154. Melissa Trevathan-Minnis, PhD 

[0:00] Colleen:
Welcome to Unleashed at Work and Home. I'm Colleen Pelar, and this is where pet professionals come for honest conversations about what it really takes to show up for yourself while serving the animals you love. If you've ever felt caught between compassion and exhaustion, you're in the right place. Here we explore what it means to reconnect with your inner wisdom and rediscover the joy that brought you to this work. Make sure to join my email community at colleenpelar.com for gentle, practical insights designed specifically for pet professionals. Now let's dive in.

Welcome back to Unleashed at Work, at Home. My guest today is Dr. Melissa Trevathan-Minnis, and she's a psychologist and I've been working with on a special project. It's very, very cool, but I invited her here to talk today with us about herself and her own journey. So welcome, Melissa.

[1:01] Melissa:
Thank you, Colleen. Good to be here.

[1:05] Colleen:
So psychologist isn't a typical category of pet professional. It's not usually what one thinks of when one's thinking of pet professional. So can you just give me a quick description of what the work you do is in the world, both paid and volunteer? How do you define your role as a professional?

[1:25] Melissa:
Sure, great question. As you said, I am a psychologist, so I do have a private practice, and I also teach and do research. In my personal life, outside of my professional world, I do and have for a long time done a lot of volunteering with different animal rescue groups, and I foster a lot of animals. I've been an intake coordinator, I've been a transporter, I've been a lot of different things in the rescue world.

There came a point where—I tend to be very purpose-driven, very "How am I spending my time and my energy, and does that align with what feels meaningful to me?"—and I found some disconnect between some of the pieces I was doing. I love my practice. I work with wonderful people, and I have done some animal-assisted therapy. I have a trained therapy dog, Athena, who is fantastic, and that's all well and good. But I wasn't finding a good way to kind of merge my passion for rescue and animal welfare with what I have been trained to do within my practice and in my academic world.

So, gosh, I guess a few years ago, by this point, I started thinking about: what could that look like? What could it look like to kind of partner expertise in mental health and wellbeing and psychology with animals? And having been in the rescue world for a long time, it became really clear really fast that it's hard work and people are in it who have their hearts fully invested. And while that's such a powerful thing, it also results in people burning out and getting heart sick and just really bogged down by the work, because you end up seeing some really hard things that happen to animals and to humans.

So out of that was born the idea of: how can we really start assisting people who do this work and get them access to mental health care and support to not only help them be their best version of themselves, but also keep them in the game? Because we know that the burnout rate and the turnover rate for folks who either work in shelters or who do volunteer rescue work is pretty high. So that's the answer to that one.

[4:19] Colleen:
That is the answer to that one, and that is so true and so important—the burnout, the burnout rate and the turnover rate. I was really surprised when I joined your team doing some studies on this to see the turnover rate in shelters. The retention rate is so low. I wasn't surprised that it happened, but the actual numbers surprised me. The number that is coming to my mind was like a 38% turnover per year. And recently, in a meeting, another team member mentioned a number that was even higher, and I was like, "Wow."

A 38% turnover—you just lose that history and the knowledge base that goes with people when they walk out the door. And if they're leaving because they didn't get the support they needed, that's a tragedy. If they're leaving because they're moving to something like, "Oh, I would really love to do this instead," awesome, great, all for it. But if it's because they still care very much and that's now too painful to stay in care, then that's awful.

So I want to scale back before we get into any of the stuff in the program that we've worked on, and I want to start back with 10-year-old Melissa. What did she think she was going to be when she grew up?

[5:43] Melissa:
I have so many memories of—well, I'll preface with: I became vegetarian, sort of quasi-vegetarian, at a pretty early age, and I remember having a lot of conversations around animal welfare pretty early on. And fast-forwarding a little bit, I knew really early I wanted to be involved with psychology and to do something where I was helping and ideally making the world a better place.

