Flourishing After Forty Five

Looking for Trouble

Melissa West — 2009-08-21T15:14:20-07:00

When I took ice skating lessons in my thirties, I met an older woman who was having a ripsnorting time falling on the ice.

Intrigued, I asked Karin why she was having so much fun looking like a fool.

She grinned and replied, simple: as a rank beginner she felt more alive than she had in years.

Say what? There I was busting my gut proving to the world and myself that I was competent and powerful. Why in tarnation would anyone be happy to be so visibly ignorant?

Over lattes Karin had the goodwill to explain. Turns out she was an expert in biomedical research.

And was getting quite tired of feeling like she knew it all. To reclaim her zest she picked the thing most unlike research that lit her up in anticipation: ice skating.

So Karin was falling down every other breath, clueless about what she was doing, and in heaven.

I couldn't understand, and dropped out after several lessons.

Fast forward several decades. Like Karin, I've done the expert thing: four books published, teaching around the world, yada yada yada. I've loved it, but was getting tired of taking myself so seriously.

So I asked myself in May what I most needed to flourish (thanks, you wonderful sisters in the Flourishing After 45 teleclass), and the answer came back loud and clear: Tai Chi. Even though I've wanted to learn tai chi for 30 years, it hasn't happened. Why, I hear you ask?

It's like this: Each of our lives is like a planet. And what we do is to cover the surface of our planet with stuff: physical stuff, emotional stuff, mental stuff.

What we don't know is that marvelous things (experiences, people, learnings) are circling our planets, just looking for a place to land. They have to keep orbiting, though, because there's no space for even a miniscule landing strip. Some of these things have been patiently circling for decades by the time we pass that 45 year mark.

No landing space, no landing.

This is what happened for me with tai chi. I've known ever since living in Hong Kong in my 20's that tai chi is closer to me than my own heartbeat.

But it took me 30 years to clear landing space for it. Two bulky things blocked its landing: being a busy mom, and my resistance to looking and feeling foolish and ignorant.

I realized that with daughter Elise launched, I had the space for something new. And I was surprised to discover that, like Karin, I was hungry to be a beginner in something that lit me up.

So I signed up for the summer all-the-classes-you-can-take special at the Embrace the Moon dojo. The day I sent my money in, I read this from Nicholas Hobbs: "The key to zest and joy and deep fulfillment: to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become."

Choosing trouble: that's exactly what I was doing!

Listen up: this kind of trouble isn't about creating chaos and conflict and drama. Honestly, sisters, by the time we hit fifty most of us are pretty accomplished at that ;-)

No, ladies, this trouble is sweet trouble, zesty trouble, Trouble with a capital T. Trouble that ejects you from your well-upholstered ruts and lands you in the deep currents of the river of your own best life.

I starting hieing my overweight, slightly-out-of-shape 54 yo self to the dojo 4 times a week. I felt shy, insecure, and scared. I wondered what insanity had driven me to this. And I loved it.

I released my fear of foolishness the third week of class, and dove headlong into delight. The teacher demonstrated a tai chi step and we practiced 4 or 5 times. Kim told us to continue while she observed.

Everyone kept practicing.

Except me.

I couldn't remember how to start. This, foot, here? No. Here? No. I watched others and I still couldn't remember. I waved my arms around tai chi-like, but couldn't achieve liftoff.

I felt humiliated to say out loud, Help, I don't have a clue what to do.

But I cleared my throat and confessed my abysmal ignorance to the entire dojo.

To my surprise, I didn't die. Kim came over and helped me.

And to my even greater surprise, I melted into joy. I felt like the Fool in the tarot deck, stepping off the cliff, having not a clue where I was going to land, but trusting the fall.

I'm learning how freeing it can be to know nothing, to let go of my carefully nurtured expert self, to return to zesty foolishness and sweet-spot Trouble.

When you find your Trouble, everything changes. To experience that luscious inrushing of new life makes you ask, where else can I invite this in? And what in my life is standing in the way of more?

So I'm clearing more landing space (more about that in future newsletters), and am celebrating all sorts of new things on my planet.

Being an oldest child, what I want all y'all to do is to play tai chi, because I know that's the finest Trouble in the world ;-)

But wait ... be still, my heart ... I realize that tai chi is my Trouble, not yours. And yours is out there, patiently orbiting your life-planet, if it hasn't landed already.

So, sisters, what Trouble sings to you? And how can you clear space for it to make a 3-point landing in your life?

Somewhere, out there in space, is Trouble with your fine name emblazoned all over it.

Happy landing.

No More Second Hand Life

Melissa West — 2008-12-09T14:24:00-08:00

OK, I admit it: I'm a recovering self-help junkie.

