We recently connected with Melisa Keenan and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Melisa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. The first dollar your firm earns is always special. We’d love to hear about how you got your first client that wasn’t a friend or family.

I had been running a marriage book-club within the community of another influencer. I was so new that I was still trying to determine if my greatest expertise was in creating deep connection in sex and relationships or creating deep fulfillment within oneself. I had finally decided that I would do a blend of both of those focuses, and created my first feminine intimacy course. I had told no one about it yet, but I was officially ready to begin working with clients, when all of a sudden one day, one of the women in the book club approached me. She said, “I have no idea if you do this sort of thing, but every time you make a comment in our book club, I think, ‘I have to work with this woman.’ Can you help me?” I was thrilled.

She didn’t even know that this was the beginning of a movement, an extremely successful intimacy coaching firm serving high-level female executives and ultimately leading me to influencing women in places like the USA Today Bestsellers list and beyond. She worked with me for 2 full years, consuming every single thing I created as she literally created a completely new life, self esteem, and became one of the most creative, playful and expressive people that I know. And what’s more, she truly claimed her value in her marriage. She came to a place where she was showing up with full integrity and expected nothing less of her partner. 2 years ago she flew across the United States with her two daughters to celebrate Christmas with my family and I. I have such a special place in my heart for her.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I know that it is not typical for high-level business women to share the behind the curtain of their lives. But I have created a business supporting women to do just that; to embrace true intimacy, reclaim their sensuality, tap into their divine feminine and access the most powerful version of themselves, to create deeply fulfilling lives and maintain massively successful businesses of impact. The kind of women I work with are thought leaders in their industry and have massive passion and fire to influence and create legacy. And they are also fiercely passionate about doing that with connected and fulfilled relationships by their side where they can be uninhibited and unapologetically free in every possible way.

I love the work of true intimacy and divine feminine empowerment because I went without it for the first 26 years of my life. and watched every single one of my female ancestors live lives that were broken down, destitute and full of disempowerment. I was absolutely terrified of intimacy and the feminine. I had found safety in perfectionism and control, walling up, proving myself through all my achievements and accomplishments and keeping people at a distance, including my husband and children. Everything hit the fan, when 5 years into marriage, with three children in tow, my husband confessed to a secret addiction that he had suffered with our entire marriage, without my knowledge. My entire reality began to crumble to the earth as I realized that meant he had lied to me countless times. What else wasn’t I seeing? What else had I missed. We separated for 6 months and I call that the 6 months that I cried on my bathroom floor. I felt so helpless, so trapped by my circumstances. How could I divorce the father of my children? Our third child was just 2 months old. I thought we were going to defy the odds and make this marriage the one that could withstand the tests of time. But here we were. I absolutely blamed him for our circumstances and felt completely hopeless.

One day, I went to the bathroom when all the kids were in bed and I took the scissors and chopped all my hair off to only a few inches. It was my moment of total desperation. I got into the shower sobbing and fell to my knees in prayer saying, “I have no answers. I don’t know what to do.” And I felt an answer that came through like a flood of peace over me that said, “Finally, I can show you who you really are.” See, my husbands addiction was not the only thing to blame for our broken marriage. He had work to do, but so did I.

It was shortly after that, that an energy healer friend approached me. She told me in one of my first ever sessions that there was an angel pacing back and forth over me, worried about me, because I was so out of balance in masculine/yang energy. I went on a journey to discover who I really was, and all the ways that the masculine-heralded society had convinced me to be someone that I simply wasn’t. All the masks and should’s and survival mechanisms that I had built in to keep myself locked up tight. Understanding the feminine at the beginning brought NEW boxes because there is so much misunderstanding in the world about the true feminine. Some of them made me want to vomit, like “meet your husband at the door with his slippers every day.” And make sure to be a, “domestic goddess.” I found there was just as much toxic messaging in feminine teachings as there was in the masculine indoctrination I had received. But I was determined to find fulfillment, no matter what anyone else around me chose. And so I swung the pendulum and gave in completely to a 50’s version of feminine housewife. As awful as it sounds, I gained tremendous lessons from this part of my journey, about myself. I found parts of myself that I had never allowed to come forward. And slowly over time I began to reintegrate to a more whole and balanced version of who I really am, and as I did so, things that had always felt out of place or dark in my life, began to make sense. And joyfully, my husband found recovery and we began to repair the connection in the soul of our marriage as well.

I found that the greatest study of the feminine, or as I love to call it, the divine feminine, came from studying my truest self. Not someone else’s idea of what feminine meant, just mine. I took a yoga teacher training that led me to meeting my own divinity within, and now, with the help of my intuition and the spirit moving though me, I could begin to identify my path and what felt truly in alignment for me, and what didn’t.

I will never forget one day, about 2.5 years after my husband and I had moved back in together, we finally looked at each other and said with tears in our eyes, “Look what we have. I never knew connection could feel this amazing. I never knew it could be this good. We never saw this before, but look what we have created.” But I think it wasn’t just the marriage we were celebrating, it was the whole soul fulfillment that we felt. Sex was better, money was better, parenting was better. And that is when I knew that I needed to help other women have this too.