I think my husband jokes with me that I knew I wanted to be a psychologist from the time I was an infant. Like, people's paths are so different, but I knew pretty clearly that that was what I wanted to do—those two pieces. So again, figuring out how those were going to work together took me a long time to figure out, but both of those separate pieces, I knew pretty early on that that was where I was meant to be.

[6:50] Colleen:
That's so cool. So you went to college—like freshman in college—you thought probably this is going to be something psychology-related. I mean, psychologist or psychology, you weren't really sure, or you may or may not have been sure, but you knew that that was your field.

[7:06] Melissa:
I did. That sounds really nerdy and boring, but it's true.

[7:11] Colleen:
I don't think it's nerdy and boring at all. I think it's really interesting how for some people they know, and for others they don't, and it's all right for everyone, just as it turns out. We've had guests who've had really loop-de-loop careers—they go all sorts of different ways until they find their way to the piece that feels right for them now. And others like you who've kind of always known this is where I'm meant to be.

So since we don't have this little side journey to take to your time creating diamond jewelry or something, let's dive into the time when you started to integrate the two pieces—being a psychologist and also wanting to use those skills and talents to provide some support for people in animal welfare. So tell me a little bit about the study projects that you have created, and what the goal is and why they matter to you.

[8:13] Melissa:
So, backing a little bit to what we talked about before, with burnout—part of what I think is so important, and what I have seen in my own experience is that, you know, we can't summarize all people who work with animals or who do training or rescue work or shelter work or whatever, but I do think that we see some tendency toward people who have a lot of empathy and who are sensitive, who tend to be drawn to working with animals, and who are good at picking up on what are animals feeling. They might have stronger what we might call mirror neurons, where they can sort of sense what other people are feeling, and they can sort of parlay that into their work with animals, and that makes them really good at that.

What also happens, though, is that when someone has a gift and sensitivity is that they might be likely to burn out more quickly. And so I, through the years, have seen some really amazing people who might have been fosters, or might have been doing intake and seeing really hard situations, who were so well aligned for that work, but who just eventually said, "I can't do this anymore. I can't keep seeing these heart-wrenching situations or feeling like I can't save every single one."

And what happens when we lose someone who's so well aligned in that way is that either now there's a gap that more people are having to fill, or they might get replaced. Let's say it's in a shelter—maybe they're replaced by someone who isn't as sensitive and who isn't as tuned in to animal welfare and needs and making it as good of an experience as possible for the animals. And so we have to figure out ways to make sure that we keep the people who are well aligned and who do have that sensitivity.

So that's part of why this has felt so important to me—I align in that way very well. I would describe myself as sensitive, and I think that has made me successful as a helper, but it also means that I have to keep an eye on balance, and saying no when I need to say no, and teaching other people that it's not only okay to do that, but that's part of what will continue to help you be successful and stay in the game long term.

Part of what some of this research that we've started developing is about—and so to jump into that a little bit, we started out with an initial study looking at the overall needs and specific stressors of specifically people who work within animal welfare. And so that included rescue folks, shelter folks and some animal sanctuary volunteers and founders. And we found that there were some high levels of stressors and traumas that were coming up that we anticipated, in addition to other sort of systemic stressors that were resulting in a lot of isolation, a lot of—as we expected—compassion fatigue and burnout.

And what we did is develop a protocol for a 10-week support group where we really use that information, that data, to build in what we felt like these people in that particular study were asking for. So fast forward a bit—Colleen has joined our team, and we have now facilitated the first round of that protocol, that first 10-week study, and we found some really cool results that suggested that it was a really helpful intervention for people in a number of ways.

Some of those included a reduced perception of stress, an increase in mental health wellbeing, a higher sense of feeling connected and less isolated. We even found kind of an unexpected finding, that there was an increase in empathy, at least from the qualitative findings. Which, to back up—if anyone listening is not a research nerd, and I don't expect everyone to be—there are challenges to research, but qualitative data is more like someone's narrative of how they felt about it, versus quantitative is more like the assessments and the numbers sort of stuff.

