Melody Godfred: I'm a Self Love Passionista

When we first came up with the idea for The Passionistas Project, we were introduced to a Melody Godfred, the founder of Fred + Far, a self-love movement. She pretty much embodied everything we wanted to represent. She is a strong and empowered woman with not one but two successful businesses. She had left a successful and stable career to pursue her passions. And she was managing to balance a thriving professional life with all the responsibilities of having a husband and two twin daughters at home. Of course, she needed a little reminder to prioritize herself now and then. So she created the Self Love Pinky Ring. It all started when the Iranian born, Los Angeles-based attorney realized that she wasn’t tapping into her creative side. So, she chose to pursue her lifelong passion of writing a novel. The result was The Agency: Hollywood Talent, CIA Managed, which followed the life of a Hollywood power-agent who lived a dual-life as a CIA operative. Realizing that she couldn’t go back to the black and white world of litigation, Melody founded a company called Write in Color, a personal branding and career development company. Rated the #1 resume service in Los Angeles on Yelp, Write in Color offers resume and cover letter writing services, helps people optimize their LinkedIn accounts and helps each individual create a brand identity for herself or product. By 2015, Melody had hit the trifecta — a great husband, fantastic twin daughters and a thriving business. And yet, she realized that she was overlooking a really important person in her life. “I had everything that you’re supposed to have or that I, at least, aspired to have. I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t sure why,” Melody confessed. “To be disconnected from your own life, to not really feel like you have a place in your own life is a pretty scary feeling,” she admitted. “For me I realized that I no longer existed as a priority within my own experience. Every moment of every day was devoted to service of someone else, whether it was a client, whether it was to manage my house, whether it was to keep my kids alive and afloat.” It was a habit that she recognized had been deeply ingrained in her for generations. “I come from a long line of martyrs. Extraordinary, strong women who somehow managed to sacrifice themselves to death but still stay extremely strong and capable. They moved mountains and that’s what I thought being a woman was — to always find a way to sacrifice myself to make magic happen.” But she came to terms with the fact that she needed to break the cycle and the only way she could do that was with some kind of reminder to make herself a priority. So she decided, “I’m going to go buy myself a ring and every time I look at it, I’m going to associate this meaning. And the meaning is — I need to practice self-care. I need to experience self-discovery. I need to love myself and know myself so that I could reintroduce myself to my own life. And nothing like that existed. So I created it for myself and after a month, only a month, I noticed a difference. I was starting to create space in my life for myself.” With the help of her best friend, entrepreneur Samira Far, Melody made the move to share her new tool with other women. “It was so needed for women to be able to claim themselves. This was something that had nothing to do with being single. It didn’t have any kind of negative spin to it where it felt like women were being used or pushed aside.” That commitment is free of any financial obligation. You don’t have to buy a ring to participate in the movement. The Fred + Far website offers other ways to honor your authentic self like participating in the December Self Love Challenge (which is a really great thing to do at any time of the year) and joining their growing online community via Instagram or the private Facebook group called Self Love Confidential. As Melody explained it, “We would tell people, you don’t even have to buy the ring. This is what works for us but what we want is for you to have a reminder every day to choose yourself and to experience what happens once you make that commitment.” Still, if you want a physical reminder that you need to take time for you, there are several beautiful ring styles to choose from. They might just help you remember to stop, take a breath and check in with yourself to make sure you’re getting your own personal needs met from time to time. And while you’re waiting for your Self-Love Pinky Ring to arrive, check out our latest Passionistas Project Podcast episode featuring the incredibly inspiring Melody Godfred of Fred + Far. You’ll love it — we pinky swear.