A place for women finding their way back to themselves
About Moth & Midden
Moth & Midden was created for the women who have spent years being capable, useful, accommodating, responsible and needed. The ones who have loved hard, carried too much, swallowed their needs, kept going when they were exhausted, and slowly lost sight of themselves in the process. Moth & Midden is about finding your way back to yourself, but it's also about the woman you're becoming. It's about reclaiming the parts of you that got lost along the way, letting go of what no longer belongs, and giving yourself permission to change, explore and evolve. Not to become someone else's idea of who you should be, but to discover who you actually are.
On your own terms.
What you’ll find here
Moth & Midden creates tools, reflections and conversations for women who are ready to stop disappearing from their own lives. That may look like private coaching, oracle decks, books, journals, guided practices, rituals, writing, creative work or something that hasn’t been imagined yet. The form may change. The intention doesn’t.
Everything begins with the same question:
What happens when you stop abandoning yourself?
A Little About Me
Hello, I'm Melissa Mae. I'm a writer, artist, storyteller, filmmaker and coach. I'm also a little witchy, quite often cheeky, endlessly curious about people, and usually able to find the humour in most things, even when life is particularly challenging. I love beautiful things, strange treasures, good stories, big, deep conversations, a bit of magic and people who aren't afraid to be gloriously, imperfectly themselves.
Moth & Midden didn't begin because I had everything figured out. It actually began because I didn't.
For a long time, I was very good at knowing what everybody else needed. I could read a room, anticipate a problem, soothe a feeling, find four solutions to every problem and generally keep all the plates spinning. And I genuinely loved caring for people. I still do.
Ask me what I wanted, though, and I'd struggle to tell you. Then I'd cover my discomfort with humour and deflection. Somewhere along the way, I'd become so wrapped up in the lives, needs and feelings of others that I hadn't realised how deeply I'd learned that being good, performing and trying to get everything right were ways to earn love. As long as I was giving, making everyone's life easier and being who they needed me to be, then surely they would love me.
I didn't understand that so much of this was a trauma response, or how long I'd been living in a constant state of hypervigilance. I'd become a chameleon, adapting to everyone around me while quietly stifling the woman underneath.
I was also living with chronic pain and some serious health issues. Looking back, it felt as though my whole being was crying out for care, a return to myself and some much-needed repair. Finding my way back hasn't been a graceful journey. There have been many tears, spectacular mistakes, uncomfortable truths, a few questionable decisions and plenty of moments when I've thought, How am I getting this so wrong?
There's been grief and anger, learning what boundaries really mean, discovering that not every problem needs fixing, and accepting that I can love people deeply without becoming enmeshed in their lives. I've had to learn that love sometimes needs difficult conversations, accountability and repair. And that being kind to myself while taking a hard look in the mirror is not only okay, it's necessary.
And after I finally jumped from the Tower, leaving behind so much of what I'd built my life around, I landed rather hard. It took a while, but eventually something else began to emerge. Creativity, pleasure and laughter and being my playful kooky self. Making things with my hands. Rediscovering what lights me up. Learning to trust my own instincts. Changing my mind. Understanding how my brain works and learning to work with it rather than against it. And discovering that the older I get, the less interested I am in being the version of myself that makes everybody else comfortable. Moth & Midden grew out of this.
It's my corner of the world where creativity, storytelling, a bit of psychology, a bit of magic and the gloriously messy business of being human all get to come together. I'm not here to tell you I've mastered life, achieved permanent inner peace or discovered the secret to being endlessly calm and graceful. Can you imagine? We'll always have healing to do. That's a given.
I'm much more interested in the conversations we have when we stop pretending. When we can admit that we love people and sometimes want to run away from them at the same time. That we're grateful for our lives and still sometimes want things to change. That we can be strong, capable women who occasionally need to sit on the floor and have a good cry. I believe we can take our healing seriously without taking ourselves quite so seriously. And I believe there's something rather magical about women giving themselves permission to become whoever they actually are, without apology or asking for permission.
Come As You Are. You don't need to be spiritual, own a crystal collection or know which phase the moon is in. Although, if you do, we'll probably have plenty to talk about. You don't need to know how to use oracle cards. And you don't need to have healed every wound, forgiven everyone, found your purpose or worked out what you want to be when you grow up. I'm still working on that one myself.
You can arrive tired, curious, angry, hopeful, heartbroken, hilarious, confused, full of ideas or completely out of them. You can bring your questions, contradictions, unfinished stories and the parts of yourself you've been keeping tucked away. You don't need to tidy yourself up before you come in. There is room for you here, exactly as you are.
And if you like your wisdom with a little mossy dirt under its nails, I suspect we're going to get along just fine.
with love
Founder, Moth & Midden
Why Moth & Midden?
The name holds the heart of the work. Together, Moth & Midden speaks to the space between what has been left behind and what is calling us forward.
The remnants of who we have been.
The truth of what we have carried.
The pull towards who we might become next.
Not perfectly.
Not neatly.
But honestly.
The Moth
She is drawn towards light, but she belongs to the dark too. She moves by instinct. She has trust in the unknown when her path is not always clear and follows something she cannot always name. She is quiet, persistent, a little mysterious, and at times misunderstood.
Her beauty is unique, sometimes a little strange, and often only revealed when we take the time to look closely. She knows how to exist in the shadows without losing her desire for the light.
She's a reminder that we don't always need to know where we're going before we begin. Sometimes we simply need to trust that small, persistent feeling drawing us towards something that matters.
And transformation can be uncomfortable, messy and can happen so quietly that we barely notice we're changing until one day we realise we're no longer the woman we used to be.
The moth reminds us that we can embrace both our light and our darkness. That we don't have to hide the strange, tender, complicated parts of ourselves to be worthy of love or belonging.
The Midden
A place where things accumulate. Fragments. Remains. Evidence of a life lived. Things that have been cast off, buried, forgotten, outgrown or left behind. Each piece telling a story about where we've been. A midden is not neat. It is layered. Full of what life leaves behind.
We carry stories, roles, grief, loyalties and multiple versions of ourselves. Some of it still belongs. Some of it doesn't. Some of it needs to be reclaimed. Some of it needs to be left to compost.
What looks like a pile of discarded things can reveal an extraordinary story. There are treasures amongst the rubble, lessons buried beneath the surface and pieces of ourselves we may have forgotten were ever there.
The midden represents the richness of a life lived. The beautiful bits, the painful bits, the mistakes, the memories and everything in between. And just as the earth takes what has fallen and turns it into something fertile, we can take the experiences that have shaped us and decide what we want to carry forward
The Moss Hag
The first offering from Moth & Midden is The Moss Hag Oracle Deck.
Moss Hag is a 36-card oracle deck and companion guidebook created for tired women returning to themselves.
She is earthy, irreverent, tender, occasionally inconvenient and not particularly interested in helping you become more palatable.
The deck explores boundaries, exhaustion, anger, grief, pleasure, creativity, rest, desire, identity and what it means to become more deliberately yourself.
Moss Hag does not tell you what your future holds.
She gives you somewhere to look when you need to understand what is happening now.
Got something on your mind?
I love a good conversation. Whether it's joy, grief, creativity, boundaries, or something messy, I'd love to hear what's on your mind. I read every question, and some may inspire future Moth & Midden conversations, with your permission.
