EP 141: The Power of the Imagination To Heal: Melanie Goodwin

Diana WinklerTrauma Recovery

My wonderful guest this week is Melanie Goodwin, who shares her story of childhood illness and trauma. We talk about her upcoming book, Resurrected Roadkill, trauma recovery, and CS Lewis-inspired approach to the imagination as a recovery tool. Join us for an informative and enjoyable conversation!

Biography

Melanie is an Amazon Best Selling Author (under a different name), a multi-awarded Singer-Songwriter, Composer, Producer, creator of faith-based tools for “resetting” a stressed-out or post-traumatic mind, has spoken and performed internationally, and has coaching Certifications from Tony Robbins (Robbins-Madanes) and John Maxwell.
Sometimes called an Artist or Soul Whisperer, Melanie loves painting, gardens, and lingering dinner parties with friends.

resurrectedroadkill.com

links to a book trailer for Resurrected Roadkill and has a “buy” button to order a copy of the book (book is currently in Pre-Sales until July 25, 2023. (I do have a course, but it’s waitlisted until fall).

Resource mentioned is

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Bessel van der Kolk

Full transcript below!

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Transcript:

Melanie Goodwin

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast. Brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer songwriter, speaker and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help.

[00:00:26] Now here is Diana.

[00:00:33] Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m glad that you’re here on this sunny day, very hot day. I hope that you enjoyed our study of Deborah, the Judge of Israel, and hope you learned some things.

[00:00:50] We have a awesome show for you today. We have a guest. Her name is Melanie Goodwin, and let me tell you a [00:01:00] little bit about her. Melanie is an Amazon bestselling author, a multi awarded singer, songwriter, composer, producer, creator of faith-based tools for resetting a stressed out or post-traumatic mind, has spoken and performed internationally and has coaching certifications from Tony Robbins and John Maxwell, sometimes called an artist or soul whisperer.

[00:01:31] Melanie loves painting gardens and lingering dinner parties with friends. So we’re gonna be talking about her new book called Resurrected Roadkill, and that title itself sounds very intriguing, doesn’t it? So I’m excited to have another singer songwriter on the show. We’re gonna talk about music and a little bit about.

[00:01:55] Abuse and trauma and her story. So I hope you enjoy my [00:02:00] conversation with Melanie Goodwin.

[00:02:03] Diana: All right. Please welcome my guest, Melanie Goodwin. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

[00:02:11] Melanie: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

[00:02:14] Diana: It’s, an honor to have another singer songwriter on, on the show. I don’t get that many of them. I definitely wanna hear about that. Okay. Sounds great.

[00:02:26] Let’s start with you setting a scene for your life, your beginning of your life. I understand that you had a life-threatening disease. Is that right?

[00:02:37] Melanie: Yes. That’s right. I was not born with it, but I went into a nursery right after birth where there was already a staph infection. And they didn’t know it yet, but it was clear after the fact that it was already there was an infection that was just really raging. And. So out of [00:03:00] 21 infants, there were 19 deaths. Now I should say there were 21 deaths, but two of them were nursing moms. And there were 19 infants that died, and I was number 20 of nu of the 21 infants.

[00:03:17] So I was second to the last that went in before they realized how bad it all was. And. And the treatment was regular Lansing about hourly. I’ve been told that we would have massive boils all over our little bodies and we had to get un swaddled and the wounds had to be lanced and drained.

[00:03:42] And so that was like the initial first weeks of my life.

[00:03:46] Diana: Wow. That sounds very painful. You, I’m sure you probably don’t remember any of it, but what was the background like growing up in your family? Did you come from a Christian home? [00:04:00][00:04:00] Melanie: I came from a churched home. I think that, my dad was just like two or three units shy of a doctorate in I, I guess it was in religion.

[00:04:11] I mean, he was trained to be a minister, but then he went to the Korean War and served and. Came home with a very altered point of view. And so we were definitely in church. They were they were, both my mom and dad were musicians and he was always the choir director and she was always the organist.

[00:04:31] So we were, we were there in church. We were there many weeknights and, all morning, Sunday morning But the culture of the home was this is the late 1950s. And so I would say, I’m not sure if this is widespread, but I think it is that the. Any kind of acting out was just perceived as a discipline issue.

