Tania Grave has always wanted to be a funeral director.
So when she was finishing high school she did what a lot of young people interested in a career do: she shadowed someone in the job to see what it was like.
"I was going to be a funeral director and that was my plan. I had no plan B.
"[He] allowed me to go and gently work alongside him in my final year of school and then tactfully told me I needed to go and get some life under my belt."
This was about 30 years ago.
"I was always still determined that that was my plan."
She went and got some life under her belt, which led to her being a physical education teacher, she had children and then ended up running gyms.
That was how she arrived at the decision to move on from owning and operating Inspiring Women, which she does with Chris Grave.
She recently made a five-year plan to exit the business — very quickly that became a reality, as a buyer made themselves known within a week of the gym being put on the market.
Mrs Grave has not quite fulfilled the dream of becoming a funeral director, but she went to celebrant school four years ago and had been a funeral and marriage celebrant ever since.
"Alongside running the gym for the last four years I’ve held this heart-filling hobby, joyous role of being a funeral and marriage celebrant."
The gym had changed hands to new owners Kirstie and Mike Williams. Mrs Williams came from a hospitality background.
The popular women’s gym in Filleul St caters for all women — even mothers, who could bring their infants or toddlers to be looked after while they work out.
Mrs Grave estimated tens of thousands of women had used its services over the years.
It started as a Contours franchise about 1994 and it was Mrs Grave’s parents who opened it then.
"Gyms were only just becoming a bit of a thing those days, let alone women’s only," she said.
"It was exciting, it was vibrant and there was a lot of women that were sold on a safe space they felt comfortable in."
It was Contours for nine years before changing to another franchise, Configure Express.
At that point, Ms Grave was in Christchurch working as a primary school teacher and set up her own Configure Express branch there.
About 2003, her parents decided they wanted out of the gym business and Mrs Grave had run it since, changing it to Inspiring Women about four years ago.
Picking that name was very easy, Mrs Grave said.
"I’m just in this privileged position that I see women of all ages going through all manner of times in their lives and so it was Inspiring Women.
"For me it was because of the inspiring women that I’m privileged to walk alongside."
She said she hoped the women who used the gym were inspired by her and her team.
For mothers to have the ability to drop their children off and be able to work out was "probably life-saving to some mums", Mrs Grave said.
"You have your newborn and you have to do what you’ve got to do which is dictated by this beautiful new life but then suddenly you need to feed yourself ... physically and mentally.
"To have this lovely, comfortable and safe place where the mums are right on hand ... for a little window each weekday is life-saving to some of those mums."
She said there would often have been three generations of women in a family coming to the gym at the same time.
"I can think of several at the moment where we’ve got the children here, the mums and then the mums’ mums coming and it’s pretty neat."
It was really important to her that the next person who took over the gym would be an owner-operator and would be a face people could get familiar with.
"If we had just taken a backstep as a manager I’d still probably be a bit attached.
"It’s a bit magnetic when you own it and your heart and soul’s been in it, so I knew I probably had to close the door on my chapter here, as reluctant as I was."
