Author. Consultant. Astrologer.
About Maya
Maya Kalaria is an author, consultant and astrologer. Her poetry book, Half Woman Half Grief, explores the hero’s journey through the underworld of death, grief, trauma and rage after losing her mother at the age of nine. As a lifelong intuitive and student of mysticism, she is also a qualified Horary Astrologer and a student of Vedic Astrology. Maya is a student at the New Earth Mystery School, where mystics learn psychic tools for Highly Sensitives, nervous system training, and subtle body liberation templates.
Maya co-founded Energetic Conversations with Daniel Edmund; a consultancy company helping to heal the racial, gender and mental health dynamics within company cultures.
Her wide-ranging professional background includes mental health practitioner work with young people, domestic abuse work with women and children, solution-focused hypnotherapy and retail management. Maya has worked for Zara, Calvin Klein, Harvey Nichols, Reiss and Oliver Bonas.
As a mental health practitioner, she managed weekly hubs for young people and created and facilitated various training sessions and workshops. She had the honour of speaking to thousands of young people about mental health in schools, colleges and universities, as well as speaking on BBC Radio about grief, identity, femme empowerment and bullying. She has also delivered mental health talks to professionals and teaching staff across Bristol-based colleges and universities.
Maya co-founded The Decolonial Podcast, which featured guests such as the author of Empireland, Sathnam Sanghera. Her work has been featured in Stylist Magazine, South Asian Heritage Month, BBC Radio, Thought Catalog, Bristol Magazine and Bristol 24/7.
As a Gujarati woman born in England, Maya speaks powerfully about the racism and colonial trauma she experienced as a result of her early life circumstances, as well as the mysticism her life became steeped in through these life-altering experiences. She believes strongly in healthy communication as a powerful tool for healing and is passionate about connecting to our ancestral, indigenous roots, wherever we originate from. She also speaks of the energy work that she has practiced for years, and is at the core of everything she does.
To listen, watch or engage with Maya's wide-ranging media work, click here.
Half Woman Half Grief
Availiable in paperback and Ebook.
I’m not here to sugar-coat grief. I’m here to be transformed by it.
This powerfully vulnerable book invites us to grieve. Having lost her mother at the age of nine, Maya has spent her life navigating her way through the myriad of emotions which surround death. In her debut collection of poetry, she maps her journey into the mysterious underworld of grief and the extraordinary lessons she learned in the darkness.
Poetry
Poems from Half Woman Half Grief
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What readers are saying
I’ve said a lot about this book to anyone who would listen. Here I am to say a little more after rereading some of it again. I have felt connected with Maya’s words since literally stumbling upon them during a late night scroll-through on The Gram.
Instantly, my spirit was touched, my heart was moved. The tears came easily to me, as someone who recognized the spirit of grief and loss, among other themes, in her work very well. There was real feeling in the words that struck me so and the same is true for this book. It is even more potent in this form I would say.
The way the book is structured into sections that chronicle a journey of the speaker of these words is a complete story. One with a beginning, middle, and end. I called it a transformative odyssey before, and this felt like the most accurate way to describe my experience of the book. One literally traverses through loss, the deep and dark places one can suddenly find themselves in as a result, and through all that to a place of hope that tomorrow will be a better day. Even if for a moment.
The book doesn’t just deal with the loss of a loved one either. It is more expansive than that. There are themes that touch on the loss of a sense of self, a loss of culture and the grief that comes with that. And, how much more powerful all that is when a loved one is tied so deeply to both. This book is at once personal and universal, especially for those who might have found themselves wrestling with similar issues, myself included.
I urge anyone who is curious to support a wonderful indie author/poet and pick this book up. Maya is full of insight and possesses a soul rich with a great deal of hard-won wisdom, and a heart of deep love. All of this comes through in the book. Whether you like poetry or not, I think you’ll find something worthwhile in it.
Steven Armstrong, author of Dragon Daughter
Energetic Conversations
A consultancy company helping to heal the racial, gender and mental health dynamics within company cultures.
Energetic Conversations is a consultancy company focused primarily on race, gender, and mental health issues. Offering professional advice for leaders and bespoke transformational programmes, our work focuses not just on the symptoms but on unearthing and healing the core issues within company cultures.
Our work is best suited for leaders of companies that are serious about the healing, development, and transformation of their organisation. We are happy to work with any company, organization or institution which wishes to transform.
Contact Maya
I connected with Maya via social media, and loved the depth and quality of her blog posts. I ordered her poetry book and really connected to the way in which she discussed grief and loss, particularly in relation to Maa Kali and the emancipatory nature of living in the darkness. I was saddened yet inspired by her life story, and the way she wove decolonization into her educational work through a critical historical lens.
Too often today, decolonization is discussed in a superficial way, but Maya takes us back to our ancestral roots and meanings.
I run a social enterprise and a women's community writing group, and I asked Maya if she would offer a guest session. Maya delivered a moving talk, and this inspired a creative group discussion on different interpretations of grief and loss through our lived experiences as women of colour. The women in my writing group left the session feeling so inspired.
As an academic, it was refreshing to find Maya's work in a world of superficial social media posts. I would highly recommend her as a speaker, decolonization educator and critical reader.
Dr Geeta Ludhra