When Parsons first retired in 2019, her time was taken up caring for her best friend and her father who passed away within three hours of each other in 2020. Her brother then died from bowel cancer in January 2021.
“This – and the grief which followed – was all-consuming,” she says.
Parsons was responsible for organising three funerals in the midst of the Covid restrictions, while also dealing with her own health challenges at the time, including angina, high cholesterol and pre-diabetes.
Happily, through lifestyle changes, improved nutrition and regular exercise, she reversed her pre-diabetes and improved things to the point where a planned stent procedure was no longer required.
“After all that, I thought, ‘What will I do now?’, I knew just retiring was simply not an option,” she says.
After seeing an advert about training with the Health Coaches Academy, she enrolled in a two-year course, qualifying in May 2024. Her focus is on women’s health, and supporting those aged 40-plus to navigate their way through the menopause.
“I was ready to do something very different, and my own health transformation was a major factor in inspiring me to retrain in this area.”
She now runs her own health coaching practice, which has given her a renewed sense of purpose.
“As a health coach, I don’t tell people what to do, I help them discover what will work for them,” she says. “I’ve also learnt that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. Starting a completely new career in my seventies has been both challenging and incredibly fulfilling.”