Hi, I'm Melissa Levi 👋🏼

Dear families,

​

Thank you so much for taking the time to be here - to become the best carer you can be, to make caring for your ageing parents easier, and for letting me help transform your family's care story. 

​

To think that my family’s story, and the stories of my patients’ families, may positively impact another family’s ageing journey truly fills my heart and was my dream for this course (and my book).

​

Your family are very fortunate to have your love and care, and I promise, I can help to set your family up for success and make the journey ahead that bit easier 🙏🏻💛

​

PS: I want to note that ageing is a universal experience. Being Australian, I use 'Mum' instead of 'Mom', 'Ageing' instead of 'Aging', but the knowledge, strategies and exercises can be used by all families, irrespective of where you live. ​​

 

My Beliefs & Philosophies

 

Two things are true:

​❤️  We can provide the best possible care for our ageing parents, and

❤️  We can make caring for our ageing parents easier

​

I believe in:

🙏🏼  The lifelong need to feel seen, heard and that you matter 

🙏🏼  No longer confusing the inevitability of ageing with an inability to shape the journey ahead (for our ageing parents & ourselves, as carers)

🙏🏼  Caring for and empowering carers, as essential to enriching the health, wellbeing and quality of life of our ageing loved ones

​

I don’t believe in:

👉🏼  Dismissing carer stress and burnout as inevitable, unavoidable and something carers simply need to learn to live with

👉🏼  Telling carers to look after themselves, without giving them the strategies to free up the necessary time, energy or resources

​

My Story

​

As much as I would love to say that choosing to specialise in older adults was a conscious, well-planned career move; that isn’t quite how I got here. More than 15 years ago, when I started my Master of Clinical Psychology degree, I knew unwaveringly what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with children.

 

As it happened, almost every other budding psychologist in my class shared this dream. When it came time to listing our placement preferences (each consisting of a six-month period of supervised practice in the ‘real world’), we all listed the very best child and adolescent mental health services on offer.

 

One day, after class, I happened to bump into our Clinic Director. She told me that she was finding it quite stressful to secure everyone’s preferred placements for next year. ‘Oh, well, don’t worry about me’, I replied, attempting to be helpful, ‘I’ll take anything’. Meaning: any of my three child placement preferences.

 

There was a fluttering nervousness in our clinic room the day that our placements were announced. As I met with my Clinic Director, she thanked me for being so flexible with my placement options and informed me that I would be spending six months working with . . . an older adult mental health service. ‘Keep smiling, say thank you’, I said to myself as I tried to suppress the rising knot in my throat, and the overwhelming urge to cry.

 

As I left that meeting, I ran into the stairwell and did what any young professional would do when presented with a challenge. I called my Mum and cried. I wasn’t even crying over the disappointment of missing out on my child placement preferences. I was crying because I was absolutely terrified of working with older people. All of the myths and negative stereotypes about older adults that I have now come to staunchly speak out against, swirled in my mind. ‘I don’t want to see anyone die’, I told my Mum through heavy sobs. ‘I don’t want to go to a nursing home. I don’t want to see people who are sick. I don’t even like the smell of hospitals  . . .’

​

You know the saying, ‘life doesn’t always give you what you want, it gives you what you need’? That’s exactly what happened to me that day. The night before my first day of placement I couldn’t sleep. I felt nauseous about what the morning would bring. As I made my way into the office (sans breakfast, as I thought there was a high possibility that it wouldn’t stay down), I was again on the verge of tears.

​

I managed to get through my first day fairly unscathed. In the days and weeks that followed, as I started to find my feet, my supervisor slowly and thoughtfully began introducing me to patients. This was it. I would have to confront the harsh, distressing reality of what it means to be ‘old’. Only, that’s not quite what happened.

​

I met people with rich life histories, whose receptiveness to, and appreciation for, our support changed the way that I not only saw them, but the way that I saw myself. I experienced a sense of fulfilment, purpose, and humility that (at the ripe age of twenty-two) was rather foreign and eye-opening. I learned that the losses that often come with age (loss of health, memory, friends, roles, independence), was not the loss of joy, the loss of quality of life, nor the loss of one’s inextinguishable will to live. I learned that older adulthood is not merely characterised by one’s capacity to survive, but rather by the potential to thrive. I learned that one’s ‘twilight years’ are perhaps referred to as such, not because they are dark, but because they can be filled with sparkling light. I learned that if ever one deserves to live with joy, dignity, support, and quality, it is in these final years of life. I also learned that it would become my life’s work and privilege to make this happen.

​

Professional experiences

​

• I spent more than a decade working at St Vincent's Hospital (Sydney, Australia) Older People’s Mental Health Service (OPMHS); a team of clinicians who provide assessment and management of the common mental health problems in older people through the integrated, multidisciplinary perspectives of medicine, nursing, psychology, social work, and occupational therapy. We see people in the community, including at our outpatient clinic, home visits and visits to Residential Aged Care Facilities.

• I have also worked with Group Homes Australia & Montefiore Residential Care

• Honorary Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

• Author of 'We Need to Talk About Ageing' (2023, published by Hachette)

• Co-author of the St Vincent's Hospital Handbook of Clinical Psychogeriatrics

• Media & Speaker: I've appeared on numerous television and radio programs, as well as featuring on many podcasts (including TODAY Show, ABC, Life Uncut, Oldie Goodie)

• Two random non-professional facts:

  • Americans: In 2018 I was on the Rachel Ray Show

  • Australians: I have my very own Gelato Messina flavour (Chillax Princess)