My dad had his first stroke at 49. Triple bypass at 60. More than twenty surgeries over his lifetime. My mom’s side carries thyroid disease and diabetes.

For a long time I held this as background information. Filed under “noted.” Like information that mattered, just not yet. I thought discipline was how you outran a genetic landscape: eat clean, move more, apply enough willpower, and the numbers would stay on your side.

Part one of this series is what happens when that stops being true.

This is part two. Where I tell you what I’m actually doing about it — the labs I care about, the devices I’m experimenting with, and an honest walk through my medication situation, which has evolved a lot since I first drafted this post. Bear with me. There’s a lot to cover, and I’d rather tell you all of it than pretend it’s simpler than it is.

The labs that actually tell me something

I used to think labs meant cholesterol and blood sugar. Normal. See you next year. Now I ask a different question: which numbers tell me where I’m headed, not just whether I’m passing today’s test?

Fasting insulin.
Blood sugar can look completely fine while your pancreas is quietly working overtime to keep it there. Fasting insulin catches that earlier, sometimes years before anything shows up on a standard panel. I wish I’d known to ask for this sooner.

HOMA-IR.
A calculation combining fasting glucose and fasting insulin. I care less about any single result and more about which direction it’s trending as I add protein, lift, and actually sleep.

ApoB and lipids.
ApoB tells me how many atherogenic particles are circulating. Perimenopause shifts lipid profiles even when nothing else visibly changes, often in the wrong direction. I want to see whether my interventions are actually moving something or just making me feel productive.

Blood pressure.
Boring. Matters more than I ever gave it credit for.

Body composition, not just weight.
Lean mass, fat mass, visceral fat. DEXA for the real picture, a consistent home scale to track direction between scans. Neither is perfect. Together they’re more informative than whatever the bathroom scale says on a Monday morning.

The gap between knowing and doing — which is where I actually live

Here’s the version of this section I wanted to write: I wake up, check my sleep data, make a protein-forward breakfast, block 45 minutes to lift like it’s a meeting. Metabolic intention from morning to night.

Here’s what’s actually true: I still look up at 4pm and realize I haven’t eaten.

My challenge was never information. It’s always been implementation — specifically, implementation inside a life that doesn’t pause for protocols.

So I stopped trying to do everything at once.

Right now my only goal is 30 grams of protein at two or three meals a day. That’s the whole plan this month. Not because nothing else matters, but because it’s what I can realistically execute while everything else is still in motion.

I’m working in three-week blocks. One change. Twenty-one days. Then reassess.

Life still disrupts it. I miss meals. I’m trying to stay gracious with myself and remember that perfection isn’t the goal. One day I get it right, the next I don’t, and the day after, I try again.

The devices I’m using (and the one I haven’t started yet)

None of these are required to be healthy. They’re feedback loops.

CGM (continuous glucose monitor).
Haven’t started yet but I plan to use one in short windows, a few weeks at a time, a couple of times a year. Pattern recognition, not permanent tracking. Which foods spike me. Whether walking after meals actually blunts the rise. What a bad night of sleep actually costs me metabolically. Then I take it off. The point is insight, not another thing to manage.

DEXA scan.
Twice a year or so. Bone density, muscle mass, visceral fat: three signals in one scan. I’d rather catch early whispers than wait for late headlines.

Whoop.
I’ve used Oura. I wear Whoop now. No brand argument, it just fits how I think. I mainly track deep and REM sleep and treat the numbers as a nudge, not a verdict.

My rule with all of it: if the device starts increasing anxiety, I stop using it. The moment a number can ruin my morning, something has gone wrong with how I’m relating to the tool.

The medications — okay, sit down, because this section has changed

A lot has shifted since I first wrote this draft over a month ago. I’ve started new things, adjusted others, and learned more about my own hormonal landscape than I expected to. So I’m just going to walk you through exactly where I am right now.

GLP-1: Zepbound, 2.5mg

Still on it. This is Zepbound’s starting dose — I’m microdosing, essentially. And I’m not increasing until I see my doctor in April.

Do I want to lose weight? Yes. Do I want to reduce visceral fat? Desperately. Am I rushing the dose to get there faster? No. I want my protein intake and strength training dialed in first. I’m not interested in losing weight at the expense of muscle. I want fat loss, not just a smaller version of myself.

I used to judge GLP-1s. Hard. I thought they were for people who weren’t willing to do the real work. Then I actually listened to endocrinologists explain what they do to insulin signaling, satiety, and visceral fat distribution in ways that, for some women, in some phases of life, diet and movement alone genuinely cannot replicate.

Before I said yes, I needed three answers: What specific outcome are we targeting? What are my personal risks? What’s the exit strategy?

Estrogen and progesterone — this is where it got more nuanced

Before I get into what I’m taking, I need to explain why, because for a while, my symptoms didn’t line up cleanly.

Last year, I did a DUTCH test (Dried Urine Test for Comprehensive Hormones). It’s not a standard blood test, it’s more like a systems-level map of how your hormones are behaving over time.

A blood test tells you: “Your estrogen is X.”

The DUTCH test shows how much estrogen you’re producing, how you’re metabolizing it, how well you’re clearing it, and how it interacts with progesterone, cortisol, and androgens.

What mine showed explained a lot.

First: my estrogen levels were low. Across the board.
So from a quantity perspective, I’m not estrogen dominant. I’m estrogen deficient. That alone explains things like fatigue, low libido, mood shifts, and changes in skin and tissue.

But that wasn’t the full picture.

The second layer was how I was processing estrogen. My results showed that I wasn’t favoring the more protective metabolic pathway, and that I wasn’t clearing estrogen as efficiently as I could.

So the reality wasn’t: “Too much estrogen” or “too little estrogen.”

It was: low estrogen + suboptimal metabolism + a clearance system working harder than it should, which explains why things felt inconsistent.

Some symptoms pointed to low estrogen. Others looked more like what people describe as “estrogen dominance.”

Why I’m using estrogen

Once I understood that my estrogen levels were genuinely low, the decision became more practical than philosophical.

I’m using a transdermal estrogen gel: one pump daily. This is systemic, and it’s helping with sleep, mood, and overall stability in a way I could actually feel within a few weeks. I’m treating this as replacing something my body is no longer producing at the same level and seeing how my body responds.

I’m also using an estradiol cream applied locally to the vulvar tissue.

This is something we don’t talk about enough.

