Family Harmony with Amy-Beth
coaching for parenting and life
About Amy-Beth Fischoff
After a 15 year career as an art dealer in New York City, I knew I needed more heart centered work. At the age of 38 I got a Master’s degree from Bank St. College and spend the next 8 years working with children and families in various roles - teacher, program director, pre and perinatal educator, and caregiver for high needs children.
After caring for kids of all ages for so many years, I longed for my own, and miraculously at the age of 46, I birthed a beautiful daughter by c-section.
Secure in the years of knowledge I had acquired with my background and training, I was convinced motherhood would be a walk in the park. Well, that was a cold-water bath!
Almost immediately post-partum, I felt overwhelmed by the conditioned ideas, knee jerk responses and overpowering emotions that toppled my expectations and self-image on a daily basis. As my daughter grew, parts of me that I had not anticipated came barreling out of the shadows: fear, rage, resentment, shame and powerlessness were as fiercely strong as my feelings of love and connection and provoked equally strong emotional backlash from my daughter.
It was hard to admit that having considered myself a seasoned professional at handling children, I was missing some key ingredients for how to relate to my own. I was saddened, and afraid of never finding my way to the joyous journey I had imagined before giving birth.
When my daughter was 7, I was blessed to come across Leslie Potter of Purejoy Parenting. Through the Purejoy work, and it’s brilliant method of self- inquiry, I learned that there were young parts of myself that needed as much attention and love from me as did my daughter.
I honed the ability to identify, listen to and accept those parts of myself tamped down through early conditioning, I learned to work kindly with the ‘inner critic’ that had run my life for years, and to change the lens of perfectionism and judgment with which I was also viewing my daughter.
After spending years suffering secret fears that my missteps would ruin my daughter’s life, and by the same token, resenting her ‘hold’ on me, I found ways to trust myself and my daughter in the face of the unknown; to see how wholesome attachment with my child necessarily included my own needs, and to understand the true meaning of appropriate boundaries.
I started to literally ‘grow myself up’ from my early programming.
Motherhood became much more the relaxed path that I had imagined, not because all conflict had disappeared, but because I now knew how to meet conflict, both with my daughter and in myself, with curiosity and compassion, rather than resistance and fear.
After 14 years of following this parenting path and seeing it’s profound results in my life and others, I joined the Beta group for Leslie’s first Purejoy Parent Coach Certification Course, to share this transformative work with other parents.
I specialize in providing a safe and nurturing space for the inner child in every parent, supporting families to experience harmony and love in their daily lives. The skills and inner resilience developed in this coaching can and will expand to any and every area of your life
"We can see the progress our family is making while working with Amy-Beth. It is an amazing feeling! I have read a lot of books on parenting—working with Amy-Beth takes things to a completely different level."