Marriage & Family Therapy with Melissa Kester, LMFT

New on Substack: When the Body Remembers Nature

In this piece, I’m exploring how our relationship with nature can become part of systemic healing — not only for the body, but for the relationships we bring our bodies back into.

A walk, sunlight, air, rhythm, quiet, and attention may seem simple. But sometimes these small practices help the nervous system remember something essential: we are not only minds trying to cope. We are bodies, relationships, and systems that need tending.

Read the full piece on Relational Wisdom. Link in Bio.

I was recently featured throughout VICE in the article “6 Signs Your Partner Secretly Hates Your Guts.”

While the title is provocative, I think clinically less in terms of secret hatred and more in terms of contempt, resentment, emotional shutdown, and the loss of relational goodwill.

When repair disappears, dismissal grows, and partners stop caring about each other’s inner world, the relationship can begin to feel emotionally unsafe.

You can read the full article in VICE. LINK IN BIO

I was recently featured in VICE for an article on the subtle ways men and women may approach love differently.

I appreciated the nuance in this piece because the point is not that men and women are entirely different. Most of us are looking for the same things: love, connection, respect, intimacy, and the feeling of being seen.

But many men are socialized to express love through action, usefulness, protection, physical closeness, or problem-solving before they are taught emotional fluency. In relationships, that can create painful misunderstandings.

One partner may be asking for words.
The other may be trying to show love through action.

One partner may be asking for emotional intimacy.
The other may be reaching for physical closeness as a safer language of connection.

The work is not to shame these differences. It is to understand them, make them conscious, and build a fuller relational language together.

You can read the full article in VICE: “3 Subtle Ways Men Approach Love Differently Than Women.”

Here’s the full caption together:

I was recently quoted in Prevention on narcissistic personality disorder, grey rocking, and why strategy matters when you are navigating narcissistic traits in a relationship.

Narcissism is more than vanity or self-focus. In relationships, it can shape power, empathy, boundaries, repair, and the emotional safety of the person on the other side.

My favorite point from the article: sometimes we do need to step back and become less reactive. But we also need our Wise Adult so we can think with flexibility and discernment. Grey rocking is not the whole strategy. Clear limits, emotional safety, and knowing when and how to respond matter too.

If you want support staying in your Wise Adult through challenging relational moments, join me for the Relational Wisdom Workshop.

We’ll work with the patterns that pull us into reactivity, protection, and me vs. you — and practice the skills that help us return to clarity, limits, repair, and connection.

You can read the full article in Prevention: “Mental Health Experts Share 9 Common Signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”