Shayla Malek grew up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia during the 70's and 80's. Back when kids were encouraged to get out of the house and explore the neighbourhood with nothing more than their siblings, their dogs, and twenty cents for an emergency phone call, just making sure they were home in time for dinner.

 

Always an adventurer and never wanting to be home for too long, Shayla was a natural traveller and first ventured to fantasy realms within sci fi and romance novels, before setting off in her mid 20's in the real world for the UK, Europe and later the USA. It was on her travels that Shayla ignited her love of photography, documenting the world as she saw it. 

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As a child, she was constantly making up silly poems and short stories to amuse herself and others, and although she loved to write, she put away that part of herself when she went to university to study science and computing. 

 

Besides a stint for a few years as a columnist in a cycling magazine in the mid 2000's, it was not until she was 50 that Shayla re-discovered her love of storytelling and has resumed her passion for writing.  

When she isn't writing, she is roaming around exploring and photographing her Seattle neighbourhood with her dog Yuengling, making sure she is home in time for dinner with her partner Joe.

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Along with her work and creative life, Shayla's other driving passion since the age of 22 has been to heal her exiled parts of self and to reach a state of integrated, wholehearted living. This desire has since taken her to explore many types of healing modalities and therapies all around the world. It was not until she found Internal Family Systems (IFS) and combined it with her knowledge of self-directed peer counseling, along with a little help from plant medicine, that she has been able to achieve that goal. Her passion is now to help others achieve theirs.