My drug of choice was books that told me how to become happier, healthier, thinner, sexier (though I never actually did the programs). I felt comforted to know that if I just worked hard enough, I could make myself over into a loveable, wonderful me.

That changed at around 50. I just got plumb tuckered out from trying so hard to make my inside (and my outside) match up to the expert of the moment's Prescription for a Happy Life. What started engaging me a whole lot more than being the ultimate with-it woman was learning how to nurture and celebrate me. Kinky, marvelously imperfect me.

I remembered the story told by Rabbi Zusya many hundreds of years ago to his students. He said something like, "You know, in the world to come, God's not gonna ask me 'Why were you not Moses?' or 'Why were you not Abraham?' No way. What God's gonna ask me is 'Why were you not Zusya?'"

What a question! What if we ask our sweet selves the same question, not in the hereafter, but now?

I started asking myself, and fell in love with my life.

I "came out" as the unexpurgated me for one of my 50th birthday presents to myself. I wrote, with the love and support of my incredible girlfriends, a wildly truthful profile of myself for an online dating service. Here I am, world, I said, this is who I am in all my luscious imperfection. Not a sanitized, presentable, nice version (no small task for someone who was constantly told as a child to "behave yourself"). It took me six months (and loving, um, butt-kicking, from said girlfriends) to write it and dare to post it. And oh, once the terror of such visibility passed, the exhilarating freedom of finally showing up as the real thing, not everyone else's version of what I should be!***

Looks like I'm not the only one stepping out (if we burned our bras in the 70's, maybe now we toss our self-help books in the same fire). Studies show that boomer women, in droves, are far more interested in getting real than in getting fixed. They're (we’re!) a whole lot more excited about just being ourselves than in wasting precious life energy trying to make themselves into someone else's version of Woman. No more shoehorning our ripe and fertile spirits into a teeny, airbrushed Madison Avenue self. Rather, the invitation (and the compelling urge) at this wonderful, icon-breaking time of our lives is to let go of that "pretend" self, and meet the world from our glorious, hard-earned, rich complexity.

I'm still thrilled to grow and learn-I just don't want to waste my time in the ultimate unkindness of demanding that I be other than who I really am. I read a self-help book every now and then, and I love my monthly Oprah magazine. How do I know what's supporting my journey of unfolding aliveness, and what's falling back into the nasty pit of self-improvement? Here are my three criteria:

* Does it (book, program, class) leave me feeling more alive, or smaller and constricted?

* Am I trying it from a place of curiosity, playfulness, and self-kindness, or from a place of beating myself up for not being perfect?

* Do I experience it as a luscious invitation or a life-sucking should?

As I give up improving myself, and spend more time and energy dancing to my own internal music, I find myself falling deeper and deeper in love with me. With me. Who woulda thunk it?

I have a client, an artist, who once brought in a manifesto on second hand art, art that looks like someone else's, that is wanting for that vital, creative, unto itself sort of spark. After reading me this manifesto, she said that after coaching it was how she felt about her life as well. No more second hand life! No more life cobbled together from everyone else's ideas about how her life should look, and how she should be. From then on she engaged in the delightful adventure of living a first-hand life.

So, ladies: No more second-hand lives! No more second-hand selves! What do you need in order to become the finest, most nourished first hand you? What, and who, will support you claiming your first hand life? What's your first step, to your own soul's music?

*** If you're curious about what happened, I received--to my total delight--almost 40 responses from very interested men, including, first and foremost, my husband! What I really got from this (along with the love of my life) was knowing that what lights others up is a lit-up me.

Honoring Your Own Sabbath

Melissa West — 2008-10-11T14:31:00-07:00

I've been experimenting, and I love what I'm discovering.

Remember the Sabbath? Growing up that meant Sunday School (boring), lunch at my grandmother's (a little less boring), and then sitting around all afternoon (how boring can you get?). Sabbath meant, well, arrgghhhhhhhhhh.........

Fast forward almost a half-century (can that really be so?). Take one boomer woman, frazzled from decades of doing, doing, doing... Marry her off to a guy who actually loves taking naps (me, I'm an abject failure at it-I actually bought a CD that promised me ultimate 20 minute naps, but I fidgeted my way through it several times and donated it to Goodwill).

Have her realize, one Sunday afternoon when husband is napping and she's washing windows, that she's spent an ungodly amount of her life worshipping at the altar of her to-do list. Even gardening and meditating had become about Getting Stuff Done; plant the bamboo, check. Morning meditation finished, check. Unremitting busyness cramped my spirit and made me cranky.

I stopped mid-window and looked up the word "Sabbath" in my etymological dictionary. I discovered that it simply means "rest" in Hebrew. Sabbath isn't about going to church. Sabbath is about finding the holiness of being, of resting into life.