Estrogen decline in perimenopause affects that tissue — elasticity, hydration, sensitivity, even urinary comfort — in ways that have nothing to do with vanity and everything to do with quality of life.

The cream works locally, in ways the systemic gel doesn’t reach.

Different tools. Different jobs.

Progesterone — the one that’s been a whole journey

This one has not been straightforward.

December: I tried oral progesterone at a standard dose (100mg). It was a disaster. I could not wake up. Sleeping around the clock and still exhausted. And the irritability? Zero tolerance. My body was not having it.

We cut the dose in half. Same issue.
January and February: I stopped.
Last cycle: I tried again but a much lower dose (25mg), bioidentical, non-soy, taken only during the luteal phase (days 14–25).

This version was better. But I had insomnia, and we’re honestly not sure if that’s from the progesterone itself or from having relatively more estrogen than this dose can balance.

We don’t know yet. I’m running this cycle again to see if it repeats.

DIM and I3C Supplements

The DUTCH test didn’t just explain what was off, it showed me where I had a bottleneck.

If I’m going to support estrogen levels, I also need to support how my body processes and clears that estrogen.

That’s where DIM (diindolylmethane) and I3C (indole-3-carbinol) come in.

Both are compounds derived from cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale) that support healthy estrogen metabolism and balance. I3C converts into DIM in the stomach, which then helps reduce "bad" estrogen metabolites.

Given my pattern — low estrogen, but not processing it optimally — the goal isn’t to reduce estrogen. It’s to help my body handle it more cleanly.

I’ve been on them for a few months now.

(If you’re on medications like tamoxifen, this is something to discuss with your doctor — there are known interactions.)

For the woman wondering if she needs all of it

Probably not. Not yet. Maybe not ever in this form.

I hear this a lot from women I respect:
“I feel fine. I don’t have any of those symptoms.”

I get it. I would have said the same not that long ago.

What I’ve come to understand, slowly, and a little reluctantly, is that a lot of this doesn’t start with obvious symptoms. It starts as drift. Small changes in insulin, lipids, body composition — things you don’t necessarily feel until they’ve compounded.

So part of why I’m sharing this isn’t because everyone needs to do what I’m doing. It’s because I wish I had understood earlier what to look for and what I could have started before things felt off.

As women in midlife, we are navigating a body whose rules shifted mid-game, usually while we were busy holding everything else together.

The question isn’t whether you should be doing what I’m doing. It’s:

In part one, I wrote about muscle and metabolism as infrastructure. This is about the measurement tools and support beams I’m using to keep that infrastructure standing — imperfectly, inconsistently, but pointed in the right direction.

The question I’m holding:

What would we do differently if we stopped waiting for our bodies to feel “not fine” — and started paying attention while things still feel okay?

xoxo💋
Paola

This post is part of Women’s Health for the Long Run—a series grounded in lived experience, careful listening to experts, and shared learning. It is not medical advice.

I knew about macros.
I knew exercise mattered.

What I didn’t know — not really, not in my bones — was that protein and muscle would be the difference between feeling like myself in perimenopause and feeling like a stranger in my own skin.

The Body Hierarchy I Grew Up In

My education about my body didn’t start in a doctor’s office.
It started at home.

My older sister is four years ahead of me.
Tall. Long black hair. Naturally thin.
She had the kind of body our culture quietly — and not so quietly — worshipped: slim, elegant, “model material.”

I was different.
Short. Curvy. Compact.

I wasn’t invisible.
I was smart, outspoken, friendly. I took up space in every room I walked into.
But the kind of attention my sister got was different.

My mother dressed her up.
She fussed over her outfits.
She paraded her — not literally, but emotionally — as the pretty one.
Boys noticed her first.

And I learned something I couldn’t yet name:
Slim meant desirable.
Slim meant chosen.

So my relationship with food and my body became about being acceptable. Attractive. Desirable.

Watching what I eat became a strategy.

I’d power through busy days — especially once I started running and scaling a business — barely eating.
Then I’d come home starving and binge.
The cycle was familiar:
Restrict.
Get overwhelmed.
Come home ravenous.
Eat everything in sight.
Feel guilty.

It’s not that I didn’t know what to do.
I did.
I’ve always been educated about nutrition, protein, exercise.

The deeper story was this:
I believed I needed to manage my body to be attractive and desirable.
I believed my worth in the romantic, feminine, “wanted” sense lived in how close I could get to that slim ideal I grew up watching.

That belief followed me straight into midlife.

Perimenopause didn’t care how educated I was

When my body began shifting, I wasn’t uninformed.

I knew strength training mattered.
I understood cardiovascular health.
I wasn’t living on fast food.

And yet things changed.

Sleep became fragile.
My mood felt subtly off.
The scale moved without obvious cause.
My clothes stopped fitting the way they once did.

Then there were the labs.

At 43:

• ApoB: 115

• LDL: 134

• HDL: 70

• Triglycerides: 146

• Fasting insulin: 10.6

• A1c: 5.0

• Resting metabolic rate: 1123 calories

If you looked only at my A1c, you’d say I was fine.

But fasting insulin at 10.6 is an early signal of insulin resistance — the kind of metabolic drift that can precede diabetes by years.

Insulin resistance isn’t cosmetic.

It affects vascular health, inflammation, visceral fat accumulation, and long-term cardiovascular and cognitive risk.

Perimenopause exposed something uncomfortable:

I understood muscle mattered.
I wasn’t eating or training in a way that protected it.

Menopause itself shifts lipid profiles. It alters fat distribution. It accelerates muscle loss. It increases visceral fat even when lifestyle remains constant.

Lifestyle still matters deeply.

It just doesn’t override biology.

Muscle as Metabolic Infrastructure

For most of my life, muscle was about shape.
Toned arms. A firmer butt.
It was aesthetic. Optional.

But muscle is not decorative tissue.

It:

• Improves insulin sensitivity

• Regulates glucose disposal

• Communicates with the brain through myokines

• Protects bone density

• Supports vascular health

• Drives resting metabolic rate

Muscle is metabolic infrastructure.

As estrogen declines, fat doesn’t just increase — it shifts toward visceral fat around the organs, which drives inflammatory signaling and insulin resistance.

My DEXA estimated my visceral fat at 1.67 pounds — not catastrophic, but a reminder that direction matters more than any single number.

Chronic under-eating of protein no longer looked disciplined.

It looked metabolically naïve.

The Strategy I’m Using Now

This is where I want to be very clear:
I am not doing this perfectly.
But I am doing it intentionally.

