Be the Change

I recently had the privilege of spending an afternoon with personal trainer Melissa Cardone of Peak Fitness.

What was supposed to be a quick photo shoot for her new personal training website, quickly turned into lot of laughs and chatting about everything fitness, motherhood, and finding her way in a fitness industry that is saturated with local and online trainers.

Melissa is the kind of person you can only hope to have in your circle of friends. Someone who has a kind and genuine heart, who listens with intent, who wants to make the world a better place by instilling confidence, strength and health in others. She’s someone who inspires others daily, not only as a personal trainer, but as a friend, a strong woman, a mom. She engages others in a way that makes you want to be a better person, makes you want to reach your goals, makes you believe in yourself.

A lifelong athlete, Melissa mixes her personal experiences of fitness with her professional personal training background to provide you with guaranteed success through a mixture of challenging workouts and the motivation you need to keep moving when you want to give up. Whether she is training clients (and also working out with them), kickboxing, coaching her online clients, or leading group workouts and even mommy and me workouts with the help of her adorable son, she is constantly striving to make those around her find the best versions of themselves.

If you’re looking for a unique workout regimine that incorporates a vision of thinking outside the box to reach your fitness goals, Melissa is your girl. Whether you are years into your fitness journey, or just beginning, she has the plans to meet all your needs.

Check out Melissa at @peakfitnessny on Instagram, online at peakfitnessny.com, or Peak Fitness on Facebook.

Connections & Compassion

“Vulnerability attracts honesty, honesty attracts soul connections.” November 3, 2016 I am officially a third of the way done with radiation. So far, all is going well with no major side effects. I’m tired, and my body is still trying to eliminate all the toxins left over from chemo, but I continue to push through, some days probably too much. Second round of x-rays show the radiation rays are still going where they’re supposed to be; I’m slowly developing a nice tan from those rays, and I smell daily of fresh aloe with a trace of Aquaphor. I have to Read More

In Sickness and In Health

“As long as we both shall live.” || October 4, 2016 Tuesday morning travels to Albany are something we have gotten used to; not having an appointment last week left us feeling like we were forgetting to do something. Today marked my first follow up appointment after finishing chemo and even though I wasn’t going to be spending my day in the brown chair, the drive felt the same: Not saying much to each other, still feeling nervous, trying to remember questions you never wrote down because “I’ll remember, I don’t need to write it down”, wondering which nurse will draw Read More

Margot’s Story of Strength

“Strength grows in the moments when you think you can’t go on, but you keep going anyway.” In the Winter of 2016, I was a third of the way done with radiation; eleven sessions completed out of the total thirty-three. I was tired, and my body was still trying to eliminate all the toxins left over from the sixteen chemotherapy treatments I had received throughout the six months prior, but I continued to push through, some days probably too much. My second round of x-rays showed the radiation rays were still going where they were supposed to be; I was slowly Read More

A Grandmother’s Love

“Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us everyday. Unseen, unheard but always near. Still loved, still missed, and held so dear.” This road we have traveled since April of 2016 has been filled with up’s and down’s, a true test of strength and determination, always a case of mind over matter, and a whole lot of letting go of expectations and just living life one day at a time. The decision to move forward with chemotherapy treatment was one of the hardest decisions I have had to make, while at the same time allowing myself to be Read More

Two Years Later

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities.  Dreaming, after all is a form of planning”. – Gloria Steinem “You are a very healthy human.” – Zoe Weinstein, MD  672 days earlier, Dr. Weinstein’s words were quite the opposite as they were today.  That late March day in 2016, I sat at my desk in my office full of hope and full of positive thoughts that the lump in my left breast was not in fact cancerous and was merely a benign fibroid. Zoe’s phone call that afternoon suddenly turned my world upside down.  “You have Read More

Spring Blips

“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature. The assurance that dawn comes after night, and Spring after Winter.” – Rachel Carson Spring has always been by one of my favorite seasons, falling second only to the crisp days of Fall. It’s the season of new green grass, blooming flowers and the time to plant new seeds, both in our gardens and in our lives. Spring 2016 was a season filled with what would one year later be referred merely to as a “blip”. It was the season of my cancer diagnosis; the season that my cancer Read More