Alchemy in the mid-life kitchen

Peter Anthony is the co-founder of you’re a nuff, an organisation encouraging young women to have conversations about healthy self-esteem with their peers, their parents and those who care about them. Peter's daughter Belle was the Inspiration for ‘you’re a nuff’ when as a 16-year-old she couldn’t find a reason to live life. Her journey to healthy self-esteem inspired them to share the message – ‘let’s talk about why you feel you are not enough’.  Nuff now sells clothing for people to remember who they are and to start conversations with young women who struggle with healthy self-esteem.

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Albana is a recognised thought leader in Generative Leadership and business innovation.  She creates transformational change in business performance and generative growth, most notably via digital enablement.

She helps game-changers manifest conscious leadership.

She is well-suited to bring her change leadership experience to Advisory, PE or VC Growth, and Pre-IPO companies that put value in creating a thriving culture and being game-changers.

An ICF, PCC accredited Coach, Albana coaches global leadership teams to instil a thriving culture that propels generative growth – an innovation-based, multiple bottom-lines growth, integrating system awareness and caring for systemic impact.

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Albana Vrioni

Madhu is a British South Asian who founded M for Menopause after her own menopause experience. Its mission is to ensure all employees feel supported to thrive at work during menopause. She previously worked for the Department of Work and Pensions for 23 years with experience in HR and Recruitment but resigned in 2016 due to her menopause.

M for Menopause provides employers with bespoke advice on the changes required to best support their employees, understanding the importance of inclusion at work and how menopause can affect women in different ways. In November she is releasing a book Titled ‘It's our menopause: Let's Make It Work For Us’. This will include a framework she developed for working individuals to lean on during menopause. These combined lessons learnt from her experience supporting individuals through menopause and also her own skillsets. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and raising the voices of underrepresented groups, so all individuals have access to the support they deserve during menopause.

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Dr. Elizabeth Davidson had been putting together the puzzle of maximizing well-being for her whole life. She's suffered with chronic illness since childhood and this spurred her to search for solutions. Using her blend of brain and nerve expertise, in depth bloodwork knowledge, plant medicine and clairvoyance she connects with people to create well-being in all aspects of life. She lives in Vermont, USA with her teen daughter Elena and she lives to ski.

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Dr Elizabeth Davidson

Janet White is a registered nurse, author and certified coach. She’s also a devoted grandmother who enjoys warm sunny beaches. She loves sharing her passion for living a happy, healthy alcohol-free lifestyle.  Her story includes a long-term abusive marriage, a bout with cancer, self-esteem and body issues, and grief. Her book ‘Finding Bliss Beyond the Buzz’ tells her story and shares her method for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It highlights how eliminating alcohol helped her to discover her passion and finally learn to be happy with her authentic self – imperfections and all. Today she empowers women and men to be the best version of themselves.  Join her every Sunday at 8 am EST on Facebook live.

JANET WHITE

Anke Middelmann is a German national, but she has spent most of her life abroad - UK, Belgium, US, France - for study, work and professional life. 

For most of her life, she considered it impossible to have everything — a lovely family, a happy relationship, a perfect career, beautiful home and no financial worries - all rolled into one and all the time. And so, she spent many years living up to expectations, meeting essential needs and trying the best she could. Life was full of “shoulds”, “needs” and “I would if I coulds”.

She finally listened to her  little voice within and with inner determination, she gradually replaced the “shoulds” with “wants.” Most importantly, she acknowledged her long-held dream to help people become their best. 

Dawn Bates is an international bestselling author multiple times on five continents. She specialises in developing authorities who wish to give a voice to the voiceless, working with them to create brand expansion strategies through activism, authorship and business.

With social justice and human rights underpinning everything she does, including her study with the

University of Oxford where she’s working towards her PhD, you can guarantee her books are powerful. Dawn brings together the multi-faceted aspects of the world we live in, delivering mic dropping inspiration, motivation and awakening. Her work captures life around the world in all its rawness.

Kelly-Anne Cummings is a highly experienced Life Coach with over a decade of industry experience. She is the go-to person if you are wanting tools and strategies to strengthen your mind both in the home and in the workplace. Her unique toolkit has now become a much sort after wellness program also by small to medium family run businesses who are looking for a more personalized approach to motivating and encouraging their staff. Kelly-Anne is a coach that cares about you, your family and your business.

At 49, Pia Antico survived three near deaths, two abusive marriages, and a major head injury. Her mission is to help single, empty nester businesswomen over 40 to effortlessly get past their darkest moments by tapping into their innate wellbeing.  So that they can shine the light of their radiant, joyful wisdom and step into their dreamed of future.

