Self love... is reclaiming your pleasure
Join me on June 24th in Los Angeles for my Strawberry Moon Workshop
What does pleasure even mean?
I’ve been thinking about this so much: the definition of pleasure, and how it evolves (or devolves?) throughout our lives.
I tried googling the definition of pleasure, and honestly, there wasn’t much consensus. Some dictionaries defined it as a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment, while others tied it more closely to desire and gratification (a desire fulfilled).
According to ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, “Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.”
If you asked me about pleasure in my adolescence and early adulthood, I definitely approached it as the first good, as Epicurus said. There was a clear common thread: having fun, being activated in my body through play and human connection, adventure, intentional sensory overload, physical touch, the secret pursuit of vices. Somewhere along the way, my pleasures shifted. Creating for the sake of creating was replaced by making money and building a reputation. Learning new things was replaced by the joy of a completed to-do list. Dancing my face off at a concert was replaced by a quiet, silent, moment alone. In researching women’s pleasure in midlife, I recognize that this change didn’t only happen to me.
Women all around me are smart, successful, utterly exhausted and desperate for some alone time to do absolutely nothing. When I ask about their pleasure, I’m met with the facial equivalent of a question mark.
Satisfaction? Desire? Gratification?
How about doomscrolling while drinking a glass of wine.
This isn’t judgment.
We’re all aboard the same sinking boat on our way to No Pleasure Island.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Pleasure — the same pleasure of our childhood and young adulthood — hasn’t forgotten us. It is still available to us, right now, in the very bodies we sometimes forget even exist.
Pleasure awaits in your mindful presence.
Pleasure awaits in your curious self awareness and exploration.
Pleasure awaits in your conscious abandonment of perfection.
Pleasure awaits when you’re off your phone.
Pleasure awaits when you activate your body.
Pleasure awaits in our communal joy.
Pleasure awaits. Will you choose it?
June is the perfect time to reclaim your pleasure without apology. June’s Strawberry Moon carries with it the energy of indulgence, of ripening, of being in your body and in the now. When we choose pleasure over perfection, we take ourselves out of our minds and into our truest reality: the one we are breathing our way through, moment to moment.
How alive are you willing to be?
This is the question the Strawberry Moon is asking of you.
Please join me and my co-facilitator Jess Kimia of
Only a few spots remain. I’d love to reclaim pleasure with you.
Your poem, Summer Upgrades, is such a beautiful, life-affirming reminder. Thank you for these words! I will return to them again and again.
I love this definition of pleasure as "absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul". What a gift to reclaim ours. Hugs. x