~30g of protein per meal
I aim for roughly 30g at each meal to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

I’m experimenting with eating closer to my bodyweight in grams per day (around 150g for me), but that’s a working target — not a universal rule.

Strength training 2–3 times weekly
Heavy enough that the final reps are difficult.
Not for calorie burn. For tissue preservation.

Creatine (5g daily)
As support for muscle and potentially cognition — not as a “bodybuilder supplement,” but as support for muscle, strength, and even cognition in midlife.

Zone 2 cardio
For mitochondrial and vascular health — not punishment.

Labs beyond A1c
Fasting insulin. HOMA-IR1. ApoB. Triglycerides. Blood pressure. Body composition.

Because metabolic dysfunction begins quietly. Over time, I’m looking for fasting insulin and HOMA‑IR to trend down, not up.

Medical tools without moral framing
Transdermal estrogen. Progesterone. GLP-1 therapy.

I used to judge GLP-1s harshly. I assumed they were shortcuts.

Used thoughtfully, alongside strength training and adequate protein, they can improve insulin sensitivity and reduce visceral fat, which lowers long‑term cardio-metabolic risk.

They are not risk-free. They are not magic.

They are tools. This is not medical advice; I’m sharing what I’m using under medical supervision.

What I wish someone had told me at 35

This isn’t only for women already in perimenopause.

If you are 30, 35, 40 — and still trying to eat as little as possible to stay small — this matters to you now.

Muscle loss doesn’t begin at 50. It accumulates gradually across years of insufficient protein and resistance training.

Menopause amplifies whatever foundation you built before it.

If I could speak to my 35-year-old self, I would say:

• Stop trying to minimize yourself.

• Lift.

• Learn your fasting insulin baseline.

• Build lean mass intentionally.

• Don’t equate thin with metabolically healthy.

Menopause is not a surprise event.

It is a predictable metabolic transition.

Preparation is cumulative.

The Tension I’m Watching

I have a history of turning health into performance.

There is a version of this where “strong” simply replaces “thin.”
Where protein targets become another control mechanism.
Where lab optimization becomes its own obsession.

I am paying attention to that.

The goal isn’t domination of my body. It’s long-term cooperation.

If Your Body Feels Different

If your metabolism feels unfamiliar.
If weight gain feels disproportionate.
If labs look normal but you don’t feel normal.

It’s easy to interpret that as failure.

It isn’t. You are not broken; your operating system has changed.

Biology shifts.

But there are levers you can pull:

• Ask for fasting insulin

• Calculate HOMA-IR

• Track ApoB

• Strength train deliberately

• Eat adequate protein

• Consider hormone therapy or metabolic medication when appropriate

Just like with sex, this isn’t about willpower; it’s about understanding the physiology so you can stop blaming yourself and start making decisions.

The girl who didn’t feel desired growing up is learning:
To eat enough.
To get stronger, not just thinner.

The questions I’m holding:

How many of us could write a different story for our 70s and 80s if we stopped fearing food, started feeding our muscles, and treated menopause as a metabolic transition we can prepare for — instead of a personal failure we’re supposed to quietly endure?

xoxo💋
Paola

The other half is what my girlfriends, sisters, and women in my life have been asking me for years:

What should I actually do?
What doctors should I see?
What treatments matter?
What’s noise — and what’s essential?

These questions didn’t start when I began writing here. They started long before that. When I learn something, I go find the best doctor I can, ask better questions, and share what I learn. I’ve been on this path since 2014 through functional medicine — and in the last year, very specifically, through the lens of perimenopause.

This post is for that broader circle.

Treat sexual symptoms as medical — not “lifestyle”

This came up again and again across clinicians.

If you’re experiencing:

• vaginal pain or dryness

• recurrent UTI-like symptoms

• urinary urgency or leaking

• loss of desire

• discomfort with penetration

These are medical issues, not things to power through, normalize, or blame on stress.

One of the most important mindset shifts for me was this:

If it affects your body, sleep, confidence, movement, or relationships — it deserves care.

You are allowed to say:

“This is affecting my quality of life, and I want it treated.”

And if you’re brushed off, that’s not information.
It’s a signal to keep going.

Vaginal estrogen: don’t wait (and don’t confuse it with systemic HRT)

This is where I wish I had known more earlier.

Vaginal estrogen is local, not systemic. It supports tissue thickness, elasticity, lubrication, blood flow, and resilience. It is one of the most underused tools in women’s health.

I didn’t have the luxury of starting sooner, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know, and because I was still navigating fertility decisions. We started with what was appropriate at the time.

I’m currently using a vaginal estrogen pill and a compounded estrogen + testosterone vaginal gel.

Now that I’ve decided not to pursue fresh IVF cycles for now — a decision I’m still emotionally unsettled about, but one my body and life needed — I can finally explore vaginal estrogen cream, which Dr. Casperson strongly advocates for restoring tissue health.

One thing she said that stayed with me:

We spend a fortune caring for the skin on our face, yet we’re told to ignore the tissues of our vagina — even though they’re just as hormone-responsive and deserving of care.

Vaginal care isn’t cosmetic.
It’s basic tissue maintenance.

Pelvic floor physical therapy (non-negotiable)

I’ve scheduled an evaluation with a pelvic floor physical therapist and now consider this a baseline appointment, not a “problem-solving” one.

What matters here isn’t theory. It’s action.

Why this belongs on your to-do list:

• Pelvic floor issues often coexist with dryness, urgency, leaking, pain with sex, and loss of confidence in movement

• Many symptoms don’t resolve with hormones alone

• Pelvic floor coordination, tone, and function cannot be assessed without an internal exam

• Early intervention prevents downstream issues that are much harder to unwind later

What to look for when booking:

• A pelvic floor physical therapist (not a general PT)

• Internal evaluation as part of the assessment

• Experience with perimenopause / menopause patients

• A clinic that treats urgency, leakage, pain, and sexual function — not just postpartum recovery

If you have a vagina and you’re navigating midlife changes, this appointment belongs in the same category as a mammogram or bone density scan: uncomfortable to schedule, invaluable to have done.

A few practical supports I’m also integrating:

• Nervous system regulation matters: Use an acupressure mat for 15-20 minutes to calm the nervous system and reduce pelvic floor tension over time.

• Blood flow matters: Sit on a semi-inflated squishy ball to increase blood flow and release deep pelvic tension.