See no amount of pushing ourselves into the prescribed boxes for females will ever create the true fulfillment we desire. As I began serving women all over the globe, I found that women in business often hurt the most in the areas of personal relationships. They have worked so hard to make a seat for themselves at the table that often it has come at the expense of their personal relationships and they want more but often feel that their hands are tied. Whether that is because they are in a marriage where they have become kind to each other, and simply live separate lives as co-parents. Or they are single and have determined that relationships just aren’t for them. Each of these women has had to exist in a reality that is not truly her hearts ideal scenario and it comes with a high cost. But she feels so judged, and that there are so many eyes on her, that her business is just too demanding, her team and clients need her, her investors need her, that she concludes that she doesn’t feel that she could ever do anything to change it. So she finds a sort of complacent acceptance, thinking, “it is what it is.” She puts a smile on, and pushes forward.

It is a tragedy and no one should ever feel so alone.

The women that work with me reclaim every aspect of themselves in the deepest most intimate way. They make friends with their divinity, and that becomes their best business partner, their support in motherhood, their guide to deep fulfillment in their romantic partnership and all their relationships. They make a seat at the table for their pleasure and reclaim their sensuality and even play in sex magic. They free the truest version of themselves and create more free time in their life and business to truly enjoy every aspect of what they have created on the planet! They feel free and truly cherished in their partnerships.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

In my own personal journey I started as a passionate woman wanting to help other passionate women. But that meant I needed to become a business owner , which I knew basically nothing about. I had a BS in Biology, A 200 hr Yoga Teacher training certification, a Master Certification in the Gibson Banning Coaching methodology, and a whole ton of experience to draw from in my personal life from dismal and disconnected to fulfilled, connected and free.

None of that helped me know how to run a business. So I began investing aggressively in every business, marketing and sales mentorship and program I could get my hands on. I found a lot of success and a lot of burnout. I found that my old habit of achieve/prove/progress/repeat just came back with fervor as a business owner. I had ironed out my life in my personal relationships but business was a whole new beast. I took on every strategy and tool that I was taught. I hired assistants and sales associates and client fulfillment specialists and tried to make my business look like what everyone said it was “supposed to” look like. It lead to more and more burnout and fatigue.

I came to a point where I felt desperate for reprieve. I invested the most I had ever invested in a done-for-you funnel and enrollment process and it was a total flop, in fact, it was a dishonest scam. This particular company was so strong in the toxic masculine sales tactics, preying on the specific weaknesses that so many other burnt-out 6-figure solopreneurs and I were facing, and I let it get the best of me. The whole strategy they used felt out of alignment, but I invested anyways in the hopes that this strategy that I hadn’t yet tried would save me to restore my energy somehow back to the blissful state I had found before opening my business. It was a total flop. In the debt that incurred and the subsequent 6 months of doing everything I could to make that strategy work, I was brought face to face with how truly out of alignment I had allowed myself to become in my business. Business owner or not, I had learned to listen to my body and intuition and I knew that I was not living in my truth. I realized if I was ever going to be a sovereign business owner that was truly able to walk my talk in ALL aspects of my life, I was going to have to pioneer my own path. I was going to have to unlearn hundreds of thousands of dollars of business coaching, strategies and systems and consult my own inner-wisdom.

Thankfully at just this time, a woman came into my life who actually felt fully free. You could feel it in everything she said and did, in her whole way of being. She had created a 7+figure business and was living a truly fulfilled life, and she took me under her wing. I studied her, not just how she did business, but how she did life. How she did her time boundaries. How she prioritized her hearts desires into her life, time with her children and her husband. How she commanded respect because of how much respect she had for herself. And after her incessant plea for me to “Stop hiring business coaches!” I finally got it.

The truth is, we have to design our lives from our heart. I am not my business, and neither are you. My business is in my life to support my life and my dreams, not the other way around. And particularly as women, we have got to be impeccable about our devotion to our own alignment, which comes from within. Not aligning ourselves with anything or anyone else but our purest hearts desires is the only way to truly creating the life, impact, and fulfillment and business we so desire.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

People are so tired of depending on external authority. The entire way society is structured puts us into a hierarchal system where everyone seems to know more, have expertise and mastery of everything in your life, more than you do. Especially for women. This has been this way for ages, from the power of the church and monarchs 2000 years ago, to today where you can’t even trust your taste in fashion, your desire for a particular food, your preferred method to market your business, or even what your feelings are telling you in a romantic relationship. Let alone big decisions like how to choose whether to marry or who to marry, or how to choose this next investment decision, or how to decide whether or not to have children. There is so much advice and knowledge thrown at us from every corner of the world, but no one is telling you that the whole blueprint for your most fulfilling life is found within you.

When women work with me, they don’t come to me to be an expert at their life, relationship, or business. They come to me to be reminded and tapped into the reality that they are the expert of their own life. Yes I have experience, expertise, tools and even spiritual gifts in intimacy, connection, sensuality, divine femininity and women’s fulfillment that I draw from to help inform how I guide my clients. But I believe what my clients walk away from in their work with me is greater confidence in themselves, not a worship of me as their guru.

High-powered business women are especially hungry for this kind of support. Nonjudgemental, not advice pushing, safe containers for them to rest in and find the magic and spark in themselves and within their own desires, passions and visions for their life. They don’t need anyone else’s blueprint or strategy or solution for their next level in their business or relationships. They need permission to draw out parts of themselves that they have felt they had to hide away to create the success that they have to this point in their life. They need permission to follow their desires, and their play and passion to access the most powerful version of themselves and create everything they ever wanted.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.melisakeenan.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melisa.keenan.35
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisa-keenan-intimacy/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH6hd89CHW1-Ac75aciUdww
• Other: Chronicles of the High Powered Female CEO Interview Series: https://www.melisakeenan.com/chronicles-of-female-ceo

Image Credits
I own the rights to these photos

Suggest a Story: CanvasRebel is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.