Get the recordings from our incredible live event that happened from 28th – 30th October, 2020
3 days of inspiring conversations and expert interviews
Get access to the two day live festival, community and all recordings
Two days of expert interviews and insightful panel discussions to empower your midlife journey - all from the comfort of your own home or office
Go to www.KarenSkidmore.com/embrace to get your ticket today
Introducing Embrace, a 3 day festival to celebrate the midlife of women
Midlife is a time where many women pull back as they reach a peak in their professional life, often invisibly as few like to or know how to discuss our natural hormonal changes.
As many women struggle with stress, often sandwiched between caring for their families and juggling business and professional careers, it’s become common for many to experience adrenal fatigue and burnout during their 40’s and 50’s.
Is it any surprise that this time of our lives is often called a ‘midlife crisis’?
At a time in your life when you may be starting your own business, deciding to step up and scale and want to become more visible in your professional life, the stress and strain of trying to work within the confines of modern-day expectations, systems and deadlines, whilst on a midlife journey, can adversely affect your health and emotional wellbeing.
Midlife has become a period of time that many women start fighting with or finding ways to fix their health, In fact, many women we speak to are even in denial that they can be ‘old enough’ to be experiencing the menopause. But did you know that it can be quite normal for the peri-menopausal journey to start from your early 40’s?
What if you stopped trying to fix and fight your way through your day and discovered a new rhythm and flow to your business, life and leadership?
As you transition and begin your crone years, midlife can be a powerful phase in a woman’s life.
You can discover a new rhythm to your life. Find ways to access your inner wisdom.
And step into leadership roles you never thought possible.
Whether you are just beginning your 40’s or are already through menopause, join us for this powerful 3 day festival of conversations and expert interviews.
It’s time to start talking about the effect of midlife and the menopause may have on you and how these impact on your professional life. We are bringing you the best menopause experts, as well as leaders from wellbeing, mind, body and business leadership.
Discover how you can change the way you work to flow with you.
Learn how your business can be structured in a way to embrace a more flexible way of supporting health and emotional wellbeing
Explore how you can stop fighting your way through life and embrace your menopausal years.
If you resonate with any of this, we’d love you to access these transformative sessions
Here’s what Embrace will give you …
Educate
To give you access to experts and options to how you manage your menopausal journey, health and wellbeing throughout your 40’s, 50’s and beyond.
Inspire
To show you how you can make the changes to the way that you work, show up and know who you are as you transition into your wisdom years
Connect
Engage and share stories with other women from all walks of life, who are all going through similar journeys in business, life and leadership
Here’s our line up of speakers
Menopause Support & Wellbeing
Dr Wendy Denning, Director of the Health Doctors
Suné Markowitz-Shulman, Menopause Wellbeing Coach
Le'Nise Brothers, Registered Nutritional Therapist & menstrual health coach
Nicki Williams, Happy Hormones For Life
Louise Westra, Naturopath
Nicola Moore, Nutrition & Wellbeing
Business Leadership & Work Flow
Manda Lakhani, Trustee of The Hunger Project
Yvonne Phillip, Holistic Success and Style Coach
Karen Skidmore, Business Mentor & Coach
Samjhana Moon, Modern Wise Woman
Alisoun Mackenzie, Your Meaningful Life Guide
Julie Stevens, Younique Designs Ltd
Melina Abbott, Spiritual Sales Coach
Body & Movement
Linda Stephens, Women’s Wellbeing & Pelvic Health Specialist
Kathryn Meadows, Pilates Teacher & Movement Rehab Specialist
Spirit & Soul
Katie Phillips, Therapeutic Master Coach
Lisa Turner, Specialist in Human Transformation and Evolution
Discussion Panel
Manda Lakhani, Trustee of The Hunger Project
Breeda Bermingham, Social Entrepreneur & Founder Midlife Women Rock Project
Melanie McKay, Business Owner & Perimenopause Podcaster
Sam Palmer, Qualified Nurse, Fitness Coach & Menopause Advocate
Working in partnership with The Hunger Project
Top-down, aid-driven charity models fail to create lasting change in the lives of those in need. To achieve a sustainable solution to hunger, we need to flip that model on its head, and afford those living in hunger access to the education and tools needed to end hunger for good.