And so qualitatively, people said to us, "We have more empathy now for our colleagues. We understand now why they might be checked out or making decisions that we wouldn't. If someone's having to make a decision about behavioral euthanasia that really felt awful, I at least now have some understanding of how hard of a decision that might have been for that colleague." That felt like a huge win and one that we're going to continue to look into in a next round of studies that will happen in 2026.

[13:59] Colleen:
Yeah, it's so exciting for me. Joining the team was really interesting because I have no background in research. Like, I always tell people, I'm not a data person. In dog training, there's a strong push to record training sessions, both video-wise, and also note-taking and data. And I always thought, "That's brilliant. That's so smart when people do that. I'm not going to do that," because it just felt heavy and hard and overwhelming.

And then to join into your group of doing this, to hear the discussions of how to collect the data—but also even more so, why and what's important about having this data—and what's been really nice for me to see is the data has shown what I believe to be true all along. And so I always was a little bit hesitant about that whole "I got a gut feeling that this is true," because I couldn't back it up or prove it in any way. And that's valid—you shouldn't walk around being like, "I've got a gut feeling, and that is absolute fact."

But to see that the data is now showing the things that so many of us really feel to be true now gives us a point of reference that we can use to test things out and see, "Oh, does this shift something? Does it change something?" So that's been really eye-opening for me in the discussions with this team, because that data didn't exist, and when it doesn't exist, there's nothing to compare to, and there's no way to measure. So that's been super cool.

So as you said, we did one group of support groups, one set of 10-week support groups in 2025, and there'll be more ones coming in 2026. And we're in the midpoint here—the article from the first study, where you had all of your findings that were used for developing these groups, that one's been published. And the article on the second study of the groups themselves is in the process of being published.

And again, all new territory for me—like write an article, get it published, get it peer-reviewed, get it—doing the data stuff. But it's an interesting piece to see how you're thinking things through. In the process of developing a third round for this next set of study groups, you noticed that there was an assessment you would have liked to have had that didn't seem to exist anywhere.

And so we started talking about disenfranchised grief, and that a scale didn't exist for how to measure disenfranchised grief. And so you created one, which I was like, "Well, how cool—those scales that we've all seen, oh yeah, somebody created them." Well, so Melissa created one, and now that one's in the process of being evaluated, so that we can try to create it as an actual standalone tool.

But could you just really briefly tell us—this is not briefly, I've got a three-part question—what disenfranchised grief is, why it matters in animal welfare, and then why do we need a scale?

[17:37] Melissa:
Yeah, super good question. And yes, not a super short question, but I will—guys.

So to back up a little bit, disenfranchised grief is a larger concept we've had since the 80s, essentially, but not one that we've really thought a lot about within the animal world much. And so in general, disenfranchised grief is the idea of grief that isn't well validated or supported or acknowledged by other people. So it's sort of a community-based experience, and that if someone is grieving and they don't feel acknowledged or seen by their peers or given the space or the time that they actually realistically need to grieve, feeling pressure to sort of be done with grief more quickly than is realistic, or grieving in ways that other people don't necessarily see as the typical way to grieve, or grieving losses that don't get as much support or validation for how intense they might be.

Examples might be a miscarriage or an abortion or someone who dies by suicide, or having left someone's home country or citizenship. These are things that sometimes are invisible—they're not necessarily as known to other people, or even if they are, someone might think, "Well, you know, either that was part of your choice, or it's not that big of a deal. I'd expect you to be done grieving by now," and that isn't realistic for most people. In many situations, many of the things that I mentioned have a deep grief that goes on for much longer.

When we look at grief around animal loss specifically, we know from the research that people can take the loss of an animal harder than they can take the loss of a human in many cases. And when you think about a companion animal, who you spend so much time with, and who becomes relationally such a core part of your day and your world and your habits—having that loss can hit really hard. And when the world suggests, "Oh, it's been a few weeks, you're done, right?" that can even be a harder element of that loss, because it's an expectation that doesn't match what the person might be feeling about that loss.

