I’ve had almost three weeks in my house, alone.

This comes close to my definition of bliss.

There’s a story here about solitude, sovereignty, and marriage, but first a little background.

I married an Australian. Michael came to the US in his mid-twenties. We had a “More American” party to celebrate when his years here surpassed the ones there. Someone gave him an obnoxious stars and stripes bucket hat which he loves. One of many things I do not understand about Aussies is their affinity for bucket hats. Vegemite also falls into this category.

He has a large family there that he loves very much. They’ve welcomed me with open arms. I adore them, too, and it makes me sad that we live so far apart.

But what’s also true is that flight is inhumanly long. Hour after endless hour hurtling through space, forced immobility, scary food, inhaling other people’s exhales…I mean it’s crazy-making.

Plus the ticket is expensive and the environmental impact significant.

Then just as you get over the jetlag, you have to get your head around the return, because you leave Sydney on a Wednesday and land back in California on a Tuesday before you even departed.

Besides, if we both go, who is going to feed the chickens, water the plants in the blistering heat of summer, and take care of the cat?

However, none of those are the real reasons I decided to stay home.

Here’s the real reason: spaces in our togetherness.

In 1923, Lebanese-American poet, Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet,

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

… stand together, yet not too near together: for the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

We live in a 900 sq. ft. log cabin so we know a lot of togetherness. Imagine one small bathroom with, that’s right, one toilet.

I love our closeness, compatibility, and the infinite ways we co-create life together. And I’m a creature who craves space and alone time. Solitude feels like oxygen to me.

I’ve noticed that this need for solitude seems to grow for many women as we age. Can you relate? I see the menopausal journey as an archetypal shift out of the Mothering phase of our life and into the Sovereign Queen stage. Out of the Summer season of our life with its relentless heat of productivity and into our Autumn phase, the time of harvest.

I noticed as estrogen receded in my system a greater sense of autonomy returned. The decades I spent nurturing others, overgiving, putting the needs of the business before my own self-care, caring so damn much about what others think of me and what I looked like, mercifully gave way to giving less fucks about all of it.

For me it felt like a kind of biochemical grace arrived, through a baptism of endless hot flashes. After all the years of self help work around co-dependency, it was as if a fairy godmother entered the picture with her magic wand and said, “Poof! Let’s just make this easier for you, darling.”

At 61, it’s a new story and I finally have room for solitude. The amount of space I have in my day to day life is a luxury…one I’ve worked hard for…and yet I feel like a beginner. So he left and I stayed. And here’s what happened.

Field Notes from Project Solitude

Reclaim My Space: After returning from an airport drop off at dawn, I go into an all-day frenzy of deep cleaning. I’m suddenly hyper-aware of the cobwebby corners and schmutz on the floor that I have been willing myself not to notice for weeks.

As I pick up the dried chocolate ice cream bowl he left on the back deck, it occurs to me that it will be the last I will retrieve for the next three weeks.

I collect fresh zinnias from the garden and put bouquets in every room. I light jasmine incense and pour myself a glass of Pinot Grigio. I allow the ridiculous satisfaction I feel, sitting in my sparkling house, to saturate my very bone marrow.

I then wonder about how neurotic I’d likely get about cleanliness if I lived alone.

Improvements: In my first days alone, I make lists of all the projects I’d like to accomplish, divided by category: Writing, Business, Garden, Relationships & Social, Home, and Personal which includes yoga, meditation, and evening walks. I look at the list with the satisfaction of knowing myself as a disciplined person. I confer this status on myself even as I know this is a list I will mostly ignore.

Intruder: A bear comes in the middle of the night. He messes with the bird feeder but the cowbell hanging next to it scares him away. It also wakes me up with a flood of adrenaline as I scramble for the flashlight and smash my toe on the door jamb. Just as I’m regulating my nervous system and falling asleep again, he returns, getting into the trash and making a mess.

I realize how safe I feel with Michael here because he’s the light sleeper, the one to jump up in the middle of the night. Without his highly alert ear, it falls to me to keep mine open, to be at the ready. I like sleeping next to a warrior much more than having to be one.

Fuck It: I’ve been solo for several days now. I’m having buttered popcorn for dinner. Dishes are piled in the sink. My butt hurts from watching movies on Netflix. Rebel Girl has moved in and kicked out Little Miss Perfect. She’s gonna do whatever the hell she wants. “That’s right bitches, I’m free!”

I ponder the state I’d be in if no one was watching.