One of the most effective ways to achieve this and to end hunger for everyone is to empower women.
The menopause is an important life transition and it’s so important to accept it fully and embrace it as a positive change. Your midlife can be a period of replenishment and reflection and as you grow through it, you can become aware of the opportunity to become a powerful women with leadership possibilities and being change in the world.
This is why we’ve partnered with The Hunger Project and their powerful Unleashed Women movement. Join us for a spotlight session with Manda Lakhani, Board Trustee, to learn more how you can use your creativity, leadership and ideas to raise funds that will empower women, and end hunger once and for all.
Event Schedule
Pick & choose which sessions you want to join live. Any that you can’t attend, you will be able to access the recording after the event.
Day One: Wednesday 29th October
Opening Ceremony
Join Karen Skidmore & Nicki Williams for the opening of the festival
Karen & Nicki set the stage for the three days with an overview of what’s coming, who to look out for and what sessions you won’t want to miss. This first session of the festival will give you what you need to help you make the most of the expert interviews and discussion panel recordings.
Menopause Support & Wellbeing
Nutrition for menopause: Forget perfection & find balance
with Nicola Moore, Nutrition & Wellbeing
Huge hormonal shifts happen during your peri-menopause, which impact on your weight, memory, mood and food cravings. When food can be a source of joy, and eating well an act of self love, it is possible to change your health trajectory, and sometimes the simplest and easiest things are the most impactful.
If you are wondering what’s happened to your waist and can’t understand why dieting doesn’t seem to work, this session is going to hep you understand what is going on with your hormonal shifts. Nicola hopes to leave feeling empowered with her pragmatic, practical and inspiring dietary and lifestyle suggestions, and positive about what you can do to support your health.
Business Leadership & Work Flow
Sacred Selling: Integrating inner wisdom with profitable, practical business strategies
with Melina Abbott, Spiritual Sales Coach
Your business is an expression of who you are. The midlife can be a time that allows you to connect more deeply to divine wisdom and heed the messages you receive, which can be a wonderful opportunity to become more profitable in your business and feel more fulfilled.
In this session you’ll discover the three keys to creating a sales system that’s fully aligned with who you are (no gimmicks or sleazy sales techniques), how to deeply connect with your community in a way that suits your unique personality and style (and have them reach out to work with you) and how to harness a feeling of lightness and ease when it comes to selling and growing your business.
Panel Discussion
Real Life Menopause Stories: How can we support more women in more ways
We are bringing together four women with very different menopause journeys to discuss the importance of menopause education and how all women must know what options are available to them.
Spirit & Soul
Calling in love after 40
with Katie Phillips, Therapeutic Master Coach
If you want to be inspired and hopeful that love is possible for you after the age of 40, then you will want to tune in to this session. You are going to discover that you are not wired wrong and you are not damaged. You will begin to understand that dating doesn’t have to be another thing on your ‘to do’ list because there’s a way of aligning and magnifying your energy that has you become a magnet for him to find you. Igniting your feminine energy is key and mid-life is the perfect invitation to this because your body is literally re-setting.
Body & Movement
Pelvic floor matters for Midlifers
with Linda Stephens, Women’s Wellbeing and Pelvic Health Specialist
Many women enter nursing homes because on incontinence. Currently, most women stay in nursing homes because of incontinence! Tena like to make us think this is normal. This session will help you understand what is pelvic floor dysfunction, why is leaking, bowel problems, pain, urgency, stress incontinence, prolapse, etc so common from peri menopause and beyond, and what actions can be taken to reduce both potential for and severity of pelvic floor dysfunction.
There is a huge amount that women can do to reduce symptoms and prevent degeneration without surgery, or reduce the stats around further surgery if they’ve had it. Education, then a commitment to simple wellbeing practices can make ALL the difference.
Spirit & Soul
Our spiritual tipping point: Power WITH versus power OVER
with Lisa Turner, Specialist in Human Transformation and Evolution
Lisa believes that midlife women can play an essential role in the coming force for good. She sees the cause of most of the problems of the world, from overconsumption, to bullying at work, to bad leadership are the result of people trying to hide from, or stem from their pain from the past and the shame they feel about it, which is why she knows personal empowerment and raising consciousness helps everyone
Our Spiritual Tipping Point explains why the chaos we see is actually our collective spiritual awakening. Her model, Project THEOSS, (the evolution of society & species) describes our species’ evolution and reliably predicts what’s to come. During this session you will discover how to identify masculine and feminine power imbalances, in relationships, how to restore power balance to enable power WITH rather than power OVER and how to balance discipline and self-care, will power, magnetic attraction, push vs pull, good vs bad hierarchies and egalitarian groups.