• Gut health matters: Prioritize fiber and hydration to prevent constipation; chronic straining accelerates pelvic floor aging and prolapse risk.

Systemic HRT — nuanced, personal, and worth real care

This part deserves honesty.

I recently decided not to pursue fresh IVF cycles, at least for now. Not because the question is settled but because my body and my life need care now. I still feel unsettled about this decision. I don’t know where I’ll land long-term.

What I do know is this: living in pain, depletion, and hormonal free-fall was costing me myself.

I have an upcoming appointment with Dr. Katherine Klos, a perimenopause- and menopause-trained clinician and urologist who practices between the Washington, D.C. area and Los Angeles, to explore systemic HRT thoughtfully and responsibly.

I tried progesterone briefly and had significant side effects. This isn’t unusual. As Dr. Mary Claire Haver has explained, a meaningful percentage of women don’t tolerate standard oral progesterone and need alternative formulations, dosing, or delivery methods.

This isn’t cookie-cutter medicine.
And that’s the point.

For women not navigating fertility decisions: yes, I would encourage learning about HRT earlier rather than later.

Much of the fear around hormone therapy stems from outdated interpretations of early studies. Over time, regulatory language has evolved, and advocacy by physicians like Dr. Casperson and others has helped clarify that hormone therapy must be evaluated by type, dose, route, and timing — not treated as a single risk category.

HRT isn’t mandatory.
It isn’t right for everyone.
But it does deserve informed discussion and freedom from fear-based medicine.

Train for Longevity: Strength, protein, and hormones work together.

Sexual health does not exist in isolation.

Muscle loss, bone health, estrogen protection, protein intake, and strength training all intersect with:

• confidence

• blood flow

• metabolic health

• long-term vitality

We’ll go deeper into this in future posts, but the takeaway here is simple:

From a sexual-health lens specifically:

• Strength training supports blood flow, posture, tissue health, and confidence

• Protein intake supports muscle, hormones, and recovery

• Vitamin D3 + K2 support bone health and hormone-responsive tissues

• Hydration matters more than we think (I use electrolytes)

Creatine can be helpful for muscle, energy, and cellular health — more on that in the metabolic health post

What kind of doctors to look for

Most physicians are not trained in perimenopause, menopause, or hormone therapy, not because they’re careless, but because this education has historically been missing from medical training.

Many clinicians who are trained operate in hybrid or concierge models, not to exclude, but because the system doesn’t support longer visits or nuanced care.

This is not a personal failure.
It’s a structural one.

Look for clinicians who:

• specialize in perimenopause / menopause care

• take time

• can explain why, not just prescribe

• offer multiple options

• collaborate with pelvic floor PTs and other specialists

If you want recommendations, I’m happy to share what I’ve learned.

Access to good care shouldn’t depend on whispers.

If you take one thing from this post:

You are not late.
You are not broken.
And you are not dramatic for wanting to feel good in your body.

Start where your symptoms are loudest.
Treat them as medical.
Advocate without apology.

The question I’m holding:

How do we make this information so normal, accessible, and unshameful that women don’t have to reach crisis points before they get care?

Because no woman should feel embarrassed for not knowing what no one ever taught us.

If you’re holding questions — I’m listening.

xoxo💋
Paola

This post is part of Women’s Health for the Long Run—a series grounded in lived experience, careful listening to experts, and shared learning. It is not medical advice.

So when things started changing in my late 30s and early 40s, I did what most high-functioning women do: I rationalized a lot because none of it arrived like a clear breaking point.

I told myself I was tired. Overworked. Burnt out. Stressed. Traveling too much. Running too hard. I didn’t wake up one day with symptoms; they crept in slowly enough to feel like “just life.”

Until they didn’t.

When “you’re fine” becomes the most damaging sentence

Here’s what actually happened.

I started experiencing vaginal dryness; not mild discomfort, but dryness to the point where I thought something was wrong with me. Sex started to feel uncomfortable, then painful. I began questioning myself in ways that quietly broke me:

Am I not attracted enough to my partner?
Am I not turned on enough?
Is this a relationship issue? A me issue?

At the same time, my urinary patterns changed. I used to be able to hold my pee forever. Suddenly I couldn’t. I had urgency. Frequency. I peed on myself more than once because I couldn’t get to the bathroom fast enough. Right before my period, I started getting symptoms that mimicked UTIs, burning, urgency, even when tests came back “normal.”

My desire didn’t just dip. It disappeared.

And that was the most destabilizing part. I’m not someone who has ever been indifferent to desire — for sex, for life, for pursuit. Losing it felt like losing part of my identity. I felt ashamed. Embarrassed. Quietly depressed. I kept thinking: Is this it? Is this just how it goes now?

Medically, I was told I was fine.
More than once.

At one point, I was told to “focus more on foreplay.”

No one examined my vaginal tissue. No one talked to me about estrogen decline. No one mentioned perimenopause. And most physicians aren’t trained to diagnose or treat it, especially when symptoms show up before cycles fully change.

What I learned from clinicians I trust

Across sessions with Dr. Kelly Casperson, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, and pelvic health expert (aka The Vagina Coach) Kim Vopni, a few truths kept resurfacing, regardless of specialty:

Sex health suffering that doesn’t show up in bloodwork is still medical.
Vaginal pain, dryness, recurrent UTIs, low desire, urinary urgency, discomfort with penetration: these are not “normal aging.” They are treatable physiological changes that deserve real care.

Pleasure isn’t indulgent. It’s preventative.
Arousal and orgasm increase blood flow to the genitals and brain. Blood flow maintains tissue health, nerve signaling, and responsiveness. Ignoring pleasure doesn’t make symptoms go away, it often accelerates decline.

Vaginal estrogen is not cosmetic. It’s foundational.
This was one of the clearest messages I heard. Vaginal estrogen is a local blood-flow medicine. It replaces what the body naturally loses as estrogen declines and helps restore tissue thickness, elasticity, lubrication, and resilience. It’s often the missing first step, not the last resort.

Dr. Casperson put it bluntly: we spend a fortune caring for the skin on our face, yet we’re told to ignore the tissues of our vagina. Those tissues are just as hormone-responsive and just as deserving of care.

This isn’t vanity. It’s physiology.
Vaginal care is basic maintenance for tissue that depends on estrogen to stay healthy.

