About

Vivid Menopause was created as a community to celebrate and elevate menopause to its proper status as a honoured transition, preparing us to come into our wisdom and live ripe, juicy, vivid and creative lives!

Menopause is a powerful and beautiful transition, representing our entry into our power years. Menopause is the beginning of the powerful and fruitful second half of life for modern women, but too often it is treated as a time of loss, something to be feared, or an illness to be cured. Nothing could be further from the truth. An empowered menopause is truly a time of ripening, coming in to our full power as women.

Vivid Menopause was created by Bronwyn Simons and Annagrace Kaye and offers courses, retreats, and community to women wishing to embrace and celebrate menopause as an exciting, vivid, and potentially joyful new adventure in our lives.

About Bronwyn

Bronwyn Simons

Hello! I’m Bronwyn. I’m a visual artist and consulting astrologer living on beautiful Vancouver Island. I love living intimately with nature; I am nurtured daily by the living ocean, the ancient giant cedars, the salmon-bearing streams and the dark night skies of my beautiful home.

At the center of my creative life are circles of women. My soul’s work happens here. I’ve been facilitating women’s circles for thirty years, and leading women’s retreats for nearly twenty. Over and over again, I have witnessed the life-changing power of groups of women coming together with purpose. Leading and mentoring women on-on-one and in circle is my honor and one of my greatest joys. In my astrological practice, I lead workshops, mini-retreats, and Moon Circles around the US and Canada, and am currently Resident Astrologer for Jane Reeve’s beautiful semi-annual Italy retreats.

As a consulting astrologer I work with the cycles of the Sun, Moon and planets to help my clients gain deeper understanding of their own life cycles. I see each life story as life is a thing of beauty, of richness, and profound depth. You can think of me as a guide to those depths, an interpreter of the deep and sometimes strange symbolic language of the soul. With gentle loving-kindness, I help my clients to see beneath the surface of life, and to better understand the great currents of energy that are moving us forward.

As a visual artist, I have explored many media, and my main work now is with ceramics, painting, and illustration. I have exhibited widely, and my work can be found in collections in North America, the UK and the Middle East.  I am currently obsessed with food illustration!

Peri-menopause came early for me, at age 38. Since then, I have devoted myself to exploring what this passage truly means in our lives, and how to move through it empowered both physically and spiritually. Today, at age 53, having moved into my Wise Woman years, I am ready to share what I have learned about this profound process of initiation. You can read more about my menopause story here.

I’m also a mom to a wonderful grown daughter, and I’ve been happily partnered to my best friend for twenty-five years. I’m a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, a dancer, a yogini, and a rescuer of pugs in my spare time.

All my work is here: www.bronwynsimons.com

About Annagrace

Screenshot 2015-06-02 13.21.54Annagrace Kaye, CD(DONA).

I am a writer, mother, sister, partner, lover, and a loud laugher. I have been so many things in my life: a Vice-President of Operations in a chain of luxury import stores, a creator of visual displays for a large retail clothing company, a makeup artist, a pregnancy class instructor, a birth and postpartum doula,
and a story doula. I have always been drawn to work which combines the beautiful and the necessary, believing that creativity is as essential to the planet as clean air and water. As I have grown into my body and heart I have also felt a deep call to heal my familial wounds and the things I’ve experienced and lived through, and to make a safe place for others to do the same. I have a fierce heart and tender bones.

I live near Portland, Oregon, and the deep, dark green of the Pacific Northwest rainforest is my soul’s true home. I love being near the sea, especially the Pacific Ocean, but I’m equally happy in the noise and excitement of city life. I love books and coffee and art museums and my girlfriends. My own little house is surrounded by medicinal plants and native wildflowers which are busily alive with bees, birds, and butterflies. I will admit to feeding squirrels as well as birds, and I spend many happy hours watching the bald eagles and Cooper’s hawks which share my neighborhood. I am probably happiest when I’m standing at my kitchen stove, in a vintage apron, feeding people I love while they tell me stories. I am happily partnered to Jeffrey Kaye and together we have two daughters, Penelope and Adeleine.

I was drawn to create Vivid with Bronwyn Simons out of a deep love for the diverse and intricate experiences of women everywhere. I love watching women walk into their own stories and discover and name their essential reasons and passions.  I think a lot about the lines and divisions within womankind and all the ways we struggle to connect with each other and embody our whole selves. I am passionate about creating safe circles which operate outside of broken models of hierarchy and power. I am thrilled to be telling new stories about women at midlife and creating community around vibrant, powerful, and healthy menopause. I believe that we can heal our wounded, modern stories and live our own beautifully unique versions of Vivid Lives.

About Jennilyn

Jennilyn Carson

Jennilyn has been a cycledork since she was a tween first intrigued by the magic of menstruation. It wasn’t until several years ago, when she started researching, investigating and tracking her own cycle – before apps! – that she realized there’s so much more to learn, and that with that knowledge comes empowerment. She started cycledork.com as a period-positive space with an underlying mission to undo the taboo around our natural cycles from menarche through menopause. She’s proud to continue those efforts as a member of the VIVID Menopause team.

4 comments on “About

  1. Good afternoon Bronwyn, Annagrace and Jenilyn,

    Hoping this finds you gloriously well today.

    Thank you for the sacred work you do, for beautiful and powerful program offerings. Deep bow of gratitude. Would love to (and be honored to) journey with you through Vivid. Wondering if you provide any scholarships for participation? Thank you for your kind consideration.

    Wishing you a lovely day, and sending my gratitude,
    Melissa

  2. Hello Bronwyn and Team~

    My name is Amanda Malachesky. I’m the owner of an online Functional Nutrition clinic, Confluence Nutrition. As a Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner, I help people move beyond their symptoms to heal their health challenges at their roots. I am also in the middle of my own at-times turbulent, but somewhat resolved perimenopause-temporary surgical menopause-restored cycles-endometriosis journey, and have used my own experiences as a laboratory for my training and practice in functional health.

    One of the aspects of care that I like to share with people is that everyone is looking for the magic pill, but I find it doesn’t really exist. What gets us where we want to go is developing a deeply intimate relationship with our own bodies, and understanding ourselves on a much deeper level.

    If you think this would make an interesting podcast conversation, I would love to connect further with you. Please feel free to visit my website, to learn more about me.

    Wishing you all the best,
    Amanda

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