Then if we take that one level or layer down further, if we think about that same concept related to people who work or volunteer within animal welfare, that's a whole other level of disenfranchisement, because number one, that tends to be a population that doesn't get as many resources and attention as it needs—hence what we're doing and trying to increase that. It also tends to be a population where the level of respect doesn't always match the amazing work that this community does.

There are some articles and research that talks about "dirty work," and it's work that other people in society or culture may not want to do or may not want to think about, but that is incredibly necessary. And being in a rescue or a shelter often involves working with animals that many people would prefer not to think about. They don't want to see the animal down the road who's been hit by a car and covered in fleas and starved half to death. But there are people in rescue work and shelters who do that hard work and don't always feel valued for doing it.

And so often within that work, loss is inevitable, whether it be through euthanasia or death, whether it be by good reasons that an animal gets adopted to a great home—there's still a connection there that's lost. And again, we want that relational component. We want people connected to the animals with whom they're working. But it also is hard when that relationship that you fostered is no longer there.

So that's part of why disenfranchised grief feels so important to this work. And scale development is a tricky beast, and luckily, we've got a wonderful team. Nellie Morris—I'll give a shout out to—is our statistician on our team and good at the numbers in a way that I'm really glad she is. And we are working on making sure that there's visibility for that concept within the animal rescue world and animals in general. So to be continued on that one.

[22:55] Colleen:
Yeah, it was really interesting to me when we were talking about that we couldn't find anything that measured this. And then when you started thinking about that there would be a value in being able to assess this for future participants in any of the programs, it's one of those holes that, once it's pointed out, it becomes so obvious, but until it's pointed out it isn't.

Similarly with ACE scores, which I've done an episode on in the past—Adverse Childhood Experiences—they don't look at anything related to animals, which I didn't notice for probably four years after I learned about what they were and how they were used and all of that. And then I was at a conference and a person who talks a lot about the human-animal bond in welfare, and particularly the risks of animal abuse and domestic violence having some links and child abuse. And then he mentioned that the ACE score doesn't do this. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, oh."

And to see that there are whole categories of information that we don't even think to collect—and so disenfranchised grief very much falls into that. And so for us to be able to create a scale which, again, doesn't exist—it exists in the "we're getting feedback on it and developing it" stage, does not exist as a standardized—Nellie would use the right words—validated and reliable. Are those the words we're looking for?

Melissa:
Those words fit, yes.

Colleen:
Yes, I'm learning. I'm learning about these things. It will become a tool, but it is not yet a tool that has met the criteria to be an official tool. Now we have a way of not only gathering the data, but even acknowledging this exists—pointing out this exists. This is something that people in this field deal with.

And what you said back at the beginning about if we have somebody who has tremendous sensitivity and they stop doing the work because it hurts too much, and then we have someone who cares less fill the role, that is not a gain. So we want to have sensitive people using their sensitivity, and we want to support those people in having the minimum amount of residual pain as a result of doing this work.

So it's an "and" situation—we want sensitive people, and if you didn't care and if it didn't hurt, then you're probably not right for the role. And also there are ways to make it hurt less. And one of the key takeaways from the support group in the group I ran was just people going, "Oh, oh, you have that problem too. You've struggled with that too. And it's not that I'm too sensitive or broken or doing it wrong. It's just that this is hard, and also I care."

And it was just such a simple thing, but so profound for people to have this sort of mirrored witnessing of "here we all are in different parts of the world"—and in the case of these groups, because they were all over, predominantly in the US and Canada, but other countries as well—to see that there are lots of people all over the place trying to serve animals. It's not just me slogging away at this kind of thing.

So I love that you tied those together, your professional part who does studies and writes articles and thinks logically and creates buckets, and the impassioned part who's been doing fostering and transport and all of those pieces, because there's something new being created because you're kind of tying your areas of passion together. It's really, it's really so cool, and it wouldn't exist if you hadn't leaned into both.