[00:04:57] And so the idea [00:05:00] was that there just needed to be stronger discipline. And I had a very, this might be kind of jumping way ahead, but I had a very are you familiar with the term Theo Foic? No. Well, Theo Foic is a trademark name, so I wanna be careful to say I’m not referring to the organization that is trademarked, that I’ve never worked with that organization.

[00:05:23] Okay. But the term is beautiful. It’s perfect. Theo is of course, God and Fosteric is light. So the name, or the name is not what I’m referring to, but the concept is, I had some very miraculous prayer where I went through a memory of, and it lasted over an hour where I kind of saw the nursery that I experienced.

[00:05:51] And the reason that I’m going there is because, All my life I heard about this birth story and I thought, I kind of rolled my [00:06:00] eyes like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna hear this story again. Like a kid might do. And I, it’s only as an adult, much later when I realized my, my mom was telling that story, or my siblings were telling that story because they were traumatized by my arrival.

[00:06:19] Because I got sent home from the hospital at maybe a week or two. It’s really not clear. I can’t get one version of that story, but the timing was, much later than normal, than an infant would normally come home. But I came home sick and then my mother had the job of continuing with the Lansing, and so it was happening on the family dining table and.

[00:06:43] So as you can imagine that really impacted the family. And then later on when all my wounds were, resolved, I mean, my skin looked fine and I didn’t have staph infection. So. Everybody thought that I should just get along [00:07:00] normally, but I was that kind of infant that if she picked me up, I’d arch my back and scream and I already obviously had some real mixed feelings about attaching because mom had been the lancer and the only contact for weeks had been negative. I mean, it was well intentioned. Entirely well intentioned. Yeah, but it was negative. And so, I was a super difficult kid. I was defiant. And so it kind of set the stage for a lot of conflict.

[00:07:35] So when you asked me about what kind of home was it, it was the era of, Dr. Benjamin Spock. And child training was, Very much, like when kids act out, you just discipline them. And that was that was completely un trauma informed and entirely wrong for me. I remember times.

[00:07:58] When I had [00:08:00] babysitters or school teachers, and I’m still young, I’m like three maybe. I was absolutely terrified of them, but they would like take my shoulders and shake and get in my face. And, just the way I remember it is just venomously spewing this stuff, like you need to behave, kind of stuff.

[00:08:17] And I was terrified and so I kicked and I bit. And I screamed and I fought because I was afraid for my life kind of thing. But they saw it as a discipline problem instead of a trauma issue.

[00:08:33] Diana: Oh yeah. Mother should not have been given that responsibility of lancing you, I can see why you reacted.

[00:08:42] You didn’t get any cuddling sessions. This was pain.

[00:08:47] Melanie: Yeah, well, even if someone had tried to cuddle, those boils, I mean, I don’t remember the pain of the wounds, but those, I’ve read that, it obviously they’re very painful and [00:09:00] they’re all over your body, so I don’t think I liked to be touched for like the first few months maybe.

[00:09:08] And I’m not even sure I wanted to be touched that soon. Just because like I said, when your initial weeks are all negative the brain is forming and it’s forming the impression that contact is a bad thing.

[00:09:23] Diana: The body keeps the score,

[00:09:25] Melanie: body keeps the score. There you go.

[00:09:28] Diana: So you said that you learned that people are treacherous.

[00:09:31] Was there anything else that came from your upbringing that happened?

[00:09:37] Melanie: Well, it just, when you’re the bad sheep my experience was that I could be blamed for things without any good evidence. Things that I did not do. People could kind of go, well, I was just guilty because I was the bad sheep, and that’s kind of got a very, That’s got a trajectory that’s just straight down, right?

[00:09:59] [00:10:00] Yes. Because if you’re guilty, even if you didn’t do something, then I remember, I don’t know what age I would’ve been, but I remember thinking, well, shoot, if I’m guilty, whether I’ve done

[00:10:13] the wrong thing or not, then what is the point of trying? Exactly. So, there was definitely that kind of thing.

[00:10:21] I definitely felt set up quite a few times and like growing up it was kind of pointless. Like I’m the bad sheep in this family. And there isn’t anything that it can rewrite that script.

[00:10:33] Diana: I assume they thought you were rebellious?

[00:10:37] Oh, totally. Yeah. I wonder what your teenage years were like.

