Melanie King KawashimaVélez 

DNP, PMHNP, RN

Melanie (she/her) is a grounded, heart-led co-traveler who has accompanied over a hundred individual, couples, and group journeys through hurt, joy, “not good enough”, forgiveness, play, anger, despair, fears of death & life, wholeness, race and cultural wounds, trauma, shadow and into the beyond.

Her work as a nurse since 2012, past work as a home caregiver for the dying, and university music training as a vocalist and instrumentalist expanded her view of the Essential Medicines: Caring, Community, and Connection to the Higher. View her social justice and ethics statement at: kawashimavelez.com

Melanie identifies as Japanese American. She trained at CIIS CPTR, MAPS, Polaris KAP, Temenos KAP, and Subtle Winds, where she also teaches. Melanie is a BIPOC circle community leader and a psychiatric prescriber and therapist with ketamine, and for local programs for sex offenders, perinatal psychiatry, and addiction medicine. She loves being in the water, with friends, family, cooking, poetry, music, and doing her own self-work as a psychonaut.

"Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable urge to care for others, which is both their greatest strength and fatal flaw." ~Jean Watson