The Yuck: The rat trap in the well house was successful. And it appears that our victim had a friend who then feasted on him as a snack. Did I mention it’s also 100 degrees out? Let’s just say: beyond gross and must be dealt with. Michael does the disgusting things. Without complaint. I have to do the disgusting thing. I complain vociferously about it.

Attunement: It’s so quiet. I love the silence. I can hear myself. I wrap serenity around me like a soft blanket. I’m watching the myriad ways I distract myself, and realize how often I blame that on him. I’m greeting my shadow and getting better at not recoiling. I’m feeling feelings that want to be felt, less inclined to shuttle them away. Yes, feelings, come, there is time for you now.

I cook a meal if and when I feel like it. Mostly, I don’t feel like it. I become aware of how often I eat because it’s mealtime, not because I’m hungry. And how rewarding it is to cook for my appreciative, foodie husband, the one I call, “the Ravenous Dingo.”

I love sleeping like a starfish in the middle of the king-sized bed.

I notice that I haven’t once felt bitchy or irritated since he left. I can see that I get prickly, like a porcupine, controlling and critical when I’m literally trying to create defensible space around me. I want to be sent to my room for a timeout. I can practice catching that pattern before it causes harm, by honoring and taking care of my needs, being responsible rather than reactive.

Missing my man. It happens in the third week. I miss the smell of him, the sharing at the end of the day that collages the pieces into a coherent picture. I want to feel his muscled arms around me, our legs entwined while falling asleep. My body anticipates delicious reunion sex. I’m also weary of all the chores and have renewed gratitude for the load he bears. I feel awe again for the many blessings of our shared life.

I know that I am a being of relation. It is in being apart that I remember the me, the individual, that dances with the other, inside of union. The spaces happen inside our togetherness.

Photo credit: Ignat Kushnarev

We do ourselves a disservice if we only define work as the stuff we produce when we’re riding waves of inspiration, our fingers clicking away purposely on the keyboard.

The truth is that washing the dishes, drying them and putting them away so that the kitchen counters are completely empty can clear the mind, giving it space to wander unimpeded where it needs to roam.

Chopping the mushrooms, stepping outside to harvest a sprig of fresh rosemary, stripping the chard from its ferocious red stem, initiates the process of assembly, bringing solitary parts into relationship with each other. Not unlike putting words together.

Then we turn up the heat. We give the ingredients time to blend, to become something new, something One, something more intricate and flavorful.

Then there’s the inner work, the battle raging with the Judge: squandering your time, irresponsible, hopeless with commitments, an embarrassment. We do what we do to sidestep the meanness but we can still hear it, hissing in an audible whisper. There does seem to be some evidence for these claims. Just sayin’. We believe it even if we don’t want to. That’s why it’s called the Judge. Guilty as charged.

Which contributes to those demons of self doubt lurking about in the shadows. The ones you see out of the corner of your eye but every time you turn to look they dart away. Succeeding in making you feel crazy.

This, too, seems to be part of the work. And these things take tremendous energy.

Which then requires recovery and rest. That nap in the middle of the day. Because they say naps are good for you; the smartest and most creative people nap. But mostly because you’re exhausted. And. Cannot. Function. Another. Minute.

So when you eventually open the laptop and something arises that speaks some truth, that carries some Shakti life force energy, that flows from the heart with something that feels like love, and maybe glows with a bit of grace, you must remember that there have been countless other hours of “work” that have come before this one. This one that gets all the glory. This one that gets called “real.”

The hours that went into making it possible are often under-recognized or even maligned. They get called chores, lazy, procrastination, distraction, avoidance.

Truth be told, they are sometimes just that. But not always. Nevertheless, what if it’s all part of the creation.

What if it’s all one big soup, no one part any more special than another. The bitter balancing the sweet, the zest complimenting the creamy. All contributing their unique flavor, texture, color, and spice to the pot. All ultimately blending into an offering, that is hopefully nourishing, beautiful, and tasty.

I am a writer who makes excellent soup.

I have a mind that benefits from cleaning the kitchen to find clarity.

I am a creator who requires some open space to meander towards what is true.

I am a recovering overachiever practicing the art of enjoying the journey and learning to hold outcomes more loosely.

The writing is part of the living, is part of the whole, is part of what’s holy.

So much has changed in me and in the world since traversing the meno portal of my 50s. I’m in my early 60s now and it’s taken me a decade to realize some things. Here’s one of them: I’m incapable of doing things like I used to.

For years, I mistook that for failure. And failure was terrifying. I fought against it and made things much harder than they needed to be. But what’s emerged after a decade in this particular spin cycle is the realization that I’m still capable just differently capable now. I couldn’t inhabit this new place until I surrendered my grip on my old identity and my old definition of what it meant to be capable.

