And I’m so excited to share the invitation for Holy Humans’ Salon with Psychic Wendy Piepenburg (if you missed our announcement about Holy Humans last week, read it here). Thank you all who contacted me to share how excited you are about Holy Humans!

Holy Humans will work like a learning club, where curious people like us bring questions to authors, scholars, practitioners, and to each other. A place where we can gather and dig deep to explore what it means to be human. All genders welcome! Follow our new Instagram Account @holyhumansofficial to get updates and inspiration.

Our First Gathering will be a Special Fireside Chat with a Chef’s Prepared Dinner

Hosts: Anbereen Hasan, Naomi Marks and Patricia Assui Reed

Guest Speaker: Psychic and Medium Wendy Piepenburg

When: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13th from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

Where: Private Residence in the Hamptons, location shared upon ticket purchase.

Tickets: please purchase them HERE. Tickets are individual and non transferrable.

Wendy is coming to the East End from Ann Arbor, Michigan, especially for the occasion. While in the Hamptons she will also offer a very limited number of private in-person readings. Please sign up HERE to reserve a session.

Readings are paid separately from the Salon.

About Anbereen Hasan

Anbereen Hasan is Pakistani-American. She grew up in Paris, finished high school in Frankfurt, and spent formative years in the Middle East and India. That nomadic childhood gave her a rare gift: she understands, deeply, how many different ways people experience and make sense of the world, and how much we share underneath it all.

Her path has been as wide-ranging as her upbringing. She trained as a textile designer, then earned a Master’s in International Affairs and Human Rights from Columbia University. She went on to work at the United Nations, where she was part of the Global Women’s Coalition for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and helped bring human rights NGOs into the drafting of the treaty that created the International Criminal Court. She has been recognized internationally for her advocacy for survivors of domestic violence.

Anbereen then spent more than two decades in U.S. public service, concluding a distinguished career as a foreign policy and counterterrorism expert when she retired from the U.S. Government in 2021. Now ready for her next act, she is picking up the thread she explored in her studies on human rights, and asking as humans how we can cultivate, sustain and bring more hope into the world.

About Naomi Marks

A graduate of Central Saint Martins in London, Naomi began her professional life in the rarefied world of fine jewelry, working with two of its most legendary houses, Harry Winston and Van Cleef and Arpels. Those years cultivated an enduring appreciation for beauty, craftsmanship, and the history behind objects of lasting value.

Naomi has an instinctive appreciation for the ways seemingly disparate ideas can illuminate one another. As AI begins to shape the boundaries of human possibility, Naomi’s curiosity has led her somewhere both ancient and timely: the modalities of metaphysics. She is intrigued by the possibility that our oldest questions about human consciousness, our existence, and the nature of reality may have something important to contribute to our newest technological age.

For more than three decades Naomi Marks has made her life in the Hamptons. She has been a committed and contributing presence to her community, deeply connected to the people and places that have become her home. She is a proud mother of three and a doting grandmother to five extraordinary grandchildren. Family is at the center of her world; it’s her deepest joy and feeds her curiosity and ever-renewing perspective on our collective future.

The Matriark Salon will continue in its original format, with themes like business, money, wellness and more. I will share invitations as each salon is scheduled.

I hope you enjoy Holy Humans and that you’ll join us at our gatherings. Anbereen, Naomi and I are so excited to see you there!

Love,
Patricia

Hi there,

I have an exciting announcement to share with you.

I met Anbereen Hasan at one of my Salons. She introduced herself, and I (along with the entire room) immediately thought: wow, I need to get to know this woman. Anbereen is one of the most curious people I know. Raised between Paris, Frankfurt, the Middle East and India, she built a career in human rights and U.S. public service. Now, in her next act, she is exploring a new question: how can we cultivate, sustain and bring more hope into the world?

Most recently, Anbereen invited me to join her Mahjong group, and there I met her friend Naomi Marks. As we got to learn the game and one another, we discovered our shared belief that we are more than our physical bodies, our deep interest for everything metaphysical, and how much we wished we had more conversations about it. In the meantime, the three of us also noticed that our friends, our feeds on social media, and well respected news outlets like the New York Times and The Financial Times, were discussing the exponential interest in seeking answers to what makes us uniquely human. A question that is more prescient as we grapple with adopting AI in our everyday lives.

Holy Humans was born from this common goal. It will work like a learning club, where curious people like us bring questions to authors, scholars, practitioners, and to each other. A place where we can gather and dig deep to explore what it means to be human.

Our First Gathering

Our first gathering is going to be fun and inspiring. On November 13th, we are hosting Wendy Pipenburg, a psychic who is coming to the East End from Ann Arbor, Michigan, especially for the occasion. Anbereen, who began exploring metaphysical modalities in the 1980’s at a time in her life when the barrel of hope was near empty, has been Wendy’s client for over ten years. I had a session with Wendy a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed.

Invitations go out next Thursday (10/29), so please keep an eye on your inbox.

The Ginkgo

For centuries, the ginkgo has stood for longevity, hope, peace and strength in adversity. Most of all, it stands for duality and unity, just as "holy" and "human" do. That is why we chose its leaf as the symbol for Holy Humans.

The Matriark Salon Continues

The Matriark Salon will continue in its original format, with themes like business, money, wellness and more. I will share invitations as each salon is scheduled.