I decided then and there to ease into one Sabbath day a week. I say "eased into" because the notion of spending an entire Saturday sans email, sans to-do list, sans schedule made me hyperventilate. I gave each one up gently, as I was ready. I set as the intention for my Sabbath day that my Being would inform my Doing. In the vernacular, that meant not doing anything unless I damn well really felt like it.

I recently gave a keynote, "Drinking from the Well," at a women's retreat. I opened with a Sufi saying, “The aim is not to drink until you are so full that you never have to drink again; the aim is to cultivate the perfect thirst, so that you never stop drinking.” I realized, while preparing the talk, that that is what I really meant by Sabbath: drinking deeply from the waters of my own Being.

The point of Sabbath, I realized, was to cultivate my thirst for rest and renewal, for reconnecting with my own Source. The point was to see that Sabbath wasn't a one time event, or meant for when I was sick or utterly exhausted. The point was to honor that my need for Sabbath was as essential as my need for water.

So what does my Sabbath look like? It might include:

* lolling in bed until noon, drinking coffee, reading, curling up with cats

* gardening in a delightfully aimless way

* meditating longer, or playing with different forms of meditation

* just sitting (remember Ferdinand the bull?), and loving it

* strolling (I'm a dedicated "flaneuse," a word I made up from the French "to stroll," the French having made strolling into a high art)

* an evening gin and tonic with David on the lush and leafy secluded patio we created last year

* lavender-scented bubble baths by candlelight

* other activities David would blush for me to describe...

I've eliminated email (even if from friends, it pulls me into doing mode), laundry (maybe someday I can wash clothes as a Sabbath celebration, but don't hold your breath), going into my office, grocerying, cleaning. Anything Useful.

So how has cultivating my Sabbath-thirst affected the rest of my life? I'm noticing that during the week:

* I take more frequent breaks during the day, and a longer lunch

* I'm more patient, generous, and compassionate with others

* I'm generally kinder to myself

* I feel more creative and inspired

* I shrug off stress a little more easily

* grace and serendipity show up frequently, or perhaps I'm simply open to receiving them more

* and--most surprising of all--I'm enjoying whatever I'm doing more (yes, even laundry), because I'm bringing Sabbath ease and pleasure to weekday activities. I'm learning to Be while I Do.

So ladies, what do you think? Would you like to join with me in this experiment? I have a friend who began by dipping her toe into a Sabbath Hour, rather than a day. Thank the lolling and lazy gods, this is isn't about doing it Right.

Experiment in the spirit of play, of curiosity about what lights you up, what slakes your deepest thirst, moment by moment. Discover the delights of flowing with the pull of your spirit's tides and rhythms, rather than everyone else's timetables. Experience the ample graces of simply Being.

Fifty is NOT the New Forty

Melissa West — 2008-09-21T16:36:00-07:00

And, while we're at it, Sixty is not the New Fifty.

I had a fabulous time last weekend leading a retreat for 20 wonderful women (and one fantastic man!). At one point, I looked around the circle of middle-aged faces, radiant with love, experience, and full living, and thought: These are the gorgeous faces of 50 and 60 year old women...

So what's this craziness about Fifty being the New Forty? What cultural mishigas is it that the finest compliment we get is that our aliveness makes us seem 10 years younger? Why is growing older conflated with loss of beauty and draining away of power and delight?

Know what it makes me think of, ladies? A chocolate covered slug. Rich chocolate covering-that's right-a juicy northwest slug. Yuck.

This "Sixty is the New Fifty" line is like being offered a slug truffle by the media. And feeling complimented by it is like taking the first bite.

I appreciate the overt message, the chocolate covering: We've got more oomph than any previous generation. That tastes great.

But hey: Here comes the slug! Why is it a compliment to say that in our oomph we resemble 40 year olds? The hidden message-the slug-is that growing older is shameful, something to hide. Is the best the media can come up with is that we seem ten years younger than our birth certificates?

I don't know about you, but I don't consider that either a compliment or an accurate reflection of my own experience.

Would I like to have 40 year old skin and pain free knees, again? You bet. Would I like my breasts to migrate back north? Of course.

Would I be willing to trade the sensual comfort of the way I now inhabit my body, or the sumptuous freedom of knowing who I really am, no apologies or excuses?

No way in the world.

I had only a smidgen of this fullness and confidence ten years ago. Less wrinkles, but lots more insecurity, spending precious life energy trying to prove to that I was loveable, attractive, and successful.

Whew. I wear my luscious self out just thinking about trying that hard.

Age, for those who free of cultural fetters, is a feast. Now that's like the chocolate caramel truffle my daughter and I ate at Fran's chocolate on Sunday. Tastes great on the outside. Tastes even better after the first bite. Erotically delectable all the way down.

