2005 Awarded Businesswoman of the Year from National Association of Women Business Owners
-2006 Served as Chairwoman of Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce Women’s Organization
-2007 Awarded Alfred P. Sloane Award from US Chamber of Commerce
-2007 Sold Chatterbox
-2009 Started Brave Girls Club with sister, Kathy Wilkins (founder of Haven Place)
-2009 Started “A Little Bird Told Me” Daily Truth emails
-2009 Created Soul Restoration
-2009-2014 Developed large lines of products for Demdaco under Melody Ross Brave Girl brand
-2009 Developed large line of products for GCD Studios
-2009-2017 Hosted Brave Girl Camp Retreats at our ranch in Idaho
-2010 Developed fabric line with Blend Fabrics
-2011 Created Soul Restoration Online and Life Restoration online
-2011 Appeared as special feature in Where Women Create magazine
-2011 Published A Little Bird Told Me Book of Truths
-2012 Created Body Restoration Online
-2013 Published You Are Going to Be Okay
-2013 Created The Walk Online
-2013 -2018 The Brave Box shipped monthly to thousands of subscribers – every month I designed a new course and a line of beautiful products to go with it
-2013-2019 Created Brave Girl University Online School – serving thousands of subscribers across the world
-2014 Created Art Therapy program for refugees entering US called Tell Your Story
-2014 Created large line of products for Walmart for their Women’s Initiative – a 22ft set of product nationwide including fashion, home decor, stationery and books
-2014 Created Soul Comfort Online
-2015-2018 Created and hosted Brave Girl Symposium in Boise, Idaho for 500 attendees each summer
-2015 Published Choose Happy with Andrews Mcmeel/Simon & Schuster
-2016 Published Go Where the Peace Is with Andrews Mcmeel/Simon & Schuster
-2017 Created The SoulBook Gathering Experience – thousands of people gathered across the world to create SoulBooks together
-2018 Partnered with nelda.com to create Soul School
-2019 Retired Brave Girls Club & Brave Living
-2019 Started Soul School
-2020 Closed Soul School during Covid19 and parted ways with nelda.com
-2021 Started melodyrossmedia.com and melodyfreebird.com and created self-guided workbooks and videos for home learning
Our First Business, Chatterbox Inc. – Circa 1997
This is our very first trade show booth, we had no idea what we were doing back then, it was a steep learning curve. Somehow, with sheer grit, determination and lots of help from people all over the world, we were a multi-million dollar international company within a few years!
The Art Barn & Brave Girl Bus - Est. 2009
Brave Girls Club is truly a sacred highlight of my career. For 10 years, from 2009-2019, we held retreats at our ranch in Idaho. Brave Girls Club was one of the most epic and beautiful movements the world will ever see – a true sisterhood across the world that lives on to this day. The Art Barn and Brave Girl Bus were beloved elements to the impossible-to-forget experience that was Brave Girl Camp. LISTEN TO A SONG I WROTE WITH MY NIECE, Stephanie Leavell about the Brave Girl Bus on Spotify CLICK HERE
My Most Beloved Soul Course
Soul Restoration, to this day, is my flagship course that every other teaching relates back to. I created this curriculum while healing from my own difficult life experiences; these lessons and exercises are what healed me! Soul Restoration has been completed by tens of thousands of people across the world, making lasting transformations and restoring souls back to their most authentic selves.