About Anbereen Hasan

Anbereen Hasan is Pakistani-American. She grew up in Paris, finished high school in Frankfurt, and spent formative years in the Middle East and India. That nomadic childhood gave her a rare gift: she understands, deeply, how many different ways people experience and make sense of the world, and how much we share underneath it all.

Her path has been as wide-ranging as her upbringing. She trained as a textile designer, then earned a Master’s in International Affairs and Human Rights from Columbia University. She went on to work at the United Nations, where she was part of the Global Women’s Coalition for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and helped bring human rights NGOs into the drafting of the treaty that created the International Criminal Court. She has been recognized internationally for her advocacy for survivors of domestic violence.

Anbereen then spent more than two decades in U.S. public service, concluding a distinguished career as a foreign policy and counterterrorism expert when she retired from the U.S. Government in 2021. Now ready for her next act, she is picking up the thread she explored in her studies on human rights, and asking as humans how we can cultivate, sustain and bring more hope into the world.

About Naomi Marks

A graduate of Central Saint Martins in London, Naomi began her professional life in the rarefied world of fine jewelry, working with two of its most legendary houses, Harry Winston and Van Cleef and Arpels. Those years cultivated an enduring appreciation for beauty, craftsmanship, and the history behind objects of lasting value.

Naomi has an instinctive appreciation for the ways seemingly disparate ideas can illuminate one another. As AI begins to shape the boundaries of human possibility, Naomi’s curiosity has led her somewhere both ancient and timely: the modalities of metaphysics. She is intrigued by the possibility that our oldest questions about human consciousness, our existence, and the nature of reality may have something important to contribute to our newest technological age.

For more than three decades Naomi Marks has made her life in the Hamptons. She has been a committed and contributing presence to her community, deeply connected to the people and places that have become her home. She is a proud mother of three and a doting grandmother to five extraordinary grandchildren. Family is at the center of her world; it’s her deepest joy and feeds her curiosity and ever-renewing perspective on our collective future.

I hope you enjoy Holy Humans and that you’ll join us at our gatherings. Anbereen, Naomi and I are so excited to see you there!

Love,
Patricia

The discussions were incredibly helpful, and sharing our thoughts and concerns out loud, in a group, and realizing we are not alone in this time of uncertainty was such a relief. Thank you to every one of you who showed up, spoke up, and listened so generously.

Which is why I can’t wait to bring us together again.

Everything changed for me in 2018, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My diet changed. My exercise routine changed. And, like so many women, I started taking supplements.

Navigating what to choose was overwhelming. How do you decide what to trust in a category with so little regulation? I didn’t want to do more harm than good, but unfortunately, that is the state of the industry today. You are largely on your own, reading labels and hoping for the best.

And wow, how I wish I had known Pure Essentials — and Rachel Ash and Neal Shenoy — back then. Since I met them, I’ve learned everything about the truth about supplements, what it means to be MADE SAFE® and how to choose supplements in a largely unregulated industry.

It’s the wild wild west out there in the supplement world, so my hope is that you leave this gathering very well informed. And even if you never buy a single supplement from Pure Essentials, I want you to walk out from our salon armed with the right information to make decisions about what you put in your body and what you give your loved ones.

Melissa introduced me to Rachel and Neal last year, and after listening to them and learning so much about what’s out there and how supplements are made, I knew I wanted to get involved and, at the very least, help spread the word. In the spirit of transparency (as I always do with you), I need you to know that I proudly serve as a Strategic Advisor to Pure Essentials. I took on this role because I am a loyal customer, I believe wholeheartedly in what they are doing, and how their products can help people like you and me make smart decisions about their health, and I wanted to share this with you and everyone I know.

About Rachel Ash, CEO of Pure Essentials: Rachel is a wellness entrepreneur and health advocate. As CEO of Pure Essentials, she leads the company’s capital strategy, investor relations, and brand stewardship. Her work is personal. Rachel co-built Pure Essentials with her late husband, Richard N. Ash, M.D., and continues to extend the vision they built together — that what’s on the label should match what’s in the bottle, without exception. She serves as Chairman of the Board of Documenting Hope, on the Advisory Board of MadeSafe, and was named to the 2025 UBS Female Founder Program and CaringKind’s 100 Women of Impact.

About Neal Shenoy, Chairman of Pure Essentials: Neal is a technology entrepreneur who has founded, operated, and sold a $3BN+ portfolio of digital media ventures across education, music, sports, and analytics in partnership with major media companies. He began career working on media & entertainment transactions at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and have been a long suffering serial entrepreneur since 2000. His specialties are venture development, business development, corporate development, content licensing, content production, content distribution, business affairs, capital raising, and finance.

About Melissa Breitbart, Principal of MBCG Strategic Advisors and Founder of The Live4Life Foundation: Through her Strategic Advisory, Melissa is focused on expanding the philanthropic footprint of purpose-driven brands through collaborations with like-minded companies and nonprofit organizations that align with each brand’s core values. She founded The Live4Life Foundation to advance critical research to find an effective treatment and cure for melanoma. She was selected to help lead the 100 Women of Impact movement, convened by CaringKind in New York City, and has continued to support and lead its national expansion.