Pelvic floor health underpins everything.
The pelvic floor supports continence, posture, core stability, sexual response, and confidence in movement. Dysfunction isn’t always weakness; tightness and poor coordination are often part of the problem. Internal evaluation by a pelvic floor physical therapist is one of the most underused tools in women’s health.

Desire is not just about sex.
Declining hormones affect dopamine pathways: the brain circuits responsible for motivation, curiosity, and pursuit. Loss of desire often reflects a neurochemical shift, not a personal failure or relationship issue.

Desire isn’t broken: the pursuit circuitry is quieter

This was one of the most important reframes for me.

Dr. Casperson explained that declining hormones, especially in midlife, affect dopamine pathways. Dopamine isn’t just about sex. It’s about pursuit. Interest. Motivation. Curiosity. Drive.

She said something that has stayed with me ever since:

That landed hard.

She reframed testosterone not as a taboo “sex hormone,” but as a motivation and drive hormone that acts on the brain. Not everyone needs it. Not everyone should take it. But the mechanism matters.

Sometimes “I have no libido” is actually: “The part of my brain responsible for interest and pursuit has been turned down.”

That insight alone removed so much shame. Desire isn’t just about sex. It’s about wanting. Wanting anything.

Not everyone needs testosterone. Not everyone should take it. But understanding the mechanism matters more than forcing willpower.

Your “why” matters more than any protocol

This might be the part I’m most grateful for.

Dr. Casperson said: find your “why” with sex. It works best when it’s your why, not your partner’s, not your doctor’s.

Because for some women, the why is pleasure.
For some, it’s intimacy.
For some, it’s confidence.
For some, it’s healing.
For some, it’s wanting sex to stop being associated with discomfort and dread.

Your “why” determines the right next step. Without that clarity, it’s easy to chase solutions that don’t actually fit.

Comfort comes first. Period.

One of the clearest lines I heard was this:

To restore comfort in sex, you need comfortable, healthy tissues.

Put back what Mother Nature already had, not as a vanity move, but as basic physiology. Declining estrogen affects tissue quality and blood flow. When tissues become thin, dry, or fragile, discomfort follows. Expecting desire or arousal on top of discomfort makes no sense.

Kim Vopni reinforced this from another angle: she made the case for pelvic health as a hidden threat to longevity: urinary leakage, urgency, prolapse, pelvic pain, recurrent UTIs; all of it quietly erodes quality of life, sleep, and willingness to exercise.

She dropped a statistic that landed hard:
46% of women stop exercising because of pelvic floor dysfunction.

That’s not “just annoying.” That’s a downstream health risk.

And one personal light-bulb moment for me: constipation.
I’ve dealt with it my entire life and I learned how much chronic constipation strains and dysregulates the pelvic floor. No one ever connected those dots for me before.

Arousal is blood flow — not a personality trait

This deserves to be said plainly.

Arousal is blood flow.
Not willpower.
Not “try harder.”
Not “relax.”

When arousal becomes difficult, it’s often because the system that supports it (i.e. hormones, tissues, nerves, blood flow, pelvic floor) has changed.

Pleasure isn’t indulgent. It’s part of how the body stays healthy.

The missing piece: the nervous system

When sex becomes associated with pain, urgency, leaking, or embarrassment, the nervous system shifts into protection mode.

Arousal shuts down not because you don’t want sex but because your body no longer feels safe there.

Sexual health is cyclical.
When pain, fear, or leaks enter the loop, the body adapts by shutting down arousal.
When comfort, safety, and blood flow return, desire often follows.

This isn’t about forcing desire back. It’s about rebuilding the conditions that allow it to emerge.

If you take one thing from this post:

Low desire, discomfort, or changes in sex are not moral failures, relationship failures, or personal flaws. They are physiological shifts and they are addressable.

I’m sharing this because so many women quietly assume something is wrong with them when sex becomes complicated.

Often, nothing is “wrong.”
Something has simply shifted.

Understanding the why is the beginning of agency, not the end of desire.

In the next post, I’ll go deeper into what this looks like in practice: pelvic floor health, urinary symptoms, local hormone support, and what I’m personally navigating right now including the tension between perimenopause care and fertility decisions that almost no one talks about.

You’re not broken.
You’re not alone.
And this isn’t the end of the story.

A question I’m holding:

How do we break the generational silence around women’s sexual health so my nieces and your daughters don’t have to unlearn shame before they can learn their bodies?

If you’re holding questions, I’m listening.

xoxo💋
Paola

This post is part of Women’s Health for the Long Run—a series grounded in lived experience, careful listening to experts, and shared learning. It is not medical advice.

Not judgmental. But concerned.

They would ask, “Are you okay?” or, “Is everything alright?”

It wasn’t subtle. They could see it. I could see it too. My body looked inflamed. Puffy. Like I was retaining water everywhere. I kept thinking I looked like a balloon, tight and swollen, on the verge of popping.

At first, I told myself it was temporary. Normal, given everything I’d been through.

All my life, I’d gone through periods of weight gain and loss. That wasn’t new. What was new was how fast it was happening and how little control I seemed to have over it. Every week, the scale went up. Every single week.

This was happening while I was doing all the “right” things.

I was eating clean. Prioritizing protein. Tracking macros. Logging everything in MyFitnessPal. I increased my steps. I started Zone 2 training. I was consistent. Disciplined. Careful.

And still, the weight kept coming.

That was the moment I knew something was wrong.

Around the same time, I had done everything I was supposed to do medically. Annual physical. OB-GYN exam. Blood work. Follow-ups. Every doctor told me the same thing:

Everything looks fine.

But I wasn’t fine.

When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize my body. My waist kept expanding. My clothes stopped fitting. My body felt foreign.

Later, I would learn this was inflammation. At the time, all I knew was that my body no longer felt like mine.

I gained over thirty pounds in six to eight months! I had never seen that number on the scale in my life. Not even close.

It shattered my confidence.

I didn’t take a single selfie during that period. Not one. I avoided looking at myself naked. I moved through the world hoping no one would comment, while bracing myself for when they did.

And underneath all of it was a quieter fear I didn’t want to say out loud:

Is this it?
Is this aging?
Is this the beginning of a body I’ll never get back from?
Will I never feel sexy or vibrant again?

What made it worse was the loneliness of it.

I wasn’t “sick enough” to be taken seriously. My labs were “normal.” I was functional. Still doing my life. Still performing competence. So the system had no real place for me.

This didn’t happen all at once.
First came the weight gain.
Then the confusion.
Then the quiet panic of doing everything “right” and watching nothing change.