I have sort of a side question, but it's one that I'm curious about. You're a parent, and you do fostering. What are some of the things that have surprised you or felt interesting or important about your children's experience with having animals come stay for a while and then move on?

[27:40] Melissa:
Great question. That has been a really interesting part of the journey, I think because, in part, it's a value of mine to teach my kids that we contribute, we help, we do—and we don't do everything. We take breaks, we monitor how we feel, we check in with each other. But if we're going to do this life right, we're going to contribute. We're going to help. And that's—I mean, there are other ways in which we do that, different volunteering sorts of things that I think are a valuable part of how we're raising them. But it also doesn't come without challenge.

We have to be really careful about when do we get really bonded, and making sure that we let them bond, and paying attention to, "Hmm, this might feel a little different. Let's think about that," and also preparing them ahead of time. I mean, by this point, we've been doing it so long that they have a good sense of how it works. They know we're helping. We're getting this dog rehabbed and to their forever home, and they're going to—those homes were vetted. We know that they're good. We know they're going to a solid place where they're going to be spoiled and taken care of.

That's part of the narrative. And we know that we're a part of their journey, but not necessarily their ending point. And just having those active conversations with the kids—mine are different ages. My mine are 13 and six, so developmentally, they're fairly different in terms of what their story is around this. But we all share some of that narrative together.

And there have been a few that we've had a harder time letting go of, that we've probably gotten more attached to than others, and so we talk about that and we check it out. We always take breaks. To me, one of the ways to make sure you stay in the game is to make sure that you still do other things in your life that are valuable.

So for example, we travel a lot, and I'm not willing to forsake travel and wonderful experiences as a family for fostering. So we take breaks and we travel, and we make sure that the kids' activities and needs are prioritized above all, and fostering is a part of our journey, regularly and often, but not in place of other things that are important to our family as well.

[30:30] Colleen:
I think we can extrapolate all of that as such wise advice for all of us too. When you think about—you're really teaching them so beautifully about the value of contributing without putting the weight of "and you must. You need to. You have to keep going. There's more." You've found a way, and I'm sure you're modifying it all the time, because they're alive and they're growing and they're changing.

But you find a way to create this balance of "we're contributing right now and we're taking a break right now," and we're looking at the big picture of this. This is what we do, and that we are contributing, but not solely responsible for all of these outcomes.

Well, I mean, when somebody's just working an ordinary job, whatever that ordinary job might be, as an adult, if they can see all the ways they're contributing, and see all the ways that taking a break serves them, and see all the ways that they are not solely responsible for the final outcome, but that they are a member of a bigger piece—it's empowering. It's really empowering and very healthy to be able to view it that way.

So I'm actually really glad I asked the question, because I think there's a lot right there for all of us in our own lives, because one of the things that I've noticed with my clients is when they take a break, it's really hard to lean into it, and some of it is based on some of their thoughts about what it means about their contribution, their contribution and their role. When they're taking a break that they're somehow slacking and making others do more. What does that bring up for you? If anything?

[32:35] Melissa:
Yeah, absolutely. One thing I'm particularly thought of is—well, two things. Number one, there's no part of what I said suggests that everyone should do the way that we do it. I mean, that's what works for our family. It's hard to do all the things. It's hard to have kids and have a job and have interests and hobbies and maintain relationships. So I think people fall at different places in what their capacity is, and that's okay to acknowledge.

Secondly, I think, having worked in different rescues, I've seen it work really poorly, and I've seen it work really well, and everything in between. I'll give a shout out to my current rescue that I work with—Atticus Legacy Rescue in Austin, and we also adopt all the way up the northeast, up to Ohio now.

And one thing that I think is really important within the rescue world is that in some circles—and I'm not talking about the rescue I work with, to be clear—there can be a real pressure to: okay, that one's adopted out, take the next one. Oh, and now there's another one, take a few more. And there's not a clear capacity for "this is enough," and there isn't always good support within those worlds of, "Are you sure you have two right now? Maybe that's enough," or, "Gosh, you have five right now, that's enough."

