Melissa Rabell ’13: Her Journey to a New Hope for Herself – and Others

Melissa (Buchanan) Rabell ’13 already had a pocketful of admissions from various universities when she chose UCF.

“It was close to home, which made it a lot more accessible,” Rabell says. “They also provided more financial support and really seemed to care about me as a student.”

Rabell, who owns Reinventing Hope Counseling, a clinical mental healht practice serving clients in Tennessee and Florida, realized later how important that latter support was to her educational and professional journey.

“Neither of my parents attended college and they simply didn’t know how to navigate my transition to higher education,” Rabell says.

She had excelled in high school and knew she was destined for something more, but she didn’t necessarily know how to get there.

Rabell was recently asked to contribute a chapter for the book “Heal to Lead”. in which she described a tumultuous upbringing that simultaneously stilted her childhood and aged her far beyond her years.

“What I’ve learned is that students like me may not always be able to figure it out by themselves,” Rabell says. “UCF definitely helped me navigate the college experience.”

UCF also gave her a safe place not only to fully embrace any activity or club she chose, but to confront some of the flotsam and jetsam from her traumatic childhood.

“UCF was the first place where I felt seen,” Rabell says. “Because of my background, I felt it was my job to make other people happy. UCF showed me that I only needed to make myself happy and also taught me how to balance caring for others and myself.”

In other words, “UCF gave me freedom and fun.”

She went to football games and plays, and one year was part of the student throng that jumped into the Reflecting Pond for a Spirit Splash duck during Homecoming Week. A talented musician, Rabell even began fronting a band around town.

But she says she also experienced disappointment at UCF. As a student in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media, she applied for a coveted position in its prestigious advertising and public relations program but wasn’t accepted.

The temporary setback caused Rabell to take stock. She had, however, learned from earlier life experiences that “when one door closes, another one opens.”

Finding Her Door

Rabell says her senior year at UCF was fraught. After not getting into her preferred program, she shifted her major to interpersonal/organizational communication, with a minor in mass communication. After graduation, she went through a divorce and the loss of her father; both due to addiction and led to her uncertainty over what to do after graduation.

“During that time, I looked back on the thread of my life and how my actions had impacted people,” Rabell says. “There was a time when I had briefly left UCF to concentrate on my music, where I realized that I could really connect with the audience.”

Often, members of her audience would approach her after the show, sometimes with their daughters in tow. “I want to be like you,” they would tell Rabell.

“No,” Rabell would say, “You be like you.”

She realized that she had the power to empower others. Perhaps she could find a way to use that gift to help others.

“I had a friend who randomly asked me if I’d ever thought of being a counselor,” Rabell recalls.

“I think I had been running for a really long time trying to escape my upbringing of neglect,” Rabell says. “So I came back to what had always been the constant in my life: education.”

She enrolled at Palm Beach Atlantic University for her master’s program in counseling.

From Trauma to Triumph

One of the important things she learned from the program was that she had to process her childhood trauma before she could help anybody else. As she gained more confidence in her clinical skills, she also realized that because of some disconcerting issues of unprofessionalism that she had noted from her work in previous jobs, she knew exactly how she would manage her own practice.

And so, Reinventing Hope Counseling was born. Her practice has elements of warm ambient lights, gentle music and peaceful colors to help her patients feel calm and at ease.

For her part, Rabell is also back to making the music that brought her so much joy; she says she is singing more and has begun taking guitar lessons. She also incorporates music into her therapy milieu.

“It’s been quite a journey,” Rabell says. “I am super grateful to UCF for leading me so far. UCF helped me realize that I had been drowning for a long time and gave me a float. And now, as I supervise new therapists, I try to provide that same kind of support as they begin their own journeys.”

Rabell says that it is important that anyone who reads her story understand that therapy “is a beautiful thing.”

She continues: “It’s like maintaining a house. Maybe you’ve noticed that the faucet is leaking. And once that’s fixed, maybe you’ve noticed something else that could be changed. Or maybe there are no problems in the house, but is there a way to make it even more beautiful? And that’s where a therapist comes in — someone who can help you get to where you want to be. One of my favorite things in the world is helping people find that next step. I am living proof that it can be done.”