Retirement Rebel: One woman, one motorhome, one great big adventure

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I only turned 50 in February 2019, and like most people, simple getting this far through the pandemic feels quite an achievement! By putting retirement in perspective, and by taking off our rose-tinted spectacles and stopping the delusion that retirement is a wonderful place to be, we can then understand that this is life’s last call to discover and implement our purpose and our legacy, before the final curtain comes down. Assimilate a new understanding of your mind A retirement that’s more like winning a lottery?Three ways to help make that happen - September 16, 2019 There were a lot of laughs over Zoom. I have known the six people on the call since we were all teenagers. There is something special about meeting up with old friends. Last year, Smith’s Bengal cat, Rococo, died at 16, and Smith decided to throw caution to the wind and have the green-eyed tabby tattooed on her forearm to memorialise her feline fellow traveller. She also dyed her long white hair a fetching shade of cerise. “They say you can’t have long hair when you’re older. They say you shouldn’t dress in bright colours and have tattoos, particularly as a civil servant, but I just thought: ‘I’m 63, I’ll do what I want. I’ll wear my hair pink and long and I’ll wear band T-shirts and skinny jeans and great big platform shoes.’”

But from her late 40s onwards, challenges – both personal and professional – began to emerge and Siobhan grew disillusioned. “As I was approaching 50, my daughter went off to university,” says Siobhan. “I’d been a single mum for years, and I started bragging to everyone that it was going to be ‘party time’! But it wasn’t that at all – I was quite miserable.”That is always a hard question as my mistakes have brought me to where I am now as much (if not more) than my good choices. I wish I had learned guitar as a child because it is so much harder to start from scratch now – I am struggling with that, although the band I am in is very supportive. With over 350 exhibitors, spanning 11 halls, this huge event is the UK leisure vehicle industry’s national showcase - the place to explore in person, the new 2024 motorhome, campervan, caravan and trailer tents from the leading UK and European manufacturers and dealers side-by-side and find all the accessories and advice you need for successful and enjoyable touring adventures – all in one day! I can clearly remember the moment I realised that retirement wasn’t something that I ‘had to do’. It was liberating to say the least! One thing I have done for the last few years is to give talks to community groups (mostly Women’s Institute branches) about positive change in the world. With all the bad news we see, it is easy to forget how much safer and healthier we are than in the past and that this trend is still improving.

As a mindset coach and mentor, George has studied retirement, lived it, and been given an insight into the lives of over 20,000 retirees across the globe. All of this means he has a unique perspective and understanding of what retirement is, and what it is not. Rather than hiding from life's challenges, she bought a motorhome and drove off to find them. Retirement Rebel is Siobhan's honest and uplifting story of how one woman stepped off the merry-go-round of life, slowed down and started enjoying the journey. Camarados puts people in charge of their own solutions through Mutual Aid – helping people who are not necessarily friends to self-organise to support each other through tough times. The main focus right now for the movement is to see communities set up Public Living rooms – a place to go on a tough day or when you’re lonely to help others and get connection and purpose.Margaret approaches the subject of retirement from a completely different perspective than most books. Her focus is on you and how you're going to live a fulfilling happy retirement. She provides you with the common obstacles and then clearly outlines how you are going to overcome them. Thanks Margaret. For Cutter, punk was all about “peace and anarchy and doing what you want as long as it isn’t about harming people”. It was also about sexual freedom. Cutter is bisexual, and the scene was a sanctuary in the 80s. Comedian Jenny Eclair’s standup show Sixty Plus! (FFS!) XXL Show! tours across the UK from 2 September. It explores what being 60 means for today’s 1960s-born “babes”. “Being part of the punk generation affected how I think and it’s probably why I still have a problem with being told what to do – and it’s why I swear so much,” Eclair, 63, says. “In some respects, punk was a licence for the middle classes to rebel, and that sense of rebellion continues in our later years.” An unconventional retirement wasn’t always on the cards for Siobhan. After working as a nurse for 9 years, in the 1980s she decided to retrain as a journalist after hearing an advert for a trainee reporters’ scheme run by the BBC. This opportunity led to a successful career as a reporter, presenter and producer on various programmes across regional BBC radio and TV. I don’t think the punk generation thought we would live to 30, let alone 60,” he says. “But those who made it are doing interesting things, working as filmmakers and photographers and musicians and artists. It’s bloody brilliant to see.”

