​​This isn’t the end. It’s the encore.

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Encore Endeavours exists for women who are approaching retirement, or who have recently stepped into it, and find themselves quietly asking, what now?

 

For many years, life is shaped by work, family, responsibility, and routine. Then, sometimes gradually and sometimes all at once, that structure loosens. Time opens up. Freedom appears. Alongside the excitement, something else often slips in too. Questions about purpose, identity, and where you now belong.

 

Encore Endeavours was created for this in-between space. The place where you are no longer who you were, but not yet sure who you are becoming.

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The Third Phase of Life

In recent years, there has been growing recognition of what is often described as the third phase of life. A period that sits between the end of working life and the later years of increased vulnerability and dependence.

For many women, this phase arrives with health, experience, and energy still very much intact. It offers time for friendships, creativity, travel, learning, contribution, and rest. It also brings loss. The loss of professional identity, familiar roles, daily rhythm, and sometimes confidence. This stage of life can be a gift, but it isn’t always easy to unwrap.

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Encore Endeavours is shaped by the belief that this phase deserves more attention, more imagination, and more honesty. Not as a winding down, but as a reshaping.

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How This Space Came to Be

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Encore Endeavours grew out of my own experience of stepping into retirement. My working life was varied and, at times, unexpected. I began in catering, moved into teaching, including supporting children with special educational needs, and later worked across law, healthcare, and education. Over time, my roles evolved into management and director-level positions, much of it within education, where responsibility, structure, and purpose were central to daily life.

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Retirement wasn’t something I actively worked towards. It arrived through changing circumstances and pressures within the sector rather than a clear personal decision. When that chapter closed, I felt both relief and uncertainty. The freedom was real, but so was the absence of a ready-made framework. Time opened up, and with it came questions I hadn’t fully anticipated.

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Alongside this personal transition sat my professional background in coaching, empowerment, and supporting positive change. As I moved through retirement myself, those two strands began to overlap. I realised how little space there was for honest conversation about this phase of life, particularly for women who felt capable and curious, yet quietly unsettled.

I was looking for something I couldn’t find.

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Encore Endeavours grew from that gap. A desire to create a space grounded in lived experience rather than answers, and shaped by curiosity rather than certainty. Somewhere that offered ideas, reassurance, and companionship without pressure to reinvent or rush.

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Who This Space Is For

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Encore Endeavours is for women who are approaching retirement or newly retired, and who find themselves holding mixed emotions of excitement and uncertainty, relief and restlessness.

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You might be full of ideas, or quietly taking stock. You might want adventure, or contentment, or simply time to work out what matters now. You don’t need a plan to be here, and you don’t need to know where this phase is heading.

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What You’ll Find Here

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Encore Endeavours is part reflection, part exploration, and part gathering place. Here you’ll find personal stories and everyday observations, ideas rooted in real life rather than perfection, reflections on wellbeing and change, travel and small adventures, food and nourishment, creativity, movement, and gentle encouragement to try something new or return to something familiar.

 

Over time, this space will grow to include workshops, conversations, and opportunities to connect more deeply with others walking a similar path.

 

What Matters Most

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Again and again, certain values surface in this phase of life.

• The freedom to choose your own direction.

• The importance of connection and shared experience.

• The need to feel that you still matter and have something to offer.

 

Encore Endeavours exists to support these, quietly and consistently.

 

A Shared Journey

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This platform isn’t here to tell you what your encore should look like. It’s here to offer perspective, companionship, and encouragement as you shape it for yourself. Think of it as a place to pause, reflect, and then gently move forward. Sometimes boldly. Sometimes quietly. Always on your own terms. If you are here, you are exactly where you need to be.

 

Welcome to Encore Endeavours.