About Tathiana Teixeira, Founder Plain-T: Tathiana was born in Brazil and began as an apprentice of Classical Ballet at the age of 4 to quickly ascend into the professional ranks where she performed worldwide for over 10 years. She found whole leaf Tea to be a great tool in maintaining a healthy balance in both body and mind to thrive in the demanding discipline of Ballet. She also discovered that all of the tea’s nutrients and health properties are contained in the whole leaf of the plant, not in the small broken pieces or “dust” used in common tea bags. Therefore, this means that most tea drinkers are only getting a fraction of the wonderful benefits of this ancient plant, so Tathiana and her husband Alessandro enlisted the expertise of a world renowned Tea Master and founded PLAIN-T.

I hope you can come and meet these amazing people in person.

Sending love,

Patricia

Hi there,

By the time this newsletter goes out, I will have hosted The Matriark Salon with Jan Planit. I’ll post about it soon, so if you weren’t able to attend, check in with us on Instagram on Monday for a glimpse of the evening. An invitation for our upcoming salon, happening on 10/29, will be going out very soon, so save the date and stay tuned!

Today I just want to share something I’m in love with: Ffern. This is 100% not a paid post and if you ever get them, you’ll know why I’m so crazy about them. I’m astonished by this company. They make the most creative and delicious fragrances, and what impresses me most is how they express their craft. It’s so difficult to convey the magic of fragrance online, for obvious reasons, but with their impeccable storytelling, beautiful artwork and absolutely stunning products, they are very hard to resist.

Ffern is a small perfume house in Somerset, England, founded by siblings Owen Mears and Emily Cameron, who grew up beside an organic herb farm. They release just four fragrances a year, one on each solstice and equinox, made in small batches from natural ingredients. And on top of it all, they also started an Artifacts Shop, and it’s beautiful.

Not an unboxing, a ritual

The outer box arrives closed with a paper ribbon that fastens onto itself. No glue, and nothing to tear. You slip it free, lift the lid, and the first thing you see is a folded hand-numbered, museum-quality giclée print resting on top: the season’s artwork, commissioned from an artist, with the story of the fragrance printed alongside it. My autumn bottle came with the work of Welsh illustrator Jackie Morris, beloved for The Lost Words. I unfolded it slowly, and read it before proceeding.

Beneath the poster lie two boxes. The slender one holds a small tester and a few little gifts: a pin, some tea or wild flower seeds, a special souvenir that completes the story.

The larger box is sealed, and inside it a single paper cylinder cradles the bottle itself, a beautiful spray bottle waiting to be discovered.

By the time it is in your hand, you feel transported into a fairy tale, as if a parcel had found its way to you from just beyond the last page of a storybook.

The Scents

I got the Spring and Autumn 26 scents and they are SO good.

Autumn 26 · Moonlit Heather. Lavender sits at its heart. It arrives slowly, softened by honeyed immortelle and the powdery velvet of orris, then settles over something warmer: sun-dried hay, moss, the earth after dusk. It’s light and deep at the same time, airy enough to float and warm enough to hold you, like a cashmere shawl at twilight. It smells like walking home across a moor under a rising moon: a little wild, entirely tender.

Spring 26 · Wild Land. This one opens with citrus, fresh and orangy, as petitgrain, bergamot and neroli catch the light like dawn on dewy grass. Then white blossoms drift in, golden broom and a touch of creamy tuberose, never heavy and never sweet. It is fresh yet sophisticated, and so light it feels like a breath of morning air. It was created with Knepp, the rewilding estate in Sussex, and you can sense that wild, green freedom in every spray.

Why I’m hooked

There are so many ways companies can make things and deliver them to us, and this one is so special that you actually feel so cared for. You want to love their scents, and I did - and for a picky fragrance customer like me, that’s saying a lot. Both bottles won me over, and I can’t stop wearing them, and I can’t wait for their winter release.

Please do yourself a favor and check them out at ffern.co to see if they are for you. At the very least you’ll be entertained by their films and dazzled by the unboxing.

With love,

Patricia

Hi there,

Ready or not, we are here again. When I lived in New York City, fall meant I could open my windows again and enjoy the weeks before the radiators in my pre-war building creaked back on.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that. The feeling that shows up every time something ends and something else hasn’t quite started yet.

Merriam-Webster defines transition two ways. The first is well known: “a change or shift from one state, subject, place, etc. to another.” The second is “something that links one state, subject, place, etc. to another — a connecting part or piece.”

We tend to only hear the first definition — transition as rupture, as before-and-after. What I want to talk about today is the second one: transition as the connective tissue, the thing that holds the before and the after together so neither one falls away.

BETWIX AND BETWEEN

There’s a term anthropologists use for this in-between state: liminality, from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. Arnold van Gennep (French ethnographer and folklorist) coined it when studying rites of passage; Victor Turner (Scottish cultural anthropologist) expanded it. Turner’s description of what it means to be in a liminal state has stayed with me since I first read it:

“Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention.”

Betwixt and between.

I used to think of transition as a state I was either in or out of. Now I know that being alive means always being somewhere inside it.

I LEARNED THIS FROM TODDLERS…

I actually learned this lesson in the most unlikely classroom: the Barnard Toddler Center, where my kids went as, well, toddlers. Tovah Klein and the late Pat Shimm — who co-founded the program back in 1973 — built an entire philosophy around this idea: that separation and transition are not obstacles to a child’s development, they are the development, and it’s ongoing.

