From Margaritaville to Mexico: How Melissa Poffel Plans to Take Back Her 40th Birthday

Melissa and her daughter.

For seven years, Melissa Poffel unlocked the door to her shop on Main Street in Muskogee, flipped the sign to “open,” and made space for women to feel like themselves again.

“I never thought of myself as someone with big career dreams,” she said. “But that shop changed me. It felt like purpose.”

Women came through the door for different reasons. Some were looking for a dress after losing someone they loved. Others, like a nervous thirteen-year-old on her first day of school, just wanted to feel confident. Melissa created room for all of it — joy, grief, and everything in between.

Fourteen days before she closed the store for good, she found a lump.

At 39, she was packing boxes, moving her business to Tulsa, and raising two sons starting their senior year and a daughter still in middle school. The diagnosis—breast cancer—came fast. “Two weeks after school started,” she said. “Six months before forty.”

A few months earlier, she had joked to her dad that she didn’t want to turn 40. He smiled and told her, “What a gift it is to be 40. Some people never get there.”

Melissa at during a chemo infusion.

She thought about that line when the doctor told her the cancer might have already spread. He compared the cells to acorns scattered in her body, waiting for the right soil to grow. “I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” she said. “How could this be happening?”

A second opinion changed everything. A woman she’d once met in her store—a pregnant customer looking for a dress—had become a stage-four survivor and sent her to the Oklahoma Cancer Specialists and Research Institute.

“I finally felt calm enough to take it one step at a time,” she said.

Through chemo, surgeries, and recovery, Melissa began writing journals and letters for her family. She wrote one for her daughter to open on her wedding day, one for each of her sons when they fall in love. “It gave me something to focus on,” she said.

In the last 13 months, she’s had a mastectomy, lymph node dissection, and hysterectomy. She’s lost her breasts, her uterus, her hair, and the hormones that once shaped her. Some days the mirror still catches her off guard.

“I give myself five minutes to cry,” she said. “Then I get up. Because I’m still here.”

She’ll never be thankful for cancer, but she’s honest about what it’s taught her. “I am more grateful and intentional about how I spend my time,” she said. “I soak in every giggle, every tear, every story my daughter wants to tell. I savor the phone calls from my college boys, even when their calls have no purpose. I throw out ‘I love you’ like it’s going out of style. I awkwardly hug anyone who will let me.”

When her 40th birthday came in March, she had just finished chemo. The big beach trip she imagined — margaritas in Mexico with her husband, Joey, and their friends — turned into dinner at Margaritaville. “My husband did his best,” she said. “We celebrated the best we could.”

The photos from that night still make her emotional. Her hair was thin. Her eyes tired. “I told Joey I wanted a redo,” she said. “A 40 plus 1. I want to go somewhere warm, let the sun hit my face, and not think about hospitals.”

Now, with her Love Bomb from the Rural Gone Urban Foundation, she’s finally getting that chance.

Melissa is turning Margaritaville into Mexico — a second 40th birthday and a 20th wedding anniversary trip rolled into one.

“I’ve spent my life planning everyone else’s parties,” she said. “This one’s finally mine.”