Ladies, the world is our oyster (or our chocolate caramel truffle). I love being in love with myself and my unfolding life. I love that I can say that outright, without shame or fear of what others may think. I love that I can say that even with the recent death of both parents, the loss of my beloved New Orleans, bursitis in my right knee, and relentlessly sagging eyelids, breasts, and belly.

I used to believe that I had to have all my ducks in a row in order to be deeply happy. Now, I don't even worry about lining the ducks up (too much like herding cats). The joy, the deeply erotic pleasure of my own almost 53 year old life is mine to be deeply grateful for, no matter what the damn ducks are up to.

Let's refuse the media's slug truffles, good as they may look on the outside.

I say to the media: Look at me. This is the face, the luminous, lined face of the New Fifty (or the new Almost Fifty Three). This is the body, the gorgeous, sagging, strong, sometimes achy body of the New Fifty. This is the life, the luscious, lit-up, sometimes painful, powerfully spiritual life of the New Fifty.

When we feast on our real-age lives, we are gifting and blessing ourselves in celebrating the truth. We are also gifting our daughters (what roles models for 50, and 60, and 70!) and sons, their children, and down the generations. Not only do we win, but our children and their children and their children win as well.

Give me caramel truffles any day...

Lights On, Ladies

Melissa West — 2008-08-21T14:29:00-07:00

Marie, a subscriber, writes, "Does 'lit-up' mean being manically supercharged? If so, forget it. I'm not a Christmas tree."

Thank you, Marie, and thank all the heavens that we're at an age where we can say what we mean!

Being lit up isn't reciting affirmations ad nauseum or pumping yourself with positivity. Lights-on experiences are more candlelight glow than Las Vegas neon. For yours truly, lying in bed with cats and husband, listening to David read aloud...Bare hands in rich, loamy dirt, creating beauty in my garden, blissfully alone with robins, roses, and the wind...Swoon-worthy food and wine, and delicious conviviality with our monthly dinner group...

Here's the kicker: what lights you up lights up the world. One of my favorite quotes is from Buddhist scholar Howard Thurman: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

As a voluptuous, deeply spiritual woman, here's how I render it: The world urgently needs us magnificent, lit-up boomer women. From the epicenter of our pleasure we can rock creation.

Ever been "helped" by a grim do-gooder? Ever been helped by someone lit up from within? Getting served by someone luminous in body and soul, even a parking garage attendant, makes this woman light up too, and happy to pass it along! No telling how far the ripples of our own radiance spread out into the world. That's the joy and the magic of lighting up. Isn't it a wonder that just being our own deeply pleasured selves can help the world in ways we will never know?

Clients have asked, "if I'm THAT pleasured, why would I care about anyone, or want to change anything?" "Because," I respond,” when you are lit up, you are in love. And what love does is overflow.” What craziness is it to believe we must be outraged or heartbroken to make a difference? Do we really think that the happier we are, the unkinder and lazier we become? Let’s get this straight: the more lit up we are, the more our own kindness and caring flourish.

Lights-on living is truly win-win, gals. We get to feel great, and we then get to offer ourselves to the world from that bounty. I ask you, how good can it get?

So what is it that lights you up? Not what lights up your lover, best friend, mother, self-help guru du jour, or even the Dalai Lama. Doing what anyone else says should light you up is like swan diving right back into that slimy cesspool of a second-hand life.

No, sister--what lights you up? What makes your skin tingle and heart soar? What, in the doing of it, opens you wide to the sweet grace of the present moment?

Make a list of what lights you up. You'll have a customized menu to order from whenever you’re hungry for a dollop of delicious delight. Get open-mindedly curious about what deeply pleasures you. No censoring: nothing is too small, too brief, too naughty, too nice. My lights-on list ranges from painting my toenails (iridescent crimson just sends me) to meditating to delights that David would blush for me to describe. This past Saturday I spent the morning in bed, reading Eat, Pray, Love...ahhhh...and from that luscious, filled-up space had a wonderful time in the afternoon helping friends box up belongings for a major move.

Here's a question for you to luxuriate in: How would your life be enriched if you did something every day that made you ahhhh from deep in your belly and soul? How might topping off with pleasure enhance work, family life, friendships, volunteering?

Try it out and see: We're cheering you on, sister. The world needs you.

Stuff On My Cat

Melissa West — 2008-01-15T15:11:00-08:00

Have you ever visited www.StuffOnMyCat.com? If not, sashay on over for some great belly laughs.

You'll find cats buried in stickers, coat hangers, babies, action figures, post-its...you name it, some feline’s covered in it.

