A Fiery Memoir
Only the truth survives the fire.
In October 2017, Melissa “Rogo” Rogozinski sat alone on a bench in a Fort Lauderdale state park with an overnight bag and nowhere left to go. She was forty-four years old and had built a well-respected career in law and legal technology. By sunset, she was homeless.
No one knew.
Becoming Phoenix: A Fiery Memoir is the five-year story of the fires
that brought her to that bench. Her mother’s Parkinson’s disease. Her
own breast cancer battle. Family estrangement. Financial collapse. A
violation by a peer. Betrayal by people she trusted. A battle between
The Darkness and The Light for control of her story. It was an inferno
that relentlessly burned her whole life down and gave her no time to
recover. Melissa lost every identity, every certainty, every safety net,
and discovered the only thing that the fire cannot destroy.
For every person who has ever faked joy through collapse, carried losses the world never saw, or wondered whether they could ever find themselves again, this story is for them.
Only the truth survives the fire. Melissa found her truth in the ashes,
and that’s how she became the Phoenix. May you find your own wings throughout these pages.
Melissa “Rogo” Rogozinski is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, and legal technology executive with over three decades of experience spanning law, business, and tech. A former litigation paralegal and two-time company founder, she is the CEO of RPC Strategies, where she advises tech companies, investors, and law firms on growth and strategic leadership.
