Discover how self-knowledge transforms into meaningful action. Learn to make choices that authentically reflect who you are and begin trusting yourself through intentional practice.
Influential Woman · The Embracing Layers Network
Melissa M Crook
Founder and thought leader, The Embracing Layers Network
Fresno, CA 93722
5Years experience
2Articles published
Her Story
About Melissa
Melissa Crook is the founder and thought leader of The Embracing Layers Network and creator of the FEEL Framework (Finding Empowerment Embracing Layers). What began with The FEEL Podcast in July 2021 has grown into a women's empowerment and resources network designed to help women move beyond simply knowing they need something to change and begin putting what they know into practice in their everyday lives.
Based in Fresno County, California, Melissa holds a bachelor's degree from Washington State University and brings professional experience in human resources, nonprofit partnership engagement, public speaking, and facilitation to her work. Through the FEEL Framework, she helps women explore who they are beyond what they do, strengthen self-trust, communicate their needs and boundaries, and make more intentional choices based on their values, bandwidth, and capacity.
Melissa brings FEEL to women through speaking, workshops, small-group cohorts, 1:1 FEEL Connect Sessions, self-guided resources, the award-winning book Embracing Layers Unapologetically, and The FEEL Podcast.
She is also actively engaged in women's leadership and community building through the Fresno County Women's Chamber of Commerce, Soroptimist International of Fresno, and as a Community Advisor for the Gender and Leadership Program at Fresno State University's Craig School of Business.
At the heart of Melissa's work are three beliefs: You're Worth All of It. You're Valuable Because of Who You Are, Not What You Do. And You Get to Choose.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Melissa
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to a strong support system, curiosity, persistence, and learning to trust myself. I’ve never believed I have to know how to do everything myself. If I believe something is possible, I’m willing to ask questions, learn, and find people whose strengths complement mine. Just as importantly, I’ve learned that self-trust doesn’t mean always knowing the right answer; it means trusting myself enough to make a choice, learn from what happens, adjust when I need to, and choose again.
There have absolutely been people who didn’t understand or believe in what I was building, but I’ve learned to listen to my own instincts without needing everyone else to agree. That journey has shaped not only my success, but the FEEL Framework itself.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve received is to trust myself, and I’ve learned that self-trust is much more than simply “following your gut.” It means knowing what I value, paying attention to what I’m feeling and experiencing, and trusting myself to make the best choice I can with the information I have. It also means knowing I can change course when I learn something new.
I’ve been fortunate to have women in my life who model that kind of self-trust. I don’t need to make the same choices they make; what I’ve learned from them is that I can listen to other perspectives without giving someone else the responsibility for deciding what is right for me. That has become one of the most important lessons in both my career and my work with women: advice can give you information and perspective, but ultimately, you get to choose.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would tell young women to be patient and intentional about building a career and a life that actually reflect who they are. Get clear about your values, what matters to you, and even what you want your calendar to look and feel like before automatically saying yes to every opportunity that comes your way. One of the practices I’ve learned is to give myself at least 24 hours before making a new commitment, because having hours available on a calendar doesn’t necessarily mean you have the mental, emotional, or physical capacity for something.
I’d also tell them to trust themselves and be persistent, while remembering that persistence doesn’t mean continuing down a path simply because you started it. You can learn, adjust, change your mind, and choose again. And especially when you’re building something of your own, don’t continually give away time, expertise, energy, or financial resources you don’t actually have. Generosity is valuable, but so is learning how to sustain yourself and the work you want to put into the world.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges I see is the cultural narrative that encourages women to undervalue their time, expertise, and work—and sometimes we unintentionally reinforce that with each other. We can be quick to ask another woman to donate her time, provide her expertise for free, or accept less compensation because it's for a good cause, a community we care about, or an opportunity for “exposure.”
I believe the opportunity is for women to redefine what supporting one another looks like. Women supporting women should also mean valuing each other's work, paying one another appropriately when resources are available, and respecting the boundaries between what someone chooses to give and what she needs to be compensated for.
I've had to learn this in my own work as well. Generosity is one of my values, but generosity doesn't require me to give everything away. I can decide what I want to offer freely and what needs to be paid work, and other women get to make those choices for themselves, too.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Trust, transparency, integrity, honesty, and curiosity are some of my deepest values. I value relationships where people can communicate openly, feel heard, ask questions without immediately moving to judgment, and trust that honesty doesn't require agreement.
I also deeply value loyalty, but I've learned that loyalty doesn't mean abandoning yourself to maintain a relationship, commitment, or expectation. I value agency; knowing what matters to you, communicating it, and respecting your own choices as well as the choices of others. And I value experiences, exploration, and travel because they continually expose me to people, perspectives, and ways of living beyond my own.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Melissa
Do your choices reflect what you know?
Moving from self-discovery to living authentically through one intentional choice at a time.
Knowing Who You Are Is Only the Beginning
Knowing who you are gives you information.