Pia wants single empty nester women over 40 to know in their bones that their past doesn't predict their future and now is the time to dream big.

Pia Antico is Founder of Essential Awakening Mentoring, a Crone Life Joy Reboot Mentor/Coach/Trainer, international public speaker and a best-selling author.

She intuitively guides single, empty-nester, women over 40 to ditch their regrets, claim their unapologetic authenticity, age disgracefully, and quit being an unwilling bystander in their lives; without getting stuck rehashing, analysing and reframing trauma stories.

Ann’s guest this episode is Kathy Donaldson, who discusses the events which led her to search for her birth parents. And they talk about the wisdom she has gained to guide others in this time of her Kathy’s life.

Kathy Donaldson is a qualified counsellor, mindset coach, teacher, trainer, and author. With more than 25 years’ experience, Kathy has assisted clients gain an understanding of themselves, and how our thinking and feeling influences behaviours in positive and negative ways.

In addition to working with organisations as a clinician and trainer, Kathy also provides individual professional coaching , mentoring, and debriefing; providing proven strategies to empower and facilitate rapid and positive change.

Kathy also works with couples and families specialising in gaining a positive mindset, active parenting, and nurturing family relationships. Kathy has successfully developed a range of courses and delivered a variety of workshops to organisations and individuals. Additionally, Kathy has written an informative book entitled Active Parenting which is packed with strategies and projects for parents to share with their children.

With a background in teaching and counselling, Kathy also provides assistance to people in career transition. In addition to reviewing resumes, cover letters, and interview skills, Kathryn also facilitates workshops on transitions.

Kathryn is passionate about helping people create the lifestyle they want. One client has called her a “secret weapon”. Kathryn provides professional services where every client feels safe to speak about their challenges, concerns, worries or issues that prevent them from living a happy and fulfilling life. Using tools and strategies that promote wellness and positive thinking, clients have the ability to create the future they desire.

Karen Ceccon is a registered counsellor with the Australian Counselling Association and is highly experienced in the use of Art Therapy as a mode of healing in all those she works with. Karen lives in a small regional Victorian town  -  Ararat where she has her own counselling centre which is fully accessible to all, and she is also a fully registered NDIS provider, able to work with people who have a variety of disabilities.

Karen is mum of two beautiful children who both have autism and having worked hard to find solutions for them she has gained a special interest in assisting parents to understand their children’s needs enabling them to gain social and interpersonal skills. She also works with adults who have ASD.

Karen offers a range of evidence-based therapies including Cognitive Behaviour therapy and Acceptance Commitment Therapy. She is trained in providing psychological First Aid for trauma, and helping clients recover from domestic violence.

Karen offers regular hours and has emergency after hours available on need.

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Marcy McDonald is the daughter of a genius father and a schizophrenic but loving mother, so she started life with an unusual gene pool. She’s worked at a 6-figure corporate job, and she’s hauled pounds of avocados on her back. She’s dined in 5-star restaurants in Paris, and she’s lived on beans and rice. She’s lived in a house worth more than half a million dollars, and she’s lived out of her car. She’s had ups and downs and everything in between on life’s journey. She believes that if she was able to learn how to be emotionally healthy, be intentional about her purpose, and be at peace—and happy—every day, then anyone can.

For more than a decade Marcy has coached clients on focus, overcoming overwhelm, productivity, and confidence. Because of her deep and broad experience, she was selected to participate in Season 2 of 4 Days to Save the World in 2022, with an audience of 8 million viewers. In addition, she is one of only 36 people to attain international certification as an end-of-life doula, an element she incorporates in her coaching.

Dr Ann Moir-Bussy welcomes back Leanne Kanzler, a psychologist and a coach who supports men and women who have or are experiencing divorce. Leanne enables them to find new passion, release their fears and create lasting change.

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Lesley Tait helps corporate women between 40-50 struggling with menopause symptoms resulting in loss of confidence, self-esteem & performance issues because of which life & career goals are getting derailed.

Susan Adzagba Gavua Agyare was born in Ghana, West Africa and she came to study at the University of Queensland in 1995. She came from a very spiritual family. Both of her paternal and maternal grandfathers were heads of churches. Her maternal grandfather performed healings and she grew up around that. From a very young age, she knew she had some special assignment to do but wasn’t sure about what it was. She studied counselling and around the age of 40, she knew there was a lot more to do. That’s how she found Ann Moir-Bussy who introduced her to the Coaching Institute – where she studied. She has since worked with other women and children to embody their uniqueness and trust their intuition. The journey continues to unfold for her and the people she serves.