[00:10:42] Melanie: Yeah. Well, by the time there was so little trust, by the time I was a teenager. There were many times I didn’t come home at all at night. I pretty much did what I wanted. What’s interesting about that is that I was kind of reckless on the one hand, but super conservative internally on the [00:11:00] other.

[00:11:00] It just makes no sense to me when I think about it. It’s like, where did that come from? And I know now it was the hand of the Lord. It was God’s protection. And so I could have found my way into a lot worse trouble than I did. But I mean, I did, like, as a young teenager, I would sneak into like clubs.

[00:11:20] I get, in some cases you get the little handstamp, but other cases they sort of didn’t care. And so I’m yet like maybe 13, 14, and I’m in these nightclubs on Sunset Boulevard watching all kinds of stuff go down, and it’s kind of shocking to me, but I’m just an observer, like

[00:11:39] I’m definitely just watching and thinking, is this really how it all works? And I, it definitely had to sort of fight my way out of some people’s grip sometimes. Oh. Cause they were definitely lecherous, but I was strong and I was good at fighting.

[00:11:58] Diana: Yeah. I fought my mama, I’m gonna fight you. [00:12:00][00:12:02] Melanie: Yeah. I did have that reflex of don’t touch me or I’m just gonna bite and kick.

[00:12:08] Wow. You mentioned the Lord. What was your relationship with God? Did you have a personal relationship with God or was just, oh, I go to church every Sunday. Was it a personal thing for you?

[00:12:21] No, not at that point. I would say I, I was obviously churched, but I actually don’t know exactly when I was the Lord’s. And I know that might sound really strange cuz some people are like, oh, I know when I accepted Jesus. Yeah, you have a specific day and it’s so clear. Yeah. The day and the hour, and I’m like, well, I see the keeping power of God over my life years before I was open to him.

[00:12:50] Diana: I love that.

[00:12:51] Melanie: So. Yeah, I remember in getting in trouble, of course I was in trouble a lot. So I remember at church some Sunday [00:13:00] school teacher was saying something. I don’t even remember what, but. I remember shaking my head and saying out loud, louder than I thought that I don’t think Jesus is like that.

[00:13:10] And I, so now I’m in trouble again, and cuz of course, my parents are choir director and church organist, so, I got marched over to them after the little, Sunday school was over and they were out of the service. And I’m in trouble for fighting with the teacher. But what I’m getting at is that I had some idea of the Lord and who he was, and I knew him to be gentle and kind and.

[00:13:39] I was taking issue with the way that he was being depicted, which didn’t seem good. I mean that in the sense of his goodness seemed to be lacking in the story. And so I had some idea of who he was, but it’s not like I felt close or that [00:14:00] I thought we were walking together. The beginning of my becoming a Christian started, I was reading tarot cards.

[00:14:09] This is in my twenties. I was reading tarot cards and I remember praying. Just in general that I would like my revelatory gifting, whatever that was at the time, I don’t even remember, but I wanted to be stepped up. I remember praying I’d like to be stepped up, and I went to bed and sometime in the middle of the night, I did not know these two spirits by name, but I’ve done the research and I believe it was Incubus and Succubus.

[00:14:38] I mean, these are two major raping spirits. Oh. And they’re like left and right of me above my bed. And I looked at them and I knew their intent. I knew that it was bad news that they were there. And I [00:15:00] just not really out of a place of faith, but more out of a place of the way that cussing happened in my childhood home, I just went Jesus.

[00:15:11] And it was not really a prayer, but it was kind of a prayer. And at that point in my mind’s eye, I saw a little door open, but through the small opening there was massive light and Jesus was in that opening and I looked at the open door and I looked at the two spirits and I knew their intent was harm and I said to them, I’m with him, and I pointed at Jesus and they were just out of the room gone.

[00:15:47] Diana: Oh, I love that. That is a fascinating story that. Just the name of Jesus is powerful. Even though you, you said it in fear or your like you say your [00:16:00] parents swearing. You heard that before. Jesus’ name is powerful.

[00:16:05] Melanie: Well, and I just think it’s such a beautiful picture of God’s graciousness because it was like, oh no, this is bad.

[00:16:14] And he, it was like his presence was invited at that point, and he was, boom, he was right there. And so that is the beginning of when you’d think I would’ve been, born again in praising God, the rest of my life. From that moment forward, that’s not really what happened.

