Your career should fit your life.
Right now, at this age, with everything you're carrying.
Professional career counselling for women in midlife who are done pushing through and ready to figure out what actually comes next.
Not all superheroes wear capes.
They look like mothers, wives, daughters, sisters - and the women you work alongside without ever knowing what they're carrying home.
You'll find them being the glue that holds families together while trying to build careers that still mean something. Hiding on the days when being a woman in midlife genuinely hurts. Being the accidental counsellor for everyone around them while quietly wondering who does that for them.
They're at the school canteen, keeping food in the fridge, running the unofficial taxi service, holding it all together with the kind of competence that makes it look easy from the outside.
And eventually, it gets too much. That's usually when I hear their story.
It’s time to change the narrative on careers…
And that’s why at Soul Compass we do things a little differently.
What I actually do
I am a professionally trained career development practitioner. My work sits within the field of career development and career counselling, informed by evidence-based theory, labour market insight, and many years on the ground working with women in real life career re-invention, sometime life too.
Alongside this, my approach is shaped by long-standing study in mind–body therapies and Ayurveda, as well as lived experience of career change, capacity limits, and complexity.
These lenses do not replace professional career practice. They deepen it. They inform how I understand:
Energy, capacity, and burnout
The relationship between work, health, and identity
Why some career strategies stop working over time
What sustainable work actually requires at different life stages
In practical terms, I support people to:
Make sense of where they are and how they got here
Understand capacity, burnout, and sustainability
Clarify direction without forcing premature decisions
Translate experience, skills, and identity into meaningful options
And yes the practical stuff too like updating your CV, positioning you correctly in the market, interview coaching etc
This is not motivational coaching. Nor is it ‘therapy’
And it is definitely not a transactional résumé-writing service.
It is career development, done properly - with the whole woman, you, at the centre of the conversation.
When career counselling is most helpful
People often come to this work when:
They feel stuck, restless, or quietly disengaged at work
Burnout keeps recurring despite time off or reduced hours
Their capacity has shifted and old strategies no longer work
Work is impacting health, energy, or relationships
They are questioning whether to stay, change roles, or step away
Their experience feels underused or misaligned
They are navigating transition, redundancy, or uncertainty
They want to make thoughtful decisions without rushing into the wrong next step
This work is not about finding the ‘perfect’ job.
It’s about understanding what is no longer sustainable - and what might be.
You don’t need to be in crisis for this work to be appropriate.
Many people begin simply because something no longer feels right.
You’re in the right place if…
You might not be looking for a promotion or a dramatic reinvention.
You might just know that the way you're working right now no longer fits your life, your health, or what you actually value.
Women come here feeling stuck, burnt out, quietly disengaged - or just certain that 'more of the same' is not an answer they can live with. Tired of being told to be more resilient, more strategic, more everything.
This work is for you if you want clarity over pressure, and a career that reflects who you are now - not the version of you that built the one you've got.
How can we help…
Working with women in mid-life
Most of my work is with women over 35 who are questioning how their career fits with their life, health, and responsibilities.
Some women want to change roles or industries.
Some want to redesign how they work.
Some want to stay exactly where they are, but with clearer boundaries, confidence, and sustainability.
Many women hit midlife and the wall at the same time. Identity shifts, changed needs, a marriage bust up, shifting values, a diagnosis or menopausal changes all take their toll.
Often, the real work is not about finding something new, but about responding wisely to capacity shifts that have been ignored or overridden for years.
There is no assumed outcome here.
Only thoughtful, supported decision-making that respects the complexity of women’s lives.
Working with organisations: Career EAP and outplacement
I also work with organisations seeking ethical, evidence-based career support for their people.
This includes Career EAP and outplacement services that support:
Employee engagement and retention
Sustainable career decision-making
Ethical and dignified workforce transitions
This work is particularly valuable for experienced employees, complex transitions, and organisations that understand that wellbeing is not only psychological - it is structural, relational, and career-based.
Be it inhouse training to support your people or outplacement services to help them move on a bespoke solution can be crafted to suit your organisational needs.
A deeper look at this work
I have written a white paper specifically for women in mid-life who are navigating burnout, capacity shifts, and questions about their work.
It explores the relationship between career, health, identity, and life stage, and offers language and frameworks for understanding why work that once fit can begin to feel unsustainable. It puts data to the stories I have heard from women in practice.
While the white paper is written for women, many organisations have also found it useful in understanding the broader context experienced by their female employees in mid-life, particularly in relation to engagement, retention, and capacity.
I'm Narelle Vigor - career counsellor, researcher, and a Gen X woman who's lived most of what she helps other women through.
Late-diagnosed AuDHD. Single parenting through a marriage breakdown. A body that nearly gave out on me in my 30s. A career that kept asking more of me than it gave back. I didn't work out how to rebuild my working life by reading about it. I worked it out by living it.
My practice is built on thirteen-plus years of professional career development, postgraduate qualifications, and thousands of hours with real women in genuinely complex situations. I also bring long-term study in Ayurveda and mind-body therapies into how I understand capacity, health and work - not as a replacement for evidence-based practice, but as a deepening of it.