Hey Fab Fam,

When I was growing up in the Caribbean, we didn't have much money. No Xbox, no fancy toys, just my imagination and weekends at the beach where the water was so clear you could see your toes.

But we had books. And books were everything.

Reading took me to places I could only dream of. It filled the loneliness and it gave me friends when I felt lonely and invisible. One day I ran out of books to read, and my Auntie Germaine handed me a notebook and said, "If you've run out of stories, write your own."

That notebook gave me a world that was completely mine, limited only by my imagination.

When I moved to America, my mom would joke that if I went missing at the mall, she knew exactly where to find me: planted in the bookstore aisle, reading the first chapter of every book I could reach.

Through my teens, my twenties, I was always reading and writing. It was how I processed the world, how I made sense of chaos, how I stayed connected to myself.

And then somewhere in my late forties, something changed.

I'd read five pages and couldn't tell you a single thing I'd just read. The words were there, swimming on the page, but nothing stuck.

Writing became my lifeline because words started disappearing when I spoke. I'd reach for a word mid-sentence and find nothing but blank space.

It wasn't until perimenopause that I learned the truth: I had ADHD. A lot of women get diagnosed with ADHD in their late forties and fifties because the hormonal changes makes it difficult to mask symptoms we've been compensating for our whole lives.

You know what's wild? Women are so damn good at adapting that we just make it work. We find workarounds. We compensate. We mask. We tell ourselves it's fine, we're just busy, everyone forgets words sometimes.

After being diagnosed and starting treatment, I thought: "Great! Now I can get back to life again."

Except I didn't.

I've been so consumed with building Fab at Fifty Plus while working full-time and navigating the everyday fog of ADHD—the kind that makes starting, organizing, and staying focused feel harder than it should—that picking up a book for pleasure rarely crosses my mind.

This month I am determined to change that.

Finding pleasure doesn't have to be complicated.

You don't need a spa weekend or a girls' trip.

You know how an orgasm works, right? It's not one touch. It's touch after touch after touch. Building. Warming. Waking up parts of you that were asleep.

Pleasure during your day works the same way.

Hot coffee that you actually taste. Sun on your face for ten seconds. A song that makes you want to dance. Something that smells amazing. Soft sheets against your skin. The flirtatious look from a good-looking man.

One good feeling. Then another. Then another. When you stack these small pleasures your whole day shifts for the better. And suddenly you're not just getting through the day anymore. You're actually enjoying it.

Yeah, the stressful stuff is still there, but it suddenly doesn’t seem that bad.

Just like sex, your pleasure is in your hands. You get to decide what you touch, what you taste, what you let yourself feel.

So touch soft things. Taste good things. Feel warm things.

All day. As many times as you want.

That's not indulgent. That's remembering that you're still alive.

Let go of: “I just don’t have time for that anymore.”
Claim this instead: “I’m allowed to make the time for things that make me happy.”

Ask yourself: What did you love doing that you stopped without even realizing it?

Not because someone told you to stop. Not because it became impossible. But because life got full, and you just... let it go.

Because it’s how creators turn attention into an owned audience, and an audience into a real, compounding business.

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I've been writing this newsletter for a while now, and I love it. But the last couple of weeks have made me realize that there are stories I want to tell, conversations I want to have, and truths I want to share that feel too real, or just too much for a free newsletter that anyone can read.

Honestly, this is a very mild version of me that you see. I’ve been catering more to you than me, even though this is supposed to be my journey that I share with you.

So I'm launching a paid tier. $9/month.
You'll still get this free newsletter every week. But paid members get:

24 challenges. No pressure. No perfection. Just you, remembering what feels good.

And here's the fun part: Share yourself doing ANY challenge on Instagram or Facebook, tag @fabatfiftyplus and use #FebPleasureChallenge. I'm picking my favorite post on March 1st.

The winner gets: A free year of my paid newsletter ($108 value) + a hoodie from my upcoming Fab line drop.

One entry per challenge. That means you can enter up to 24 times.

Download the full challenge below and let's see what pleasure looks like when we actually let ourselves have it.

Until next week, stay fabulous
Izzie