^{Happy Friday & Welcome to} 🌿 ^{NOURISHED, a weekly newsletter to help women over 40 re-prioritize themselves so they can feel healthier, stronger, more present, and confident. I share personal stories and experience, wellness, fitness, and Perimenopause advice specific to women over 40. Was this sent to you? Subscribe here}

A Peek Inside:

• It looked all well + good

• The hidden stress

• Stress Management + Flexibility

Thanks for keeping 🌿 NOURISHED free!

I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I am late to the game on having my kids do regular chores. But this Summer, they are helping out.

They have some regular chores and if they do them, they get a small allowance each month. They can also choose additional harder chores to earn extra money. And Greenlight makes this super easy. The app set up was fast and I manage all of their accounts in one place, payout chores, and more. They also have their own app where they can check off the chores they complete and see how much they have in spending and in savings. It’s been a game-changer.

For A Limited time: Earn $75 when you sign up for Family Shield and link a financial account to monitor by 7/31/25 — or $30 with any other plan. Teach kids about money, protect seniors from fraud, and keep everyone safe.

Story Time

I was supposed to go to hot yoga like I always do on Tuesday, and I almost made myself go anyway, but I cancelled after I saw this.

My Oura ring said I had nearly 4 hours of stress and it was only 4pm.

It was a sunny day, a nice breeze. I sat in the Adirondack chair on the dock watching my kids play in the river. I looked relaxed on the outside.

On the inside? hyper-focused

Watching kids in the river, counting heads, making sure all was well…. for 3 hours. Add 2 other unsupervised young kids doing flips off of the dock to the mix and I was hyper-vigilant.

(this is why parents say they need a vacation after family vacation)

After we came home and got cleaned up, I was wiped out.

Hidden stress is like that.

There are days where it is just so busy between all 3 of my kids’ schedules that I truly don’t have time to get to everything on my list — and I tend to be a little hard on myself sometimes and feel like I didn’t do enough. (I’m sure you can relate)

But, here’s the thing. I did.

And I deserve to recover, even if it’s not from a “workout.”

Now, do you need an Oura ring to tell you these things? Maybe, maybe not.

(all of the new tech is cool, but the data isn’t worth anything unless you use it to make decisions. just something to keep in mind before you splurge.)

If you can check in with how you’re really feeling, you might be honest and say you need a break. But most of us don’t tune in often enough and are influenced by outside expectations. Sometimes, you may even know you need a break, but you ignore it because somewhere, someone once told you that you needed to earn rest.

And at what point have you earned it? After you’re too tired to move? Once you come down with a cold?

Be Stress Flexible

More and more I’m seeing that for women in their 40s and in Perimenopause, rest and recovery is more important than crushing it in the gym everyday. You have to give your body and mind time to recover, otherwise you’re in a state of stress all the time. And your efforts in the gym won’t yield the results you’re after.

So, if you were like me where you were conditioned through sports and the media to think that you had to earn your rest, earn your dessert, or glass of wine — you may need to do some rewiring.

As a certified Sleep, Stress Management and Recovery coach, I can tell you that dialing in on your sleep and recovery will only help your efforts to improve your energy, mood, and hormone function throughout Perimenopause. And this is one way to become more stress flexible and increase your resilience.

→ Our goal is to be able to do what we need and want to do, even if stress is present. Think of stress management like having a dial. You can turn it up. You can turn it down.

Stress management is about actively choosing something:

• We can choose what stressors we expose ourselves to. We can seek challenge in the areas we want to grow, and lower the threats in the areas that are harming us.

• Where we can’t change the stressors, we can try to choose our response. We can learn and practice skills (breathing techniques + mindfulness) that help us regulate.

There’s no one best stress level all the time.

Instead, we want to be “on” when it’s time to be on. And “off” when it’s time to be “off”.

xo, Tara

A GIFT FOR YOU

I’ve just launched a new Perimenopause Masterclass — and it’s free!

There are 7 short lessons to help you understand Perimenopause and the most important lifestyle routines to master in order to help support your mind + body. It’s designed to be empowering and easy to follow. You can binge it in a day or do 1 lesson every day for a week. You’ll walk away with a 1 week sample lifestyle plan to simplify and get you into action. Rinse and repeat.