“Incapable” is a word that carries quite a charge for me. For as long as I can remember, being told what I couldn’t do was a very effective way to piss me off and ignite my competitive fire. For that matter, being told what I should do didn’t work well either.

As a Projector type in Human Design, my core strategy is to wait to be invited. I’m good at soliciting outside perspectives and taking the coaching, but I fundamentally believe that only I know what’s best for me. And only you know what’s best for you.

Knowing this about myself is ironically part of what makes me capable and being capable has been a cornerstone of my identity for a lifetime. I was praised for being precocious long before I understood the word. Long before I realized that I had incarnated into a family with an alcoholic root system stretching through both branches of my family tree back to my grandparents on both sides and likely beyond.

I was capable long before realizing that I was being groomed to be that way. Before I adopted it as a coping mechanism. Because it seemed vitally important that someone be alert and in control and maybe that someone was supposed to be me. With the family room full of enabling and addiction, the overachiever ladder in the corner pointing to the blue sky seemed a pretty good ticket out. The blue sky seemed to promise love, self-confidence, control, safety, and ultimately freedom.

And I was an excellent climber.

I liked being an achiever. I got straight A’s, graduated early from high school, got into UCLA, and became financially independent. Being capable saw me through all kinds of stress as a new mom, becoming an entrepreneur, being yanked out of obscurity with an appearance on Oprah, and years later finding myself at rock bottom when my husband abruptly left our 20 year marriage.

I got this.

Just keep swimming.

All will be well.

So when menopause hit at 50, I thought, “No problem. How hard can it be?”

But suddenly I just didn’t feel so capable anymore. The hot flashes were quite literally incapacitating and relentless. My body was exhausted and my head foggy. I looked at the merry-go-round of social obligations that had become my life and wanted to jump off. The stress, rushing, and hustle that used to fuel my sense of purpose started to feel toxic and utterly unsustainable. I wanted to put up a “closed” sign, crawl under the covers, and sleep forever.

What I know now is that menopause is a profound initiation. Like all initiations, the beginning includes a period of stripping away all that’s familiar. The disorientation can be devastating, like wandering around a desert without a compass, for years. There were long periods of grieving, loss, and reckoning. Reaching for acceptance only to slide back into resistance. Over and over again.

The reality is that in many areas of my life I am less capable. For a long time not being able to run on adrenaline like I used to felt like failure, getting old, losing my edge. Now I see it as wisdom, waking up, sanity.

I’m far less capable of putting up with bullshit or silencing myself when a truth or a feeling needs to be spoken. With less estrogen coursing through my veins, I’m more capable of saying, “No” and less capable of twisting myself into some pretzel shape to please whoever is in front of me.

I’m much less capable of being motivated by fear whereas before it fueled me: fear of failing, of not being liked, of surviving financially. I’m no longer capable of exhausting myself in pursuit of goals, giving it all away, or throwing myself off a cliff while frantically searching for the parachute cord. So much less drama. This feels like healthy progress.

Aging is humbling in so many attractive ways. Wanting to be the center of attention, the sexiest, the smartest was such an exhausting exercise in self-absorption, comparison, and superiority. Cringe. I can see now that being uber capable was such a capitulation to patriarchal conditioning and the illusion that my worth depended on exceptional performance. I have new compassion for the abandoned little one inside who just wanted to love, play, and be her creative, messy self.

Here’s another framing that’s been useful. Think of a toddler when she stops crawling and begins to take her first steps. It doesn’t mean she loses the ability to crawl. It’s just that very quickly she finds she prefers something else. In this way, we might say she’s “incapable” of crawling anymore because her new-found momentum and agility is so intoxicating, exhilarating, evolutionary.

I can still feel the stubborn tap root of a need to prove myself but it no longer dominates the landscape like it used to. My ambition and dreams pollinate now in a life that’s more grounded in peace, spaciousness, and connection. Stress, unpredictability and obligations are always going to be part of life but my relationship with those states has changed dramatically.

Although I may not be rushing to hit project deadlines like I used to, I can still slip into being a hurried woman. But these days that usually involves rushing to yoga class because I lost track of time gathering flowers in the garden.

I’m still goal-oriented as well but the goals are shifting. I geek out with my biometric sleep score being consistently in the 90s and being in the top 10% of my age bracket for cardio heart health. I drink less wine to wind down and need less caffeine to gear up. The passion and intimacy I share with my husband totally lights me up. I’m far more committed to rocking my curves and feeling good in my skin than worrying about that elusive 15 pounds I can never lose anyway. I’m happier and more fulfilled than I’ve ever been.

