Amy Taylor-Kabbaz is an internationally awarded life coach, best-selling author, award-winning journalist and creator of 'Happy Mama'.
Over the past 5 years, she has coached and supported more than 5000 women through her many online programs, one-on-one coaching, workshops and retreats, allowing her an inside understanding of how women are affected by and live with modern motherhood. In 2013, she created her very first 'formula' for women with young children to help them navigate the enormous changes, demands and expectations placed on women, but it wasn't until she discovered the groundbreaking research into 'matrescence' that all of her years of research, interviews and coaching came together.
Matrescence is an anthropological term that refers to the massive transformation and identity shift that women experience when they become mothers. First coined by Dana Raphael in the 1970s (who also was the first to talk about the importance of supporting the woman - not the baby - in childbirth, and therefore created the role of 'doula'), 'matrescence' is best understood when compared to adolescence. Just as adolescence describes the complete transformation (physical, mental, hormonal, societal) of a child to an adult, so too is matrescence the complete transformation of a woman when she first becomes a mother. The exciting thing about this new insight is that it finally gives credibility to what every single mother knows: motherhood changes you. It changes everything within you and around you. But until now, this word has not been understood or used, and therefore the support we have given women has been severely lacking.
But without this understanding, we simply expect women to go back to who they used to be (especially in the workplace) and just become superwoman.
At the end of 2018, Amy flew to New York City to meet with the world's leading expert on matrescence at Columbia University, and is now working exclusively with Dr Athan to be the leading expert on how to support mothers through matrescence, no matter what stage of motherhood they are in. She is expected to complete her initial studies with Columbia University by mid-2020, but has intentions to go on to study further, with the hope of a PhD one day.
Amy is an experienced journalist, having worked for the ABC as a newsreader, senior producer, and radio presenter around the country for nearly 15 years. She's written for various newspapers, as well as Wellbeing Magazine, ELLE Australia, The Collective and Practical Parenting. She has presented her insights into motherhood and the pressure to be 'superwoman' at business events for working mums, and is currently working on her second book to be published by Hay House international at the end of 2019. Her third book - "No More Superwoman" - is due out in late 2020.
KEY NOTE TOPICS:
- Matrescence: the key to understanding modern motherhood and womanhood
- No more superwoman: how to balance everything in life without burning out
- It's not just you: the groundbreaking research into motherhood and womanhood and why it changes everything
- Returning to work: how to transition back into the workplace as a new mother
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Amy Taylor-Kabbaz is a writer, producer, speaker and mother to three young children. After more than a decade covering breaking news and current affairs for the ABC around the country, her 'traditional' career took an unexpected turn when she found herself lost, overwhelmed and diagnosed with a thyroid condition after the birth of her first daughter.
11 years - and two more babies - later, she is now the author of the best-seling ‘Happy Mama: the guide to finding yourself’, the host of the ‘The Happy Mama Movement’ podcast (with more than 200,000 downloads), runs numerous online programs for mothers all over the world, is an international award-winning coach, and the creator of the #1 itunes meditations for children ‘Bedtime Explorers’. Her latest book ‘Mama Rising’ is due for release with Hay House in Australia and New Zealand in December 2019, and internationally in early 2020.
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Mama, Best-Selling Author, Journalist and Matrescence Activist.
