Dear friends,

I want to share something a little more personal today.

Long before cancer entered the picture, I had already lost touch with my sensuality.

Many of you might remember when I first started my online business years ago. I was in my mid-thirties, freshly divorced, and standing at a crossroads. As painful as that chapter was, it also felt like an opening. I had the chance to redefine myself on my own terms.

At that time, I was teaching women how to feel more feminine and sensual through body language and dance. And I meant it. I lived it. I still felt beautiful. I still felt sexy in my body. Some of that, if I’m honest, came from external validation. I knew how to use the tools I taught. But there was also a genuine, embodied confidence I could access easily back then.

That innate, fluid, delicious energy I spoke about so freely began to slip away as I entered peri-menopause. I didn’t have language for it at the time. I just knew something essential felt harder to reach.

Before I go further, there’s a moment that’s stayed with me for years.

In the late 1990’s I was given an unexpected opportunity to attend the Oscars in Hollywood with a small TV station. I was there to interview actors about sensuality. This was before smart phones, so I don’t have the photos anymore, but I remember it vividly.

When there’s a camera, actors turn on their charm. They answer almost anything. I kept asking similar questions:

Is sensuality innate or can it be taught?
How would you define it?
Who embodies feminine or sensual energy to you?

I spoke briefly with Jason Ritter, Lou Diamond Phillips, Shelley Morrison, and even Miss America at the time. Everyone had something thoughtful to say, but one exchange stopped me in my tracks.

When I asked Shelley Morrison, who played Rosario on Will & Grace, she looked at me as if I’d missed something obvious. She said she was almost insulted by the question. She spoke candidly about having gone through a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, and more. Her response wasn’t polished or politically correct. She shut me down.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand her reaction.
Now, I do.

As our hormones shift through peri-menopause and menopause, that easy access to sensual, fluid energy can disappear. Long before my cancer diagnosis, I was already losing touch with that part of myself.

And suddenly, the truths I once taught with confidence were much harder to live.

This healing journey has been asking me to redefine sensuality from the inside out.

For me now, sensuality requires safety. It requires allowing vulnerability without masking it. It asks me to connect to an inner radiance that doesn’t rely on being seen or desired to feel whole.

I always knew this intellectually. But when your body changes, knowing and embodying are two very different things.

This is where Kilimanjaro quietly enters the story.

Climbing a mountain like that isn’t about force or performance. You can’t rush it. You can’t fake your way up. You have to listen to your body, respect its pace, and stay present with each step. Sensuality, I’m realizing, works the same way now.

It’s not about intensity.
It’s about presence.
It’s about being fully here in my body, exactly as it is.

What’s opening for me feels deeper and more intrinsic. I feel most whole when I’m in service. When I move my body. When I love. When I can sense people beyond their external shell and recognize their energy, their humanity.

And I realized something important. I need to offer myself the same respect and tenderness I so easily give to others, if I want to receive it back.

This chapter isn’t about reclaiming who I used to be.

It’s about discovering who I am now, without armor, without performance, without proving anything.

So I’ll leave you with this to sit with, if you feel called:

👉 Where in your life might you be pushing, when what’s actually needed is presence?
👉 What would it feel like to trust your body’s pace, instead of fighting it?

I’m learning that sensuality, like climbing a mountain, isn’t about reaching the summit quickly. It’s about staying connected to yourself the entire way up.

With love,
Patty

P.S. I’ll continue sharing reflections like this as the journey unfolds, including how movement, healing, and purpose are reshaping my relationship with my body. If you’d like to follow along between newsletters, you can find me on social media here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pattycontenta/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePattyContenta
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pattycontenta

P.P.S. In this picture, I’m sharing a moment from Madeira, an island I didn’t expect to love as deeply as I did. Hiking through Seixal Forest taught me something about mystery, trust, and letting the path reveal itself one step at a time.