Melissa Delport is a virtuoso in the wellness world. She works as a holistic health coach, private chef and retreat facilitator, and is the best-seeling of author Heal: Begin With Food - an integrative cookbook that teaches us to live a life of abundance and vitality through food.
Through each of her roles, she uses her intuition to guide her services, enlightening her clients to the unconscious emotions and underlying issues that influence their food and lifestyle decisions. She specialises in high-vibrational, plant-based food, using their nutrients and wellness benefits as personalised medicine for the mind, body, and soul.
Her aim is to enable her clients to mindfully connect with not only what nourishes them on the plate, but off the plate too.
“I believe that if you are willing to feel all your emotions and get curious about them, then you can gain a deeper understanding about your current behaviours,” she says. “Awareness is the birth place, and choice is the pivot point.”
“For me success is in doing more than just feeding my clients, it comes from nourishing their souls, offering them a sense of connection to something greater, and inspiring their cooking and eating going forwards,” she explains.
For Melissa, a big component of her own nourishment comes from the relationships she keeps. In particular, the relationships she shares with a network of strong, supportive and inspiring women, is what fills her with the confidence and empowerment she needs to pour into others.
Here, she shares the five women who help her do just that:
My mother
My mother is my constant cheerleader. She is the one who taught me that no dream is too big to chase. I am forever grateful for that because it has taught me to be fearless in my endeavours as a businesswoman and as a coach. She supports everything I do and always leads with love. She has taught me about kindness and respect for others, and I know there is no way I would be the woman I am today without her guidance.
My grandmother
I firmly believe that my gift of creativity and passion for food came from my grandmother. Some of my earliest memories are learning to bake chocolate cakes from scratch with her. She was graceful and elegant, and taught me to express my creativity. I don’t think my career and the multiple hats that I wear would have been possible without her influence. I know that she is one of my guardian angels.
Jessica Sepal
Discovering Jessica’s work and the JS way of living truly changed my life. It set me on the path of writing my own books as well as becoming a holistic health coach and healer. It was the start of me understanding my strong emotional connection to food and learning to hold space for women in their relationships with food and themselves.
Finding balance in my relationship with food was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I will forever be grateful for Jess and for sharing her story because it showed me that there was no shame in sharing mine.
Brene Brown
Brene is so deeply inspiring and her work on vulnerability and shame has allowed me to delve deeper into my emotional landscape and to better hold space for my clientsto do the same. Through my years of coaching, I have learnt that we cannot look only to food in being well but to our emotional landscape too. Brene’s work is fearless and raw and showed me that it is okay to not be perfect. In fact, perfect doesn’t exist and there is so much beauty in that.
Lady Gaga
I am so drawn to Lady Gaga as a power woman. She’s a true trail blazer and has shown me that you can expand as much as you need, and that true leadership is done with kindness and is led with the heart.
I am in love with titanic women and their strength. We are always taught as women to play it small and to fit into boxes. Lady Gaga is a testament to the fact that it is okay to be the shape and size that you are and no matter your race, sexual preference or career, you are perfect just as you are.
I saw her live many years ago in Cape Town and remember being in awe of the message of love and strength that she preached. Her creativity also sets my soul on fire! I think that in today’s world, representation is so important and although she isn’t gay herself, her messages of love and support for the LQBTQ+ community inspired me to own who I am as a queer person and to never let my light dim to make others comfortable! I also want any young person who is reading this to feel the same and to know that they are perfect the way they are.
