Meet Mel West

We recently connected with Mel West and have shared our conversation below.

Mel, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.

Generosity was modeled for me from the very beginning. My parents gave freely no matter what they had—always extending invites to barbecues and Thanksgiving dinners, sometimes to relative strangers, because they couldn’t bear the thought of anyone feeling alone or without.

I remember one particularly tight year when they invited two strangers to our Thanksgiving table. I was 12 or 13, and honestly? I was annoyed. I didn’t want to share the holiday with people we barely knew, and I definitely didn’t think we could afford to. But at the end of the meal, one of the guests started to cry. He thanked us and said how much it meant to him just to be included. I sat there feeling a bit ashamed—and deeply glad he’d come.

That moment taught me something I’ve never forgotten: generosity isn’t about abundance, it’s about what you choose to prioritize. The satisfaction and connection it creates are their own reward. I genuinely believe the more love you give, the more it multiplies and finds its way back to you.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m an author—my debut novel, Now Is Not a Good Time for a Breakdown, is out May 19th. It’s about coming of age in your 30s, the chaos and comedy of dating in New York City, and the kind of female friendships that keep you sane through all of it. The thing I find most exciting about what I do is that I write the stories I desperately needed to read — the ones where a woman is a mess and magnetic at the same time, where she’s figuring it out and failing and laughing at herself, and somehow you finish the book feeling deeply seen.

Alongside the novel, I’ve been building a community of mystics over on my Pocket Mystic YouTube. I love how intertwined mysticism and creativity are—and I especially love empowering people to connect to their own inner knowing. The answers are already in us; tools like tarot and astrology just help unlock them.

I’ll soon be launching a series of virtual workshops on using tarot to unlock your creativity.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Resilience. Things never go as planned, and the ability to take a setback, recalibrate, and keep moving is the only way through. My journey to writing and publishing this book was filled with moments that could have stopped me dead in my tracks. What kept me going was a sense of humor and my eye on the prize. For anyone early in their journey: expect the detours and get comfortable with them. The detour is usually part of the path.

An expansive idea of what creativity means. For a long time, I didn’t see myself as a creative person at all—I’d spent years working in finance and had quietly written myself out of that category. Then one day, sitting with a group of friends I’d always considered “the creatives,” they called me out. They pointed to my writing, my sense of style, my ability to problem-solve at work. That conversation unlocked something in me I haven’t been able to close back up since. The more you claim the identity of a creative person, the more everything starts to feel figure-out-able—it may just require a different angle.

Understanding how money works in your field. This one might sound crass alongside the other two, but I think it’s essential. Knowing how people make money in the space you’re entering helps you understand motivations, timelines, and what success actually requires. You don’t have to play by every rule—but you can’t bend them if you don’t know what they are.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

A friend’s mom once told us that when she’s overwhelmed, she “goes to the bathroom and talks to the wall.” I was in my early twenties and thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. A decade later, I think she was onto something.

I don’t talk to the wall, but I do carve out a moment to pause—and then I brain dump everything. Every single thing I think I need to do, out of my head and onto paper. Then I sort it: has to be done today, get to this week, parking lot, and my personal favorite category—not my circus, not my monkeys. Breaking it down into small, actionable items is usually enough to quiet the monkey brain so I can actually work.

If the overwhelm is more of an I don’t even know where to begin situation, I set a twenty-minute timer and just see what happens. The act of starting builds its own momentum, and a time limit makes it feel a lot less scary.

And if it’s some unnamed, formless anxiety that I can’t quite locate? I put my favorite song on and dance my heart out. Let it move through the body until it shows me what it actually is.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mel-west.com
• Instagram: @heymelwest
• Youtube: @PocketMystic
• Other: https://substack.com/@heymelwest

Image Credits

Main Image by Serena Bolton