I thought I was there to learn how to get my toddler to stop crying at drop-off, but I was actually learning how to handle my own life. We never stop doing this. We are never finished with separation and transition — we just get better, or worse, at noticing when we’re in it.

THIS SUMMER, AND THIS FALL

This past summer, my kids were on vacation. I was not. Every week the schedule reshuffled itself, with no school pickup, no predictable rhythm, just a loose, sunny chaos that was fun and also a little stressful. I kept trying to build structure around a season that isn’t built for structure, and kept feeling slightly behind my own life.

And now, fall. I love the sweater weather, the sense of everyone snapping back into their own orbit. School already started, and there’s real relief in returning to our routine, but it comes, as it always does, with a little sadness: the kids are around less. I am, once again, on the other side of a separation I once coached my toddlers through (or, let’s be honest, that Tovah and Pat once coached me through).

Last week I was driving with my daughter while she took over the music with her own playlist — she’s fifteen now, and it shows. Out of nowhere, my eyes filled, thinking about her at college, which isn’t happening for three more years. I was grieving a separation I hadn’t even lived through yet.

CONNECTING THE PAST TO THE PRESENT

I think what was actually happening in my car wasn’t sadness about the future, it was my mind doing the thing minds do in transition: reaching backward and forward at the same time, trying to hold her at five, at eighteen and right there next to me, all at once.

We are always doing both — always the connecting piece, Merriam-Webster’s second definition, linking who we were to who we’re becoming.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED TO DO WITH THIS

As a mother, an entrepreneur, and someone who has restructured her own life more than once, here’s what going through this has taught me so far:

I stopped dreading each transition as the scary unknown, and started accepting it as the bridge and connection I need to move forward.

So whether you’re in the middle of something enormous right now, or just feeling that low-grade September disorientation that comes from the end of summer, my only real advice is this: notice that you’re in it. Breathe through it. Let it be a necessary and ordinary part of the process rather than a detour from your real life. If you get good at it, you can even welcome it (I’m not there yet!). That acknowledgment alone that this is a transition, and transitions are simply what living is made of, is what gets me through it.

We are always betwixt and between. We are always a moving bridge. That’s not the interruption of the story. That’s the story.

Sending love,

Patricia

Before I start, I want to share some exciting news: I am resuming The Matriark Salon starting this Fall. The gatherings will come in different forms and sometimes with different names, and I can’t wait to send you the invitations. More soon!

I met Meredith Burns years ago in the Hamptons, the way so many friendships begin — through our kids’ school, standing at pickup. I didn’t know that our school small talks were going to turn into something that completely changed how I take care of myself and my family.

Fast forward to 2023. My father started showing the signs of dementia. Repeated questions. A story told several times over in one sitting.

While I was learning about dementia, Meredith was living a version of it three times over. In twenty-four months, she lost three members of her family to different variations of the same disease. But Meredith, being the force that she is, did not let her incredible grief break her. She channelled it into fuel instead, and I am so grateful for it.

Ten days ago, Meredith hosted a beautiful luncheon to kick off The Beautiful Brain Campaign, an initiative built to make sure women’s brain health gets funded by the NIH, and that the funding reaches the neuroscientists doing the best, most rigorous work on this disease. Meredith and I share more than the love of our kids, and the disease who killed our loved ones. We both know that women are affected the most (they are almost two-thirds of Americans living with Alzheimer’s), and we share the conviction (not just hope) that dementia can be prevented and cured. So we won’t rest until it is.

A 45-year-old woman’s lifetime risk of developing it is 1 in 5; for a man, it’s 1 in 10. Women also make up roughly two-thirds of dementia caregivers in this country — more than a third of them are daughters, caring for the very people who once cared for them.

That’s not an accident. Until the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993, it was standard, legal practice to exclude women from clinical trials altogether. Even now, a staggering share of foundational Alzheimer’s research — by one estimate, 99% of mouse studies — has been conducted using only male subjects, and most clinical trials still aren’t even designed to analyze results by sex.

The Beautiful Brain Campaign isn’t urgent only because of the statistics. It’s urgent because of the lack of data on women’s health, which is crucial for prevention and cure.

But I got to see what happens when that silence starts to break. At the Beautiful Brain Campaign lunch, Meredith flew in Dr. Claire Clelland, of UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center, especially for the occasion — a physician-scientist doing exactly the kind of work this funding exists to protect. Among so many other things, Dr. Claire told us the first and most important factor to prevent Alzheimer's is blood pressure - that ideally, we should keep 120 and under. I’m keeping this as a main priority in my own health journey. We also heard from George Vradenburg, co-founder and chairman of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, who spends his days in Washington fighting for the federal research dollars that make Dr. Clelland’s work possible, and who is now working directly with CaringKind to put women’s brain health on that agenda. Meredith also invited Project ALS because ALS is weirdly and confusingly linked to dementia, something that Meredith’s mom had to deal with as her disease progressed. I had no idea about this link.

Before the lunch, CaringKind founder Eleonora Tornatore-Mikesh co-hosted the NOURISH gathering with Claudia Romo Edelman, Helen Christoni, Jan Planit, and Natasha Caronna to drive the point home: this disease is not inevitable, and it is not someone else’s fight.

