Pre my fabulous fifties, I have been an intrepid traveller both personally and professionally, meeting amazing people from all over the world. My heart bought me to France so I now split my life between the Provencal countryside and the energetic east end of London.
Fifty-four and fifty-five came with a few knock downs in career and health, but supported by my discovery of life coaching I began my own reinvention. Amazing mentors and diplomas later and the listening and people skills I have developed through the years have now brought me to my own coaching business.
My Reinvention Journey in Detail
When I was young, travelling here, there & everywhere was pretty unknown & making money from doing so was way off the radar, unless of course you had the glamour bits & bobs to be an air hostess. Therefore when an opportunity to be an au pair came my way I was quickly off on my first solo adventure, travelling in a train overnight to Rome , in those days Ryanair could have only been a dream! Little did I know then, how it would set me on my life path, but it did. Approximately three thousand and sixty-eight days later I nabbed my dream job scenario and began a life of paid travel, as a tour director/ group leader throughout Europe, China, USA, Australia and New Zealand.
Fast forwarding after many adventures I woke up and I was fifty, which I looked upon as an excuse to celebrate. I felt privileged to make it after all, so many don’t! Then came some wake up calls, as a routine mammogram turned into a dodgy cancer cell discovery, which took me on a surreal journey of a small op and radiotherapy. This for ‘ms organic, exercise freak & Tai chi practitioner since my twenties was not what I expected. Why me? ‘Well Ms Ronane you are 56 after all’ I was told. Next, out of the blue I lost a job for a company that I had dedicated way too much of my valuable time to. I felt that I had landed in another world and if it had not been for the insistence of a wise friend that I had actually been given a golden opportunity to break free and reinvent myself, I would have fallen deeper into the misery trap and become a victim of the question of ageism, which frankly challenges women at any age!
I had always loved studying and had missed the learning experience for some years , a teaching english as a foreign language course was quickly followed by the discovery of life coaching . An online course missed the pro-action I thrive on, which lead me to Carole Ann Rice and the Pure Coaching Academy which was a lift off in all senses of the word.
My own reinvention has been exciting and challenging, all at the same time and has proven to me that us women have hardly touched the surface of all our capabilities when we enter the last third of our lives. Have a look at my video ‘When is the perfect age of a woman’ and you will see that our mid-sixties is generally highlighted as when we reach our full potential.
The Phoenix – a mythical bird that symbolises regeneration, for me perfectly represents that at any age with the right key tools you can rise up and reinvent yourself.
