About Amy Tiemann

Watch a Bookspan interview with Amy Tiemann

Byline:
Amy Tiemann is author of Mojo Mom: Nurturing your Self while Raising a Family. Before becoming a mom, Tiemann earned her Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Stanford University. See why women are joining the revolution and downloading their own "Mojo Mom Party Kits" www.MojoMom.com, where you can read Amy’s blog and listen to her podcasts. Contact her: [email protected].

Broadcast Bio:
Dr. Amy Tiemann (say TEE-man) is author of Mojo Mom: Nurturing your Self while Raising a Family. She is an expert in helping women prepare for and face the challenges of new motherhood - from the first few weeks with the new baby to deciding whether or not to return to work away from the home. Her online community, MojoMom.com is a place where women gather to share insight and support one another in regaining their mojo. Welcome, Dr. Tiemann.

Amy Tiemann, Ph. D. (say TEE-man) is author of the young adult novel High Water and the award-winning book Mojo Mom: Nurturing your Self while Raising a Family. She is also creator of MojoMom.com, and President of SPARK Seminars.

Amy has always created her own path in life. After earning her doctorate in Neurosciences from Stanford University, she left "Big Science" for high school teaching.

Teaching turned out to be far more demanding than she had imagined, but incredibly rewarding. However, neither career prepared her for the challenge of becoming a mother.

Amy went from days full of interaction with students and colleagues to being home alone with her daughter.

“The saying, ‘the days are long, but the years are short’ best describes my entry into motherhood. Now that my daughter has reached school age, it seems like time has flown by, but during the early months and years of motherhood, I faced a major adjustment in my identity, as well as a reshaping of my career path,” expressed Amy.

After emerging from what she calls “the cocoon of the early months of motherhood,” Amy began to wonder “Who am I, now that I am a Mom?'” She was no longer an employed scientist or educator. She became “Mom,” not Dr. T, a label she found to be immensely important, yet anonymous.

This is when Amy began the process of getting her Mojo back, though at the time, she didn’t call it that. She revived her creativity and found causes she could be passionate about. She took creative-writing classes, finished a long-dormant children's novel, and even penned a screenplay. Teaching jobs came along, but none felt right.

Amy was fortunate to have the option of staying home if she wished, and asserts that one gift of motherhood was knowing better than to commit time away from her family to a position that wasn’t a good fit.

She decided to combine her personal values and teaching skills to create her own teaching opportunity. In May 2002, she founded SPARK Seminars (www.sparkseminars.com) to educate parents about the core concepts of child safety and self-defense. Her seminars have reached hundreds of parents in North Carolina through talks given at schools, churches, mothers' groups, and UNC Family Medicine.

By the time her daughter was three years old, Amy recognized that she had come a long way. The journey from her old concept of “Self,” to a nearly-blank slate wiped clean by motherhood, to a life that had been built to include time and space for both her family and herself as an individual was challenging, yet necessary to be whole.

This amazing process inspired her creation of the term “Mommy Mojo,” to describe the intangible feeling of embracing a component of one’s identity that is separate from being a mother, while preserving the dedication to family.

The wisdom she collected from interviews, research, and personal insight became the basis for her book, Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family. Eager to extend her work into the community and dynamically update it, she now offers insight through MojoMom.com.