Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Mezzancello.
Hi Melanie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
This question made me laugh because I found myself staring at the words “how you got to where you are today” and thinking… where exactly is that? I’m not entirely sure I’ve arrived anywhere just yet.
The funny thing is, the first time I chatted with you back in 2022, I remember saying that I felt like my story was just beginning. Looking back now, I think I was more right than I realized.
At that time, I was approaching 50 and rediscovering parts of myself that I had packaged up & put away for a very long time. I had survived breast cancer, lived for decades with Crohn’s Disease, gone through more surgeries than I care to count, left a career in Human Resources, become an award-winning author, and somehow found my way back to the performing arts.
And then Flamenco happened.
What started as something I thought I would simply try became one of the greatest loves of my life. Over the last four plus years, I have had the privilege of performing on stages throughout Florida, from Orlando to Miami. There is something truly special about stepping onto a stage in a beautiful dress, feeling the heat of the lights, seeing the anticipation of the crowd, hearing that first note of music and feeling the floor beneath my Flamenco shoes… it makes everything else disappear. Nothing else matters in that moment. Just the dance. At 53, I can say without hesitation that I feel more alive when I am dancing than I ever imagined I could.
Creativity has become a huge part of my life in other ways, too. I’m still the author of Love Snaggs – A Little Dog’s Courageous Journey, which continues to collect accolades. I paint, I crochet & knit, I play guitar, and I am apparently now also the social-media manager for my six-year-old, adopted green cheek conure named Jellybean. Yup, Jelly has completely taken over my Instagram account! Somehow this tiny feathered comedian has developed his own little worldwide fan club online. It turns out that he loves to dance too! Life takes some very strange and wonderful turns, doesn’t it?
But the last few years haven’t been entirely joyful. There has been illness, profound loss and grief, and I have had some painful reminders that we don’t get unlimited time with the people we love. Those experiences have changed me. I used to think strength meant pushing through everything. Now I think strength sometimes means knowing what deserves your energy, letting yourself grieve, knowing when to say “no,” resting when you need to, and still finding your way back to joy even after tragedy strikes.
This year I celebrated eighteen years since my breast cancer surgery. Eighteen years. There was a time when I was 35 years old, frightened and lying in a hospital bed, when I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like this far into the future.
Now I know.
It looks like dancing.
It looks like paint-stained hands, costumes hanging everywhere in my bedroom, music playing in my house, a rescue dog nearby and a little green bird yelling at me because apparently I am late with his snack.
It looks like loving my people fiercely.
And it looks like understanding, finally, that a meaningful life doesn’t necessarily resemble the life you planned when you were young.
So how did I get “here?” Probably by taking the very long way around. There were detours, losses, reinventions and quite a few spectacular wrong turns. But there was also love, creativity, friendship, laughter and an awful lot of dancing.
I don’t think I’ve arrived yet.
I think my story is still beginning.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
You asked me if it has been a smooth road?
In 2018, I sailed from South America to Antarctica. To get to that magnificent & mysterious continent, you must brave the Drake Passage, where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet, and where some of the roughest and most dangerous seas on the planet are found. If you’re lucky, you get the “Drake Lake” and have a smooth sail. More often, you get the “Drake Shake.”
I got the Drake Shake.
For days, we sailed through 30-foot seas that tossed our ship around like a toy boat.
That was a calmer ride than the past few years of my life.
I think many of us experience something similar when we reach our fifties. We begin losing what I think of as the pillars of our families—the generation ahead of us who helped shape who we are. Our parents, aunts and uncles. They’re the people who saw us at our most ridiculous, remember parts of our childhood that we don’t, and taught us—intentionally or otherwise—some of life’s biggest lessons.
Over the past few years, I’ve watched people I love become seriously ill. I’ve had to confront anticipatory grief, caregiving, loss and the realization that some of the people who seemed permanent throughout my entire life simply aren’t. Watching someone you love reach the end of their life changes you in ways I’m still discovering.
At the same time, I’ve had my own serious health challenges these past two years. Living with Crohn’s Disease has taught me that remission doesn’t necessarily mean your body is finished surprising you. I’ve dealt with a heart condition, anemia and iron infusions, and days when the fatigue is so severe that my body simply refused to cooperate with what my mind wanted it to do.
And then there are the losses that other people might consider smaller, but that leave enormous holes in our lives. In December of last year, I lost my little rescue dog Wesley after nearly fourteen years together. Anyone who has deeply loved an animal knows there is nothing “small” about that grief. And any of you who have read my book know how very special Wesley was. And then like magic, just before Christmas, a tiny rescue dog from Puerto Rico found her way to me – my Phoebe Noelle. It was as if Wesley sent her straight from Heaven to heal my heart.
Yet something interesting happened in the middle of all of this.
I kept dancing.
Sometimes joy and grief can exist in one’s life at exactly the same time. I’ve learned that one doesn’t necessarily cancel out the other. It is okay to give yourself permission to feel joy during a time of grief. I can miss someone terribly and still laugh until my stomach hurts. I can be exhausted and still put on a Flamenco dress. I can grieve my beloved dog while opening my heart to another. I can watch people I love grow older while being profoundly grateful that I still have the opportunity to love them.
