MELANIE WRIGHT
Melanie Wright is a courageous woman with boundless spirit and sharp wit. She has a strong sense of self and a wisdom that is born from a persistent dance with survival. She is a doer and a fighter who has had her steel tested more times than is reasonable.
At the height of her triumph over death, prison, homelessness, and poverty, Melanie won the crown of Mrs Universe South Africa. Melanie shows us that when you aim for a crown you leave your face at the door and carry your heart in your hands. Vulnerable, open, and valiant, she reaches out to serve a broken and sometimes treacherous world, leaving all sense of pettiness behind as she takes giant leaps in high heels towards uncharted territory that promises no guarantees.
In pursuit of healing, she shakes off shallow and narrow-minded views and brings grit and guts.
In the face of criticism and pretentiousness, she rolls with the punches and uses the momentum to propel herself to even greater heights. She is a public speaker, storyteller, life coach, and author. Melanie’s ongoing journey reminds us that blowing out someone else’s candle will not make ours burn brighter.
When you wear your crown with decency and integrity you build a kingdom where others come to thrive and heal. When you serve and represent a throne that encourages others, you help them become entrepreneurs, leaders, examples of independence and an inspiration to children whose lives most of us could never bare to understand.
Not being able to walk in the shoes of another does not stop us from warming ourselves at the fire that comes from the stones they’ve bashed together. To know someone, we need only know what inspires and disgusts them and how hard they will fight to become the champion that stands and roars in the face of adversity.
Melanie clawed her way back from the most unfathomable hardships, crashing through one obstacle after the other, sometimes face first. She walks in earnest, suffering no fools, scattering wildflowers into the most barren of soils, knowing they will summon the wind and rain needed to prosper. Hurt and hardship either toughen or ruin us. Through devastation we either learn to get up, let go, or hold on too tight to the very things that threaten to destroy us.
Melanie will lock you in a paradox of beliefs and feelings. She will test the steadiness of your foundations, and rock you back and forth to the cradles of your own past with the tales of her journey.
Fighters like Melanie, who have come through the turfs and strongholds of hardship bring themselves back together like Russian dolls that once lay scattered. Eventually they find the balance and become whole again.
Her stories are monstrous, and chilling and they wear a crown to the most inappropriate events.
Melanie shows us the difference between giving up and walking away. Her stories dig their fingers into sore spots, opening new wounds, and raising new questions. You’d be wise to let that happen.
Melanie Wright has many titles, but Warrior is the one that holds them all together.
The story starts with Melanie, but it will always end with you, and it just might help you stop asking yourself if you are ENOUGH.
Be your own hero and unfold your own myth. You might just surprise yourself.
Written by Angela Shearer