REBECCA HODDINOTT, 60, PILATES AND MOVEMENT TEACHER
When Rebecca Hoddinott’s eldest child left school in 2008, it dawned on her that she hadn’t given any thought to her future. She’d devoted the past nine years to bringing up her three children – Stuart, now 28, Helen, 26, and Marcus, 22 – and now, on the eve of her 50th birthday, her former career in marketing belonged to another life.
“I wouldn’t have missed being with the children for anything, but when the reality hit me that they were going to leave, it came as a bit of a shock,” she says. “Family life had been my main focus, and soon I was going to have to find a new role.”
There was no question, however, that she’d go and work for somebody else. “I wanted to be in control of my time; to be able to take a month off in the summer if I felt like it.”
It was her pilates teacher who suggested she should qualify as an instructor. She’d been practising for nine years and had never considered taking it further, yet it suddenly made sense. Over the next 12 months, she completed the Body Control Pilates qualification ( bodycontrolpilates.com) and by the time the second of her three children left home in 2010 she had built up a teaching practice.
Now, she has also trained as a somatics coach.
“It’s been a fascinating journey,” she says. “At first I was extremely daunted by the teaching side. I thought I was an awful teacher, so I stuck by the rule book and was very prescriptive. Gradually, though, I developed my own interests and style and now I don’t think twice about it.” Even with pilates teaching taking up four days of her week, adjusting to the empty nest took time. Particularly as her marriage broke down once the children had left. “I’m not going to say I didn’t miss having them at home, but at least I had structure to my week, which made it easier to cope with” she says.
Through pilates she encounters people of all ages sharing the same enthusiasm. “The people I teach age from 20 to 75,” she says. “And my former coach is still teaching aged 70, which inspires me to keep going.”
With a little planning, the empty nest can be an immensely invigorating place, she continues. “I feel very free,” she says. “You invest a huge amount of energy in bringing up children and when you step out the other side it can be very liberating.”
‘You invest a huge amount of energy in raising children and when you step out the other side it can be liberating’