About

From pain to purpose

Hi, I’m Michél. At 16, I escaped an abusive home and captivity. Although I was free, life was extremely difficult with no place to call home for seven years. Strangers fed me, sheltered me, and believed in me, which laid the foundation for my deep faith in human goodness.

But no matter how much my life improved, my childhood trauma followed me: depression, PTSD, autoimmune diagnosis, migraines, and menstrual pain. I wanted to give up again. At 29, an ER visit finally opened my door to free psychotherapy and the start of real healing, and the lesson that mental and physical health are inseparable.

But even with access to a psychologist, when insomnia and sleep deprivation debilitated me, my psychologist didn’t have a solution, and my GP prescribed two antipsychotics, with risks to weight and fertility, which I couldn’t accept as an aspiring mother.

In desperation, I asked ChatGPT and discovered CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia), the first-line treatment based on clinical evidence. It’s holistic, free, and often unknown or under-taught to doctors and therapists. I tried it. Two nights later, my sleep and life turned around—no drugs, no side effects, just behavioural and logic modification and sunlight exposure.

If such a simple, proven tool existed yet wasn’t reaching people like me, how many other safe, rigorous, low-cost practices are hiding in plain sight?

Too many of my questions and symptoms remain unresolved, and billions are in my position, so I decided to build what the world needs: humane technology to nurture our entire well-being, step by step. I believe that technology, when used ethically and equitably, can solve all our problems. Thriving shouldn’t be reserved for the lucky few.

Why “MELIA”

MELIA is named after the philosophical concept of Meliorism (Latin melior, “better”), the belief that humans can and should make the world better through intentional, concerted effort. It’s continuous improvement in action: neither naive optimism (progress is automatic) nor fatalistic pessimism (decline is inevitable), but a hopeful, active stance.

MELIA is also an acronym for my name: MICHEL LIPAN

I’m building MELIA because I want to start a family soon and become the mother they deserve, and help build a better world for them. Healthy, happy people care about others; they have a generative drive to create goodness. MELIA’s dedicated to enabling people to be healthy and happy.

Life shouldn’t be this hard, and we shouldn’t do it alone.

When people can stand on their own two feet, they solve real problems: become clinicians, researchers, founders, coaches, teachers, or simply better partners, friends, neighbours, and parents, raising a more empowered and healthy generation.

It starts with each individual’s well-being. Strangers once believed in me; I believe in humanity and want to pay it forward. As a species, we’re in our adolescent phase, and with the proper guidance, we can mature and realise our full potential.

We owe it to our children, to all children, to be better people and build a better future for them to grow up in.