What lands more solidly in me with every silver strand and new wrinkle is that I’m incapable of doing my work inside the old model of pushing, proving, or performing. Not because I can’t but because it’s no longer interesting. The compelling experiment now is how to contribute more of my gifts to more women in a new wise woman way. In even stronger partnership with my own soul and the Divine. With deeper surrender, trust, and faith. With greater allegiance to my feminine body, heart and soul. Fueled by pleasure rather than pressure. Magnetizing to me what’s wanted with less effort.

This has, frankly, long been my mission and vision. I’ve been orienting, to the best of my ability, toward this horizon for decades. Perhaps it’s that my standards for relaxation, surrender, and pleasure have been refined, strengthened, sharpened through this meno portal.

My younger self measured her capability by her output. She could do almost everything, it seemed, but rest. The emerging wise woman in me measures her capability by integrity. She’s practicing how to receive, surrender, align with seasons, attune to right timing, use soft power and her Shakti energy for manifestation.

Ironically, in so many ways, my capabilities are expanding rather than contracting.

I’ve come to think that maybe there is phoenix wisdom born out of the fire of hot flashes that you just can’t get but for the living through it.

My dad is an artisan blacksmith by trade. For years I’ve watched him heat the steel in the forge to glowing red and then quench it in the water to temper it. Tempering the metal makes it stronger.

Maybe that’s what this passage has been. Not breaking down or burning up but tempering. Emerging changed and stronger from the fire. Incapable. Unwilling to bend the same way.

Photo Credit: Tim Mossholder @Unsplash

I’ve noticed that recovering over achievers tend to think of pleasure like dessert. You only get it after you’ve eaten your veggies and cleaned your plate. Pleasure becomes a reward for accomplishment, the gold star for an endeavor deemed successful. It comes after the hard work and it’s gotta be earned. That’s the deal.

Besides, isn’t it a bit frivolous to prioritize pleasure when there’s so much that needs doing? It seems like an indulgence when we’re entrenched in patterns of over-giving, problem solving, being indispensable, coping with overscheduled lives, and working hard to get it all in place so we can finally have what we need. Later.

Someday, after everything is finally handled, then we can relax into a life with more pleasure. Because then we’ll have truly earned it.

It’s kind of amazing how many of us bought into this arrangement, pleasure as a dangling carrot. It seems like we’ve been busting our asses for decades, reaching but not really having.

Here’s the thing: it works until it doesn’t. For many women, the wake-up call arrives during the meno-passage.

As estrogen departs, so does people pleasing. The drive to exhaust yourself in pursuit of the goal becomes untenable, unsustainable. A revolution moves through your body, heart, and soul. You’re not sure exactly what’s happening but you’re clearly in unfamiliar territory.

But what’s also true is that when one door closes, another opens.

Always.

If living in the pressure operating system is no longer sustainable in our changing body, if the hustle has tapped out our adrenals, if self-care has moved from optional to mandatory, then we find another way.

It can be terrifying to feel like we’re not who we were. It can feel like a failure. But it’s actually a flowering.

This is not the end of our ambition.

It is a necessary arc in its evolution.

I remember someone offering these wise words to me in a moment of my own heartbreaking loss:

“Nothing that you’re being asked to let go of is anything that you need, and in fact, your soul will no longer allow you to hold onto.”

At some point you realize you’re done being driven by pressure.

Your body won’t tolerate it.

Your heart feels no love in it.

Your spirit has no passion for it.

Frankly, it’s just not that interesting anymore.

And so a new question emerges.

What if pleasure isn’t the reward? What if pleasure is the fuel source? What would it look like to be powered by pleasure instead?

It sounds subversive, wrong, stupid to those of us who have spent a lifetime proving our worth through effort. We trust hard work, discipline, and tenacity. (Indeed these are admirable qualities that we want to keep in our repertoire.)

But maybe we’re ready to loosen our allegiance to struggle and learn to trust pleasure more. Maybe it’s just kind of thrilling to imagine manifesting what we want with more magic and less muscle. Maybe we want to rest our weary minds and tap into the clarity of our womb intelligence. Afterall, we are in possession of the ultimate chalice of alchemical creation, the very source of life itself.

Part of the problem is that our instinctual feminine knowing of pleasure has been stolen, disfigured, repackaged, commodified, and sold back to us by the patriarchy. We’ve been conditioned to be suspicious of pleasure. Too soft, weak, irresponsible, dangerous, slippery slope.