[00:16:37] I just was done with tarot. Yes, and I I burned the cards and then I was like, well, Jesus, I don’t know what to make of that. I have encountered you. I. I, but I don’t really like church and I don’t know if I don’t think I want to be a Christian, so I had to [00:17:00] deal with, I had to sort that out.

[00:17:02] Yeah. Because And everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. So it took me, I think another year. So. Or so after that to really get to the point where I said, yeah, I am a Christian. He is my Lord. I want him. And I got baptized a few months after that.

[00:17:22] Diana: I just think that, after you’ve been surrounded by such negative all around you, that you even saw that Jesus was kind and gentle, even though the people around you were not.

[00:17:33] And then you encountered this horrible situation and you recognized who Jesus was and that he was the savior physically at that time and spiritually. And everybody’s experience is different. It’s not always like cookie cutter. I came from a, background that’s like cookie cutter.

[00:17:51] You say this prayer. Oh. And you get baptized and you start doing all this stuff in the church and like you say, praise the Lord. [00:18:00] And it’s not always that way. It’s sometimes it’s gradual and you discover things. So I love that so much.

[00:18:08] Melanie: Yeah. And I think for a lot of people, if there’s really been any, not that I don’t think I was openly indoctrinated against Christianity, but in some way I really was postured to be against it somehow.

[00:18:23] And so it wasn’t, it’s kind of like CS Lewis, where Lewis didn’t have one moment and everything was settled and done. His spiritual autobiography Surprised by joy describes definite steps along the way. Some of them happening in childhood that were indelible, but they didn’t add up to a complete of salvation until he was later on in life.

[00:18:50] And there were many milestones along the way. So that’s kind of more. Like what my experience has been. And you’re right. I mean, I love the, I love these stories about, [00:19:00] I, when I was raised in a Christian home and I accepted Jesus when I was five, and I’m thinking, my goodness, that is just beautiful.

[00:19:07] Yeah. That bless. Yeah. Yeah. But it is not what my story was. But on the other hand, I look back and I know God’s saved me. God’s saved me in the nursery. God was there. God saved me from all manner of things before I was ever thinking about being faithful to him.

[00:19:28] Diana: That’s how he is.

[00:19:31] He’s there for us. Can we talk about your music background a little bit? What did you do? Your parents were musical, what did you do in the church? You sang, obviously, right?

[00:19:42] Melanie: Well, in the church, by the time we were teens, I was out and that’s when I started really singing.

[00:19:49] I was raised in classical music. The helm was always full of either classical or choral. It could have been choral, classical, or maybe some [00:20:00] musical theater. Lots of chamber music and stuff like that. I was already a violinist. Not that I was a good one, but I was classically trained. And the thing about it that is interesting to me now as an adult looking back, is that the world of classical music is replication.

[00:20:17] You you get your sheet music or the score or whatever, and you replicate. What’s on the page, and I always wanted to write. I was I was kind of getting scolded, when I was six and seven years old because I was coming up with melodies. I would spend my practice time working on the scales and, working on the prepared pieces for my next lesson.

[00:20:42] But then I did that as fast as possible so I could write melodies and and that wasn’t okay, so, so I was a songwriter and didn’t know it. And when I started writing songs maybe about age 11 or so, when I [00:21:00] bought my first guitar and that’s when I started songwriting outright. And I did continue with violin through high school.

[00:21:08] Actually, I switched to Viola in junior high because they needed more violists. And I was happy to. I love the inner voices of the orchestral spectrum of sound. So I was very happy to be a violist and so I was kind of looking at commercial music, but my family didn’t put a high value on it.

[00:21:30] And and then when I got out of high school and I was in college I was writing songs and with a band.

[00:21:38] Wow. You can make your own melodies now. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, yeah. Now that’s a big part of that is a big part of my my income. I have more than one different income stream, but I compose.

[00:21:55] Music and put scores to like [00:22:00] people’s audio books. I just finished four weeks in the studio for that. So, and that was quite orchestral and kind of cinematic, which was, it was a ton of fun.

[00:22:12] Diana: Yeah. I love classical music. I was took voice lessons, well, I could sing since I was in kindergarten and always was in choir and and sang solos and school and stuff. And then I was raised with a lot of different kinds of music, which I uhhuh look back on, and I appreciate that. It wasn’t just one type of music. And college I studied voice and did mainly sacred music and stuff like that.