Even though I love the photos, I don’t need my bifocals to see that these cats are not happy campers, even with all their Stuff.

I looked like one of those cats when I was younger. I thought that pleasure was about The Stuff. You know the drill: I'll be totally happy when my life looks, metaphorically, like one of those inundated cats. Right house, right husband, right job, right kids, right car, right clothes...

It took me a loooong time to REALLY get it that pleasure and happiness are not about The Stuff. It seems to takes most of us a half-century or so, given our Stuff-crazy culture.

One of my clients discovered that it’s not about The Stuff simply by clearing out her closet. Grace was bogging down in her pleasure journey, so I suggested she literally make more room for pleasure to come in.

Bingo! Grace said she had a closet crammed with great clothes that dragged her poor spirit down each time she opened its door. I led her through a visualization where she realized that the clothes themselves didn’t light her up, even though she had thought that the more great clothes she had, the better she’d feel.

What she discovered gave her pleasure, instead, was the experience of wearing clothing that was beautiful, sensual, and comfortable. These three words, she said, gave her the feeling of purring like her cat.

Grace quickly realized that about 2/3 of The Stuff in her closet wasn’t purr-worthy. Saturday afternoon she turned off her phone, lit a lavender-scented candle, made herself a great latte, and put on some Joni Mitchell. She then went through her closet piece by piece and noticed what felt beautiful, sensual, and comfortable. No purr, no keep: the clothing went in the giveaway pile, no matter how much she felt like she “should” like it.

Grace then had a delicious time deciding where the clothes could go (remember Pleasurefesto Pillar #7, “Your Pleasure Lights up the World”), feeling like a bountiful queen with her largesse. She donated the clothes to an organization that helped battered women find good jobs.

Post-giveaway, Grace found that just looking in her closet elevated her. “I was so amazed,” she told me in our next session. “I really had thought, ‘more clothes, more pleasure.’ Now I know pleasure is my own experience of wearing clothes that make me purr.”

Over and over, both I and my clients discover that pleasure and happiness are about experiences, not Stuff. When I reflect on my trusty pleasure list, everything there is ultimately about the deep and sustaining happiness of connecting with others, of creating, of the nourishing eroticism of touching, smelling, seeing, of pure play.

After 50, The Stuff no longer holds its illusory sway over us, promising us that she who has the most toys wins. God bless the stuff--I'm not advocating for an ascetic’s life--but I can't find anything on The Pleasure List that isn't ultimately about an experience of pleasure.

So if pleasure isn’t about The Stuff, what about The Stuff?

Grace came back to me after the closet clearing with this important question. I invited her to play with paring down her Stuff to that which gave her the experience of purring. Once we realize that more Stuff doesn’t equal more pleasure, we can look at Stuff through our life-seasoned eyes and make pleasure-worthy choices.

At our ages, ladies, it’s quality, not quantity. And we get to decide what makes us purr.

I remember my own mother, at my age now, giving family jewelry and other treasures to me. And me, at my daughter’s present age, being confounded by her happily letting go of her Stuff.

Now I understand.

I get so jazzed thinking about having a purr-worthy home that here’s what I’m doing, and I invite you to play along. I’m going through my house, 10 pleasured minutes at a time. No making a chore of it. I’m simply going to notice what makes me purr, and what makes me feel like one of those beleaguered cats.

If it’s just Stuff (beleaguered cat), I’ll ask myself where it could go that would delight someone else. And invite myself to add more pleasure to the world by giving it away. This will include giving my daughter, with great love and pleasure, the same jewelry my mother gave me with such great love and pleasure.

I don’t want to look like one of those poor cats. Sisters, I’ve got better ways to love the time I’ve got left.

It's not about The Stuff.

It's about the purrrrrrrrr......

Pleasure, Grief, and Eros

Melissa West — 2007-10-15T15:39:00-07:00

This week is my mother’s yahrzeit, the first anniversary of her death.

I’m crying a lot, at unexpected times: swimming up from a night dream in tears; seeing our Japanese maples fire up in all their fall glory; hearing my mom’s dusky voice while I’m driving on the freeway.

I thought I was done with the grief of her. I was wrong.

At first, when the tide of pain started rising a month ago, I tried to “out-pleasure” it. Hey, I thought, I’m a pleasurista; surely I can outrun the grief with Ghirardelli chocolate, tender lovemaking, a trip to the Fiber Gallery to stroke some gorgeous silk and mohair yarn.

It didn’t work. Those pleasures ceased to be pleasures, and slid into numbing distractions (for the difference, see my Pleasurefesto)

What’s worse, I lost my connection with my own heart and soul. I lost what is most precious to me with pleasure, that sense of being deeply inside my own experience, of fully inhabiting my life. I exiled myself from myself.

