Cat Coluccio watched as her daughter was accepted into university.
After home schooling her kids for their last years of high school, the east Auckland resident felt stuck.
“I felt like I didn’t have that role of a homeschooling mum anymore,” she says.
“I no longer needed to oversee their education, take them to training, fundraise, prepare and help them pack for their overseas tours.”
She had three options: she could sit and pine, go back to teaching or do something different.
She decided to pursue a whole new career path.
Coluccio, 55, who lives in Whitford, was born in Perth, Australia.
When she received a musical scholarship at age 11, she travelled two hours each way every day to attend classes.
Then, at 17, she left Perth to study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for four years.
She became a talented and professional saxophone player.
She did solo work, released an album and, eventually, transitioned to become a high school teacher.
There assumed various other roles including music director, conductor, lecturer and principal of a tertiary training college.
Coluccio told the Times her career as a musician was a love/hate relationship.
“I never thought I was good enough,” she says.
She also suffered from stage fright. However, as she progressed and performed in front of 20,000 people, she transformed from crying to loving performing.
“It pushed me out of my comfort zone,” she says.
In 1999, she migrated to New Zealand with her husband and two children, a son and a daughter.
By the time they were teenagers, she was a stay-at-home mum.
Then, at age 44, she underwent her midlife transformation.
“I’ve always loved helping people so I became a personal trainer,” Coluccio says.
She started a personal training course, gained her certification and, at age 45, started working at a body-building gym.
For seven years, she sought to make a positive difference in people’s lives.
“I started attracting more and more women like myself,” she says.
She started a Facebook group called Coluccio Fitness to better serve the people she was training.
By the time she’d left the gym – due to a chronic pain condition – the group had morphed into Rocking Midlife.
She’d launched a variety of programmes and started a life coaching course.
Coluccio’s work became focused on women in mid-life.
“It’s a time of flux,” she says. “When I asked what the primary midlife issue is, it wasn’t body weight or menopause but ‘how do I get my mojo back?'”
Her three books, 21 Hacks to ROCK Your Life: Stop Procrastinating, Do that Thing, and 21 Hacks to Rock Your Life Teens, and her recently published 21 Hacks To Rock Your Midlife: Release the Past, Dare to Dream and Create your Legacy, are intended to help people struggling in their time of flux or going through a transformation.
“It’s for anyone undergoing their transformation, whatever that may be,” Coluccio says.
She currently has 50,000 Facebook followers, a Facebook group with 6100 members and has hosted an International Summit with 700 women.
A little-known fact about Coluccio is she suffers from interstitial cystitis, a painful bladder condition .
“I have chronic pelvis pain,” she says. “It’s crippling.”
“But I won’t let it define me.”
It doesn’t stop her from continuing to fulfil her dream of helping people.
“I want them to be encouraged and to find joy.”