And sometimes we need each other as accountability partners to say, "You need a break. Take a break. It's okay to take a break. I want you here in a year. I want you here in five years, and you taking a break now is more likely going to result in you still being here down the road."

And we cannot help every single animal—it's not in our ability. And knowing that and feeling good and celebrating the wins and not beating ourselves up over, "Well, that one didn't work out," or "I took a break and I didn't take that one in"—that's the thing that is the poison in the system. And allowing ourselves, but also our peers and colleagues, to remember it's okay to say no. We should say no sometimes—that's going to maintain a healthier system.

And so the other piece I would say that I really appreciate about the rescue I work with now is there's always an accolade someone is offering. There's always a thank you. There's always a smiley face at the end of messages that suggest positive energy. You know, there are systems where that isn't the energy—it's much more harmful and ugly and resentful or passive-aggressive, and those little moments add up to a system that can deteriorate much more quickly.

So adding in that kindness and the thank yous and the appreciation for the things that people do, even when they're doing the same things that you're doing, making sure that you put that positive energy into the group, I think, is so critical.

[36:07] Colleen:
Yeah, because in many ways, the biggest challenges in this kind of work are the systems, and so one person can't change the whole system, but putting as much positive energy and focus on the little pieces that we can do can start to shift things and create a better experience for everyone within the system, because the culture matters so much in any work environment. It has a huge effect.

I want to circle back to one thing you said about it's okay to say no, and just underscore a point that was really helpful to me when I learned it, which was: saying no has multiple beneficial effects, but one of the biggest is it allows people to ask you for favors or tasks in the future with less guilt or weight, because they know that you will say yes when you mean yes, and that you will say no when you mean no.

And so many people say yes when they mean no. And we see the bleed-out behind the scenes on that. So we talk to somebody who's like, "I can't believe I have to do this thing." And we're afraid to ask people to help us at times, because we don't want to be one more burden on them. The person who will say no to you—when they say yes to you, you can believe it.

And when that was pointed out to me, I was like, "Oh my gosh, what a gift." And then to see that modeled throughout a system where somebody says, "No, I can't do that right now. Here's something else I could do," or whatever other things come up. But for that, the answer is no. It creates—I don't know, permission is the wrong word—but permission for all of us to step into this ability to weigh within ourselves, "Do I want to do this or do I not want to do this? Is my answer yes or no?" and then make a decision.

And one of my clients, she makes me laugh, and she says, "I sometimes still say yes, but then I at least know I've said yes and my heart said no, that I have an awareness inside me then that I made that distinction." Where I like—"I really want to say no and I'm going to choose to say yes anyway." That shifts the story for herself in her head when she's thinking about it. But it's really, really helpful.

So this idea of we contribute when we contribute and we take breaks and we say no when we need to say no, creates a healthier system all the way around. And it is the system—we do need good systems. So that's really helpful. So I wanted to go back to that.

[39:03] Melissa:
And to add to what you said, I think often if we say yes, but our heart says no, our body language is going to—it's going to say what we really mean.

And another piece of that, I think is so important is boundaries can be such a loaded term that people really value or feel really icked out by. But I think one way that I really appreciate thinking about boundaries along the lines of what you're describing, is I remind clients often that boundaries are a kind thing. They're not meant to be a wall that we build—they can be in times if the other person is resistant—but having a boundary is essentially a way to say, "I'd like to be in relationship with you. If I'm going to be in relationship with you, these are some of the things that can make that a healthy relationship."

And you know, if the person is open to that, and there's a reciprocity around that conversation, that can lead to a deeper, more meaningful relationship, because both people are understood, and whatever boundary is in place is manifest in a way that can make trust build more solidly.