[00:22:42] Yeah. Which I still love to this day. Yeah. And then when I met my no husband Brian. He’s a he’s a drummer and we were in a bunch of bands. I branched out to singing, let’s see, blues, jazz classic rock. And we were in a [00:23:00] progressive rock band. And I had to go back to lessons to

[00:23:04] Learn stage presence because classical singing, you just, do your hands like that. And unless you’re in an opera, you don’t really move very much. So I didn’t know what to do on the stage.

[00:23:18] I started with my husband, he’s a songwriter too. We started writing music, and the whole pandemic. I don’t know how you went through the whole pandemic, but we couldn’t be in the bands anymore. Right. And I still wanted to do music, so I bought a I’ve got a Juno synthesizer behind me and I decided I was gonna write music and do all the instruments myself.

[00:23:41] Good for you. That’s awesome. I just put ’em on my website for now until I can afford to get them, mastered For real. But how did you get through the pandemic with the music and. Everything else?

[00:23:55] Melanie: Well, the, I spent the pandemic in kind of an unusual way. [00:24:00] I was with my mom who was approaching 90, she is 90 now, and she had been super active, like she was accompanying a number of choirs and she played Oregon for A local church.

[00:24:16] And so when it came to lockdown I was very concerned about her health as well as my own. And so I I, we really locked down. I mean, we almost didn’t go out. I remember on January 1st, 2021. I said, let’s get in the car. And we drove around the the Long Beach Harbor and up to Signal Hill and places that provided great views.

[00:24:45] And it was the first time we’d been out of the house and months except for going to a doctor appointment. And how I survived was basically writing the book and so. Well, basically it [00:25:00] was writing the book, but that’s how I got the pandemic.

[00:25:06] Yeah. Everybody has a different story about that too.

[00:25:10] Diana: I wanted to swing around back too, CS Lewis, because you have a different approach than everybody else. Like for recovery tools, you use imagination. Tell us about that.

[00:25:24] Melanie: Yeah, well, so, if you fast forward in my life there was a point where I realized that things were really a mess more than I had realized.

[00:25:34] I realized that this story, this birth story that I thought for years was. Just my mom kind of having a trauma, I realized it had impacted me much more than I realized, and I ha I needed to kind of go into that with the Lord. Now if you think about, there are some verses, many of them are in the Psalms, but there are a lot of verses where it says the Lord.

[00:25:59] [00:26:00] Wants truth in your innermost parts or some translations might say in your deepest parts. And when I started realizing that I had childhood trauma and that there were lingering. effects. I was introduced to the work of Bissell VanDerKolk. The author of the Body Keeps the Score. Oh. And I’m so grateful for that. You’re familiar with it, aren’t you?

[00:26:25] I can tell. Yes, I can see it. Yeah. Yeah. He’s kind of a hero for a lot of us. And when he goes into his research basically on the types of therapies that help trauma sufferers To recover. What I noticed is that he was talking a lot about drama therapy. You know how the family therapy was literally dealing with parts?

[00:26:53] And I thought, well, my goodness, that’s what my prayer life has been like for years. I have this pet [00:27:00] phrase I like to say about my Bible reading, and that is that the Bible is not just a book that I read. The Bible is the only book that reads me. It actually, it, yeah.

[00:27:12] Right. It reveals us to ourselves. And I was always taken by these cause I read the Psalms a lot, e every month I’m going through the Psalms and I knew that God was showing me things that are in the recesses of my soul, in my deepest parts. And so when I looked into family therapy, which is called I F C, they were talking or drama therapy.

[00:27:40] Either one. They were talking about, okay, whatever your story is, Wendy. We have a teenager who is suffering from, not just incest, as if that’s not bad enough, but also an entire family system that says they’re telling a lie. So there’s no support whatsoever. [00:28:00] And so in drama therapy, they would say, alright, pick who the players are.

[00:28:07] And the team who’s been victimized gets to choose who the players are and gets to direct like what they’ll say or what they can’t say or what they do. And then the teen is completely empowered. To kind of rewrite the situation, a point of trauma or some narrative in the family that has been so incredibly harmful.