The testing came later, not as a first instinct, but as a last resort, after I’d been told, repeatedly, that nothing was wrong.

That’s when I stopped relying on typical doctors and typical blood tests.

I took charge.

Out of frustration. Out of desperation. Out of a deep need to understand what was happening inside my own body when no one else seemed willing to help me figure it out.

That’s when I turned to ChatGPT.

Not because I thought it would replace doctors but because I needed a thinking partner. Someone to help me ask better questions. To make sense of test results. To identify which markers mattered and which ones were being ignored. To help me decide what to look at next when the answers kept coming back as “fine.”

I didn’t just do basic blood work and call it a day.

I started running my own tests, beginning with Function Health blood work. I established baselines with a DEXA scan, VO₂ max, and resting metabolic rate. I went deeper with advanced cholesterol and sterol testing that showed my body wasn’t absorbing too much cholesterol from food; it was overproducing it at the cellular level.

I did hormonal and stress-axis testing through DUTCH, gut testing with GI-MAP, and followed up with cardiology, fertility specialists, and additional evaluations as new patterns emerged. I compared markers across different health domains. I asked why certain numbers were considered “normal” when they didn’t match what I was experiencing. When results pointed somewhere new, I followed the data.

I wasn’t chasing a diagnosis.
I was trying to understand what was breaking down, area by area, when no one else seemed willing to look.

People suggested GLP-1s early on. I refused because I don’t believe in band-aids when I don’t understand the wound. I’ve dealt with digestive issues most of my life. I knew the side effects. I was scared to make things worse. And I didn’t have a doctor I trusted to guide me properly.

I wanted the root cause. I’m data-driven. I needed to see the full picture before choosing a solution.

The turning point came later, when cardiovascular and liver markers from that deeper blood work flagged something no one else had paid attention to: I was in clear metabolic dysfunction.

When I finally sat across from a cardiologist, after sending him all my results ahead of time, he didn’t start with my weight.

He asked about my cycle.
He asked if my period was regular.
He was the first person to say the word perimenopause out loud.

Perimenopause wasn’t something I’d been educated about by doctors, by family, or by culture. It wasn’t on my radar. And yet, suddenly, it explained why so many symptoms had been treated as isolated or irrelevant.

Around the same time, I was listening, reading, learning, trying to understand what actually happens in women’s bodies during this phase of life that no one prepares us for. I sought out better care. I followed conversations that finally named the intersection between hormones, metabolism, cardiovascular risk, and weight in a way that made sense.

By the time I walked into the YPO Women’s Wellness Summit recently, this journey wasn’t new anymore.

But something shifted being in that room.

Sitting among women who were accomplished, capable, outwardly steady, and privately trying to piece this together too, I realized how much of what I’d learned had stayed locked behind access. Behind money. Behind geography. Behind the ability to keep digging when others simply don’t have the bandwidth.

I’m deeply aware that the access I’ve had o doctors, tests, conversations, rooms like that is a privilege. And I’m grateful for it.

This series is my way of not keeping that knowledge to myself.

Women’s Health for the Long Run isn’t a promise that paying attention will fix everything.

It’s a sharing.

Of what I’ve learned.
Of what I’m doing.
Of what I’m still unsure about.

I’ll write about metabolic health, bone health, brain health, sex health. I’ll write about sleep, food, movement, emotional health, as infrastructure for a life you want to keep living in your body.

Some of this is lived. Some of it is learned. All of it is offered in the spirit of this:

You don’t have to figure this out alone.

If Between Selves has been about noticing the space between who I was and who I’m becoming, this is part of that same inquiry: where the body stops being a background character and starts asking to be included in the conversation.

I’m not writing this to tell anyone what to do.

I’m writing because I know what it feels like to be told you’re fine when your body is clearly telling a different story. When the data says one thing, the mirror says another, and your intuition is left holding the tension alone.

I’m writing because that space between “fine” and truth is where many women quietly live for far too long.

And because I know how lonely that can be.

xoxo💋
Paola

This post is part of Women’s Health for the Long Run—a series grounded in lived experience, careful listening to experts, and shared learning. It is not medical advice.

This post is a little different from what I usually write here. It is a short note to set the stage for a specific series I’m publishing alongside Between Selves, called “Women’s Health for the Long Run.”

Between Selves will continue to be about identity, transition, patterns we inherit, and the internal work of becoming. That isn’t changing. This series lives alongside that work, not in place of it.

Women’s Health for the Long Run is a short, finite series inside Between Selves. Each post in this series will be titled Women’s Health for the Long Run: followed by its specific focus, so they’re easy to recognize and return to.

This series focuses on women’s health through the lens of hormonal health and the shifts that begin in midlife, including perimenopause and the symptoms many women experience long before anything is formally diagnosed. It’s about how those hormonal changes intersect with metabolism, cardiovascular risk, bone density, brain health, sex health, energy, and weight; and how little guidance most women receive while trying to make sense of it.

What I’m sharing here comes from what I’ve learned and lived through years of personal investigation, careful listening to experts, and access to conversations and spaces many women don’t typically get into. I’m deeply aware that this access is a privilege, and I’m grateful for it. Sharing what I’ve learned is one way of not keeping that knowledge to myself.

These posts aren’t medical advice and they aren’t comprehensive. They reflect a mix of lived experience, careful listening to experts, and what I’ve learned through reading, research, and conversation.

If you’re looking for the personal context behind why I’m writing this series, start here:

Context / Bridge
→ I Was Told I Was Fine

Posts will be published over a concentrated period and added here as they go live.

xoxo💋
Paola

Between Selves is a personal publication about identity, transition, and the space between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming. Women’s Health for the Long Run is one inquiry within that larger work.

Not out loud.
Internally. Constantly.

I kept having these quiet conversations with myself. I’d tell myself why this made sense, why it wasn’t a big deal yet, why I just needed a little time. It felt easier to explain it than to stop and feel how off everything was.

That’s always been a reflex of mine.

Growing up around emotional instability, I learned early how to stay alert. I learned how to read the room, manage myself, anticipate what was coming. I learned that being perceptive was safer than being porous. That understanding things gave me leverage, even when I couldn’t control them.

My mind learned to work overtime.

It learned how to scan, assess, explain. How to stay ahead of emotion by organizing it. How to keep moving by staying cerebral. I didn’t check in with my body. I didn’t ask what my younger self was holding. I didn’t listen for anything quieter or less coherent. I relied almost exclusively on my brain because it had always kept me safe.

