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.”
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.
(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
