Welcome to The Lavish Well—where this week, we’re talking about desire. Not just the sultriness of sexual desire, but the deeper current of aliveness that fuels curiosity, pleasure, motivation, and joy — and what happens when that current goes quiet.

Because when a woman’s spark fades, it’s rarely random.
And it’s almost never permanent.

Keep reading.
We’re uncovering what your body actually needs to want again. 👇

Many women experience a gradual dimming of desire in life, especially in midlife, even if only temporarily. I’m not talking just about sexual desire; I’m also talking about aliveness, for life. The curiosity, anticipation, pleasure, motivation, spark, play, and joy that fuel life.

The dimming happens slowly, like one of those giant candles you can’t see the wick or the flame of, once the candle has burned for several hours. It gets lost inside, and you forget about it because you can’t see its light. 

The sad, and even dangerous part, though, is that most accept this dimming as a “normal” part of adulthood.

But it’s not.  
It’s not. 

You see, despite motherhood, taking care of aging parents, being chronically stressed out, surviving trauma, and relationship issues with our partners, we are meant to live fully alive.

Not numbed out.

Not perpetually exhausted.

And certainly not settling for mediocrity in any area of our life.

The hard part is that even though we notice the quiet fading of our desire over the years, most women are at a loss as to what can be done about it.

Some start by trying to be really good about self-care—a weekend getaway with girlfriends, a yoga retreat in Bali. Others self-soothe with shopping, alcohol, Netflix, or over-giving to everyone but themselves.

Busyness can feel like purpose, for a while. And that’s kinda close to desire, ya know, because you have to have some semblance of desire to be working on purpose, right?

The truth is that no one has ever explained to us what is actually happening.

As women, we’ve just kept going, accepting our feelings as normal. We look back with nostalgia at the way we “used to be” or “used to feel” when we were younger and convince ourselves that those days are gone. That the feelings of desire, wanting, pleasure, and spark belong only to the days of our youth, and they somehow and for some reason dissipate as we age.

We have exchanged our verve for life for responsibility, success, motherhood, or even mere survival. And that’s the way it is. The way it should be even.

But all of that - it’s one big, fat lie.

And this matters because women, lots and lots of women, are going through their days, day in and day out, living a muted existence.

Maybe I’m talking about you. Maybe I’m talking about your best friend, or your sister, your mother, or your daughter. Maybe I’m even talking about your grandmother.

I know without a doubt that I am talking about many, many women — past and present — because that is how our culture has conditioned us to believe, to behave, and to live.

It’s the rare woman who lives fully vital, desirous, and full of spark and joy into old age. When we meet someone like this, it’s not only noteworthy, it’s often newsworthy.

We see their stories being told on Good Morning America, a positive note in the sea of sad and depressing world affairs. They are so inspiring! 
“That’s how I want to be when I’m old,” we say to ourselves.
As if someday we will magically transform into this person, just because it sounds nice.

Desire is so much more than Calvin Klein perfume and a forbidden lover. 
It’s more than reaching a goal, the taste of success, or even the deep longing
for what you can not have. 

Desire is the feeling of being fully alive inside your own body.
It’s the quiet confidence that you are allowed to want — and that what you want matters.
It’s the internal spark that pulls you toward experience, connection, creation, and pleasure.

Desire is not only sexual.

It’s the impulse to reach for life.

It’s curiosity.
Anticipation.
Imagination.
Movement toward something that feels meaningful or delicious or exciting.

It’s the energy that makes you plan a trip, start a conversation, change your career, kiss someone, take a risk, learn something new, or linger longer in a moment that feels good.

At its core, desire is a biological and emotional state that emerges when the nervous system feels safe enough to open toward life rather than protect against it.

When we are regulated, resourced, and connected, desire rises naturally.

When we are depleted, stressed, overwhelmed, or disconnected from ourselves, desire often goes quiet — not because it’s gone, but because the body is prioritizing survival.

Desire is not a personality trait.
It’s not something some women have and others don’t.

It’s responsive.
Dynamic.
Sensitive to context.

And perhaps most importantly:

Desire is information.

It tells us where aliveness lives.

And that, my beautiful friend, is everything.

So if desire isn’t gone… what actually happens? 

As tempting as it is to believe that it just randomly disappears, it does not.
Desire requires the right context, which means it needs the right environment to show up and thrive.

For women, desire can change depending on a lot of different factors, including, but not limited to, your nervous system load, stress exposure, trauma history, relationship dynamics, identity transitions, hormonal shifts, cultural conditioning around women’s bodies, how safe you feel emotionally and physically, and your mental bandwidth on any given day.

And guess what? If you’ve got a lot going on or if you’ve been through a lot in the past, your body and your mind are going to prioritize survival, not desire, and certainly not sex. And that’s normal. It’s supposed to be that way. (Although there is a smaller subset of women who feel an increased desire for sex when they’re stressed, which is normal too.)