[00:28:34] They just get to rewrite it. And I was looking at that it reminded me of CS Lewis because there’s a woman named Lean Payne and she was a major student of CS Lewis and from his work she kind of, she pulled out, she kind of extrapolated all these insights that he had into how humans

[00:28:58] imagine. If you think [00:29:00] about the screw tape letters. The senior demon screw tape is coaching his junior demon to get them to think and believe certain things, which is a use of the imagination, right? Yes. And so in the case of screw tape, we have an example of how the imagination can be used

[00:29:23] for negative results, and in the case of drama therapy or what the Bible says is I want truth in the end. Most parts, we saw how the imagination was a powerful tool for rewriting the wounds of the past. And so I, as I looked into that further, that CS Lewis was not the first guy to think of this stuff.

[00:29:49] He was influenced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge back in the 17 hundreds who explored the power of the imagination. And [00:30:00] so That’s how I largely did my own d i y therapy was I just journaled and journaled with these parts that I knew were believing and acting out of a belief system that was completely counter biblical.

[00:30:20] And so, in the process of doing that work that’s where I found. My deepest healing.

[00:30:30] Diana: Well, that is such a unique perspective that you took all those little bits and pieces and combined them into something unique for you.

[00:30:43] Melanie: Yeah. It is. I mean, I definitely did borrow from different sources.

[00:30:48] I was inspired by different sources. But it is a pretty established approach. I kind of regret, to be honest with you, that family parts [00:31:00] therapy is not acknowledging the biblical roots of the fact that you know the souls. I don’t know what you think of souls.

[00:31:10] I’ve met some Christians who think that souls are part of us that is condemned. I don’t think so. I think God loves our humanity. To me the soul is mysterious and definitely sometimes evasive because we have a subconscious and it’s powerful but we don’t necessarily understand everything that’s in there.

[00:31:35] Diana: Maybe the flesh was what was condemned, our flesh body. And the soul is our true selves. Okay. Yes, the good parts of us. I, that’s how I always saw it.

[00:31:46] Melanie: Yeah. Okay. Well, and I know that the Bible talks about the true man and the false man, and they, and I, for in case anybody is thrown off by that they mean the true person and the false person.[00:32:00][00:32:00] The language was just written at a time when mankind meant all of us. Yeah. But humankind is maybe more accurate. But so we have this true self and this false self and the work that the imagination can help with is separating when the false self is literally dialoguing with the true self, which is in Gotted, right?

[00:32:29] Because Christ divides within and clear up the conflict so that you are internally aligned instead of internally confused.

[00:32:41] Diana: That’s a good way of putting it.

[00:32:42] Melanie: I finally got there.

[00:32:45] It might sound a little complicated, but it’s not really. I’ve seen similar work. If you’re familiar with the Artist Way. Are you familiar with Julia Cameron’s artist way at all? No.

[00:32:57] Okay. Well, and fair enough, because she’s she [00:33:00] has some ideas that are really off-putting to a Christian, because the way she defines God I’m not sure I’m gonna remember this correctly. Good. So she’s got some ideas that are clearly not Christian.

[00:33:17] But then on the other hand, she has some ideas that are absolutely central to Christianity. We’re made in God’s image. And because God is a maker, meaning a creator, so are we, little mini creators. And as a result, our imagination, the modern definition of the human imagination is that’s just where we go to try to find a good idea or make stuff up.

[00:33:45] But the Christian concept of imagination is it’s the capacity that God gave each of us for two-way communication. In other words, that’s how we get our downloads from heaven. [00:34:00] Ooh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And so of course it has the ability to rewrite belief systems that are wrong. Of course it does, because we’re getting wisdom from beyond.

[00:34:16] So that is also imagination, not just making things up. And that’s the basis for how the imagination can be a tool for healing and recovery.

[00:34:29] Diana: Yeah. You’re mentioning, people that may not align everything with Christianity, but just take out the meat and throw away the bones kind of thing, right?

[00:34:39] Yeah. Yeah. We try to reach a Native American population around us. And there are many. My mother’s side is Cherokee, and so trying to connect with the native populations where you have the white man problem in our [00:35:00] history, but trying to connect with them on a spiritual level.

[00:35:03] They have a lot of things that, that go with Christianity. They. Respect for the Earth and the creator and, each person is valuable and loved. And so we can use those things to, have something in common. Talk about spiritual things. It doesn’t have to be our little box of evangelicalism.

