If you’re feeling pulled between life and business, this post will show you how to pause with purpose, honor your real season, and reset your business with clarity and compassion. You’ll discover the heart behind the Gentle Business Rebellion and the simple steps you can take to begin your own.
This is a reflection on seasons, caregiving, alignment, and doing business gently
Sometimes a season of life knocks the wind out of you. It rearranges your priorities, your energy, and your capacity. And sometimes, like it did for me earlier this year, it forces you to take a step back you didn’t plan on taking.
If you’ve followed the podcast for a while, you may have noticed I disappeared for several months. What was meant to be a short 4-ish week break, quietly stretched into seven + months. Not because I lost interest. Not because I stopped caring about the work. But because my season of life became bigger than my business.
And I know I’m not alone in that.
Many of the women I coach are also navigating caregiving, health challenges, aging parents, shifting identities, and the undeniable reality of being entrepreneurs over 50 who have built something meaningful… yet increasingly feel a nudge that says:
“Something needs to change.”
The heart of the Gentle Business Rebellion, is for you. This post will explain how and why.
When Life Gets Life-y, Something Has to Give
In the last 12–15 months, my mother’s health declined dramatically, leading to more than a dozen ER visits, hospital stays, and finally an emergency move into memory care. If you’ve ever walked that road with someone you love, you know it is all encompassing and demanding experience… mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
I was still serving clients and keeping my business running, but anything that required visibility, creativity, or extra energy, like podcasting, had to be gently set down for a while.
In those long hours sitting beside my mom in hospital rooms, I kept asking:
- What is next for me?
- What is God inviting me into?
- What actually matters in this season?
- And when I’m ready to return… how do I want to show up?
Those questions created something powerful: clarity.
Not the loud, high-energy clarity you hear about in the online business world.
But the quiet kind that emerges when everything your priorities suddenly become simple and clear.
The Birth of the Gentle Business Rebellion
Out of that season came an unexpected but a startling, exciting, and kinda scary realization:
I’m starting a movement.
Not in a big flashy way. More like a whisper that slowly grew louder each time I coached a woman who said:
“I’ve reached my enough point.”
A gentle business rebellion is exactly that. It’s a line in the sand moment where you say:
- Enough of the shoulds.
- Enough of the noise.
- Enough of trying to run a business built for a past version of myself.
- Enough of strategies that exhaust me instead of support me.
Most of us, especially as introverts, highly sensitive women, or caregivers, cannot thrive inside the pace the online world says we “should” be keeping. We don’t need louder strategies. We need gentler ones. Ones that respect our lives, our families, and the season we’re in.
That’s the rebellion.
For Us A Life-First Business Isn’t Optional, It’s Essential
One of the biggest things my caregiving season taught me is this:
You cannot show up well in your business if you’re not also showing up for your life.
This isn’t indulgent. It’s stewardship.
If you’re an entrepreneur who wants to:
- serve deeply
- create meaningful impact
- build something with longevity
- follow the calling God has placed on your heart
…your business must be aligned with who you are now, not who you were when you started three, five, or ten years ago.
When your season shifts, your business must shift too.
And that’s not failure. It’s growth.
The Push–Pull of Trying to Be in Two Places
During the hardest parts of this year, I felt like I was living in two worlds:
- The world where my mom needed me fully present.
- The world where my business also needed my focus and creativity.
And you know this tension well, because most women I work with feel some version of it.
But here’s the truth I had to learn:
You can’t be present in two places at the same time.
Not emotionally.
Not mentally.
Not spiritually.
And pretending you can is part of what burns so many of us out.
The Gentle Business Rebellion begins by honoring your real life, not the idealized one, not the high-performing one, not the constant hustle-fueled one.
Your real life.
Rebellion Looks Like Rest, Boundaries, and Realignment
Rebellion isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it looks like:
- Saying “not right now” without guilt
- Publishing podcast episodes every other week instead of weekly
- Pausing your marketing instead of forcing momentum
- Serving your clients exceptionally while giving yourself margin
- Choosing rest over hustle
- Listening for God’s voice instead of the industry’s voice
- Rebuilding at a pace your nervous system can actually sustain
This isn’t laziness.
It’s leadership.
Why We Need the Pause Before the Pivot
Most of the women I coach hit their breakthrough moment when they finally stop pushing through and give themselves permission to pause long enough to hear what’s really going on.
Not the surface-level frustration.
Not the “I should be further along.”
Not the comparison.
But the deeper wisdom underneath.
Because once you pause, you can ask the right questions:
- What’s no longer aligned?
- What season am I actually in?
- What do I want my next chapter to feel like?
- Where is God nudging me?
- What am I being invited to release?
- What needs to be reimagined or rebuilt?
This is where real clarity comes from. Not from strategies. Not from content tactics. But from reconnecting with yourself and with God.
Resources:
- Episode 93 Transcript – Click here to read
Marta Goertzen is a Gentle Business Coach and founder of Selah Studios, host of the Doing Business Gently podcast. She helps Christian women entrepreneurs over 50 rediscover who they’ve become, realign their business to match, and fall in love with their work again, gently, at their pace, without starting over. As an avid photographer and lover of the outdoors, she daily explores the trails and beaches of the South Central Oregon Coast with her dog Mochi in tow. Take the free Business Alignment Audit as your gentle first step, a way to pause, get honest, and see clearly where you and your business are right now: https://SelahStudios.co/alignmentaudit