I was going to try harder with the whole pleasure thing, but fortunately I remembered my favorite definition of insanity, trying harder at what isn’t working and expecting different results. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying harder, and at 53, sisters, time is too precious to ramble open-eyed down that dead end road.

I was left with my own deep grief, and my own ever-present curiosity. What if I quit setting pleasure against pain, as our culture does? What might my grief teach me, and where might it lead me?

So, at 3 a.m. a couple of weeks ago, I let go into my mother-grief, and leaned back into my own broken heart.

It didn’t lessen the grief, though there was a tiny part of me that hoped it surely would. I still dreamed about drowning in great grey ocean waves, still had hours of sitting with my cats and crying, still had moments of bargaining with life to get my mom back.

What changed?

I reinhabited my own body and soul.

I stopped being an exile, a frenetic exile, from my own life.

When I let myself sink into my grief, I rediscovered a trust in myself and my own basic experience. I rooted again in my own depths. I softened and opened into pain, the way I’ve learned to soften and open into pleasure.

I rediscovered eros, the deep and passionate connection with life, with body and soul, right there in the heart of my heartbreak. The erotic isn’t what happens just in the bedroom, just as the sacred isn’t what happens only in church. The erotic is our deep and passionate connection with life, with others, with our own essential experiences.

I learned that eros can encompass both pleasure and pain. I learned that there is a deep eros to life itself, to direct experience, even if that experience is lying in bed at 3 am, in tears, wanting my mom to come back.

I learned that the suffering of exile from myself and my own experience is far worse than the pain of heartbreak.

I learned that if I can truly let go into eros, the connection with my own body and soul, that when grief passes, as it always does (just like pleasure), my capacity for pleasure has also widened and deepened.

I can quit making divisions between “good” and “bad” experiences, and just let them be. I can stop exiling myself. I can quit the struggle to manipulate my experience to make it feel good, and sink into some deeper and more durable connection with life, and love.

Last week I spent an hour on the couch crying until my stomach hurt. I gave myself over to it, not having a clue where it would take me. When the wave receded, I just sat. My body thrummed with a quiet sort of ecstatic aliveness. I listened to a UPS truck rumble down the street. Kabobble (the 28-toed kitten) nuzzled me, and I buried my nose in her warm and sweet smelling fur.

And then, sisters, I had one of the finest chocolate episodes of my life.

A square of Lindt 70% dark chocolate was on the coffee table, and I ate it slowly, letting each small bite melt on my tongue. I was inside that experience, just as I had been inside the experience of sobbing for my mom. All I can say is, ahhh...

With my own mortality now on the horizon (rather than an entirely theoretical event as in my thirties), I want to be fully alive as long as I am alive. I no longer have the luxury of spending years in exile to myself, thinking I’ve got all the time in the world to find my way back Home.

Whatever time I’ve got left in this sweet and crazy adventure, I want to be in it and not someplace else. I want to roll around in every possible joy, pleasure, and happiness that comes my way. If that means opening fully to pain as well as pleasure, so be it. I’m done with the drama and suffering of exile.

I know there are more tears ahead, not just over the loss of my mom, but with the mounting losses that simply come with growing older. I certainly won’t go courting pain and sorrow, but when they come knocking, I want to open the door.

I want eros, not exile. I want Home.

Particularly if it makes chocolate taste that good...

If Not Now, When?

Melissa West — 2007-09-12T13:09:00-07:00

When you die, God and the angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself. ~Anonymous

My mom died last fall.

I sat by her hospital bed for a week as she lay dying. It being the south, all manner of relatives, blood and otherwise, streamed in and out of the hospital room and told long stories about Mama's life. My sisters and brother and I laughed buckets and cried rivers. The wonderful pleasures of drawn out southern tales, uninhibited laughter of aunts and cousins, and platters of fried chicken rose from the same deep life spring as the grief for my mom dying hour by hour in her white gown.

Since then, my own horizon of mortality—knowing that someday that will be me letting go of this sweet life—has loomed large in my mind's eye. The nearness of that horizon, whether measured in weeks or years or decades, hits me more in my fifties than it could have even 10 years ago.

I've thought often of that quote about being held accountable for pleasures denied. What luscious delights (that angels would gleefully incarnate for) have I tossed aside in my impatience to get stuff done?

In the bittersweet aching for my mom, I realize that this life is the one I've been given. This is it! This is it! In honor of her life, and mine, I stop now to relish the crisp delights of my afternoon Fuji apple, the sensual pleasure of my breasts rising and falling with my breath, the evening light shafting through the Japanese maples in the back garden, the scent of my husband when he leans over to kiss me.