It’s why I said yes to CaringKind’s 100 Women of Impact. It’s why I’ve now donated to the Beautiful Brain Campaign. And it’s why I’m asking you to get involved: we can change this. With awareness, with dollars, with pressure on the institutions that decide whose bodies get studied and whose don’t.

If you want to learn more about the Beautiful Brain Campaign, or you’re ready to give, start HERE.

Sending love and gratitude,

Patricia

Thank you all who came to Manolo Blahnik this week and shopped for a great cause. If you couldn’t make it but still want to support CaringKind, you can purchase Diana Frank’s limited edition, handmade prints (she is a fellow 100 Women of Impact). They are $750 each, and she is donating 10% to CaringKind. Head to her website to see them in detail, and contact her to purchase.

A few months ago, in the middle of a French lesson, my teacher Carrie Anne said something that was not in my French bingo card: you’l learn better if you remove the concept of time. Remove the timeline for when you’re “supposed” to be fluent, and just do the learning itself, unhooked from the clock.

I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, because of course this isn’t really just about French. It’s about everything. Except we’ve built entire lives around the opposite idea, and most of us never stop to ask why.

As summer progresses and I get used to loose schedule with my children, the later nights, the daily ice cream for dessert, I’m finally feeling like I’m in summer. Which would be great if it weren’t also a little sad, because in less than a month they go back to school and I go back to a more structured life, and just naming that puts pressure on what’s left.

That’s the paradox my teacher’s comment keeps circling back to for me: a deadline focuses you, but it also steals something from the middle of the experience, because part of you is always aware the clock is running.

I’ve been thinking about this more broadly too, if I’m honest, because I’m not only recalibrating for September - I’m recalibrating for midlife. I’m 55, the same age as my father when he retired, and never did anything else. Just... stopped. And I cannot picture doing the same thing, it just isn’t me. But when I try to envision what my next phase actually looks like, I catch myself running into the same wall I hit with my French lessons. The idea that certain things have a “should happen by” attached to them. That there’s a deadline for certain things in life, and if you miss it, you are late.

In my twenties and thirties, all I could see was a road ahead of me - long and endless, wide open. And now that I feel more confident, more experienced, and so much more proficient, wiser and more capable, I feel that so much more is ahead of me, and that time is abundant, despite what the system wants me to believe.

I think that’s the shift I’m actually in the middle of this summer. I’m trying to enjoy what is happening right now.

I’m trying to get out of scarcity mindset on all fronts - especially about time.

So I’m going to try to live the way my teacher described, even outside of French class. Time is a construct. Maybe happiness isn’t about beating the clock or racing it or even accepting it gracefully - maybe it’s about taking it out of the conversation entirely, when I can, and asking instead: “Does this feel right? Does this move me toward the best version of myself”? Not “Is it too late?”, or “Am I behind?”, or “What’s the deadline?”.

We’ve got a few more weeks of loose schedules and late nights left. I'm not going to rush toward the structure that's coming, or mourn it either. And I'm not going to rush toward what's next in my life, or feel sad about what's stayed in the past. Or at least I’ll try.

Sending love,

Patricia

Hi there,

Before I start, I’d like to invite you to a special event at Manolo Blahnik in East Hampton. I’m excited to shop for his incredible shoes, preview Diana Frank’s Photography Series, and help support CaringKind and 100 Women of Impact (which I am honored to be a part of). CaringKind not only empowers families and caregivers with support and education, but they also fiercely advocate for brain health research and preventative brain health care. Looking forward to seeing you there!

PART TWO

Following up from last week’s Part One, let’s get into this week’s newsletter!

These days, you can spend an hour on the spiritual side of TikTok and you’ll surface a dozen systems Gen Z is fluent in that their grandparents mostly weren’t: Human Design charts next to birth charts, Enneagram numbers dropped into dating bios, akashic record readings sold alongside energy clearings. Most of these practices are centuries or millennia old, but the sheer density of posts and information, and the openness to them feels new.

Of course some many of these tools get used and misused, and there is so much out there. So I wanted to share some of the things I have been doing, maybe some of them can be a good start if you are curious about them. Enjoy!

Divination and Metaphysical Systems & Self-Knowledge Tools

Astrology (Western)

I have been reading Susan Miller ‘s Astrology Zone for more than a decade now, and no matter how many others I find, she is always the most spot on. People on social media complain a lot that she is always late on delivering the monthly forecast (it’s true), but I don’t take this that seriously to be that upset if she is late  . I also listen to Jessica Adams weekly horoscope podcast. She is very prolific and her website has a ton of information too. Chani Nicholas ‘s readings don’t resonate with me most of the times, but she has an app a ton of resources there such as meditations, journal prompts etc, and your birth chart “lives” there, which is always helpful when you want to do a quick consult. Her readings based from your ascendant – or rising sign, not your sun sign. I do read both on Susan Miller’s and Jessica Adam’s. PS: If you are a fan of astrology, I hope you enjoyed the Lion’s Portal and yesterday’s eclipse in Leo!

Human Design

Human Design synthesized in the 1980s from astrology, the I-Ching, Kabbalah, and chakra theory. It produces a detailed “chart” sorting people into energy “types” (Generators, Projectors, Manifestors, and so on) meant to describe how each person is built to make decisions and expend energy. It’s fascinating and I find it extremely accurate. I love the app Align created by Jenna Zoe on My Human Design (they also have a podcast) that generates your personalized Human Design chart and bodygraph. It explains so much in text or in audio, but also because we can add other people to it and learn about them. I have my children and husband there and it’s fun to read all about them.

