For 23 years, I knew exactly who I was.
I was a dancer. A performer. My career was my identity, and my body was my instrument. I spent most of my adult life auditioning, rehearsing, performing and constantly preparing for the next job.
Then, I left the stage.
There was no dramatic ending or single moment when everything changed. It was something quieter, the realisation that a career I had known for most of my adult life was coming to an end, and I had to work out what came next.
And that was harder than I expected.
How do you start again when you’re in your 40s and you’ve spent 23 years becoming very good at one thing? When the answer to “What do you do?” has always been so easy?
I suddenly had to imagine a version of my life that looked completely different.
Pilates became the thread connecting the two chapters. I trained as a Pilates instructor in 2013, initially alongside my performing career. As a dancer and performer, Pilates made sense to me. My body was my livelihood, and keeping it strong, mobile and injury-free wasn’t a luxury, it was part of being able to do my job.
After leaving the stage, I decided to make Pilates my main career and opened REFORM & VIBES, a reformer Pilates studio in London Bridge, Southwark.
Starting a business in my 40s has meant learning an entirely different way of working. There is no audition, no choreographer, no director and no one telling you what’s next. You have to make the decisions, take the risks and trust yourself.
But I’m realising that I didn’t actually leave my old career behind. I brought 23 years of experience with me.
The discipline, resilience, confidence, understanding of the body and ability to connect with people are all part of what I’m building now.
Perhaps that’s what we get wrong about changing careers later in life. We think we’re starting over, when actually we’re taking everything we’ve learned and using it somewhere new.
The hardest part isn’t necessarily learning a new skill. It’s letting go of the identity you’ve known for so long and believing there is another version of you waiting on the other side.
For me, there was.