Day Two: Thursday 29th October
Business Leadership & Work Flow
Ebb & Flow: How to get out of your head and stop the burn out
with Karen Skidmore, Business Mentor
More women than ever are starting up and growing their own businesses in their midlife than ever before. But as many struggle with stress, often sandwiched between caring for their families and juggling business and professional careers, it’s become common to experience adrenal fatigue and burnout during their 40’s and 50’s.
As we understand more about how the menopausal journey affects women in leadership, it’s time for women to stop trying to work to our modern, fast-paced schedules and work productivity expectations (often designed by and for how men work), and start to embrace our cyclical powers and work rhythms. In this session, you will learn how to get out of your head and slow down your race to success to help discover your natural work flow and leadership style.
Body & Movement
Why women need to embrace movement now more than ever (and why cold water swimming could be your new hobby!)
with Kathryn Meadows, Pilates Teacher and Movement Rehab Specialist
In this session, Kathryn will discuss why movement is a form of self love and why women coming towards or through menopause need to keep moving consciously not only for their physical health but for so many other reasons too. She will also talk about the increasing interest in cold water swimming amongst older women and how you can get moving when you think you can’t. This will be a light hearted, fun chat about all things movement with someone who by her own admission is a “perfectly imperfect mover learning to love her body again in this new phase of life”.
Business Leadership & Work Flow
Stop giving back #JustGiveNow
with Alisoun Mackenzie, Your Meaningful Life Guide
Alisoun doesn’t believe in ‘giving back’. Giving back hinders charitable giving, causes personal overwhelm and is accelerating the destruction of the planet, plus if you are waiting to ‘give back’ could also lose you business. Discover how, as a business owner or leader, you can have more impact in the world by striking a healthy balance between giving to yourself and putting compassionate giving strategies at the heart of your business. You are going to hear about the benefits of turning our business into a force for good, an example of how fundraising through your business helped Alisoun grew her own consulting business and how you can strike the right balance between giving to ourselves and others.
Business Leadership & Work Flow
The Hunger Project & Unleashed Women
with Manda Lakhani, Trustee of The Hunger Project
Top-down, aid-driven charity models fail to create lasting change in the lives of those in need. To achieve a sustainable solution to hunger, we need to flip that model on its head, and afford those living in hunger access to the education and tools needed to end hunger for good. One of the most effective ways to achieve this and to end hunger for everyone is to empower women.
The menopause is an important life transition and it’s so important to accept it fully and embrace it as a positive change. Your midlife can be a period of replenishment and reflection and as you grow through it, you can become aware of the opportunity to become a powerful women with leadership possibilities and being change in the world.
This is why we’ve partnered with The Hunger Project and their powerful Unleashed Women movement. Join us for a spotlight session with Manda Lakhani, Board Trustee, to learn more how you can use your creativity, leadership and ideas to raise funds that will empower women, and end hunger once and for all.
Menopause Support & Wellbeing
The truth about HRT
with Dr Wendy Denning, Director of the Health Doctors
Women should be able to make an informed choice as to whether they wish to take HRT after the menopause and for how long, rather than being told what they are allowed to do. In this incredibly insightful session, Dr Denning will outline what health challenges a woman faces at the menopause and how to manage them. You will hear about bioidentical hormone therapy; what it is, who is it for, how long you can take it for and why it is not for everyone.
She is going to answer the questions that every women needs to know about HRT: whether all women should take HRT, is HRT safe and are there ways of making HRT more safe?
Business Leadership & Work Flow
Personal brand for midlife success: How you don’t need to lose your style during menopause
with Yvonne Phillip, Success and Style Coach
For many women, midlife gives us changes to our bodies that we don’t like. From thickening of our waists to hair colour changes, clothes that made us feel good in our 20’s and 30’s either don’t fit or just look awful. As we age and menopause affects our confidence, it’s easy for us to lose our identity and even become invisible, trying to wear baggy clothes or subdued colours to fade away.