I used to think resilience meant getting knocked down and immediately getting right back up. I don’t believe that anymore. Sometimes resilience means staying down for a minute. Sometimes it means asking for help. Sometimes it means saying, “This hurts,” instead of pretending it doesn’t. Sometimes it means ending a toxic cycle or relationship. Sometimes it means a quiet resistance. And sometimes it means putting on your dancing shoes anyway.
So no, it definitely hasn’t been a smooth road.
But I survived the Drake Shake once. I suppose I’ve learned how to hold on when the seas get rough.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’ve always had a difficult time answering the question, “What do you do?” because I’ve never been just one thing.
I’m a dancer, a visual artist, an author, a musician and a lifelong maker of things. I paint in watercolor, crochet and knit, play acoustic guitar, perform Flamenco, and wrote the award-winning children’s book Love Snaggs – A Little Dog’s Courageous Journey. More recently, as I mentioned, I’ve somehow become the creative director, videographer, editor and unpaid publicist for Jellybean, my goofball parrot—but that may be a story for a different type of article!
When I look at all of those things together, though, I realize they aren’t as unrelated as they might seem. At heart, I’m a storyteller. I just use different languages to tell the story.
Sometimes the language is words. Sometimes it’s watercolor. Sometimes it’s yarn. And sometimes it’s the movement of my bata de cola, the snap of my fan or the rhythm of my nailed Flamenco shoes against a wooden stage.
Flamenco has become an especially important part of my creative life. I began studying it later in life, which I once might have considered a disadvantage. Instead, I think it has given me something uniquely valuable to bring to the stage. Flamenco isn’t about being twenty years old, having a particular body type or achieving some impossible idea of perfection. It asks for presence, passion, feeling, power. It asks you to bring your experiences with you. It asks you to put your whole heart into the dance.
When I dance now, I bring all of it—the woman who survived breast cancer, the woman who lives with chronic illness, the girl who loved performing, the writer, the artist, the woman who has loved deeply and lost deeply, and the 53-year-old who has finally figured out that she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to take up space.
I’m incredibly proud of Love Snaggs. What began as my way of telling the story of one extraordinary little dog went on to receive awards internationally, and knowing that something I created has touched children and families in places I’ve never even been is still astonishing to me.
But I’m equally proud that I’m still creating.
I think what sets me apart is that I don’t have much interest in staying in one creative box. I spent years confined in the corporate world, where we’re encouraged to define ourselves by titles and specialties. These days, I’m much more interested in curiosity. If something fascinates me, I want to learn it. If something moves me, I want to create something from it.
I don’t create because I’m trying to be the best at something. I create because making things—whether with words, paint, yarn, music or movement—is part of who I am. I’m still curious. I’m still learning. I’m still willing to be a beginner. And at 53 (almost 54 in a few weeks), I think there’s something pretty wonderful about knowing there are still so many things I haven’t tried yet.
Maybe that’s what I’m most proud of: I’m nowhere near finished becoming.
What does success mean to you?
I can’t. Or rather, I can’t define success for anyone except myself.
We’re often taught that success has a particular look: the big title, the corner office, the fancy house, the expensive car, the money… you know, all those things that we can point to as proof that we’ve “made it.” And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting those things, if that is what fulfillment looks like for someone.
The problem comes when we mistake those things for the universal definition of success—and, worse, when we assume that someone who doesn’t have them has somehow failed.
I don’t believe either is true.
To me, success is deeply personal. Maybe it’s reaching your own version of self-actualization—becoming more fully yourself and building a life that reflects what actually matters to you, rather than what the world told you should matter.
These days, I find myself thinking much less about success and much more about legacy.
Not legacy in the grand sense of having my name remembered. I mean the quieter kind. What did it feel like to know me? Did I make good choices? Did I do the right thing when it was hard? No—especially when it was hard. Did I speak up when it mattered? Did I use whatever voice, talent, influence or power I had to make things a little better for someone else?
Did the people I love know that I loved them? Did I show up? Did I make someone laugh when they desperately needed to laugh? Did I make someone feel seen? Did I leave an animal safer than I found it? Did I create something that made another person feel something? Did I help when I had the ability to help?
And when I got it wrong—and Heaven knows I have (so many times)—did I have enough humility to recognize it, own it, apologize, learn something, and then strive to do better?
At this point in my life, those questions matter far more to me than the size of my house or the number in my bank account.
I’ve had careers and titles. I’ve had fancy cars. I’ve written an award-winning book. I’ve danced on beautiful stages. I’ve traveled to extraordinary places and accomplished things that I’m very proud of. But none of those things, by themselves, tell me whether I have lived successfully.
If, at the end of my life, the people and creatures whose paths crossed mine are a little better for having known me—and if I can look back and know that I became more fully my true self along the way—then I will consider my life an extraordinary success.
Pricing:
- Artwork available on Red Bubble. Link with pricing below.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melliemezz?stkn=aDlwZ2MxbmhpZTcx&utm_source=qr
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@melliemezz?si=-moCw7fCU7HMUupn
- Other: https://www.redbubble.com/people/MellieMezz/shop?asc=u&ref=account-nav-dropdown
