MelRo felt like a fraud, the way so many of us do. We worry we'll be "found out" for whatever burden we carry. Truth is, no matter how we try to avoid or ignore our bad experiences, we'll never realize our true gifts until we heal those invisible obstacles that cause us to quietly self sabotage or allow us to settle in our lives. No matter how much success comes your way, it will keep brewing underneath, getting in your way. MelRo is proof.

She is the product of a violent rape. Her mother was a 13-year-old girl who was violated by a man in his 50s.

She was raised by my abusive grandmother until the age of 10 when a neighbor witnessed her beat MelRo with a pair of BBQ tongs and called the police. She was then placed in foster care and bounced between care and going back with her grandmother for many years. By age 15 MelRo had lived in 23 different homes--foster homes, group homes. Constantly changing schools. Constantly wishing for love and a family. Experiencing horrible emotional, physical and sexual abuse along the way. No one wanted to adopt her. She felt like a burden.

Unprepared for the world, by 17, she was homeless with an infant, but luckily found a shelter with one last available bed.

She was determined to give my son a better life. One day while shopping for diapers a woman approached MelRo and asked if I'd ever considered modeling. Next thing she knew she was traveling the country doing photo shoots and walking on runways. She was suddenly the beautiful woman in the photograph that everyone admired, desired or envied.

The survival skills MelRo learned in foster care came in handy during modeling. Acting "normal" and pretending that everything is OK when the social worker visits isn't unlike hiding behind make-up and beautiful clothes and pretending everything is OK. She had never addressed her childhood trauma. She tried to push it down and ignore it. Whether MelRo liked it or not, a day of reckoning was coming.

The pain became too much to bear. She found herself standing on a bridge looking down. She couldn't take it anymore. It was time to say goodbye.

Then MelRo felt a woman's hand in hers. "Don't do it," she pleaded. She was taken to a psychiatric hospital where for the first time she began to address the wounds of her childhood. Healing her past has been like peeling back the layers of an endless onion, but MelRo keep on going.

She is living proof that if you haven't healed trauma and bad experiences, no amount of success or riches will erase it. You will never become the complete, successful person you were meant to be. Walking around unhealed, there was no way MelRo could ever be truly happy, have positive relationships or enjoy her early modeling success.

That's why she is so passionate about inspiring others and passing along tools to address their unresolved pain head-on. Whether you experienced abuse, a bad divorce, or carry other unresolved issues, they will always be an invisible obstacle preventing the full realization of your authentic, beautiful self. You must heal the trauma to unmask true beauty.

Models, Modeling, Fashion Model, Adoption, Foster Care, Inspirational, Motivational, Inspire Mental Health, Social Work,