This is why assessing our personal brand and style and identifying what outfits can make us stand out (in a good way!) and feel amazing, is important in our business leadership. Yvonne is going to share how you can work smart, not hard, and have a balance of strategy, style and self-care to elevate your personal brand.
Day Three: Friday 30th October
Menopause Support & Wellbeing
Menopause isn’t just about Oestrogen: Meet your Feisty 4 hormones
with Nicki Williams, Happy Hormones For Life
When we hear about menopause, we often hear about symptoms and issues associated with declining levels of oestrogen, and the pros and cons of HRT. The thing is, the symptoms of menopause can be impacted by many other hormones, and if you don’t address these imbalances, you’re not going to feel 100% even if you’re on HRT.
In this session, Nicki would like to introduce you to your Feisty Four hormones! These four hormones can be the difference between sailing through menopause with no symptoms or having a really tough time. Once you know what they are and how to control them, you can get them all working for you, not against you so that you sail through perimenopause and beyond.
Business Leadership & Work Flow
Discover your creative flow in harmony with your natural cycles of menstruation and moon
with Samjhana Moon, Modern Wise Woman
Learning to work with the energetics of our menstrual cycle and/or the moon phases has the power to transform all aspects of our lives. Because when you harmonise your lifestyle and workflow with these natural cycles, you‘re connecting with forces way bigger than yourself. Join us for this special session to discover a simple map of these 2 natural cycles that applies whether your menstruating or menopausal. Applying this wisdom will help you feel more energised, creative, visionary and sexy, so you can live and work in your feminine flow.
Business Leadership & Work Flow
Discover how your home and workspace affects how you think, feel and behave
with Julie Stevens, Younique Designs Ltd
Our environments affect how we feel, think and behave, which is why Julie believes that we can help regain control of our feelings, thinking and our behaviour by changing the environments we live, work and play in.
In this session, we are discussing how menopause has affected her relationship with her home, what has changed for Julie now that she is embracing her wisdom year and how being a creative designer has helped her get through the last few years. She is also sharing where women can start if they want to ensure that they create the right environments that will allow them to flourish where they are now, because knowing what to do first can save you money, time and your own energy to give you the confidence to embark on change in this season.
12.30pm to 1.30pm – Panel Discussion
Menopause Support & Wellbeing
We are bringing together four menopause support professionals to discuss the importance of menopause education and how all women must know what options are available to them.
Closing Ceremony
Join Karen Skidmore & Nicki Williams for our final session of the week
The perfect way to close our festival; our hosts, Karen & Nicki, have an open discussion on their biggest take-aways, what surprised us and what sessions are worth listening back to again.
Meet Your Hosts For The Festival
Karen Skidmore
Leading the festival is Karen Skidmore. Business Books Awards finalist 2020, podcaster, and business mentor with 25+ years’ experience, Karen is CEO of True Profit Business which uniquely combines the being-ness and doing-ness of business to help scale up purpose-driven businesses.
We know that most business owners are burning out, trying to drive their businesses forward. And Karen knows this from first-hand experience. She has run her own coaching and consulting company since 2004. After an 11-year career with Hays Plc, her children were approaching school age and she realised how much she wanted a more flexible and fulfilling professional career.
Within 6 months of starting up, she was awarded European Social Funds for her Women’s Enterprise Programme and Simply Marketing Workshops, which was instrumental in helping hundreds of women start up their own businesses across Surrey & Sussex. She founded a regional women’s networking group in 2005, created & ran a 100+ membership site for 3 years and launched dozens of online courses and group programmes over the past 13 years.
But in 2012, struggling with adrenal fatigue and hormonal imbalances, Karen was burnt out from constantly launching new programmes and marketing campaigns, exasperated by dealing with grief from losing her father to cancer two years previously. She fought with her health; trying to find ways to fix her low energy levels, severe brain fog and aching body, and struggled to keep up with work and family life. After admitting that she had to change the way she was using her body, as well as the way she was working, she begun to realise she had far better outcomes when she started to embrace her menopausal journey. And it soon became apparent that many of her clients wanted this same change.
