About Catherine May
January 2024-
Recently, at a Holiday party, as I was stating my age, a 30-year-old something, with probably the intention of pleasing me, exclaimed:
“Oh wahoo, you are 50? You certainly don’t look like it!”.
To which I answer:
“Oh, yes, I do; I know that I do.
And I am so pleased I do.
Thank you, though.”
I like Maya Angelou’s quote:
“Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is is aging.”
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It’s been hard work to grow up during the past five decades (with still many years to go, I hope).
I am now at a place where I can look back and take stock of many things I have harnessed through life experience, whether through personal drama, collective upheavals, or deep introspections.
I can now see the ebbs and flows of my life & journey, inner & outward.
The move to NYC in my early 20s was not full of hopes and dreams but propelled by my running from home. Running away from a way of living, of thinking that I was carrying so deep in my belly that it took me to turn 35 to act on it and reclaim myself. It is the year that I became a single parent (my boys were 5 & 7 then) & a solo entrepreneur at the helm of a disintegrating business (addictions of my then partner).
I had pulled the string at last & at the image of the world economy (it was 2008); everything was unraveling in my personal life & only to reveal what I could not see before.
Clarity emerged from the chaos.
And to follow, I launched what turned out to be a decade and a half of deep work on all fronts:
I was resuscitating a dying business, raising two kids who became two teenagers, opening a 2nd business, finding my voice & reconnecting with my instincts & life force, harnessing courage & inner fortitude, and changing my carer ( becoming a transformational Coach) while running Maison May & launching my boys in life & finally wethering a world pandemic (restaurants have been hit hard, financially & physically by it).
My friends describe me as fierce, courageous & a “straight shooter.”
My clients hire me & keep working with me for my honesty, my utter incapacity to lie to them & my impeccable ability to sit with them in excruciatingly difficult life situations.
I have been through so many fires that the proximity of the heat doesn’t frighten me.
Solo parenting & entrepreneurship have taught me to embody my values deeply & to know how to manifest them in real life.
Long Covid finally has forced me to harness a fine-tuned understanding of my body & of how to manage my energy & spirit.
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(Feet on the Ground) Spiritual Trainings
Below are some of the places/trainings that deeply transformed me
Retreats with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Este
Original Voice – Return to Whole Creative Life & True Self
Ancient Archetypes – Excavating & Living Out Your Deepest Personal Myth
Heart Of The Wounded Healer – 40 Nights on Snow Wind Mountain
Workshops & Groups with Martha Crawford
Dream As Praxis Workshop & ongoing weekly Dream Group
Death & Mortality Workshop
The Group Group
Retreats with Nina Simons & Deborah Eden Tull
Relational Mindfulness, Power & Deep Feminine
Love in Action: Embracing Change & Co-Creating a Just & Regenerative World
Important Certifications & More
COACHING
– Certified Professional Coach CPC –
Leadership That Works (now based in India)
– Certified Group Coach –
Group Coaching HQ
– Internal Family System –
Year-Long Training & Mentorship Program with Guthrie Sayen
BREATHWORK
– Certified Breathwork Facilitator –
Breath Liberation Society
– Discover Healing & Expanded States of Awareness Program –
Jennye Patterson
TRAUMA & MORE
– Somatic Abolionism Training –
Resmaa Menakem
– The Healing Trauma Program –
Jeffrey Rutstein
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