Meet Melissa Crook: Thought-Leader and Creator!

Melissa Crook is a woman in her 50’s who currently lives in Fresno, CA with her best friend and spouse, Brady Crook. Melissa loves her family (including her husband and three grown daughters), traveling to new places, a beautiful sunset over the ocean, the mountains, the WSU Cougs, the 49ers, the Dodgers, and the Olympics (especially track). She’s passionate, driven, loyal, fierce, and brave. She believes in justice, mercy, equality, and empathy for ALL.

Melissa is available to speak to your group about our F.E.E.L Framework, tailored to your event's themes. From emotional leadership to women’s empowerment and values-based boundary setting, Melissa helps women embrace their beautiful and complex layers.

To schedule an empowerment session with Melissa, fill out our contact form here.

Melissa’s Story:

The month I turned 50, just two weeks after our family settled into another move,this time to Lubbock, Texas, I found myself in the emergency room twice within ten days. My body was sounding an alarm: a racing heartbeat, dangerously high blood pressure, bladder control issues, and an overwhelming sense that something was very wrong. After test after test and a visit to a cardiologist, the results were surprisingly inconclusive. Aside from the effects of menopause, nothing was physically “wrong.”

The truth was harder to see on a medical chart: years of anxiety, over-performing for approval, codependency, intrusive worries about my health, and a life that, despite being deeply grounded in faith, held very little peace or contentment.

That moment in September 2019 began a life-changing awakening. It was the first time I understood the profound connection between unprocessed emotions and our physical well-being. So many women, myself included, are taught to push past feelings, deny them, ignore them, numb them, detach from them. I learned the cost of that: your body keeps score, and eventually, it calls the meeting you’ve been avoiding.

Since then, my own healing journey has been about connecting the dots, body, mind, heart, and spirit. I’ve spent these years doing the deep work of understanding how emotional avoidance can quietly erode health, identity, joy, and peace. And as I healed, I realized I wasn’t alone. So many women are living exactly as I was: high-achieving, capable, grateful… yet exhausted, disconnected, and never feeling “enough.”

This is why I created The Embracing Layers Network, a space where women can rediscover who they are without the pressure to perform, where they can embrace every version of themselves, and where living unapologetically is not a dream but a process.

Through my signature F.E.E.L Framework, I guide women into a new way of living, one that prioritizes emotional awareness, wholeness, alignment, values, and healing. Today, women can engage with this work through:

• Our online course

• 1:1 empowerment sessions

• In-person and virtual presentations

• My book

• And The F.E.E.L Podcast

On the podcast, I introduce listeners to remarkable individuals I’ve encountered who, in their own authentic way, are living well, with intention, alignment, and truth. I introduce each guest not by their résumé or accomplishments, but by their character traits, because our worth is not what we produce, it is who we are and how we show up in the world. Their professional credentials appear later in the show notes and online, but the person always comes first.

My hope is that my story, and the space created through this movement, reminds women that they don’t need to wait for a breakdown to redesign their lives. You can begin now. You can choose peace before your body demands it. You can reclaim your voice, your boundaries, your joy, and your identity.

I hope you’ll join me in beginning your Embracing Layers journey today.