I loved being a volunteer moderator for Melanie Tonia Evans's Forum and it really was the very best thing for my own growth. I have already spoken about how I would only use the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) modules weekly because of them being so long. But being a moderator and dealing with prickly members meant I had to use them a lot more.
And to be clear - NARP really does work. There's nothing that I've found that works better than the Quanta Freedom Healings (QFH) that are part of the program. According to Melanie, she channelled QFH whilst lying broken on the ground in a toilet. Or maybe in Koh Samui to overcome agorophobia. It's one of those things where there have been different stories at different times, so the truth is lost somewhere. The first mention of it on her website, according to the Wayback Machine, was in February 2011, when Melanie describes it as being a result of her breakdown/breakthrough experience.
QFH itself is a hodge-podge of techniques, one of which I was familiar with before finding QFH, as it is a common technique used in spiritual development circles. The rest - maybe it is channelled, maybe it is stolen borrowed from others. In her latest description of how QFH came about, Melanie does describe how:
"I was writing down protocols and healing steps. They were things that I knew in regard to Kinesiology and Theta Healing, but there were also things that I didn’t know, which were a deeper timeline aspect, more compartments of the subconscious to access. And there were also Source downloads that were much more impactful, richer, and bigger than I’d been used to."
This is the first time I saw her acknowledge that QFH wasn't all entirely her own invention, so I suspect that many others had recognised the similarities to other healing modalities.
But back to the moderating - I loved feeling helpful to the members, and I loved the community of both the members and especially the other moderators.
A while after I began moderating, Violet Spectre joined the team, and it was obvious from the start that whereas I was pretty invisible, Violet was the MTE darling. She was Melanie's chosen one, and people who have been to any of Melanie's live programs up until the last year will have heard her say herself that 'the channel' told her to have Violet join MTE, that she is her soul sister etc.
But I was fine with being invisible and had a huge enthusiasm for the program and for the Forum. When Melanie visited the UK in February 2019, I went to London for her day long event, even though I had a party to attend that evening so could only stay until mid afternoon. But I really didn't want to miss her.
It was amazing, and truly the energy there shifted something in me - the last little bit of fear I would feel when travelling. At the time I thought this was all to do with Melanie, but now I wonder. But it was the greatest day, and I got to hug many of my fellow mods and thrivers.
In 2019, NARP version 3 came out - and wow! The modules were much shorter (30 minutes each) and I loved them! Ok, so now it included dialoguing with the trauma, which is a craniosacral technique I had mentioned to Melanie in the mods chat a couple of times - but the QFH techniques had always had similarities to craniosacral therapy, as a form of bodywork, so this 'new chanelling' was surely a coincidence? (She's jettisoned that whole aspect now anyway, because people were getting caught up in focussing on their trauma, so it's by-the-by where she got it from).
This was the point where I began using the modules almost daily, and my life really did take off exponentially - a TV appearance, a new house by the sea, a whole new way of life.... Things were growing great - a typo that is actually true, so I've left it!
Then Covid hit.
It took all the joy out of my job (as a physio), and I decided I couldn't continue like this, as my job had become so emotionally draining.
At around this time, I had a Skype chat with Zac (Melanie's son, and the person who was running MTE at the time - not sure what his job title was) and Iva (his deputy) and was then taken on as a paid moderator. This really suited me, and a little later, I saw there was a job going in MTE Support.
I emailed my CV, and Iva basically got in touch to say I had the job. I could not have been happier! This was like a dream - working for Melanie Tonia Evans full time! Such a privilege to be part of her mission to help people to heal from abuse.
After a very lengthy training at MTE and an equally lengthy handover period where I was working as a physio, I began properly working for MTE full time in autumn 2021.
That first year it was great. the workload was manageable (8 or so hours a day - more than 10 hours was definitely frowned upon, even when we were busy), and I was even gradually able to take on bits and bobs to help other people.
I did find it tough only having one day a week off (my day was Friday), but the weekends were generally quieter anyway, although there was usually a blog to post on Sunday nights, which was at 11pm for me. The work was extremely flexible, and we covered for eachother if we had weekends away. For example. I'd often go to meet friends for a weekend, and work first thing in the morning each day, then take the rest of the day off.
By the time things went wrong, I was working in Support, editing Melanie's articles and YouTube transcripts, and posting them in conjunction with other staff members (Ivy and Heather), which also involved sending out the notification emails and the Forum updates. I had also just begun to do the affiliate emails (notifying members of affiliate events) and affiiate payments.
The people I usually worked with were Iva, who was in charge of me in Support, and Loreto, who was in charge of the affiliates and the blog posts and emails. K and Violet also worked in Support and we worked together to set up and run the live programs, under Zac's supervision
K is the only one I will not name, as for a long time she was the only fly in the MTE ointment. We regularly had 'Support Meetings' which were basically when K would moan about things I had or hadn't done - she just did not like me, it was pretty clear.
As an example, one of her moans was that I 'sent messages when I allocated tickets' - I'd literally been trained to do this, to politely say 'for you and why I have allocated it to you xoxo and emojis'. Which of course needed a meeting and couldn't possibly have been solved by her messaging me on Skype to say 'please don't send me messages when you allocate tickets, thanks'. But no, an hour meeting it was.
I think the underlying problem was that she thought I was depriving her of work hours, when actually I wanted fewer hours - ever since I'd joined, I'd been clear I wanted around 30 hours a week, rather than the 40-50 I was working.
So this was my mini-cross to bear, and to be fair to K, there were times when she was fine with me, and even almost friendly. But the underlying tension meant that when she became the first domino to fall, I was really glad to be free of her bad juju around me. I didn't stop to think of the ethics of the way it panned out.
But that is all in the future. For now, in Summer 2022, my work at MTE is secure, stable and manageable, and I am blissfully unaware of the drama that is about to unfold. So far as I was concerned, I was living the dream, and had rarely been happier.
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