That reflex followed me into adulthood. Into leadership. Into responsibility. Into a life where being capable wasn’t just rewarded, it was required.

So when I started to feel off, I did what I’ve always done.

I rationalized.

I told myself this was burnout. Years of pressure catching up. A heavy season doing what heavy seasons do. Of course my energy was low. Of course my edges felt dull. Of course I wasn’t functioning the way I used to.

Burnout fit the story I already believed about my life.
It felt earned.

It also let me stay upright.

As long as I could explain what was happening, I didn’t have to interrupt anything. I didn’t have to stop. I didn’t have to question the systems I relied on — discipline, endurance, competence, will.

I just needed time.
Perspective.
Space.

Except time didn’t change anything.

What I didn’t say out loud — what I barely let myself think — was how embarrassed I felt by my own inability to function. Not in dramatic ways. In small, quiet ones.

I couldn’t do things that had always been easy for me. I couldn’t initiate. I couldn’t follow through. I couldn’t summon the internal momentum I had built my life around.

And instead of asking what was happening inside me, I judged myself for it.

I kept thinking, this shouldn’t be this hard.
I kept wondering what was wrong with my discipline.
I kept assuming I was failing some internal test I’d always passed before.

I started feeling ashamed before I even knew why. Not loud shame. The kind that makes you smaller in your own eyes. The kind that convinces you to hide the evidence and double down on self-control.

So I intellectualized harder.

I told myself I was reacting to professional loss. That losing ground in work would naturally destabilize anyone. That meaning had cracked, and of course my energy followed. That once things stabilized externally, I would recalibrate internally.

That explanation made sense too.

Work had always been an organizing force for me. A compass. When that cracked, everything felt less anchored. I assumed the rest of me would catch up once I found my footing again.

But even as I told myself that, something didn’t line up.

I wasn’t spiraling.
I wasn’t avoiding.
I wasn’t resisting my life.

I was trying — quietly, consistently — to do what I’d always done. And it wasn’t working.

The more I explained myself, the less responsive my body became. The more I reasoned, the further away I felt from the parts of me that actually register truth — my body, my heart, my younger self, my spirit. The brain was running the show alone, unchecked, convinced it could think its way back to capacity.

I understood plenty. I still couldn’t move.

What strikes me now isn’t that I missed the signs.

It’s how completely I trusted my mind with something it couldn’t actually handle on its own.

I didn’t lack awareness.
I lacked listening.

Rationalizing had always protected me. It had gotten me through instability, pressure, responsibility. It had helped me survive by staying sharp and ahead.

I didn’t realize it had also learned how to override everything else.

I kept asking myself why I couldn’t do what I’d always done, instead of asking what part of me was no longer being heard.

And by the time that question started to surface, the strategy I’d relied on for most of my life — letting my head make all the decisions — had already exhausted itself.

xoxo💋
Paola

At first, I tried to make sense of it the only way I know how. I told myself I was tired, burnt out, maybe depressed. I told myself this was situational, that anyone would feel this way given everything life had been throwing at me. I wasn’t dismissing it; I was normalizing it. I was intellectualizing what was happening, contextualizing it, convincing myself that this was a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances.

But my body didn’t respond to my reasoning.

I started waking up exhausted, not in a sleepy way or a low-motivation way, but in a depleted, hollowed-out way that didn’t lift as the day went on. Getting out of bed became physically difficult, not emotionally dramatic. My body felt heavy in a way I couldn’t override, and that confused me more than it scared me at first.

Until it didn’t.

I’ve always had strong willpower. It’s been one of my defining traits. When things get hard, I decide, I push, I move. That muscle has carried me through most of my life. And suddenly, it was useless. I would lie in bed fully awake, knowing exactly what needed to be done, and feel completely unable to generate the force to do it. Not resistant. Not avoidant. Just empty of propulsion.

I couldn’t reconcile that with who I understood myself to be.

Then the cognitive changes started. I began losing words I use every day. Not forgetting names or details, but losing entire thoughts mid-sentence. I would be speaking and suddenly the idea would vanish, as if someone had pulled the plug. I started worrying about meetings, especially with people outside my company. It was embarrassing. I could feel the panic underneath the conversation: please don’t happen, please don’t happen; and sometimes it did.

Around the same time, my emotional regulation fell apart. I started crying suddenly, disproportionately, over things that would never have touched me before. It didn’t feel like sensitivity or vulnerability. It felt like something inside me had lost its governor. My mental health was a wreck, and what made it worse was that I didn’t understand why.

That’s when fear entered in a real way; not fear of illness, not fear of dying, but fear of not being able to return to myself. I kept trying to talk to myself the way I always have. Snap out of it, Paola! Come on. You’re strong. You’ve handled worse. But I physically couldn’t. And that was new.

No one around me really understood what was happening, not because they didn’t care, but because they weren’t used to seeing me this way. They were used to me being the one who holds it together, who powers through, who figures things out. I wasn’t that anymore. Or maybe I was, and it no longer mattered.

What frightened me most wasn’t feeling weak; it was realizing that my strength had always been a mechanism, and that mechanism had stopped responding.

I stopped trusting my energy, then my cognition, then my emotional responses. I didn’t know what was a symptom and what was a reaction. I kept waiting for the old formula to work: try harder, sleep more, eat cleaner, reset next week; but nothing moved.

This wasn’t a conversation I could reason my way through. It wasn’t a mindset problem or a discipline problem. It wasn’t something I could outwork.

My body didn’t break.
It refused to keep taking orders.

And I don’t yet know how to live inside that truth.

xoxo💋
Paola

I’m still leading a company, making decisions, carrying responsibility, and moving through days that require clarity and momentum. From the outside, much of my life still looks functional—very successful actually! But internally, the framework that once made everything feel coherent has shifted.

Not because it was wrong, but because life shifted in ways I didn’t anticipate, forcing me to pause and reassess rather than push forward on instinct.

This is not a space for polished conclusions or neatly wrapped lessons. It’s a space for the in-between—the moments most of us live in, but rarely name. The stretch between who we were and who we’re becoming. Between certainty and doubt. Between ambition and embodiment. Between the identities that once fit and the ones we’re learning to outgrow.

Some readers will recognize themselves immediately in that in-between; others may simply be curious, reflective, or drawn to these questions without yet naming them as change.