And when we're thinking about people who we work with, what you said is right on. If we're saying yes all the time, but we're resentful or we're building some frustration behind the scenes, that's going to show up, versus if we're direct and we're really clear about what feels possible and what feels like too much right now, and really gauging that in a way that we're still being collaborative, we're still being a team player, we're not sloughing off responsibility or not contributing, but we're really being honest about what we can do and what feels possible. We're going to be able to show up in a much more healthy mindset, in a much more place of "I want to. I want to be here. I want to say yes," and that's a whole different level of commitment than "yes, but I really don't want to."

[41:21] Colleen:
Yeah, yeah, it changes the energy and the outcome as well. Okay, so if I had a magic wand and I could give it to you, and you could grant one blessing or wish or something for all pet professionals, what would you give us?

[41:37] Melissa:
Money and vacation time.

[41:42] Colleen:
Okay, well, those will be very welcome.

[41:48] Melissa:
Absolutely. I think so, to elaborate a little bit more: there is a terrible lack of funding within this world, and I think that's something that many would agree. And given my specific bias, I would love to see much of that money go to mental health. There's such a deficit in ways to make the work more manageable and thinking about quality of life within the work—or the professional quality of life. That's one of the scales that we use for one of our studies.

Allowing there to be more access to make the work feel better—and not just getting the work done, but making sure that the people who are doing it are taken care of—has such a cascading effect. It not only creates a better work environment, but it also creates better conditions for the animals, who pick up on energy.

I mean, if we as humans are social creatures, oh my gosh, so are domesticated animals. That's part of why we connect so well with them. We understand and they understand our language, our relational language. And if we're all stressed out and not enjoying the work and fumbling through things and being more hurried and frenzied in our work, they're picking up on that too.

So finding ways, financially and otherwise, to make the work environment feel better for the people that do the work is also going to make it feel better for the animals who have to be there too.

[43:51] Colleen:
Yes, yes. We'll take it. Thank you. Yes, okay. If people wanted to learn more about you and your work, how could they do that?

[43:58] Melissa:
Yes, well, so I do have a private practice. I'm in Austin, Texas, and I'm happy to share that page. I'm also happy to share my email address if people would like to reach out that way.

Colleen and our team are going to be doing another round of support group study measures and all the rest that we've described in 2026. We have a registration page that we will plan to share, and we would love for people who are interested to reach out and get involved as participants in that. It's a free service that will be offered. There's no payment for that. It's something that we feel really passionate about, and not only for the purpose of getting people support, but also in continuing the research so that we have more information to build better systems and better models and better professional quality of life for all of the folks that we're talking to right now.

[45:07] Colleen:
Yeah, I will link all that up in the show notes. Thank you so much, and thank you both on the small scale for this conversation and on the big scale for being the kind of person who sees ways to create data and history and understanding.

One of my friends—I call it buckets—she's really good at putting things into buckets and seeing how things can be sorted. My brain tends to be very messy conglomeration of all the things. So I really appreciate people like you who can see, "This is what I wish I knew, and here's how I can create a study, a program, a resource that can serve that," and then test it, validate it, find out what happens, and then iterate and try again and do more and more. So thank you for that.

Thank you for combining your passions for psychology and for animals in a way that's having big, big ripple effects.

[46:06] Melissa:
Yeah, well, thank you for saying that, Colleen. You are a very humble host, but you have created so much, so many great ideas and contributions to our team that you did not highlight in our conversation, and I want to make sure that you have acknowledgement for that, because you've been amazing and creative and so insightful in what you've brought. So let's make sure we don't leave that out.

[46:35] Colleen:
Well, thank you. That's very sweet. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it, Melissa.

Melissa:
Absolutely. Thanks for the invitation.

Colleen:
That's our conversation for today. If something we talked about resonated, I invite you to sit with it. Notice what feels true and what you want to explore further. You don't have to have it all figured out to start moving toward what matters.

Whatever showed up for you today—clarity, questions, even resistance—trust that it's pointing you towards something important. For more support, join my weekly notes at colleenpelar.com. And until next time, remember: you are enough, always, just as you are.

Transcribed by otter.ai