Like many, Ria faced adversity in life. Ria was sexually abused by her father from ages 12 - 19, forced to play the role of his wife, and even shared with other men. Desperate to escape, she left home at 19 without a job, a car, or even a high school diploma. 

Today, Ria is a motivational leadership speaker, certified trainer, TEDx Speaker, and author of 13 books. Ria shares powerful leadership principles and tools of transformation from her journey to equip and empower women, helping them increase influence, develop leadership, and maximize results.  

Diane Ebsworth first trained in nursing, and in 2015 changed to counselling in her mid-life. She explains to Dr Ann Moir-Bussy what it was like to transition to the next stage of life and shift career, while dealing with grief.

Clarissa Kristjansson is an internationally recognised Midlife and Menopause coach & mentor who helps women reinvent midlife by come into a greater awareness of themselves, shifting their mindset, building resilience, and implementing profound compassionate change in their lives. So that they become that woman who lights up the room, confident and energized.

Clarissa has 28 years’ experience working in consumer understanding in multi-national FMCG and she has had 7 years’ experience working with neuroscience, mindfulness, compassion and health coaching supporting women on their menopause journey.

She is a speaker, author of international best seller The Mindful Menopause and the host of the popular Thriving Thru Menopause podcast.

Clarissa Kristjansson

Urvina Shah has worked as a therapeutic radiographer since the 90s. Her personal journey as a mother of 3, one with special needs, has given her a different perspective, and helped her to create an environment at work and at home to support, develop and enable change for the better.

Margie Hare is co-founder of Team Activate Distributors, one of the biggest entrepreneurial teams in Australia helping people to take charge of their health naturally and building a legacy business for their families.

Dr Ann Moir-Bussy chats with Dr Sridevi Kalidindi CBE, consultant psychiatrist and leadership coach in London. She is also a visiting senior lecturer at the institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. Dr Kalidindi helps women, as they grow older, to tap into and develop their own inner wisdom.

Dr Ann Moir Bussy talks with professional coach, Lisa Lukretia Fischer, who helps female entrepreneurs overcome their crippling self-doubts to grow themselves and their businesses.

Barbora Jedlovska is master mindset coach, manifestation coach and expert, and big dreamer who is on a mission to help others to flourish and reach their full potential.

Barbora Jedlovska

Leanne Kanzler is a psychologist and a coach who supports men and women who have or are experiencing divorce. She enables them to find new passion, release their fears and create lasting change.

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Leanne Kanzler

Deb Pace is a coach and consultant who takes her clients to a new level of thinking. raising standards both personally and professionally by bringing them to work with her horses. In her equine effect program she creates leadership and training within a team environment enabling cultural changes by building better relationships. Deb also works with individual clients.

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Deb Pace

Dee Coxon is a wonderful woman from northern England, who in her 50s has taken the transition into the afternoon of life. She shares with Dr Ann Moir-Bussy her own experiences as she came into the journey and the challenges she faced. She shares what she feels are the key ingredients that women need to embark on the journey and the possibilities that are there.

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Dee Coxon

Based in Atlanta, Florida, Kwavi Agbeyegbe has devoted herself to health & wellness and weight loss strategies for over 30 years. Kwavi’s a certified weight loss coach, a life coach and an international speaker. She specialises in helping women over 50 manage their health, mindset and waistline.

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Kwavi Agbeyegbe

Samantha Touchais is a business and mindset coach and best-selling author. Samantha helps busy women seeking change to create a safe and secure path to launching their dream business and provide them with the tools to make it a success.

Samantha discusses with Dr Ann Moir-Bussy the preparation of her own journey as an alchemist in the mid-life kitchen.

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This episode, Dr Ann Moir-Bussy speaks with Gloria Smythe, also known as The Menopause Stylist.  Gloria helps women bring back style confidence into their life by showing the key areas they need to focus on whilst supporting them drop the old-style habits.

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Gloria Smythe

This episode, Dr Ann Moir-Bussy speaks with Donna Maltz, also known as Mama Donna, and whose tagline is, “Why retire when I can inspire”. From her home in Hawaii, she’s refines success and wealth to help improve your health whatever your age.

Mama Donna is a Soil to Soul Entrepreneur, helping eco-leaders balance their lifestyles with their workstyle.