For a long time, my life was organized around achievement. Success provided structure. Momentum gave me meaning. And when things were moving forward—professionally, visibly—it was easy to know who I was.

Then several things happened at once.

My body changed in ways I didn’t recognize or understand.
My business entered a season that forced me to move differently.
Questions I had postponed—about fertility, motherhood, purpose, and choice—became harder to ignore.
My sense of privacy and safety was disrupted.
And the familiar anchors I had relied on quietly loosened.

None of this came with a clear map.

What it gave me instead was an invitation: to stop rushing toward the next version of myself and stay with the questions longer than felt comfortable.

Between Selves is where I explore those questions in real time.

I write about identity when it’s no longer reinforced by external validation. About womanhood, aging, fertility, and the ways our bodies speak before we’re taught how to listen. About ambition, self-worth, grief, power, anger—and what happens when purpose goes quiet. About patterns we inherit, roles we perform, and the courage it takes to dismantle them.

This is also a space where I’m honest about what I don’t yet know.

I don’t write from resolution. I write from the middle—from the questioning, the recalibrating, the moments where certainty dissolves and something more honest begins to take shape.

If you’re in a season of transition—personal, professional, physical, existential—this space is for you. If you’ve outgrown an identity but haven’t yet named the next one. If you’re learning to sit in uncertainty without abandoning yourself. And if you’re not sure you’re in one, but find yourself lingering on these questions anyway, you’re welcome here too.

This isn’t a guide.
It isn’t a manifesto.

It’s a companion—for the in-between.

Welcome to Between Selves.

Not because it was provocative.
But because it was clarifying.

It made me realize something important about myself:

I don’t need New Year’s resolutions.
They quietly make me feel like a failure.

Resolutions turn desire into pressure.
Vision into obligation.
And progress into perfectionism.

I end up stuck—endlessly refining ideas in my head, waiting for the right moment, the right version, the right confidence.

So instead of resolutions, I’m choosing something else this year—inspired by her words, but grounded in my own lived truth:

Fuck yeses and fuck nos.

Because clarity creates movement.
And progress matters more than perfection ever will.

Fuck Yes

Fuck yes to taking the first step—even when it scares me.
Especially when it scares me.

I’m done waiting until ideas feel fully formed, polished, or bulletproof.
Perfection has been my favorite hiding place.
I’ve called it “preparation,” but it was really fear.

Fear of failing.
Fear of being vulnerable.
Fear of being seen trying—and not succeeding.

This year, if something pulls at me, excites me, or won’t leave me alone, I’m taking the step.

Movement over mastery.
Action over overthinking.

Fuck yes to listening to my body—because it doesn’t lie.
Yoga tells me the truth.

It shows me what nourishes me.
What drains me.
What brings me back into my body, my creativity, my desire, my aliveness.

I’m listening again.

Fuck yes to living on purpose, not by expectation.
I don’t want a life that looks good.
I want one that feels right.

I’m being intentional—and relentless—about protecting my energy, honoring my desires, and building what I actually want, not what’s expected of me.

Fuck yes to trusting myself more than external approval.
My instinct.
My inner authority.
My knowing.

I’m done outsourcing my truth for validation or likability.
I trust myself more than the room.

Fuck yes to regulating my nervous system and prioritizing my health.
Peace over pressure.
Health over hustle.
Presence over performance.

I want my vibrancy back.
My confidence.
My sensuality.
I want to feel alive—and at home in my body again.

That’s not indulgence.
That’s self-respect.

Fuck No

Fuck no to perfectionism.
It’s not discipline.
It’s fear wearing a nicer outfit.

Perfection keeps me stalled, overthinking ideas that never meet the world.
It convinces me I’m not ready—when readiness was never the requirement.

Fuck no to fear of failure running my life.
Especially the fear of being seen failing.

I grew up in an environment where achievement was rewarded — good grades, success, visible wins.
Failure wasn’t encouraged, and often felt shameful.

That conditioning taught me to hesitate.
To wait until I was sure.
To only move when success felt likely.

I’m unlearning that now.

Trying and learning beats hiding and wondering every time.

Fuck no to empathy at my own expense.
I’ve noticed a pattern in myself — being too understanding, too generous with excuses, too willing to justify behavior that doesn’t actually feel okay.

I call it empathy.
Patience.
Seeing the bigger picture.

But when compassion requires me to shrink, over-function, or explain away treatment that diminishes me, it stops being compassion.

It becomes self-betrayal.

I can understand someone’s circumstances without accepting behavior that costs me my dignity.
I can be kind and clear.
I can hold compassion without lowering my standards.

Fuck no to isolating myself when I’m not okay.
I’ve learned to tell myself that being honest about not being okay makes me look weak.
So instead of reaching out — even for a listening ear — I retreat.
I distance myself.
I carry it alone.

I confuse strength with silence.
And positivity with pretending.

But isolating myself doesn’t make me stronger — it just makes things heavier.

I’m learning that I can be honest about not being okay without becoming negative.
That I can ask for support without collapsing.
That connection is not a failure of resilience — it’s part of it.

The author, , invited her readers to reflect on two questions:

• What is a clear fuck yes for you right now?
• What would change if you stopped negotiating yourself to keep the peace?

My clearest fuck yes right now is simple—and not easy:

Taking the shot.

For me, that means choosing action over perfection.
Starting before I feel ready.
Letting myself be seen trying, instead of staying safe in my head.

This year, Taking the Shot is my anchor—the theme I’m coming back to whenever I feel myself stalling, overthinking, or waiting for certainty.

If I stop negotiating myself to keep the peace…

I become authentically happier.

Not performatively fine.
Not externally successful but internally exhausted.

Actually happy.
Grounded.
Aligned.

Before I end this, I want to return to the questions Michelle posed — the ones that ask us to look honestly at what we’re choosing, and what we’re negotiating away.

Then write your own Fuck Yes / Fuck No list.

Put it on your mirror—where you see it while washing your face.
Put it on your computer screen—where you glance when you get stuck.
Put it anywhere you need a reminder of what you’re choosing.

And if it helps, give your year a theme. One word. One anchor.

In the spirit of that theme, this is my first Substack article.

Putting my thoughts out here—publicly, imperfectly—takes more vulnerability than I expected. I don’t have a following. I don’t have a strategy. I’m not trying to build an audience.

I just wanted to put my thoughts into the world—and let them exist.

That, for me, is taking the shot.

And this year, I’m choosing courage over comfort.

xoxo💋
Paola