Enneagram

A nine-point personality typing system with roots in early-20th-century spiritual teaching, developed in the 20th century by modern esoteric philosophers and teachers like Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo, drawing from various global wisdom traditions. Unlike most of the systems here, it isn’t really divinatory, and it doesn’t claim access to unseen information. It’s closer to a map of motivation: what each type fears, wants, and does under stress. I first heard about it through Glennon Doyle’s podcast, where Suzanne Stabile explained the system. This is another fascinating tool to know yourself better and the people around you. The podcast episodes are this, this and this. Suzanne Stabile is an internationally-recognized Enneagram teacher, and the co-author of The Road Back to You, and the author of The Path Between Us and The Journey Toward Wholeness. Suzanne’s husband is a United Methodist pastor, so she also teaches with a Christian leans, but enneagram is not a religious practice.

Tarot

Angie Banicki with Billie Eilish

Covered in the last piece, briefly: a 78-card deck used less for fortune-telling today than for structured self-reflection, prompting a reader to project meaning onto ambiguous imagery in the presence of another person. I use it a lot to tap into my intuition, and I learned from Angie Banicki, back when she used to host workshops. She is amazing, I highly recommend you schedule a session with her. I use the original Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, and also Angie’s Explorer of The Soul deck. I used to sell Pamela Love’s jewelry in my shop in Sag Harbor, and Pam came once for an event and gnerously read tarot cards for my clients. And now she has beautiful deck called The Infinite Door, I pre-ordered and it should be arriving soon. I also have a few oracle decks that I sometimes use if I want some extra guidance: The Flower Oracle and L’Oracle du Jardin by Le Jardin Retrouve (the company’s owner Clara was kind enough to gift me one, I used to sell candles and diffusers at my shop as well).

Feng Shui

I have moved many, many times in my life, and I have been using the help of a Feng-Shui expert since around 2003 – more on this very soon! Feng Shui is a practice for arranging physical space like our homes, offices, and furniture to direct the flow of energy, or qi, in ways believed to affect health, wealth, and relationships. Feng Shui is about the environment rather than the self, though the underlying logic still relies on unseen forces and energy. My home is my ultimate sanctuary, and I will always be up for anything that can make it the most harmonious possible for me and my family. I will be sharing more about my favorite practitioner, and will share more resources too, so stay tuned.

Psychics & mediums

Now this is a tricky one. I’m about to consult with a few people soon, and they come highly recommended. But I remember when I lived in NYC, out of curiosity I went to see that famous physic that was located on Bleecker Street, her name was Zena. At first, things were fine and she went about her “regular” reading, but towards the end of it, she started to “see” things that she could fix – for the modest amount of 5,000 dollars. I knew it then that she was a grifter, so I thanked her and left. 10 years later, I read in the news that she had been found guilty for stealing 138,000 from clients. I have a feeling she stole a lot more than that over the years, and I’m glad she got caught.

These predatory practices are all over the place, so I’m super careful and very skeptical. But I grew up in Brazil, where it’s very common to meet people who are mediums, and ask for their help when you need them. The most infamous of them all is John of God, who was indicted for sexually abusing about 600 women. Netflix had a documentary about him and his crimes. It’s so infuriating and unforgivable that he used his position to take advantage of vulnerable women who were there to seek help. And if half f his abilities were true, it’s a shame that he decided to waste them.

This type of healing modality is not as common here in the US, and there is a lot of skepticism, rightly so. If you want to find someone, make sure they are always recommended by someone you know and if they ask for a lot of money upfront, I strongly recommend that you walk away. My mom sees this medium in Brazil who says being a medium is not her choice, she believes it’s a mission that was given to her by God. She lives in a very modest house, and never charges anything – she relies strictly on small donations, so I know she isn’t fleecing anyone. I’m not saying everyone needs to work for free, but be careful out there with the crazy large fees.

A few members of my family also had some extraordinary experiences with mediums, so I am open to this practice so long as they come highly recommended.

I don’t use Numerology (though I know my numbers), I-Ching, Runes & pendulum work, or Akashic records, so I can’t recommend them. The most mysterious and hard to grasp of them all (to me, at least) is the Akashic records.

The claim, drawn from Theosophical tradition, is that a non-physical archive exists containing the record of every soul’s experiences across lifetimes, accessible through meditation or a trained reader. I hadn’t heard about them until recently, when someone asked me if I believed in them. I read this article about it, and learned a lot. In it, they explain how Edgar Cayce (who has been called the most documented psychic of all time as well as a 20th-century mystic) gave readings, or psychic dissertations, using the Akashic Records as his primary resource material. He talent was his ability to access and describe information from the Akashic records to enable a person to discover everything from their purpose in life to the root cause of a long-standing problem. Read the full article, it’s fascinating. It seems that the purpose of the Akashic Records is to keep track of and assist with each soul’s personal growth and transformation.