But what if that’s really not what true pleasure is? What if it’s actually a frequency of our power to be rediscovered?

Not pleasure as escape, avoidance, or something to seek outside of ourselves.

Pleasure as aliveness.

Pleasure as connection.

Pleasure as the experience of being fully present in your own life.

I’ve come to believe that pleasure like that replenishes something essential in us.

When I am connected to pleasure, I move through the world differently. Intoxicated by the scent of lavender blooming on our front walkway, the miracle of the moon rising through the pines, the delicate green crisp of butter lettuce picked from the garden, my naked skin spooning his, our breath slowing and deepening into sleep.

There is less forcing.

Less proving.

Less pushing uphill.

Instead there is more synchronicity.

More flow.

More intuition.

More support arriving from unexpected places.

More natural magnetism, drawing to me what’s wanted with less effort.

Not because life suddenly becomes easy.

But because I’m no longer abandoning myself, my center, my sovereign seat. I’m not waiting for later. I’m harvesting the goodness that’s everywhere around me, right now. And there’s a natural effulgence in that.

What if pleasure was never meant to be dessert?

What if it was always meant to be the root of true nourishment?

The ground from which everything blooms.

Which brings me back to the beginning of my own journey as a sacred sexuality teacher. A core principle in Tantra, an ancient spiritual path from the East, is that pleasure can be a gateway to the divine.

Can be. I find that compelling. It takes discernment, practice, and honesty with myself. What I know is that the world needs more of the authentic connection to pleasure that I’m speaking to. We need many more of us walking this path, reclaiming and anchoring the frequencies of love, pleasure and sacred connection as an antidote to the madness.

I’m not waiting for later.

I’m practicing, harvesting the goodness that’s everywhere around me, right now.

Pleasure is not dessert.

Pleasure is the pathway.

At a party last weekend I found myself delightfully engaged with 2 other women I know, all of us in our early 60s. One hasn’t worked professionally for several years although she hesitates to use the word “retired.” It’s more like she’s “exploring what’s next.” In the meantime, she’s traveling and engaged in a new relationship.

The other woman still works full time, commutes to a big city, and does work that she enjoys. She also calls herself a “workaholic.” She shared, “It scares me, actually, the idea of not working. I’m afraid I’d sit on the couch eating ice cream and watching Netflix all day.”

That made me chuckle. Having been self employed for over 30 years, I’m keenly aware of the challenges of being accountable when no one is watching. With astonishing regularity, mission critical activities like scrubbing the scale out of the electric kettle, organizing the spice drawer, and weeding the garden take priority over my writing and work.

In these midlife years as we transition from the giving mother archetype into sovereign queen, our relationship to our work life undergoes necessary, natural evolution. Hopefully more mastery and less muscle. When I look at the 3+ decades of my career, I can see that I’ve been motivated, in part, to get my business to a place where I had maximum time, space, and freedom. That’s my definition of success and it’s always been more important to me than money (they are, of course, related). Having arrived at this place, I can say I feel truly wealthy in the currency of choice.

However, I was wholly unprepared for how cataclysmic the shift was in my post menopausal mid 50s as my identity as a lifetime overachiever, performer, generator, and producer began to dismantle. I think of myself as grounded, centered, confident. But no amount of meditation or personal affirmation could stop the deeper existential doubts from surfacing. Feelings of insecurity and panic wormed their way into my psyche, waking me up in black abyss free fall dreams in the middle of the night.

The patterns that fueled my need for external validation, linked productivity with self worth, entangled love with success showed up on my doorstep like unwelcomed guests. And then they moved in for a while.

Which brings me back to the conversation at the party. Because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what structures sustain us after the externally imposed ones begin changing or dissolving.

Because they do change. Like everything in this beautiful, fragile, impermanent world of ours. Maybe by choice, in that they are structures that no longer feel aligned with who we are now or who we are becoming. For example, after a lifetime of people pleasing, I now feel allergic to invitations that land as obligations. So for the most part these days, if I’m not a full “yes,” I decline.

Other times it may feel like the familiar structure has been dismantled despite your preference. Like your estrogen, focus, and stamina for example. I’m learning to live in a new body, one that no longer tolerates the rushing, stress, and depletion that I simply rode over before.

It’s been useful to reflect on what structures are emerging, deepening, even replacing previous ones. Because even though living through these times while grappling with the personal revolution of the midlife menopassage can be utterly overwhelming, we can trust that the desolation of winter always, eventually gives way to spring.