The second myth is that in retirement, you’ll have enough money. This is also untrue. When you retire at 65, you could go on to live another 30 years. How will you fund retirement? And finally, probably the most important myth to bust is that retirement will make you happy and healthy. The statistics actually reveal a significant increase in depression, illness, loneliness and social disengagement in retirement. Mental Health Nurse John-Barry Waldron is our guest on this week's Reach Out PodcastJohn-Barry works in a secure hospital, supporting people experiencing mental illness and helping them return home to their communities.He's also capturing the stories of staff and patients through the On The Ward Podcast which you can also get wherever you get your podcasts.Also in the conversation - We discuss access to mental health services, and how stigma still bring issues for patients and their families. Digital Reads A Curse For True Love : the thrilling final book in the Once Upon a Broken Heart series Approaching retirement and frustrated with her job, Siobhan Daniels made a BIG decision: to start living life on her own terms. Rather than hiding from life's challenges, she bought a motorhome and drove off to find them. Using my own experiences, and my research, I created the D.A.R.E. Method, which is the basis of my 8-module online program Dare to Discover Your Purpose . The method was my way of helping people to do what I had done: find out that there is a new path you can take, however close you are to retirement age – and even if you’ve reached it already.Last year, over 10 million people trusted us to help them with some of the biggest issues in their lives. Learn more about how we help. How your support helps Today, she has nine children and stepkids, aged between from 18 and 31, she also has two grandchildren, aged seven and two, and a younger female partner. She is, for her part, very happy to be a punk grandma. But Cutter dislikes it when people tell her they “used to be” a punk. “It’s not about the hair colour and the piercings you once had, it’s about an attitude: thinking for yourself and not accepting authority.” It’s an inward rebellion, Cutter says, that surely applies at any age. Approaching retirement and frustrated with her job, Siobhan Daniels made a BIG decision: to start living life on her own terms. Say yes to opportunities. You’ll regret the things you did not do much more than the things you do.

Reformed criminal and drug addict Steve was so kind and generous to share his story and if anything spoken about on this episode resonates with your situation, please speak to a friend, colleague, your GP, Reach Out For Mental Health, Samaritans, MIND, Calm, SOBS or just google suicidal feelings The granny shift is a tender point for the over-60s with a yearning to self-actualise through travel, says Anne Hardy, a sociologist who studies later-life “snowbirds” (sun-seeking van and motorhome nomads). “Women who choose this lifestyle are often judged harshly by their own children and by society,” she says. “They are construed as being somehow selfish for leaving their grandchildren.” Like most of us, I’d been led to believe that it was the only option. I’d accepted it as the path I would take, and I didn’t question it. That all changed when I became semi-retired at the age of 52, after being diagnosed with a bone tumour. We can rewire our minds by envisioning. This uses our visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic senses, so as to create a new software program in our minds to replace the old one, and thereby impressing on our minds our new future, our new purpose, our new life. Expand your horizons by manifesting your future nowI don’t really know anyone my age who thinks that they will be able to fully retire any time soon,” Cutter says. Having spent her youth in squats across west London, Cutter and some of her old punk friends often talk about returning to communal living. “It’s not for everyone as you have to be flexible and sociable and God knows loads of us get fixed in our ways as we age,” she laughs. But living an uptight, ever-decreasing later life is everything Cutter wants to avoid. By assimilating this new understanding of how our mind works, we can change our present by creating new thoughts. And as we are emotional addicts, we can replace our past memories by imagining a new future, a new purpose, a new life. Rewire your beliefs by learning how to use your subconscious mind