Whatever you do, and whether you believe in these tools or not, I hope this has been interesting and helpful to you. Sending love,

Patricia

PART ONE

I watched The Odyssey last week, and I kept thinking about a world where gods argue over dinner, omens hide in the flight of birds, and any storm might be a message. It made me realize how far we’ve drifted from a world that could still surprise us like that, and it’s what finally pushed me to write what I’ve been obsessing over for a long time.

The flattening

Technology did not set out to remove the sacred from daily life. It was supposed to make life easier, and mostly it has. But this ease has collapsed time and distance, and removed much of the wonder we once experienced. A letter took two weeks and carried the ache of waiting for it. A walk alone used to be uninterrupted time with our own thoughts, and we could hear the birds, look at the trees, feel a flicker of awe at the natural world, but now we half-listen to a podcast about optimizing our lives, or photograph the flowers to produce content.

As we started seeing too much of our world through a screen, we stopped looking out, and up. Our world went flat, and somewhere between one phone update and the next, we stopped looking for awe. We don’t need to anyway: our algorithm serves us whatever we want to see, flat and 2D, and we just keep scrolling.

I want to spend this newsletter (Part One), and a few more that follow it, exploring why and how so many people — Gen Z especially — are trying to claim some of life’s sacredness back.

Hope and Awe, in a different format

Gen Z has been raised inside the flattening, is looking hard for hope and awe.

The Pew Research Center reported this year that roughly 3 in 10 American adults now consult astrology, tarot cards, or fortune tellers, with usage concentrated most heavily among Gen Z and millennials.

The tarot and oracle card market alone has grown from an estimated $830 million in 2020 to roughly $1.5 billion in 2026, and about two-thirds of new practitioners are between 18 and 34. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, formal religious affiliation among Gen Z continues to slide: only 45% now identify as Christian, down from 55% a decade earlier, according to Pew's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, and 41% claim no religious affiliation at all.

Surveys of Gen Z consistently find people who describe themselves as spiritual far more often than religious. The hunger for meaning, for awe, for something larger than ourselves hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s just no longer looking for a home inside traditional institutions.

It’s also, I think, why so much of this search gets filed under “wellness” rather than “religion.” We already have a fluent, judgment-free vocabulary for taking care of ourselves such as therapy, meditation apps, sleep tracking, breathwork, and slotting tarot or astrology into that same category isn’t a stretch so much as a natural expansion of it.

The questions AI is forcing us to ask

I don’t think it’s an accident that this is happening at the exact moment technology has also stripped the wonder out of daily life. We are all asking, essentially, the oldest question there is: not “what should I do today” but “what am I here to do at all.” That’s a spiritual question, and it always has been.

The Tarot

I got an early preview of this searching-for-connection instinct in my own life a few years ago, when I started reading tarot. I remember one reading in particular: sitting across from a stranger, a deck of cards shuffling slowly between us, forty minutes passing before either of us reached for a phone. What I understood afterward is that the cards were almost beside the point. A stranger and I had given each other forty uninterrupted minutes of real attention, and the deck between us gave us both permission to talk about things too big for small talk, without either of us having to hold that weight alone. Reaching for something explicitly non-human — a set of symbols with no stake in my life — is what made the hour feel more human than most conversations I have in a week.

I’m not a theologian, a scholar of religion, or anyone with the authority to tell you what’s true. But I’m someone who noticed the flattening in my own life, went looking for a way back to noticing the awe in everything around me — birds, flowers, the ordinary miracle of another person’s attention — and found myself, unexpectedly, at a table with a tarot deck, discovering that what I was actually hungry for connection to the world, to other people, to myself and my own intuition. I wanted to recapture a sense of magic, hope, and mystery — the idea that some things can’t be explained by the brain. They have to be felt and understood in the body, not just the mind.

Over the next few pieces, I want to explore why practices like tarot, energy work, spirituality and some modalities that used to live at the margins are now sitting comfortably in the mainstream, sometimes alongside very religious traditions. I want to talk about the charlatans, because they’re real and worth naming plainly. And I want to talk about the people I believe are genuinely gifted, and why, in a world this flattened, reaching toward them might be one of the more rational things a person can do.

Next week: a field guide to the many modalities people are reaching for right now — astrology to akashic records — and what they all turn out to have in common.

Sending love and good energy ❤️

Patricia

*this newsletter is not intended as medical advice, please discuss the medications mentioned below with your doctor before considering them

Hi there,

Last week, I launched a Wellness Conference in Brazil with Iguatemi, where so many important topics on health, beauty and wellness were discussed. Today I want to focus on menopause, not only because it’s an important conversation and a reckoning with how far behind women’s health research remains, but because it’s a subject that stays controversial across every layer of the medical community. I was just reading Dr. Jen Gunter’s post on estradiol, and the flood of comments about how the medical community can’t seem to agree on anything is telling.

I watched a very engaging conversation between Brazilian actress and menopause activist Claudia Raia and Brazilian gynecologist Dr. André Vinícius, one of Brazil’s most important menopause specialists, a speaker at the The Harvard Medical School “Women’s Health and Menopause” (WHAM), and the author of Menopause Without Mysteries. Claudia not only advocates for more information and research on menopause; she also stars in the Brazilian play “Menopause Scenes”. She is committed!

Together, they did exactly what the title of his book promises. They turned the lights on a phase of life that most women navigate in the dark, often times confused, dismissed, and ashamed.

