Dear Reader, As women in midlife, we have choices. We can deny the natural cycles of life and ignore the fact that aging holds great potential, or we can embrace perimenopause and discover the gifts that it holds. The results of all our choices have consequences. In my opinion, staying unconscious and denying that menopause can be a pathway to a vibrant, transformative, developmental stage in our lives is tragic. It means that we miss out on a journey of deepening awareness of ourselves and...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, As you know, we've been interested in the transformational and psychological power of aromas for a long time and have partnered with these aromatic allies in psychedelic-assisted therapy over the years. Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is becoming popular. Some people are calling it a renaissance, although that term has been called into question, because who is it a renaissance for? (This is really a topic for another time.) Psychedelic-assisted therapy is really an umbrella...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Dear Reader, Everything takes longer than we imagine, and the new Alchemy of Menopause website was no exception. On the other hand everything happens when it should. When I began to teach the Alchemy of Menopause nearly nine years ago now, I got some backlash. How dare I talk about menopause as something powerful and positive. Women regularly unsubscribed to the Alchemy of Menopause Instagram when they realized what I was saying. It was frustrating, but I truly believed in menopause as a...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, This past weekend we taught a live online class for practitioners wanting to integrate aromas into psychedelic therapy. As usual we learnt new things about the subject through teaching it. The main thing being that, with or without psychedelics, when we open to our own wounded healer’s journeys of profound inner healing, aromas are amazing allies and on that level have their own psycho-active qualities. It’s just a question of allowing. As is the case in all our classes, the...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, I don’t usually write an email on a Thursday, but I just had to share today. Last night we guided an Aromatic Journey with rose geranium. As I’ve mentioned in a previous email, geranium hasn’t been my favorite oil. I was excited to change my preconceptions and so have been working with it for the past month. However, it wasn’t until we journeyed with it as a group and really spent two hours giving it and us the time to explore and build relationship with collectively that the...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, As perimenopause and menopause go from being taboo to hot, talked about subjects, I think it’s interesting to look at what we tell ourselves about this midlife phase in our lives. I believe women need to reclaim this transformational period and this means not just talking about it more, but honing in on where our beliefs and attitudes towards it stem from. Self-talk is a science in that psychologists have studied the internal conversations we have with ourselves and have found...
5 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, Aromas, which I call the Molecules of Connectedness, have brought us together. For example, you've found out about our work and signed up for our newsletter. You appreciate that aromas bypass the intellect, and open doors to your individual unconscious and the collective unconscious. In our work and in us connecting, we're being guided by aromas, even if our egos think we're in charge. Nevertheless, we hear from a lot of people who tell us "When I smell an aroma, I just don't...
7 months ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, The subject of older women has gone from being a no-go topic, hidden away in the privacy of ageing women’s psyches, to being a hot-off-the-press conversation. I’ve been working with women going through menopause since 2017 and listening carefully to the conversations being had in the media, on podcasts, in books, etc. And I’m worried. I’m worried, because I believe the journey to elder-hood is at the risk of being ‘cashed in on.’ By this, I mean that it's not taken to the depths...
8 months ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader, We're all familiar with the idiomatic expression "Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees," which to me means we're too close to, or immersed in a subject to see the bigger picture, to get an outside view. In my lateral thinking, the next thing that pops up is the opening of Dante's "Divine Comedy", (written over 800 years ago, and yet still so relevant to our modern experience): "In the middle of the journey of life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct...
8 months ago • 2 min read