And so, lovely and luscious women, I open my arms to welcome you as sisters on the journey! This full-bodied journey of awakening to the deep pleasures of life: pleasures that liberate us from lives far too tight and small for our spirits; pleasures that open us wide to what makes life meaningful and right. Pleasures that nourish our bodies and sustain our souls and, from that fullness, free us to give back to this sweet and achingly transient world.

I invite you to honor your own delicious pleasure, not as "self-care" or "self-improvement," but as light, water, and oxygen for your body and soul. I invite you to allow delight to heat up your own love and wisdom and ignite your passionate care for the world and for those around you.

What if authentic pleasure was neither detour nor distraction, but the royal road to your own heart and body and soul and spirit? What if your pleasures were a blessing, a mitzvah, for your own life and the life of everything and everyone around you?

What could you do, what could you offer, if you were lit up from within by the delights of your own body and soul?

When you meet your Maker and Source, what unsung pleasures will you have to account for?

Why not sing them into being now?

Is Your Pleasurestat Set Too Low?

Melissa West — 2007-07-11T08:39:00-07:00

The gorgeous, lazy, sensual days of summer are upon us, sisters. What’s a girl gonna do?

Sunday I spent the morning in bed reading a new novel, then meandered with husband David out to the private patio we made last summer by the waterfall and pond.

We feasted on a bowl of luscious organic black cherries, listened to the water and the birds, and just exhaled...ahhh...David made a dinner of curried cauliflower and sweet white corn while we re-watched the Wimbledon finals...ahhh...then a candlelight bath, and then...

and then I wanted to pick a fight with this lovely man!

I was suddenly anxious, critical, and nasty.

Yikes! It's a good thing I know about pleasurestats, or I would have hauled my poor self, and my beloved, right down into the muck after a 5 star day.

See, we all have internal gizmos--much like the thermostat for your central air--that let us know when we've hit our "upper limit" of pleasure and happiness. Just like the AC kicks on when the temperature gauge in the thermostat registers an upper limit, so we feel anxious and create difficulty and drama when our happiness reaches the upper limit of what we can allow ourselves.

That's the bad news. I don't know about y'all, but I'm perfectly capable of mangling my own happiness when I've had a string of days like Sunday. It used to confuse the hell out of me (why am I feeling so awful when I've had such a good time?) until I discovered pleasurestats.

Here's the good news, ladies. Research shows that our pleasurestats (the researchers have a clinical term for them...I much prefer "pleasurestat"), though stable over time, are perfectly amenable to being raised.

Where pleasurestats are set has a lot to do with old beliefs, guilts, and fears we all carry around happiness and pleasure. Here are some of mine, custom-made to damp down too much happiness (I call these The Nags)

* If I'm too happy, something terrible's bound to happen. David and I call this "earthquake thinking." His Armenian grandmother, suffering deep in her bones from generations of Turkish atrocities, would solemnly tell young David when he left her, "Watch out for earthquakes." Hunh? We laugh, but how many of us hunker down when the going gets good, steeling ourselves for the next metaphorical earthquake?

* I don't deserve this much pleasure and happiness. The "deserving" model of pleasure invokes the Almighty and Ever-watchful Bean Counter busily toting up when I've been naughty and when I've been nice. If left to this Bean Counter (who scowls like my mother, my, my third grade Sunday School teacher, and my high school headmistress all rolled into one) I'd never deserve any pleasure--my sins are far too many, I'm not perfect, and there's always another good deed to be done before I earn a little happiness.

* What about all the suffering in the world? What I've learned in thirty-five years of service (including several years of working in Vietnamese refugee camps in Hong Kong) is that bringing myself down doesn't do a damn thing to help others. This doesn't mean hardening my heart-there's plenty of grief in there for others' pain. What it does mean is that I do a whole lot more good from happiness. I've discovered, the hard and long way, that the best gift I can offer others is my deeply pleasured self.

What you'll find as you sashay down this pleasure-path is that you'll need periodically to reset your own pleasurestat, in order to allow yourself to live an even more luscious, pleasured, generous life. Here are some tips on how to tinker, or even overhaul:

* Enroll a coach. Most of us can't bootstrap ourselves into higher pleasurestats. A certified life coach or skilled psychotherapist can help more than anything else. Someone who is there just for you, who can create a safe and pleasured place for you to stretch into more pleasure and release what's binding your joy. I couldn't be relishing this voluptuous adventure I'm on with y'all, and with my own clients, without the support of my own bold and dionysian coach (thank you, Harriet!)

* Enlist girlfriends. Five or so years ago a bunch of us pleasure-loving, heat-seeking girlfriends got together and called ourselves the Pleasure Babes. We've helped each other fertilize our own gardens of earthly delights, and supported each other through the inevitable bumps of life. We've consistently helped each other raise our pleasurestats. How grateful I am to them, I could never ever express-I love y'all so much!