And so seasons is the most obvious structure emerging as something abiding, beautiful and very trustworthy to hold on to. In the midst of this period of personal dismantling, my husband and I bought a 7 acre property in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The past 5 years of growing our home and gardens here have brought me into an intimacy with a structure as old as time, the rhythm of the seasons, offering me transformational medicine on every level of my body, heart, and soul.

Spring means liberation. Come, come outside, be warmed by the sun instead of huddled by the hearth. Our days of labor are long, weeding, soil amending, pruning, planting. There’s a burst of energy, chores, and collaboration with all the growing things as the light builds again adding hours to the day. Those long polished fingernails I flaunted during winter have given way to these naked stubs perpetually full of dirt and in constant need of hand salve.

As summer heat approaches, we’ll be drawn to lazy days at the river, trusting that the irrigation and tending we’ve done will lead to harvesting the fruits, flowers and vegetables that are busy rooting now. In autumn we’ll be drying the tomatoes and basil for winter stews, storing the butternut squash, cutting everything back, stacking wood in the shed. The rains, freezing temperatures and darkness will tip toe in. The sweaters and candles will come out. We’ll spend more time cuddling on the couch with our cat, Mocha.

It occurs to me that life is a series of structures that serve us for a time and evolve, or get replaced. Some abide. Intimacy with the land has given me the gift of something that feels steady, real, and ancient. The busy bursting energy of spring, the steady ripening of summer, the harvesting and shedding in autumn, the quietude, inwardness and darkness of winter. It comforts and fulfills me knowing that I’m part of this structure.

My sister in law retired recently after a very high-powered career. Someone gave her a parting gift that looks just like an old analog clock but instead of the face having the 12 hours of the day, it has the seven days of the week with a single slowly moving hand that points to the current day. The implication was clear. Instead of managing departments, deadlines, and details now you can simply track what day it is.

For many of us, structure has been primarily tied to professional accomplishment and validation. As we change, as the world changes, as the conversation about “work” continues to evolve, so too must we re-evaluate the foundations underpinning our lives. What if structure is now less about productivity and more about rhythm, cycles, seasons? What if the failure of the old scaffolding is a call to return to something far more authentic? A wake up call to that which has always held and sustained us. Thank you Ma.

As I wrap this up, a spring storm has passed and now I can see the blue sky returning. My hips ache from too much sitting. I hear the birds chirping and realize it’s time to replenish the feeder. I can already feel the soft pine duff under my feet on the damp trail that winds in a full circle around our land.

I was chatting with a friend of mine in her early 70s who’s single. She said to me,

“I think my days of relationship and sex are probably over.”

I asked her how she felt about that.

She was ambivalent. A little sad. A little relieved. Mostly, she seemed resigned.

I shared a few things with her that arose in the moment—things I now know in my 60s that I wish I had understood in my 40s.

I want to share them with you, too.

#1 Sex doesn’t have to matter to you.

If you are genuinely happy and at peace without sexuality in your life, there is real power in owning that.

Sexualized messaging is constantly used to manipulate us. Layer that with our personal history—longing, conditioning, wounding—and it makes sense that there can be relief in stepping away. In simply being done.

That can be an empowered choice. And…

#2 It’s never too late.

You might be lacking support, perspective, or ideas. There may be grief to feel, stories to unravel, expectations to excavate.

It can feel overwhelming. Daunting. Confusing. Scary.

And…

If desire is still alive under all of that, even if you don’t know what to do with it–that’s real.

That’s yours.

Desire is life force calling you home to your body, your heart, your soul.

Which is why this distinction matters:

There is a difference between dampening your desire because you don’t believe what you want is possible…

…and letting it go with love because you are truly complete.

#3 Your sexuality belongs to you.

Whether or not you’re in a relationship…

Whether or not sex is happening the way you want…

Your sexual energy belongs to you. Period.

You may choose to share it.
You may choose to expand or contract it.
You may choose to explore it as a path for your own healing, pleasure, curiosity, or awakening.

But it is yours.

And part of that is expanding what “sex” even means to you.

If you define it too narrowly—through a heteronormative lens of intercourse—you may miss entire realms of pleasure, sensuality, and erotic aliveness available to you.

With or without a partner.

I once coached a woman in her late 70s who had been in a deeply loving, sexually fulfilling marriage for decades. When her husband’s health declined, she began exploring her own erotic energy through breath and spiritual practice.

The expansive and ecstatic states she discovered on her own were beyond anything she had experienced in her younger years.

I feel blessed to be married to a man who deeply turns me on. Sexuality matters to both of us. We’re 14-years into a monogamous partnership and I’m happy to say that at 61, I’m having the best sex of my life.

