Welcome to The PAUSE Network
Community, connection and practical business support for self-employed people moving through perimenopause, and beyond.
A business ecosystem
By landing here, you’ve found a business ecosystem for midlife self-employed people who want their work to keep working, without having to override their basic human needs to make it happen.
Inside The PAUSE Network®, there are three core types of support - community, mentoring, and practical business support.
Community is medicine
The community is where you land. It’s where you can work alongside other women who get it, without having to explain yourself. It’s connection, solidarity, and the quiet relief of realising you’re not the only one.
Business Mentoring
Mentoring is where the mental load starts to lift. It’s a place to talk things through, make decisions, untangle what’s looping, and find your next step without forcing clarity that isn’t there yet.
Business Support
Practical business support takes the pressure off the parts of business that feel confusing, overwhelming, or simply just not your thing. This is where you can handover the website build, get help organising your systems, setting up funnels etc….all those bits that have been sitting on your to-do list for months.
Here for you when business feels harder than it used to
Perimenopause doesn’t just affect your energy. It can shift your focus, confidence, capacity, tolerance, and sometimes even your sense of self.
You can still be capable, experienced and ambitious, yet find yourself staring at your laptop wondering why your brain is stuck.
Your business might look perfectly fine from the outside, but behind the scenes you’re carrying an emotional and practical load that feels heavier than it used to and you feel a bit lost, and very close to calling it a day.
The PAUSE Network® exists for this. For you!
How can Perimenopause affect your business?
Perimenopause is the transition leading up to menopause, which is defined as 12 consecutive months without a menstrual bleed. It often begins in your forties and can last for several years.
As hormones fluctuate, brain chemistry shifts too. Oestrogen plays an important role in memory, focus, emotional regulation and stress tolerance. When levels rise and fall unpredictably, it can affect how clearly you think, how steady your mood feels and how resilient you feel under pressure.
For self-employed people, these shifts can ripple straight into work. Confidence may dip. Anxiety can appear where it never used to. Decisions that once felt simple can start to feel heavier or more exhausting.
In a traditional workplace, some of this may be buffered by colleagues, structure or sick leave policies. When you run your own business, you are the manager, the team and the support system, so when your capacity changes, the impact can feel much more personal and immediate.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. This stage can also bring clarity. A lower tolerance for what drains you. Stronger boundaries. A sharper instinct for what actually matters.
The PAUSE Network® exists to support that transition and encourages you to seek out support and find new ways of working to honour this change.
Here, community and business support sit side by side.
You can work alongside others who actually understand what you’re feeling, receive mentoring to untangle decisions, and receive practical business support that can help make your business easier to run.
You don’t have to carry the weight of business in isolation.
Meet the Founder
Hi, I’m Heather.
Through my work as a Virtual Assistant, I spent years working closely inside other people’s businesses. During that time, I spoke with many self-employed people navigating perimenopause and midlife while trying to keep their businesses running as usual. They were often looking for more understanding, more support, and a sense of solidarity during a stage of life that can affect energy, confidence, identity, and mental wellbeing.
Many were also quietly questioning how their business might need to evolve to reflect who they are now.
From those conversations, The PAUSE Network® was born.
