Here I am in 2018 at The Body Camp in Ibiza, having a fantastic time with new friends and old. I love the camaraderie and new friendships born in a retreat environment.
Retreats and I have had a colourful and varied past. For years, I was a retreat super fan, saving up for months to attend a retreat or being first in line to sign up for an opportunity to visit a far-flung destination in the name of improving my wellbeing, on a press trip, when I worked as a journalist on magazines including Red, Glamour, Grazia and Hello!
I loved the intrigue of being thrown together with a group of strangers. Yet back to back scheduled retreats could be exhausting and left little time for a deeper pause from everyday life and a chance to reflect on where you’re at in life, and where you might like to be.
I wrote about some of the retreats I have attended in the past for the Sunday Times last weekend, including what I loved about them and what didn't always float my boat. If you missed the article, you can read it in full here.
Yet despite being lucky enough to dip my toe – and various other body parts – into many hydrotherapy pools, cryo chambers and aromatherapy jet baths in the name of improving my wellbeing, the opportunity to pop off for five days to reboot my mind and body became very limited during the busy child-rearing, working mum days when it felt as though I was ricocheting through life at break-neck speed. And none of them was a place I felt able to turn to for practical support when, in 2022 and the Editor in Chief of HELLO! magazine, I teetered perilously on the edge of burnout and spent anxious, sleepless nights wondering how to escape the relentless pace of a career and lifestyle I was no longer enjoying. It came to a head one day when I collapsed into a sobbing mess and was signed off work for a period of time with ‘psychological exhaustion’. Now it was my body’s turn to scream ‘Stop!’. I was forced to tune in to the persistent little voice in my mind which had been trying to tell me for a while: something needs to change.
My story is not unique. The UK is at risk of becoming a ‘burnt-out’ nation. According to a recent report commissioned by LumApps, a leading Employee Experience Platform, 88% of UK employees have experienced at least some level of burnout over the last two years, with one third claiming to suffer from physical and mental exhaustion frequently due to pressures within the workplace.
Coupled to this, it is no coincidence my ‘breakdown’ began to take hold when I hit 47 years old and entered the perimenopause stage of life. There are almost four million women aged 45-55 employed in the UK, the age that menopause (the time being identified as a year after periods have ceased) usually occurs, and perimenopause symptoms can kick in months or even years beforehand.
I used HRT for a year, and then decided to take a break from it. I'm now managing my perimenopause symptoms naturally (that's another blog post for another time!). HRT is a great option for many, and it helped me through a certain time.
With perimenopause symptoms including hot flushes, night sweats, brain fog and anxiety, focusing on work can be incredibly hard. The Menopause and the Workplace report by the Fawcett Society and Channel 4, which polled 4,000 women aged 45-55, found that one in 10 women have left work because of symptoms of the menopause. This is equivalent to 333,000 women if extrapolated across the UK, the report said. The poll also found 14 percent of women in this age group had reduced their hours and 8 per cent had not applied for a promotion because of symptoms.
I was desperate not to be another statistic of a burnout, perimenopausal woman leaving her career potentially at the top of her game. In an effort to regain a new purpose in life, I turned to coaching. After having experienced some 1-1 executive coaching in the past, I knew I loved the language of coaching – how it fosters a growth mindset, it is practical and positive, a coach's job being to support clients to unlock their potential. This time, harbouring a strong urge to learn again, I decided to train to be one.
I am now a qualified life coach, having completed a diploma at Optimus Coach Academy
last year, where I relished finding a new cohort of like-minded individuals, who did not pigeon-hole me as someone whose sole professional purpose was to peddle royal and showbiz news. It was liberating!
Speaking as a coach at an event I attended in March this year organised by Dame Kelly Holmes. I love doing this!
I found coaching a way to craft a purposeful endeavour for my next chapter of my life, and I began to see my ‘breakdown’ as a ‘break-through’. I left my role at HELLO!, although I still enjoy a connection with the media title as Editor at Large, and it was during the training that the seed of an idea for a new kind of retreat began to form in my mind. I wanted to create an accessible retreat for midlife women like me who are feeling worn out, unfulfilled and in need of a change, to take a pause from everyday life; a retreat aimed at women looking for a reinvention, so they might not just survive the next chapter, but thrive in it; a retreat that is practical, informative and will provide tangible personal-development, without the need to travel too far from home for it. So I set my sights on doing something to tackle the statistics.
Rosie’s Reinvention Retreats provide a holistic and results-driven approach to living your best midlife, all in a fully flexible retreat format, where you can come for one, two or three days and stay any number of nights. They will bring a carefully-curated vision to a wellbeing retreat experience. Whether it’s reinventing your working life, starting a small business or getting a grip on your wellbeing, including tackling the menopause and burnout, through workshops with top coaches and experts – such as the queen of small business, Holly Tucker MBE, who will co-host the business reinvention day with me; and personal trainer and author Kate Rowe-Hame founder of Owning Your Menopause, who will join me on the wellbeing day – they will help attendees reframe midlife, to feel that a whole new chapter of happiness and fulfilment awaits. There will be a nod to my showbiz connections with the appearance of TV presenter-turned-media mentor Andrea McLean on the careers day and Penny Lancaster Stewart will share her menopause journey in a fireside chat with me on the wellbeing day, which also falls on World Menopause Day, 18th October. I envisage laughter, learning and making new connections, all in a luxury hotel environment. The perfect combination, in my opinion!
This October, almost exactly two years on from the moment I thought my career and wellbeing was crashing down, I will be hosting the retreat I wish I could have found. I just want my guests to believe reinvention is possible for them too. It is never too late to reinvent your career or any other aspect of your life. You can start today.