Since 1980 she has been a successful eco-businesses woman and the founder of many companies including AH!LASKA, the first organic cocoa and chocolate syrup company in the US, and the first natural food bakery and cafe in Alaska, the legendary — Fresh Sourdough Express.

She is a life and business coach, and offers custom Retreats at her farmstead, on the Big Island of Hawaii where she lives full time with her husband of nearly 4-decades, many four-legged friends, and an abundance of tropical fruits and plants. She is a Nature photographer and A Voice for Nature. Donna is the author of three empowerment books that emphasize the value of living like the future matters, in harmony with Nature. She believes that age is a state of mind.

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Donna Maltz

www.donnamaltz.com

Dr Ann Moir-Bussy

In the last few episodes, Dr Ann Moir-Bussy has been looking at the gates of wisdom that we meet as move through midlife and that invite us to step into our wisdom and greatness. This episode, she examines one more gate: the Bone Gate, which brings us to the “bones of who we are”, a metaphor for our authentic self.

The Black and White Gate is an interesting one as it is where we are refined and made more beautiful. And it is the gate of relationships and it is the only gate that we must go through in the company of at least one other person.

Clay is such an interesting medium, isn’t it? You can mould clay and remould or reshape our image of it into many different shapes and if you want to you can burn it so it solidifies.

Dr Ann Moir-Bussy explores the movability or shapeability Angeles Arrien’s Clay Gate, the only gate that is constantly changing and that never becomes solidified.

We’re all familiar with the little white picket fences and alongside a white picket gate. What is intriguing about this gate? In this episode, Dr Ann Moir-Bussy says it’s about changing identities and discovering one’s true face.

The Silver Gate is the first of the eight gates which lead us through midlife to the rest of our lives. It’s not surprising that a lot of women arrive at this gate leading to the second half of life and they want to turn back, only because society has often painted this phase of life as one full of loss, illness, depression, decline and at the same time continues to advertise that women should regain their youth, focussing only on the external.  And with hormonal change it’s no wonder women get caught up into this narrative.

Moving into the second half of life requires us to understand what has been and is most significant and meaningful; in our lives.  Dr Ann Moir-Bussy says we can do this as we place all those morning of life experiences in the special container in the alchemical kitchen and enabling the transformation process. As we watch that process carefully in the way we talked in earlier episodes it will reveal what is true and authentic for us.

Here, in mid-life, we have to find out what is true for us and how to live it. We also need to be responsible for who we are becoming. It’s so easy to blame our circumstances or events for why we are the way we are, rather than examining how we ourselves may be the cause of our problems. It’s funny how easy it is to be comfortable with old problems, old ways of reacting to situations rather than finding new solutions. Here at mid-life we often find though that these old ways of doing things, old beliefs and patterns of behaviour no longer work.

Historically heroes have been men and women have been damsels in distress waiting to be rescued. Unfortunately, the warrior archetype, became somewhat elitist – only some brave men would take that journey, women had to sacrifice and serve.

But if we don’t take that journey, we will never find our own voice our own talents and make our own unique contribution to the world. It’s a critical journey for us as women, for we must recover and develop our strong feminine power to become leaders for those after us and to enable all those young girls and women in the morning of life to be prepared for this journey too – to no longer live the stereotypes that have been placed upon them.

In the last episode Ann Moir-Bussy talked about the energies of the goddess archetypes – remember these are ancient patterns present across cultures and ages. Did you reflect on which goddess was your more dominant energy.

The goddess archetype will become activated in you at a particular time depending on: a variety of events, such as your own predisposition, your family, your culture, other people, circumstances and events; and the stages of life, such as mid-life.

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Last time Dr Ann Moir-Bussy talked about the some of the powerful energises within us in the pattern of the Greek goddesses  and we looked at the “independent” goddesses – then, Artemis and Hestia

In this episode, she examines: the “relational” goddesses, Persephone, Demeter and Hera; as well as Aphrodite.

Recover your personal authority – know the archetypes we live by!

Did you know that within every woman is a goddess? And so, as a woman you play the leading role in unfolding your own life story. Or are you led by an energy you don’t understand or aren’t aware of?

For so many years women have been helping and serving others, at home and in her career, sometimes rescuing here children, being the one who has spent the morning of life working hard and by the time midlife arrives, she is tired, even demoralised. She knows something needs to change but she is often unaware of the powerful cultural stereotypes that have shaped her.

And at the same time, she is unconscious of the powerful forces within her that influence what she does and how she does it. We can learn a lot about these forces form the ancient Greek goddesses. They represent powerful inner patterns – or what we call archetypes – which are responsible for the major differences among women

In this episode, Dr Ann Moir-Bussy examines three of the seven major goddesses: Athena,  Artemis and Hestia.