It can help you understand what nourishes you. What you value. What your expectations are for your own life. Where you need boundaries. Where you want to say yes. And where you need to say no.
But then comes another question:
What are you going to do with what you know?
One of the things I talk about through the FEEL Framework is moving beyond simply learning things about ourselves and beginning to put what we know into practice in our actual lives.
So, today's FEEL Connection is about what happens after we begin learning those things about ourselves.
Do Your Choices Reflect What You Know?
So many times, choices are not inherently right or wrong.
The question is whether the choice reflects YOU.
From Defining Yourself to Living From What You Know
One of the Ways to Engage with this is simple:
Make one choice that reflects who YOU know yourself to be.
Not ten choices. Not change your whole life. Not quit your job, move across the country, buy a house, sell a house, or book an international flight by Friday.
One choice.
- Maybe you know you're someone who needs quiet to feel grounded, so you protect 30 minutes of it.
- Maybe connection is deeply important to you, so you call someone you've been missing.
- Maybe adventure is part of who you are, so you finally look into something you've wanted to try.
- Maybe you've realized you've outgrown a commitment, expectation, or label, and today's choice is simply admitting that to yourself.
- Maybe your choice is a yes.
- Maybe it's a no.
The important part isn't what someone else would choose.
It's asking:
Does this reflect who I know myself to be?
And Then, Stay Curious
Because knowing yourself doesn't mean creating a definition you now have to live inside forever.
We grow. We change. We discover things. We outgrow things. We enter new seasons.
And sometimes we realize that the woman we're becoming wants something the woman we used to be never imagined.
So, rather than turning what you know about yourself into another set of expectations you have to live up to, stay curious about who you are becoming.
For this week, come back to one thing:
Make one choice that reflects who YOU know yourself to be.
Then notice how it feels to make a choice from that place.
That's where knowing yourself begins becoming trusting yourself. And where reflection begins becoming practice.
Discover who you are beyond your job titles and accomplishments. This transformative practice guides you to identify five core words that define your true self, helping you make life choices aligned with your authentic values and desires.
This Week's FEEL (FindingEmpowermentEmbracingLayers) Practice: Who Are You, Not What Do You Do?
Discover who you truly are beyond your career and accomplishments with this transformative practice.
WHO ARE YOU, NOT WHAT DO YOU DO?
When someone asks who you are, how quickly does your answer become a list of what you do? Your career. Your relationships. The roles you fill. The people who depend on you. The things you’ve accomplished. We spend so much of our lives being recognized for what we do that it can be surprisingly difficult to answer a much simpler question: Who am I underneath all of that?
I kicked off September with an invitation to think about how you want to FEEL in this season. A few days later, I hosted a conversation on The FEEL Podcast with guest Merit Kahn, where we dug into the scripts we may still be following, the places where we’ve become “everyone’s everything,” and what we might choose if we trusted ourselves a little more.
September also marks the second anniversary of our book, Embracing Layers Unapologetically, which is built around getting curious about our layers and reconnecting with who we are underneath them, and then making choices for our lives from that place.
There’s a thread running through all three: Knowing who you are outside of what you do.
So let’s put that into practice.
Your FEEL Practice: YOU Choose Your 5 Words
Choose five words that describe WHO you are.
- Not your job.
- Not your titles.
- Not your relationships.
- Not your accomplishments.
- Not the roles you fill.
- And not what you do for everyone else.
Who are YOU?
Maybe you’re compassionate. Curious. Resilient. Creative. Loyal. Adventurous. Thoughtful. Courageous. Those are some of mine :).
The point is, though, that there are no “right” five words.
They’re yours to identify. Don’t ask someone else how they’d describe you. I want you to do this for yourself. It’s OK if it takes a little time. This may be something you haven’t thought about in a while.
Write them down.
Say them out loud.
Look at yourself in the mirror and say:
I am ________.
I am ________.
I am ________.
I am ________.
I am ________.
Then sit with those words for a little while. Notice how it feels to describe yourself by who you are rather than what you produce, accomplish, provide, or do for other people.
Because this is where so much of the FEEL Framework begins.
The more we understand who we are, the better equipped we become to recognize what nourishes us, identify what we value, establish healthy boundaries, communicate our expectations, and make choices that align with the life we actually want to live.
And here’s something else I’d encourage you to notice this week: How often do you introduce or describe yourself by what you DO before you say anything about who you ARE?
No judgment. Just curiosity. That’s part of embracing our layers, too.
Now, Live It.
Don’t let your five words disappear when you close this article.
- Put them somewhere you’ll see them this week.
- On your bathroom mirror.
- In your phone.
- At your desk.
- At the top of your journal.
Then pay attention to the choices you make.
Do your choices reflect the woman those five words describe? That’s where reflection begins becoming practice. That’s where listening begins becoming living.
Don’t just listen to FEEL. Live it.
Now I want to hear from you:
What are your 5 words?
Share them in the comments. No explanation or résumé required.
Just tell us who you are :).
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