[00:35:27] You know what I mean? Totally. Yeah. It’s that is powerful common ground. So you wrote your book and you have this roadkill checklist. I’ve gotta know what that is.

[00:35:40] Melanie: You know what? Okay, the roadkill checklist. I don’t know the whole thing by heart, but since you’ve read Bissell VanDerKolk what I say in the book is when I encountered Bissell VanDerKolk’s checklist for what an adult survivor of developmental trauma looks [00:36:00] like, what their life looks like, and he names things like chronically underperforming.

[00:36:10] So. Chronic conflicts in interpersonal relationships out of, I think it’s 21 or 23 things on his checklist. There’s only one that I did not have. I’ve never been incarcerated. Thank God. Yes, my God. Yeah. But everything else is like check, check. And I was at a point where I was, now I kind of say it

[00:36:35] tongue in cheek. But I was at a point when I encountered that list where I was, I just felt like, oh heavens, I. I have this early life experience that has shaped my entire life, and now I’m finding out medically my stress regulation has been [00:37:00] dysregulated since birth. And it has created health issues.

[00:37:05] One of the things on that list is obesity and endocrine dysregulation. So there are literal bodily systems that are affected by this. And I felt like roadkill, I felt like there, this is all said and done before I was three months old. My and I, and it was really like a prayer toward heaven.

[00:37:29] It was like, are you kidding me? It was all said and done, and there’s no remedy. There’s no way out because if you talk to Traumatologists, thank heaven for Bissell VanDerKolk, who says lots of trauma can be resolved, but outside of his developmental trauma framework, you’ve got a whole body of people who are like, yeah, that’s it.

[00:37:54] Let’s get you on antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds, or, [00:38:00] in other words, there’s no hope. And so I nicknamed it the roadkill checklist. It’s his checklist. I did add a few things. That’s the only thing I did that makes it, mine. I added multiple failed marriages.

[00:38:15] I was married to my third husband, which my, was my one and only Christian marriage for 24 years. But but that was a third marriage that I kind of married everybody I got serious with. And again that’s weird conservatism. If you’re serious, you marry, right. Yeah. But anyway, I had some additions to that.

[00:38:40] But that’s the roadkill checklist. It was mostly inspired by VanDerKolk.

[00:38:46] Diana: Yeah. I’m definitely gonna put a link in the show notes for that book because there’s maybe some people that I have not read it. It’s an excellent book.

[00:38:55] Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about with your book? [00:39:00] How you wrote it? What else is in the book besides the checklist?

[00:39:05] Melanie: Well, there’s a lot of trauma research in the book, but to be honest with you, just speaking as one writer to another, I wrote that book to be kind of like a Trojan horse, and I’ll explain what I mean by that.

[00:39:21] I knew that. I knew that I needed to provide a good read a compelling story that would make people wanna keep going. And so I dropped in a lot of trauma research so that people who were captivated by the storytelling would also end up learning a lot about trauma. And I did that because I know there’s a lot of trauma sufferers who aren’t necessarily

[00:39:52] going to read medical research, they’re not going to read. They’re not gonna go on PubMed and read [00:40:00] VanDerKolk, or they haven’t studied the history of the D S M, that’s the diagnostics and statistics manual. They’re not gonna know that storyline, that Bissell VanDerKolk, brings such light on.

[00:40:12] And so I wanted to really I know this is Very very sweeping statement, but I wanted to tell a strong story so that people would get an education of trauma and what the landscape of trauma recovery is and have a lot more compassion for people who have unhealed trauma and their lives reflect

[00:40:41] that and basically kind of raised the bar on how people understand trauma.

[00:40:49] Diana: It is so valuable, just to put it in layman’s terms, for people to understand. They don’t, like you say, they don’t get the medical gobbledygook, the jargon. I’ve been [00:41:00] in the medical industry for 15 years, so I’m a little geeky in that aspect, but not everybody else is.

[00:41:07] They don’t know how does it apply to them? So, it is certainly very valuable and I appreciate that about your book. So when is it released?

[00:41:18] Melanie: It’s in pre-sales right now. It releases July 25. That’s not very far from now. It’s not very far from now, but yeah, depending on when this show airs it may be out already.

[00:41:31] Diana: Well I will definitely promote it. Do a little commercial.

[00:41:36] Melanie: Thank you. Yeah, I would love that. I started out writing because I needed a way to process my own life, and writing is really a great tool for that.

