Check Out Dr. Melissa Durfey’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Melissa Durfey.

Hi Dr. Durfey, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today. 
My life is complicated, so I don’t know how brief I can make it, but I will try! 

I grew up in a small town in Oregon, where I discovered my love of learning and developed a passion for cosmetic chemistry, entrepreneurship, and art. While art did eventually win for a time and sent me towards my first college experience at the Art Institute of Seattle, it didn’t last very long, and I returned to Oregon a little over a year later to pursue a degree in public health at Portland State University. At the time, I was working a variety of jobs as a barista, karaoke host, and freelance makeup artist. After graduating, I never really found my place in what I thought my career would be, so after a really powerful experience with Chinese Medicine, I decided on another pivot: to Chinese Medical school. 

In 2009, I found myself unable to continue doing makeup without an esthetics license, so I added night classes at beauty school on top of my graduate school coursework. While I was working “on the floor,” I first began layering Eastern theory on Western skincare and found myself getting superior results to that of my fellow students. After graduating from beauty, I continued to hone those skills in school while taking every Chinese dermatology, East Asian cosmetology, and facial massage class I could get my hands on. 

After graduating from Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in 2012, I immediately went into private practice while also working at a salon. A year and a half later I went into a partnership with a colleague, opening a multi-award winning 1500 square foot wellness center in Oregon City. Sadly, the partnership only lasted 2 years due to ethical disagreements, and in 2015, I found myself running the center by myself and on the path to burnout. 

After meeting my husband in 2016, I realized it was time to simplify and focus my practice a bit and move to a smaller space. With the weight of the larger center off of my life, as well as my body, I was able to launch a small line of products and work on my continuing education offerings. I moved to a few different spaces in the Portland Metro Area and had a pretty successful private practice until the pandemic started in early 2020. 

At first, like many others in my field, I wasn’t sure what to do. After a lot of journaling and reflection, I decided to shift my practice to fully virtual, where it remained until May 2021. By that time, my husband and I had moved to Sonoma County, California, for a much-needed fresh start. We were putting the finishing touches on our wedding plans, and I was preparing for the start of my Doctoral program at Pacific College of Health and Science. 

That program further shaped how I practice East Asian medicine and brought into focus how I really want to make a difference with my work. It was a long and twisted road to get to where I am, and I’m so excited to see what the future holds for me. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
You can probably tell reading between the lines, there have been a number of bumps and derailments along the way of my career. For a time, I was known as the Queen of Resilience and Reinvention. My friends often tell me that it’s one of the things they admire about me. 

One of the biggest challenges I face on a daily basis is my own body. Many people don’t realize that I have autoimmune challenges unless I tell them. I’ve been treated poorly by colleagues and others due to my ability, or lack thereof at different points in my life. The truth is, I live with severe chronic pain and celiac disease. This, of course, limits my mobility and what I am able to get done on a daily basis. Because I am so passionate about what I do I used to overcommit myself and keep going until my body forced me to rest. I am happy to report that I am getting better at listening to my body and while I still have a ton of great ideas, I no longer feel the need to accomplish every single one of them at once. 

Another obstacle early on in my wellness center-owning years was a business partnership that unfortunately split, as I alluded to in my story. This split affected everything in my life, from my mental health to my physical health, as well as my confidence and, of course, my finances. It took me a long time to recover from that mistake. When I finally felt my feet under me again, I was met with another business devastating challenge. 

In October of 2018, my beautiful office that I had moved into a year prior in the basement suite of a collaborative wellness center flooded during an unbelievable rainstorm. Sam and I rushed to save as much product and equipment as we could, but the space was left unusable without renovations that we could not wait on. Having to pick up and move again was incredibly stressful and difficult, especially when my insurance claim was denied, but it gave me the opportunity to evolve my brand once again. 

I had recovered from the fallout of the flood and was gearing up for the best year of my career when the COVID-19 pandemic began. As I’m sure you are already aware, the pandemic was particularly for all hands-on providers. The shelter-in-place order made it impossible for us to practice the way we were used to. When we were able to “reopen,” we were met with a long list of new rules and regulations for aesthetics and hands-on services. At the time I was in the beginning stages of a mobile aesthetics service fashioned out of a custom retrofitted RV. This plan would unfortunately fall apart before it became profitable, as the new regulations made this business model nearly impossible. Watching the world change around us was an eye-opening lesson for me. I once again needed to refine my practice, this time to a simpler design. I also took the pandemic as an opportunity to move to an area where my body feels a little better. 

So that leads me to the most recent challenge I face which is establishing myself in a new area. I moved into my new office in Rohnert Park, California, exactly a year ago, and I can honestly say this is my favorite version of my business so far. Finding out the needs of a new community is not always easy to parse out, but I am excited for this new chapter. 

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I consider myself a pro-aging specialist. What I mean by that is I love helping folks feel better in and about their skin holistically and without shame or judgment and embrace their current chapter in their life. I approach every client as an individual and help them establish or refine their self-care rituals. Whether that is through helping them reduce their stress levels, rejuvenate their skin, release their scars, or heal their guts and their relationship with food, my multi-modality non-invasive approach straddles East & West, ancient & modern and high & low tech. 

My mission is to celebrate beauty outside of Western standards. I believe all bodies are good bodies and everybody is beautiful. By embracing where we are and focusing on taking care of ourselves beyond the “shoulds” of our society, we can have a much higher quality of life. 

It’s truly my deepest honor to teach people to have greater love for the body they’re in and inspire them to take better care of themselves and their skin. 

I am most proud of the difference I have made in hundreds of people’s lives over the past two decades, and feel so blessed to be able to continue this work. The feeling of helping someone else realize how amazing and beautiful they are is honestly what gets me up every morning. 

What are your plans for the future?
You have caught me right before the official launch of my new project. I am so excited to announce I made an app! 

It’s called Club Haute Flash, and it’s available for iOS & Android as well as a web version. It’s an app designed for women over 40, though anyone can download it. The app’s intent is to help women feel comfortable in the changes that happen in the 40s and beyond with a natural twist. 

It includes exclusive webinars, recipes, skincare tips, guided meditations, and so much more! This is all aligned with my mission to help people love the skin they live in, and I take my no judgment and no shame rules very seriously. There is zero body or gender policing allowed on the app as well as no age shaming allowed. My goal is to help change the narrative around what it means to be a woman over 40. I hope to offer a safe escape from the ageism, fatphobia, diet culture, misinformation, and shame that plague resources for women over 40, especially those going through menopause. 

This app is still a work in progress, so it will continue to grow in content available as well as subscription options. I’m super proud of what I have built so far, though. 

In other future plans, I plan to do more teaching in the very near future on East Asian facial techniques both for my fellow professionals as well as small workshops for clients. 

Pricing:

• Treatments start at $97 for 30 minutes
• Unlock a Free Self Care Strategy Session by taking one of my quizzes: https://myselfcaredoc.com/quizzes

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.myselfcaredoc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myselfcaredoc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@myselfcaredoc
• Other: https://www.clubhauteflash.com

Image Credits
Hansen Lane Photography