The week after Thanksgiving always feels like a slow slide into holiday hysteria.

Before you’ve even swallowed that last bite of pie, the world is whipping you toward Christmas and New Years, demanding a smile, a casserole, a slice of manufactured cheer.

And all the while? Millions of women are quietly running themselves ragged.

So I want to ask you a question our culture rarely asks with sincerity: How are you, really?

And I don’t mean the curated resilience you hand out like holiday cookies.

I mean the truth behind your truth.

I mean how is your spirit holding up under the weight of being a woman in this world?

Because let’s be honest: Being alive right now is not a soft experience. It’s a full-contact sport.

We are navigating pressure systems that never let up – caretaking, income-making, calendar-managing, emotional-labor-performing, soul-tending – in a society that expects us to juggle flaming swords while smiling sweetly and moisturizing twice a day.

And if you’re a Black woman, a woman of color, a trans woman, a queer woman, a disabled woman? The patriarchy has placed weights on your ankles that others can’t even see.

So if you feel like you’re running on fumes: Congratulations. You’re not broken. You’re perceptive.

Here’s my stance:

I do not want exhaustion to become your personality.
I do not want depletion to masquerade as devotion.
I do not want your radiance rationed out in teaspoons.

I want you fed, held, wanted, witnessed, and turned all the way on.

And I want that, not because it’s a luxury, but because it is the basic maintenance required to exist in a female body.

Aliveness doesn’t return through overthinking.

It replenishes through breath, sensation, movement, and pleasure. Through practices our culture dismisses as “indulgent” precisely because they make women more powerful.

It stems from a sisterhood that mirrors your radiance, and access to spaces where it’s safe to unravel, and safer still to shine.

And if even one of these pillars is missing, life becomes a slog of silent endurance – checking boxes, managing crises, keeping the façade polished while the soul starves.

But with them? Something miraculous returns: Your pulse. Your play. Your hunger. Your rightful, radiant, erotic life force.

So if this week finds you fume-running and hovering an inch above burnout…pause long enough to ask yourself:

How will I feed my aliveness this month?
Where will I go to be held?
Who are the women I will let see me?

And most importantly: What promise can I make to myself, right now, that I refuse to break – no matter the chaos, the calendar, or the world’s expectations?

Because once you commit to tending your spark, even December can’t dim you.

With so much love and pleasure,