The barriers we face in life are not outside of us – it’s not the people around us or the work or the relationship. The barrier is inside us. It’s the core belief you have about yourself, about others and about the possibilities or the non-possibilities for your life.

It forms your core identity. And unless we learn to break free of it, no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to transcend it or succeed, because the nature of what  we want to create is in the feminine – not in the masculine principles that as we said in earlier episodes have controlled or dominated us.

And we need to be clear we are not negating the masculine principles or males – we are saying that they must be balanced and the feminine has been repressed for too long, both in men as well as within us as women.

So how do we identify the core beliefs that form our core identity? We need to ask ourselves a question: Who or what am I blaming for the reason I am not successful in each area of my life?

The real reason that makes menopause so challenging is that it isn’t just a physical change. It also marks the end of your morning of life – the end of youth and vitality as we knew it.

But is it?

Yes, it is the end of the morning – but endings also mark beginnings and it’s the beginning of a new phase. Look at the women who are happier as they become older, who recognise that now there are some things they don’t have to worry about anymore, that they can call on their wisdom and experience to deal with new challenges.

We’re often very self-absorbed when we are young, and full of our own sophisticated ideas of what is right and what is wrong.

But rarely do we question what forces shaped us, diverted us, or wounded and distorted us.

What forces perhaps, supported us and are still at work within us, whether we acknowledge them or not.

So, this new phase is not about simply repeating the script and expectations of the first half of life. Is it not self-deluding to keep doing the same things and yet expect different results?

Lack of self-compassion is a common experience of many women and can be traced back to our inability to accept and come to terms with those parts of ourselves we don’t like or have disowned.

So, as we stand at the threshold of this mid-life kitchen we have to pick up all those parts and put them in that alchemical blender and that is everything that’s there – we have to be true to ourselves.

Start close in. Begin that conversation with yourself – bring compassion and deep love to all that is not yet opened with you.

Bring compassion and love to all those parts of you that are difficult to deal with – including the moodiness the hot flushes or just the restlessness and dissatisfaction you are feeling

Ann quotes one of her favourite authors, David Whyte, who grew up in the valleys of Yorkshire in England and in early life studied marine zoology. He is a captivating speaker and uses a wonderful blend of poetry, humour and insight to enable us to engage in the unfolding conversation with our life. 

In the last session we talked about coming into the middle of life as a process somewhat like the alchemists engaged in when they transformed raw material or ore – metal - into gold.

They used a physical process – extracting matter from the earth and subjecting it for purification in order to have transformation.

It became a powerful symbol for the psychic process – for what needs to change in the mind and heart and spirit as we move through mid-life into the afternoon of life. We need to become feminine alchemists in our daily living through these years if we are going to extract from the material of our morning of life’s daily experiences and turn them into the gold that enriches our lives and those we meet.

The alchemists needed matter – we have that in all those experiences good and not so good that have brought us to here.  When we look and reflect on what we see we need AIR as it often takes our breath away

We heat up and our heart pounds – for women the heat comes naturally – those hot flashes – FIRE (and they take the breath away too!)

We experience things deeply – in our gut as it’s drawn up out of us – EARTH – maybe feelings of heaviness, tiredness.

WATER with tears and longings and deep feelings, restlessness – what on earth is going on?

This is not a series about cooking – not in the traditional sense of cooking food and recipes. But is it about cooking in another sense. You know we have an expression - ‘Cooking up new ideas” – or someone might ask you ‘’What are you cooking up now?” when you’re on to a new project.

So yes, we will be cooking and what and how you might ask? And what’s this alchemy or alchemical cooking?

This series of podcasts are moments to look at how we can do this – how we can break away from the need to control it and to BE with it and to BECOME a woman who is rejuvenated, women who are awakening their feminine consciousness in a new way, women who are not afraid to enter the alchemical kitchen – that safe space which is a container to hold us as we transform and transmute all that we have and where we can find the energy – the fire, the air and all that is needed to create a coherent field of light.

'Alchemy in the mid-life kitchen' is a new podcast series for women in mid-life who yearn to gain new clarity and purpose for the afternoon of life.

Ann Moir-Bussy will help you awaken your feminine consciousness and gather your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your morning of life experiences and wisdom.

Put them into the blender, and transform these ingredients into inner gold for the afternoon of life.

Launching on Wednesday, August 5th 2020.

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or where ever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

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