[00:41:46] But what ended up happening was I processed my stuff to a point where it’s like, okay I’m good. You know what I mean? I’m finally functional. I have enough inner alignment to set a [00:42:00] goal and reach it. Which was new. And I don’t feel like I recovered in some sense. I feel like I am, by the grace of God, I am better and stronger than I have ever been.

[00:42:15] Amen. And that is because of this work. And I explain in detail how imagination. Guided by the Holy Spirit is the tool of recovery that I used. So I wrote it so that people who maybe they can’t afford, 10 weeks of E M D R or heaven knows how many months of therapy or years. Of course I wrote it for people who can afford a book and a blank journal.

[00:42:52] And to equip people to draw near to God and let God do the work cuz it’s way better than [00:43:00] anything the world has to offer. I’ll be happy to send you a book. I’d lo I’d love your help. Just getting it out to. Trauma sufferers.

[00:43:09] Diana: Yeah, I can’t wait. The listeners know my story. I’ve done my story on the podcast and I lead small groups called Mending the Soul. It’s trauma informed small groups for healing. And I’d love to promote your book to my, girls in the In the groups. We have a workbook and we have a textbook by a trauma counselor and a theologian here in Arizona, which is excellent. But we’re always also adding all these other tools.

[00:43:37] Because everybody heals in different ways. You know that Yes. Some people like group therapy, some people hate group therapy. Some people like you say, do EMDR and everybody’s eyes are. Glazing over cuz they don’t know what that is. Or animal therapy or music. I personally love music.

[00:43:56] That was a big part of my healing, but Absolutely. You [00:44:00] said something earlier in the interview about that you don’t think in your trauma, that there’s a way out and there is. Can you speak to those listening and give them some encouraging words and what it’s like on the other side?

[00:44:18] Melanie: Yes. Yes. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that very thing because there is absolutely a beautiful life on the other side, and God is so good and so faithful and so close to someone. Who is facing the things they don’t want to face and going into the pain there, I know the fear is that the pain will never end, that there is no end to it.

[00:44:50] But that is just alive from hell and there is a complete resolution on the other side, and it is totally [00:45:00] worth it. Amen. God is good. God can rewrite the brain, he can, and that I, I am convinced that is, he’s in the business of rewriting catastrophe and tragedy. And he, we just need to bring our hearts to him.

[00:45:20] Diana: That’s such smart and wise counsel for those that are listening. It is true. It is true. There is an abundant life that the Lord promised us to begin with. Tell the folks where they can get your book, pre-order your book.

[00:45:39] Melanie: Yes, it is on Amazon, or they can order it from Ingram.

[00:45:44] I see some Ingram Spark. In other words, go to any book store and request it. The title is Resurrected Roadkill. I love it. And now we know. Yeah. And now we know. I just used the word [00:46:00] roadkill because that is how I felt when I was at my most hopeless stage. But obviously resurrection is a living power in any believer.

[00:46:13] And the power that Rose Christ from the dead is in us and it is accessible for our help. And so I named it Resurrected Roadkill, or they can go to resurrected roadkill.com, but, and that’s a link to the Amazon store, so. Either way they’ll get the book. No

[00:46:37] Diana: do you have any music that that I can play that’s yours?

[00:46:41] Melanie: I do have some a actually, some of the points in the story, of course, I wrote a song. Right? Of course I did. Yeah. And I have it, but I don’t have it produced yet, so I’d be happy to share links with you. It might be a more than a, well, I’m not sure when the timeframe is to be [00:47:00] honest, which is why I don’t really lead with it.

[00:47:02] But inside of now to September, there’s definitely a resurrected roadkill music series that I’m working on producing right now.

[00:47:13] Diana: Well, if you can send me an MP3 of anything that you would like to share with us. I always like to feature music on the show, being a musician and all, so Of course.

[00:47:24] Yeah. Let me know. Very good. It was awesome to have you on the show! We had some laughs even and and you had some great gold nuggets for us. Definitely keep in touch. Definitely. Welcome to come back anytime.

[00:47:41] Melanie: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure.

[00:47:45] We thank you.

[00:47:47] Diana: God bless you.

[00:47:48] Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast. If this episode has been helpful to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You could [00:48:00] connect with us at DSW Ministries dot org where you’ll find our blog, along with our Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week.