And also…

Our aging bodies introduce new limitations all the time.
Our libidos wax and wane.

There’s definitely a learning curve to post-menopausal sex.

But we schedule lovemaking time, regardless of how we feel. We prioritize connection over performance.

And I know this, too:

My sexuality is my responsibility.

It’s bigger than what I share with my partner.

Tending to my sensuality, my pleasure, my connection to beauty and the erotic—this fuels my connection to life itself. To creativity. To nature. To the divine.

It is part of my wholeness.

Partnership is my path and I adore my husband.

And… the wise woman in me also longs for her solitude. For quiet. For sovereign space.

Sometimes I envy the women I know who live alone, in deep communion with themselves and the divine. I fantasize about order, cleanliness, eating popcorn for dinner.

Sometimes, I know, they also envy my life.

Here’s the thing, Dear One, only you get to decide what’s true for you.

You can question your beliefs and narratives about sexuality. You don’t have to shut your desire down to find peace. Desire is yours. Peace is yours.

You get to choose your relationship to it all.

It’s your body.

It’s never too late to come home to yourself.

The land is coming alive again. Everywhere a great unfurling, the season of resurrection. The naked branches of the oaks ruffle with new green. Pops of pink splatter the rose garden. The hens (and Zeus the rooster) are so busy that now we have enough eggs to give away. I just made a delicious frittata with feta, kale, and last summer’s sundried tomatoes.

Maybe like me your body is waking up too. With the growing light, I have more energy in the evenings. I feel my own sap rising in a kind of erotic entrainment with the nectar-drunk hummers and buzzing bees. Even the territorial squabbles between the red finch couples at the bird feeder have their own passion.

Diana Richardson, one of our Tantra goddess master teachers, recently wrote that the first step to sex is not arousal as we’ve been conditioned to believe but relaxation.

I know this to be true in my body. I curl up on the outdoor sofa in the morning with my black tea (with a touch of honey and milk), warmed by the gentle spring sun, and relish feeling free in a t-shirt instead of packed in a parka. The cool air carries a potpourri of pine, lilac, and daphne. This is soul food for my sensuality…nourishing…wholly disarming.

This is our fifth Spring on this land we call home. She and I seem to have come into a relationship phase where we can rest in an abiding familiarity. A precious feeling of mutual respect seems to flow between us. Beyond thoughts of thankfulness, I feel a visceral gratitude for the mighty miracle of being alive together. Here. Now. In communion. In Love.

She is a patient teacher as I confront ongoing layers of inherited conditioning around superiority and separation. Extracting. Taking. Demanding. Property. The inevitable failure of actions that come from my desire to dominate, control, or be clever. I wrestle with humility and humanness.

I’m also learning which efforts are fruitful and create reciprocity: mulching, composting, pruning, patience. I am cultivating more awe and less perfectionism. I am attuning to the elements, the directions, and the breathing, relational web of which I am a dependent and contributing part.

After several years in communion with this place, I am learning what grows, re-seeds, and comes back stronger. Instead of stubbornly trying to grow another delphinium and suffering her demise, I plant more foxglove and aster which are already thriving.

Instead of hoping that the voracious gophers won’t do what they do, again, I dig deep, wide holes and make hardwire baskets for the new plants. Maybe we can’t stop the predators but we can protect what we love, create boundaries, throw obstacles in their way.

Thank you Ma.

She generously offers me the weeds as my guru.

First there is the sheer expanse and proliferation of them. We’re talking acres here, not a little patio. Encountering the weeds feels a lot like my daily consumption of the news: there’s a prevailing sense that I’ll never make a dent with my meager efforts. That the task is just too big (hopeless, complex) for this one small woman (despite her tenacity and overachiever tendencies).

However, since turning away from the garden I love is simply not an option, I take a breath and focus my attention on the next single step. Just one small part of the garden. Yes it’s true, there are many, many more screaming in need but let me stay with this one, right here. Turns out, small, measurable progress has its own momentum, inspiration, gratification.

I also find humor in these truly arbitrary decisions about which growing things I deem superfluous or noxious, to be removed, from those which I want to encourage, nurture, and save from invasion.

That gives me pause, speaking of the news, as I breathe into the uneasy awareness that this micro reflects the macro. That decisions about who is worthy to live and who is not are being made by ruthless and capricious leaders all over this planet. That I, too, am part of that human family.

I work my gloved fingers under the fanned out tentacles of a weed, grip tight around the base and pull the thing out. It is a special sort of gratification, a mild ecstasy, to feel the whole root release from the still-soft earth. The satisfaction of throwing it on the growing refuse heap.

