If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Hi loves,

This is my first letter of 2025 but I’ve been working hard behind the scenes: refreshing my website, planning for upcoming events and thinking big. I’m still focused on the peri-menopause transition, though I think many of the themes are universal to being a human right now.

One of the lesser-known but perplexing symptoms of peri is anhedonia, which is a fancy Greek way of saying a loss of pleasure. Not feeling bad, like in depression, but void of all feeling. While caring less about things can be liberating at first, it can make it hard to stay motivated. In the Awakening Joy course I learned that joy is a muscle you can train. And like physical muscle, it is important to build capacity for joy in mid-life.

I love the trend going around of women sharing their small acts of whimsy, whether it’s wearing matching pjs in clean sheets or having philosophical conversations with their pets. My practice lately has simply been to let myself be more myself, to be free to like the things I like and do what feels good to me. I also realized that that is what a regulated nervous system looks like–not just lying peacefully on a mat but dancing to Doechii in the shower and getting a milkshake for no good reason.

But Ali, joy? In this economy? There are many reasons why joy may not feel accessible to you right now, but tuning into what lights you up is the antidote to what feels hard right now. The opposite of stress is not relaxation but pleasure, and cultivating ways to restore our life force is an act of rebellion. Patriarchy only works if you are submissive to it, so do your best to make yourself immune.

I have some TMI thoughts about how this relates to pleasure and libido but you’ll have to come hang out with me in person to hear more on that. I’m kicking off some monthly support groups around the Bay starting on Mother’s Day (because why not?) so please join me for some juicy chats. Find a group near you in the link below.

sign up