Mehrnaz Massoudi

Author and Emotional Healing Coach

I paddle to put out the fire.

The fire that engulfed my four-year-old body. The fire of fleeing my homeland. The fire of cancer. For twenty years, water has been my sacred oasis for healing — a paddleboard on a cold September morning, no destination in mind, just the sound of a paddle breaking the surface.

That image is the truest thing I know about myself. I move through storms. I always have.

The Storms

In 1983, I fled Iran. I was raised Muslim and fell in love with a man from the Baha’i faith — a religion outlawed by the regime. I chose love. That choice made our lives dangerous and illegal, and we both had to flee.

I arrived in a new country at 24, a refugee with no resources, no safety net, and no clear path forward. Surviving that displacement was the first great test of my life. It would not be the last.

Years later, I stepped away from a successful career as a cancer research scientist to raise my daughters. Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer myself. The scientist in me researched treatments and outcomes. The human in me was terrified.

After chemotherapy and a radical mastectomy, I tried everything — naturopathic treatments, supplements, restrictive diets, intense exercise. But through yoga and meditation, I discovered something the lab never taught me: exercise and diet were secondary to managing the fear and anxiety that my illness would return.

What I needed was to find moments of calm in the midst of my life’s storms.

The Turning

The knowledge that came to me during my recovery started with my university education but went far beyond the scope of my laboratory work. Through the learning that helped me heal, I became a certified Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner — also known as “Tapping.” I studied meditation with renowned teachers. The life I’d lived and the training I’d received pulled me toward a single purpose: sharing the promise of emotional freedom with those who are searching for it.

Growing up, when I asked my mother why I suffered, she answered: “God loves those who suffer.” Friends with good intentions told me: “Bad things happen to good people.” For years, those were invitations to submission. I accepted them.

Until I didn’t.

I chose resistance. I chose to rise, to transform, to heal. Healing is a ride with no arrival time and no destination — but it is a ride I now help others take.

The Writing

My practice freed me to write. I never believed I could be a writer — especially in English, my second language. But by creating space for emotional freedom, the words came.

She’s Still Here (2023) is a collection of short stories about women who’ve survived adversity to find, embrace, and love their identities. My forthcoming novel by Guernica Publications (2017) Mahsa: Ancestral Downloads, a battle against injustice and supremacy that takes more than one lifetime. My forthcoming work, Orange Blossoms Necklace, goes back to the beginning — to the fire that shaped everything.

I write because silence was never an option for me. I write because the stories of women who survive deserve to be told. I write because the world needs more voices that refuse to submit.

I paddle to heal. I write to heal. I teach others to be their own healers.