Melissa Kester

Melissa Kester is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Founder of Madison Marriage and Family Therapy, with over 20 years of clinical experience working with individuals, couples, and families. She is a Certified Relational Life Therapist, Certified Sex & Couples Therapist through the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, Certified Integrative Mental Health Professional, and Certified Grief Educator. She has served as Metro Chapter President of the New York State Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and as an adjunct faculty member at Hunter College, where she instructed graduate students in family therapy.

Melissa’s work centers on the relational impact of chronic illness, medical complexity, caregiving, and the ways stress can reshape intimacy, communication, and connection. She supports individuals and couples in slowing down the patterns that emerge under pressure—moving toward clearer requests, adult-to-adult communication, loving limits, and repair that can hold under stress.

As a systems therapist, Melissa attends to both the present relationship and the family-of-origin patterns that continue to live in the body, in communication, and in moments of conflict. Her approach is integrative, combining systemic, psychodynamic, creative, contemplative, and relational frameworks. She sees therapy as a space to stretch, slow down, reconnect with oneself, and create the boundaries needed for protection, healing, and meaningful change.