You’re stressed out to the max, your plate is overflowing, your kids are throwing tantrums, you’ve got a big presentation at work, you’re having hot flashes left and right, and you’re supposed to want to jump in bed and have sex, too?  Really?

And since sex isn’t the only place women’s desire dissapates, you can apply the above example to just about every area of your life.

Come on, ladies. This is not the movies. You don’t have to pretend you want something you don’t, or perform for anyone. 

I know you might think you do, but you don’t.

Cultural, family, and even religious conditioning (which can be covert in our Judeo-Christian society, even if you are not or never have been religious) teaches women that we should for all sorts of reasons, but those, too, are big fat lies. 

Our worth and our goodness are not predicated on performance.
And if you don’t want something, you’re not broken.
In fact, just the opposite — you’re normal.

Yes, your body is working EXACTLY the way it was designed to.

Why? Because desire is a nervous system state, and survival mode and pleasure mode don’t coexist well. 

It’s like walking into a dark room (your desire) and switching on the light (your stress). Once the light comes on, the dark is gone. Not a little gone, vanished. Dark can’t be where the light is shining, it just can’t. So it is with desire and stress, survival mode and pleasure mode.

Here’s the science:

We know that cortisol, fatigue, and inflammation all impact desire of every kind — from libido to hunger, from sleep to love and belonging, from creativity to emotions, and even intellectual drives such as learning.

Chronic stress suppresses arousal pathways — and not just the ones related to sex.

Arousal, in biological terms, is the body’s capacity to orient toward something desirable. It involves the same neurological systems that drive motivation, curiosity, anticipation, pleasure, creativity, and connection. Sexual desire happens to be one of the most obvious expressions of those systems, but it is far from the only one.

So when stress dampens arousal pathways, women don’t just lose libido —
they often lose their spark for life.

The excitement about a new idea.
The motivation to pursue something meaningful.
The anticipation of pleasure.
The sense of aliveness in their own bodies.

From a nervous system perspective, this makes perfect sense.

When the brain perceives overload — whether from emotional strain, chronic busyness, trauma history, sleep deprivation, hormonal shifts, relationship tension, or ongoing pressure — it shifts priorities toward protection and survival.

Cortisol rises.
Dopamine signaling, which fuels motivation and “wanting,” often drops.
Sensory bandwidth narrows.
Energy is conserved.

In that state, exploration is not the priority.

And desire is fundamentally about exploration.

This is why many women describe feeling flat, numb, or uninterested in things they once enjoyed. It isn’t laziness. It isn’t aging. And it isn’t a character flaw.

It’s physiology.

Sexual desire is often one of the first places women notice this shift, because sexuality is one of the most sensitive barometers of how safe and resourced a woman’s body feels. The brain is constantly asking, at a subconscious level: Is this a safe time to open? Is there enough capacity here for pleasure?

If the answer is no, desire quiets.

Not because it’s broken.
Because the body is trying to protect you.

And here’s something incredibly important to understand: the absence of desire is often protective, not pathologic.

Your nervous system is prioritizing survival over expansion.

But remember that survival mode and pleasure mode are not permanent states.
They are conditions — and conditions can change.

When safety increases, when stress load decreases, when regulation improves, when a woman reconnects with her body and her sense of permission to want… desire can return.

Not magically.
Biologically.

Because desire was never truly gone.

It was waiting for the right conditions to emerge again.

This is why nervous system safety is foundational to desire.

Now, when I say chronic stress, I don’t just mean working long hours or feeling busy. Many women dismiss their experiences because they assume stress only counts if they’re overwhelmed by work or crisis.

But chronic stress often looks like everyday life.

Carrying the mental load of a household.
Caregiving for children or aging parents.
Perfectionism and constant self-monitoring.
Unprocessed trauma or grief.
Relationship tension that never quite resolves.
Financial pressure.
Hormonal changes.
Sleep deprivation.
Achievement pressure.
Feeling responsible for everyone else’s emotional state.
Never truly resting — even when you’re technically “off.”

It can also include the quieter forms of strain:
the subtle vigilance many women carry simply moving through the world.

Even when we haven’t personally experienced violence or oppression, we are constantly exposed to it. We absorb it through media, culture, history, and collective memory.

And it is very hard for a body to move into exploration mode when part of the brain is always scanning for danger.

Add to this the fact that for generations, society has measured female desire against male standards — assuming we should want sex the same way, at the same frequency, under the same conditions. When we don’t, something must be wrong with us.

The same goes for how we perform at work, our desire for success and promotion, our drive in sports, and how we choose between family and outside endeavors.

Even medicine has sometimes reinforced this narrative by making a woman’s low desire a pathology. Diagnoses related to low desire exist, and while there are absolutely situations where medical evaluation is appropriate, desire itself is profoundly contextual. It responds to safety, connection, hormones, identity, emotional climate, and life circumstances.

