The Pause Effect Insights

Before the madness of autumn hits, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for reading my newsletters this first half of 2026. This year has been eventful with new partnerships, some brilliant sess...

A line from Gracie Abrams' new single, "Look at My Life", made me think about how many women recognize this in their own lived experience: "Got what I wanted, it doesn't sit right."

The seat at the t...

Over the past few months, I've surveyed more than 200 women across different organisations, roles, and life stages.

I didn't set out to find a pattern, but (unsurprisingly perhaps), the same themes k...

In a recent session on menopause in the workplace, one woman shared that she was relieved - genuinely relieved, that she hadn't been working during the hardest stage of her perimenopause.

That says e...

Earlier this week I posted on LinkedIn about watching Ladies First on Netflix, a comedy that's absurd, and yet I recognised almost everything in it.

The quiet question underneath all the laughs: What...

Activity vs lived experience and why closing the gap matters for every woman in your organisation.

Back to the Maritime industry conversation this week and a connection I have been sitting with since...

I rehearsed every sentence before I said it. Out loud. In my head. Sometimes both.

I thought I had simply become more careful. More mature. More considered. I had not. I was in perimenopause. And I d...

There is a woman in her mid-30s in your organisation right now. She is ambitious. She is watching. And she is drawing conclusions about whether this is an organisation she wants to stay in for the nex...

I've asked a lot of questions from various stages. Last Saturday in Norway, I asked one that stopped the room.

How many of you wake up at four in the morning, regularly, and can't get back to sleep?

I have written about what it costs when organisations look away. This one is about what happens when they don't.

The question I put on a slide this week

I was preparing for a talk and I wrote a titl...

Yesterday I ran a Power Pause session and forgot about my slides.

I was prepared and had the slides, but a technical glitch happened, and something more true took over: My own experience of navigatin...

Editions 15 and 16 of this newsletter named two things.

The gap: Experienced women at the height of their careers, navigating something that has no language in their working world.

The cost: Not jus...