Nicki Williams
Joining Karen as co-host for the week is Nicki Williams
Nicki is an award-winning nutritionist, author, speaker and women’s health expert.
But she wasn’t always this clued up about her hormones……Far from it!
She struggled in her early 40’s with exhaustion, mood swings, brain fog and stubborn weight gain. And it made her miserable. When her doctor just offered her antidepressants, she got on the phone to her dad, a doctor and hormone specialist, who told her she was in ‘peri-menopause’ – a term she had never heard of and frankly didn’t quite believe. So he ran some hormone tests which showed her hormones were all over the place. Determined to figure out how to feel better, and with dad’s help, she discovered she could turn things around using diet, lifestyle and targeted supplements.
It changed her life (and career!). Now in her 50’s, she’s far from perfect, but she feels great. And she’s on a mission to provide women with the often missing support they need to feel great too.
Nicki Williams
Joining Karen as co-host for the week is Nicki Williams
Nicki is an award-winning nutritionist, author, speaker and women’s health expert.
But she wasn’t always this clued up about her hormones……Far from it!
She struggled in her early 40’s with exhaustion, mood swings, brain fog and stubborn weight gain. And it made her miserable. When her doctor just offered her antidepressants, she got on the phone to her dad, a doctor and hormone specialist, who told her she was in ‘peri-menopause’ – a term she had never heard of and frankly didn’t quite believe. So he ran some hormone tests which showed her hormones were all over the place. Determined to figure out how to feel better, and with dad’s help, she discovered she could turn things around using diet, lifestyle and targeted supplements.
It changed her life (and career!). Now in her 50’s, she’s far from perfect, but she feels great. And she’s on a mission to provide women with the often missing support they need to feel great too.
Alexia Padgham
Alexia is our Community Manager and runs our events like clockwork.
She has been supporting Karen in her business since 2007 so she knows exactly what our clients and community members need to help them in their business growth journeys.
As well as running our events, she personally welcomes all new members into our Momentum community and ensures you know where to find all the resources available to you. If you need any logistical info for the festival, including timings, joining links and follow up resources, Alexia is the go-to person to reach out to.
Get access to the two day live festival, community and all recordings
Two days of expert interviews and insightful panel discussions to empower your midlife journey - all from the comfort of your own home or office
Go to www.KarenSkidmore.com/embrace to get your ticket today
Inner Game Wisdom Alongside Practical Techniques
Karen gives tremendous value at her events and has the unusual combination of empowering business owners to address their inner game alongside practical techniques for shaping their business to work for them.
Great Insights & A Fresh Perspective
Karen uses her enormous breadth of experience to deliver a high-value day that will give you great insights and a fresh perspective on your business. This day is packed with practical advice and strategies that place you and your wellbeing at the heart of it all, without ignoring the importance of profit and cash flow.
Highly Engaging
Karen is a highly engaging presenter and you’ll also meet some great new connections on the day, which is an added bonus!
Fun & An Opening For Creativity
Karen’s events are always really great events; very professionally run and Karen’s team are awesome. What I love is that it’s not all head down and work. There is a fun element to the events, too, which opens up your creativity and you come away with a clear plan of action.
Fresh Ideas & Creative Energy
Despite having been to Karen’s events a few times before and, in theory, knew much of what she teaches already, I still came away with fresh ideas for my business, which I won’t have come up with by sitting in my office by myself. It’s the magic of giving yourself time away from your day-to-day to think and tune in to all the wonderful creative energy that flows from these events.
No Worry & Expense Of Any Travel
I loved your new way of live streaming your events. It has meant I could take part without the worry and expense of travelling to the event. I get put off from attending events because of the logistics around my lifestyle, but this was a great way of doing it. Plus, no travelling for hours to get home afterwards either. Or getting up early to get to the venue on time.
Get access to the two day live festival, community and all recordings
Two days of expert interviews and insightful panel discussions to empower your midlife journey - all from the comfort of your own home or office
Go to www.KarenSkidmore.com/embrace to get your ticket today
Need to ask us a question first before registering?
If we didn’t answer all of your questions here on this page, please email Alexia on alexia@karenskidmore.com or click the contact us button below.
Embrace Midlife & Menopause
For Business Leaders Stepping Into Their Wisdom Years