* Read books, watch movies. You can "catch" pleasure and a raised pleasurestat with the luscious company of books and movies that thrum at a higher setpoint than yours. I'll let y'all know in every newsletter some of the high-vibe resources that have helped me and helped my clients. I invite you to send me in your own favorite resources too, so I can pass them along here to other pleasure hungry sisters!

So what did I do last night to halt my slide down the slippery slope? I named which Nag had me in her wretched grasp, first to myself and then to David (it was "earthquake thinking"). I did some self-soothing (more about that in a later issue). I called one of the Pleasure Babes for lifting up. I also realized I was exhausted, and just plain needed sleep.

After about 45 minutes (much less time than it would have taken to have a fight and find our way back from that), I was back in bed with my lovely man. Much too tired to make love, but delighted to cuddle and reconnect.

We'll make up for lost time tonight...

First, the Bad News

Melissa West — 2007-06-21T20:44:00-07:00

First, the Bad News: Pleasure won't protect us from pain, death, loss, or illness. Pleasure cannot inoculate us from our own pain or the pain of the world. Pleasure isn't a magical amulet we wear over our hearts to prevent them from breaking.

Opening our hearts and souls to pleasure guarantees that our hearts and souls will be open to pain, too.

But wait, all is not lost.

Here's the Good News: being a pleasurista allows you to surf waves of pain just as you surf waves of pleasure, neither clutching nor resisting. This means pain can move through cleanly and clearly.

Being a pleasurista also empowers you to find pockets of pleasure and happiness even when pain has shown up at your door.

The way of the pleasurista is not some Madison Avenue fantasyland of adolescent beauty, endless sunsets, and nonstop Crest smiles. The way of the pleasurista is about learning to trust the process of life, living open hearted and curious, willing to step into adventure and Mystery.

And romping with pleasure wherever, and wherever, she shows her luscious face.

Great theory, I hear you say. But how does that really look? How do we keep returning to, and remembering, pleasure, even in illness, loss, death, and the profound pain of both our culture and the world?

First, a couple of stories from my clients;

Blake subscribed to a flower delivery service during a painful divorce, treating herself to beautiful weekly flower arrangements (her favorite pleasure). After mediation finished, she continued to send herself flower arrangements once a month. The best part was that with menopause brain she kept forgetting that she had set up this automatic treat, so each flower delivery was a surprise!

Georgia decided to journey through chemotherapy as a pleasurista. Her friends gave her hand and foot massages during her treatments. During one chemo these generous pleasuristas gave hand massages to the four other patients as well. "It was like a love feast, and the high point of those three months," Georgia told me. These same pleasuristas gave her weekly pedicures and manicures.

Georgia told me these times of being cared for by girlfriends were like oases in the desert she had to cross. Knowing an oasis was coming soon helped immensely when the desert crossings—the nausea, the bottomless fatigue, the fear—got really tough.

And from my own life:

The Way of the Pleasurista recently sustained me during the darkest fourteen months of my life: both parents suffered and died (Parkinson's and breast cancer); my daughter left home; my homeland, New Orleans, was devastated by Katrina and politics.

I chose to find pleasure wherever I could. I allowed David (The Husband) to cook me scrumptious meals, even when I didn't feel like eating. I watched funny movies three times a week, finding that sometimes I could laugh even when I thought I'd never smile again. I wrote gratitude lists. I lit rose-scented candles and meditated.

Surrounding myself with pleasure and love and beauty reminded me of a piece of Buddhist wisdom. Grief is like a fistful of salt, they say. If you dissolve it in a cup of water, just try sipping it: what you have is some pretty damn gaggy stuff (my words, not theirs). If, however, you take that same salt and dissolve it in a lake, the gag factor plummets.

We can't make the salt go away. What we can do is to dissolve it in the biggest container possible. Pleasure helps us make that bigger container, a container made large with love, caring, and beauty.

Knowing how to dissolve the salt of your pain is one of the sweet powers of a pleasurista.

After 45 years on the planet, our losses pile up, sisters: children leave home, illness finds us and those we love, marriages end, and parents die. We can shut down in the face of so much pain (many of us do, unfortunately, for the rest of our precious lives), or choose life, pleasure, beauty, and love even in the midst of sorrow.

And the final Good News: opening to both pleasure and pain (in other words, opening to life as it moves through us) makes us so much more grateful for the pleasure, the joy, the happiness, when it shows up.

We post-45 pleasuristas can celebrate pleasure, and beauty, and joy as the divine gifts that they are. Let sorrow and pain come, as they most certainly will.

Let us keep returning, as we can, to love, and beauty, and pleasure.