On to the next one. Talk about a dopamine rush. Beats scrolling any day.

But of course it’s not always like that. There’s also the exhausted frustration of the fight with the ones that don’t give up so easily. The investment of sore muscle and sweat for a scrap of leaves in the hand. The utter futility of the effort, as if they’re mocking me, “Hey lady, thanks for the prune job. I’ll be coming back stronger.”

After just such a morning of meditation with my gurus, I take a quick shower and pick up my mom for the “No Kings” protest downtown. I’ve read an article in the New York Times that morning questioning whether the massive turn out makes a difference, changes anything in a measurable way. I’m asking myself this question.

What I do know is that it feels enlivening and empowering to stand on the street with my 85-year-old mother and thousands of others in my community, littles and elders, waving handmade signs, voicing our “Yes” for democracy, justice, and peace. It feels right to name the noxious, to say “No” to that which threatens beauty, abundance, equality and so much of what my feminine heart holds dear.

Audrey Hepburn said, “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”

Maybe you don’t have a passion for gardening but you surely have dirt under your fingernails with all that you do, growing your belief in tomorrow. All the ways you contribute to what you love and want to protect. Not to mention all the weeding I know you do in your own heart and mind. Thank you, sister. I see you, Shakti Woman.

It’s so important to remember that you are not alone in the work you do, whether seen or unseen. It registers in a myriad of ways that we cannot fathom. We are the lovers, mothers, leaders, and gardeners growing a good tomorrow even when the task feels utterly overwhelming or sometimes futile.

Trust the season you find yourself in. Wear your sunhat, drink water, and know when to rest. Nourish your sensual self with the beauty and erotic that pulses everywhere. This is the nectar that will fuel your power, passion, and vitality, your Shakti.

With so much love,

On the night of a full moon, my Facebook and Instagram social media accounts were hacked. The pages, community, and content that I’ve been curating for decades literally disappeared overnight. My connection with over 75,000 subscribers and followers—gone.

I’ve spent countless hours attempting to access my accounts again, to file an appeal, or to get help, only to hit one wall after another.

Chaos.
Erasure.
Disruption.
And it all falls down.

I’ve been frustrated, angry, sad, and incredulous.

I haven’t given up hope that some human being inside the Meta-verse will stumble on something and say, “Well clearly this is not right,” and push the buttons that will restore things to the way they were. But there does not appear to be a way to make human contact. Instead, it’s a maze of AI rabbit holes—dead-ending in error messages or looping me back to the beginning.

After the initial shock of violation and the ensuing scramble, something quieter emerged: the awareness that the world of social media I’ve suddenly been excommunicated from isn’t the real world I want to live in.

I had to repeatedly step away from my laptop and go outside.
Feel the soft green clover under my feet.
Hear the geese honking across the sky.
Smell the cold air and the smoke curling from the chimney.
Orient myself, alive on the earth, in my beautiful life.

As a wise and deeply empathic sister reminded me at the beginning of this ordeal, “Lisa, you have not been erased. You are still very much here.”

I’ve also been thinking about this poem by 17th-century Japanese poet Mizuta Masahide:

Barn’s burnt down,
now I can see the moon.

Then I remembered something else. A couple of days before that full moon, I was having a conversation with one of my besties about my growing lack of enthusiasm for Facebook and Instagram—confessing that it was increasingly not a place I wanted to be. I wondered what might be next, and we talked about the wisdom of making a fresh start.

On Substack.

You cannot make this stuff up. If this were a novel, you’d roll your eyes and think, Oh please. And yet, here we are.

It occurs to me now that I could choose to be in awe of the efficiency of my own wo-manifestation skills—or take this as a rousing endorsement of my new plan from Goddess Herself.

Another person in my network shared this with me: “Consider that maybe you’ve been spared.”

Maybe indeed.

The more I learn about this platform, the more at home I feel. A welcome place to share my writing with those who love words, who value relationship, vulnerability, and deeper connection. A place where my heart feels safer. Where my creativity feels sovereign.

I’m willing to start over.
I’m happy to be here.
I’m grateful, beyond measure, to connect with you, dear reader.

I promise to treat your presence as sacred. I know what it means to choose where you give your attention.

You can expect writing from me that is thoughtful, embodied, and real—rooted in wise woman lived experience rather than performance.

This is a space that honors the intelligence of the feminine—in body, heart, and soul. Writing that invites you more deeply into your own exquisite knowing and remembering.

A warm welcome to you.