Melinda Feola-Mahar, MA, DA

Melinda Feola-Mahar lives in New Hampshire with her wife of 24 years, Alison. They have four children ranging in age from 26 to 8 years old. Melinda’s professional background has spanned 40+ years, including a psychotherapy practice, community mental health outreach, and establishing a non-profit community collaborative to serve the needs of community members falling through the cracks. In addition, Melinda has served as adjunct faculty at several institutions of higher education focusing on child welfare and foster care.

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Melinda and her wife were foster parents from 2002 to 2019, when Melinda was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast cancer. At the time, Melinda was working with a national consulting firm providing technical assistance to child welfare agencies around the country to improve services for families and children and improve existing foster care services. When Melinda “retired” due to her illness, she soon found Project Life and began to see that she had more to offer. She went from a mindset of “dying from MBC” to “living with MBC.” Melinda has been trained, through Healing Circles Global, as a Healing Circle Host and leads Project Life efforts to expand the Healing Circle model to meet the needs of our members.