About
Hello, I'm Melissa.
I'm a counsellor based in Kyneton, on Taungurung Country in central Victoria. I provide compassionate grief counselling for adults experiencing any significant loss, helping them feel less alone, navigate life after loss, and find their footing at their own pace.
Why counselling
Like everyone, I've faced things that felt too big to carry on my own. My first time seeing a counsellor has stayed with me. Having a space that was just for me, where I could finally say the things that had felt impossible to say out loud, was incredibly moving for me. It was the start of finding my own footing again, and my own strength to face what I was afraid of. When the chance to become a counsellor came along, I took it.
Before counselling, I was a teacher, and a carer. And many things in between.
Why grief
When someone dies, the grief that follows can be devastating, it can shatter you, floor you, take the ground out from under you. Grief also turns up in the everyday parts of life, where there's change, wanted or unwanted, expected or sudden and shocking. Underneath that stress, there's often a loss we haven't quite named, so we feel it without always knowing what it is.
Modern Western culture has largely lost a visible, shared language for loss that other cultures still hold onto. Those rituals weren't just tradition for its own sake, dressing in black, mourning for a set period, being visibly excused from ordinary life, they told everyone around you that you were grieving, so you didn't have to explain it, and you were given time, not just permission. I remember the nonnas outside my primary school, dressed head to toe in black, and even as a small child I understood, without being told, that they were sad because their husbands had died. Grief comes from the Latin gravis, heavy, and for a long time, it was allowed to look that way. Now we're expected to keep going, back at our desks within days, grieving, quietly and out of sight.
Grief and loss touch all of our lives. Sometimes it lingers quietly, sometimes it doesn't stay quiet at all. Some losses we carry and keep carrying, some we honour for as long as we live, and our world reshapes around all of it. Sitting with someone in that, especially once it feels like everyone else has moved on, matters to me.
How I work
People often tell me I remind them of someone, a teacher, an aunt, a friend who always seemed to have time. I think that's close to what I want you to feel with me: familiar, calm, and easy to be honest with. I care about what you're carrying, and I'll be direct with you too, when that's what helps.
Person-centred counselling places you at the heart of everything. Rather than diagnosing or directing, I offer a relationship where you can feel truly heard, accepted and understood, the conditions in which people naturally find their own way forward.
There are frameworks I draw on, continuing bonds and the dual process model, that shape how I think about grief and what might help. But none of them lead the session. You do.
Some sessions are full of words, others aren't. Both are useful. If talking feels like too much on a given day, we can find other ways to sit with what's there. My job isn't to move you through grief faster; it's to keep you company in it, and to help you make sense of what it's doing to your life.
Credentials
- Master of Counselling
- Level 2 accredited member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA)
- Ongoing professional development and clinical supervision in grief and bereavement
Where I work
I see clients by telehealth. That means we meet over secure video, from wherever you are. You don't need to drive anywhere, find parking, or sit in a waiting room. For a lot of people in grief, that matters.
Future Plans: Towards the end of 2026, I will be able to see people in person in a space near the Kyneton Botanical Gardens. Watch this space and my Halaxy page for updates. Please note when this space is available access is via a loose stone driveway (where you can park your car) on an incline, and then across a small grassed lawn. If you are unsure if this is accessible for you, reach out for more information or I also provide telehealth sessions.
Why counselling
Like everyone, I've faced things that felt too big to carry on my own. My first time seeing a counsellor has stayed with me. Having a space that was just for me, where I could finally say the things that had felt impossible to say out loud, was incredibly moving for me. It was the start of finding my own footing again, and my own strength to face what I was afraid of. When the chance to become a counsellor came along, I took it.
Before counselling, I was a teacher, and a carer. And many things in between.
Why grief
When someone dies, the grief that follows can be devastating, it can shatter you, floor you, take the ground out from under you. Grief also turns up in the everyday parts of life, where there's change, wanted or unwanted, expected or sudden and shocking. Underneath that stress, there's often a loss we haven't quite named, so we feel it without always knowing what it is.
Modern Western culture has largely lost a visible, shared language for loss that other cultures still hold onto. Those rituals weren't just tradition for its own sake, dressing in black, mourning for a set period, being visibly excused from ordinary life, they told everyone around you that you were grieving, so you didn't have to explain it, and you were given time, not just permission. I remember the nonnas outside my primary school, dressed head to toe in black, and even as a small child I understood, without being told, that they were sad because their husbands had died. Grief comes from the Latin gravis, heavy, and for a long time, it was allowed to look that way. Now we're expected to keep going, back at our desks within days, grieving, quietly and out of sight.
Grief and loss touch all of our lives. Sometimes it lingers quietly, sometimes it doesn't stay quiet at all. Some losses we carry and keep carrying, some we honour for as long as we live, and our world reshapes around all of it. Sitting with someone in that, especially once it feels like everyone else has moved on, matters to me.
How I work
People often tell me I remind them of someone, a teacher, an aunt, a friend who always seemed to have time. I think that's close to what I want you to feel with me: familiar, calm, and easy to be honest with. I care about what you're carrying, and I'll be direct with you too, when that's what helps.
Person-centred counselling places you at the heart of everything. Rather than diagnosing or directing, I offer a relationship where you can feel truly heard, accepted and understood, the conditions in which people naturally find their own way forward.
There are frameworks I draw on, continuing bonds and the dual process model, that shape how I think about grief and what might help. But none of them lead the session. You do.
Some sessions are full of words, others aren't. Both are useful. If talking feels like too much on a given day, we can find other ways to sit with what's there. My job isn't to move you through grief faster; it's to keep you company in it, and to help you make sense of what it's doing to your life.
Credentials
- Master of Counselling
- Level 2 accredited member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA)
- Ongoing professional development and clinical supervision in grief and bereavement
Where I work
I see clients by telehealth. That means we meet over secure video, from wherever you are. You don't need to drive anywhere, find parking, or sit in a waiting room. For a lot of people in grief, that matters.
Future Plans: Towards the end of 2026, I will be able to see people in person in a space near the Kyneton Botanical Gardens. Watch this space and my Halaxy page for updates. Please note when this space is available access is via a loose stone driveway (where you can park your car) on an incline, and then across a small grassed lawn. If you are unsure if this is accessible for you, reach out for more information or I also provide telehealth sessions.