Hi, I’m Melina

I’m the writer and creator behind The Good Soul, a growing world of stories and creative experiences designed to support children’s emotional wellbeing.

My connection to children’s development began long before The Good Soul. After leaving school, I gained my CACHE Level 3 Diploma in Childcare and Education, before following another part of myself into a career in fashion design.

For more than a decade, I worked creatively; developing ideas, telling stories through design and learning how colour, texture and imagination can communicate what words sometimes cannot.

After becoming a mum, I felt drawn back to child development and education. I began homeschooling my two boys and later completed a certification in art therapy, bringing together the two threads that had shaped my life: an understanding of children and a deep belief in creativity as a form of expression.

But it was my own children who became my greatest teachers.

They showed me that feelings rarely arrive in neat, easily explained sentences. They appear at the kitchen table, on the way to school, before bedtime and in the middle of seemingly ordinary days. Sometimes children need help finding the words. Sometimes they need a pencil, a quiet moment or a character who feels a little like them.

That is where The Good Soul began.

Why stories?

The Good Soul first grew from a collection of emotional wellness tools created for use in our own home. Over time, I realised that the most powerful part of those tools was always the story behind them, the moment a child recognised themselves in an idea, a feeling or a character.

Today, The Good Soul is evolving into a story-led emotional wellness community.

Through thoughtful children’s stories, calming audio experiences and related creative activities, I hope to give children gentle ways to explore emotions such as worry, courage, frustration, change and belonging.

The stories are informed by my background in childcare and education, my training in art therapy principles, my experience as a designer and the everyday reality of raising two children.

But The Good Soul isn’t about perfect parenting, diagnosing feelings or telling children how they should respond. It is about creating space: space to listen, imagine, express and feel understood.

Because sometimes a story doesn’t need to provide the answer.

Sometimes it simply needs to let a child know they aren’t the only one feeling that way.