You cannot separate a woman’s biology from her environment.
Or her history.
Or her lived experience in a female body.

This is why the loss of desire is so often also a loss of self-connection.

Desire requires presence.
Presence requires safety.
Safety requires regulation.
Regulation requires support.

When women are chronically in performance mode — doing, producing, caregiving, achieving — they often lose access to the internal signals that tell them what they want, what they enjoy, what feels good.

It’s not that desire disappears.

It’s that the pathway to it becomes harder to access.

The hopeful part is this:

Desire is responsive, not fixed.

The body is adaptable.
The nervous system is capable of change.
Pleasure pathways can reactivate.
Aliveness can return — sometimes more deeply than before.

Many women experience renewed desire later in life, especially when safety, support, and self-connection increase.

Even if it’s been missing for a very long time.
Even if they have felt irreparably broken.
Even if they had to move heaven and hell to make it happen.

Even if…
Even if.

Because this is not the end of the story.

It’s information.

An invitation to understand what your body has been carrying — and what it needs in order to feel alive again.

I have been working with women in the realm of desire for the last fourteen years. I understand deeply all that desire stirs in a woman — excitement, inspiration, motivation, playfulness, pleasure, ecstasy even — but also deep fears about worthiness, guilt about being selfish, and old wounds shaped by personal history and cultural conditioning.

Desire opens doors.

And sometimes behind those doors are things we’ve been avoiding for a very long time.

But I want you to hear this clearly:

I have never met a woman whose capacity for desire was truly gone.

Buried. Guarded. Exhausted. Disconnected. Yes.

Gone? No.

Every woman I have ever worked with who was willing to explore, to soften, to reconnect with her body and her truth has experienced some form of expansion on the other side.

Not because she forced it.

Because her nervous system found safety again.

Because her body remembered and let it rise.

Desire doesn’t return in a flash.
There’s no romantic lightning strike that suddenly opens the floodgates.

When a woman begins to feel safety in her nervous system…
when she gives herself permission to feel…
when she has the support and resources to be present with her body, mind, and spirit —

It rises.

Steady.
Certain.
Warm. (sometimes hot.)
Alive.

Once we begin shifting the conditions — even slightly — things change.
Sometimes slowly. Sometimes surprisingly quickly.

Because desire responds to safety.
It does not start with forcing yourself to want more.
It starts with increasing capacity.

A few small shifts can begin to open that door:

These are not dramatic interventions.

They are signals to the nervous system: You are safe enough to open a little.

I have watched women reconnect with their aliveness after years — sometimes decades — of disconnection.

Not because they forced it.

Because they created conditions where their bodies could respond again.
They created the context in which their desire could begin to thrive again.
Their aliveness got its pulse back.

And for reals, they told me that they feel:
Like an effervescent rock star!
Bad-ass!
Like a Goddess!
Free for the first time in my life.
So in love with myself.
Whips and Chains, baby!
Fierce and Powerful.
Like I met myself for the first time.
So, so grateful.

When you’re ready to explore more deeply, the right guidance can change everything.

These are two of the most impactful resources I know for reconnecting with desire, clarity, and self-trust.

This book has been in my personal and professional toolkit since its 2014 publication, and I have guided many women through the process over the years.

The premise is simple, but profound:

Instead of focusing on what you want to achieve, you begin with how you want to feel.

That distinction matters.

Again and again, I have watched the same shift happen:

Clarity returns.
Permission returns.
Desire returns.

For women who feel untethered from themselves, this work can open doors that have been closed for years.

👉 Get “The Desire Map” here

If you have ever wondered why your desire changes…
why your body responds differently at different times…
or why something that once felt easy now feels complicated…
this book can be profoundly illuminating.

Come As You Are has changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of women (including mine) and has become a modern standard for understanding desire and pleasure. It is widely recommended by therapists and physicians because it does something deeply reassuring:

It explains how your body actually works — and it normalizes women.

One of its most empowering messages is that what often feels like “low desire” is usually a reflection of context — stress, environment, relationship dynamics, nervous system load — not something wrong with you.

For many women, this book dissolves years of confusion and shame.

It offers knowledge, permission, and hope.

👉 Get “Come As You Are” here

Desire is not something you earn.
It’s something you remember how to feel.

It is an enactment — just like love.

If all you do is think about it, nothing happens.

You must create the space.
The environment.
The context.
The safety.

You must be present with yourself — your senses, your breath, your body.
You must be willing to look at what is standing in your way.

Without judgment.
Without disgust.
Without resistance.

But with curiosity.
With tenderness.

With the understanding that nothing inside you is broken — only waiting to be seen,
felt, and integrated.

And when you meet yourself there, even briefly, something begins to open.

Because the moment you stop fighting yourself, your body stops fighting back.

And aliveness begins to rise.

That’s the shift.
That’s the medicine.

Until next week…

Be well. Be fierce. Be lavish.