The most radical thing he said had nothing to do with hormones

You’d expect a leading gynecologist to spend his time on the physical aspects of menopause and the hormones, and he did discussed estrogen in depth, how it moves through the body, and why its decline reverberates far beyond the reproductive system.

But the message he kept returning to was almost startling in its simplicity, but so urgent that needs to be repeated: doctors need to listen.

Women are tired of doctors who scan the lab results, recite the statistics, deliver the standard lecture on what hormones do, and then move on. Listen. Because the woman in front of you arrives with her own constellation of symptoms, her own mental health, the specific changes she wants to make in her life — and too often those get waved away by physicians who prefer to go strictly by the book.

How many times does a woman in perimenopause walk into a doctor’s office and get prescribed antidepressants because her labs “are fine”? Hormones fluctuate wildly, and just because one test comes back “fine” doesn’t mean you’re not in perimenopause or menopause. Knowing what to ask, how to ask it, and then actually listening would have been far more helpful.

The gut

He also brought the frontier of the research to the stage, including work he presented at Harvard’s menopause conference on the estrobolome — the community of gut bacteria involved in how our bodies metabolize and absorb estrogen. Here’s what that actually means: when your body is done with a dose of estrogen, your liver tags it for disposal and sends it toward the exit — but certain gut bacteria can snip that tag off, reactivate the estrogen, and send it back into circulation. Your microbiome, in other words, helps decide how much estrogen you hold onto.

It’s a beautiful, under-appreciated idea: that the health of your gut shapes your hormonal reality, and that something as unglamorous as eating enough fiber is quietly doing hormonal work on your behalf. Menopause, it turns out, is not only happening in your ovaries. It’s happening in your gut, your brain, your sleep, your mood — everywhere.

And some good news

The Brazilian version of the FDA (called ANVISA) has just approved a non-hormonal medication for hot flashes — fezolinetant, sold as Veozah — which means relief is finally arriving for the women who can’t take hormone replacement therapy. The NY Times just came out with an article about all millions of women left out of the HRT conversation, and they mention this drug. The fact that it’s not widely known in the US when millions suffer from the same issue is a mystery to me.

And this issue is personal to me, and I fel like the women mentioned in the article. As a breast cancer survivor whose doctors won’t even open the conversation about HRT, I’ve spent years being told, in effect, to simply endure. So a hormone-free option isn’t an abstraction to me. It’s a door that had been locked, opening to all the women who cannot have HRT.

For my readers in the US: this same medication is FDA-approved here as well. And as of late 2025, a second non-hormonal drug — elinzanetant (Lynkuet) — has been approved too, with early data suggesting benefits for sleep and mood on top of hot flashes. The toolbox for women who’ve been left out is, at last, getting bigger — and that’s great news.

Dr. Vinicius also mentioned estetrol (E4) as a possible alternative in HRT, and it seems to have less impact on the liver and on breast tissue, which is very interesting and positive. If this is a viable alternative, I will for sure ask my doctor to try it.

Moving forward

I have many take aways from their talk, but the most important ones are:

First, medicine and treatments are moving forward. There are more options this year than there were last year, and the conversations being held — not only in Brazil but worldwide — are themselves a sign of how far we’ve come.

And second, we are all impatient, and for good reason. Because for every advance, you can feel the vastness of what’s still missing: the research not funded, the symptoms not studied, the women not prioritized. That a phase of life every woman on earth will pass through remains this under-examined is not an accident. It’s a choice the world keeps making, and we all need to advicate for ourselves and for more research and resources in women’s health.

In the meantime, the remedy Dr. Vinícius offered is one we can all carry, in the exam room and out of it. Insist on being heard. Turns out, our doctors’ most important organ is their ears. And if they are not using them, find a new doctor that does.

Sending love,

Patricia

Carla-Rae Prober, Jan Planit, yours truly and Lauren Aiyana, photographed by Paulo Josepetti

Hi there,

It seems generational wars have been happening for at least 2,400 years.

I have always hated the way media weaponizes generational differences and turns them into full-on wars. OK Boomer. Slackers. Snowflakes. Zoomers. Delulu. The Me Generation. The Avocado Toast Generation. These labels are designed to rage-bait us and divide us, to make us roll our eyes at each other across the table and dismiss people we don’t even know just because of the year they were born. Though I’m not immune, I’ve always believed we have so much more to gain from crossing those lines than defending them. Yes, we’ll always have our differences. Young people will always push against older cultural standards — that’s their job, and it’s healthy, and good most of the times. Older people will tend to hold on to the world they created, and why wouldn’t they? But why can’t we do it with a generous dose of mutual respect? This wholesale disdain for an entire generation is, quite frankly, stupid, and while we are busy judging and dismissing younger or older people than us, we are missing out on so much.

This is why I was so taken by WelcomeHaus. A new company founded by Lauren Aiyana, Jan Planit and Carla-Rae Prober, 3 women of different generations supporting women in refining every dimension of their lives through intentional experiences, curated retreats, gatherings, and personalized individual mentorship.

Last Saturday, I attended their retreat in Montauk. The setting was idyllic: after driving and soaking up the Hamptons beauty, I arrived at a gorgeous beachfront house. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the ocean views and the sound of the waves crashing immediately put everyone in the mood for some R&R.

The view, at arrival

Getting saged before meditation / Photo credit Niels Schröder

The day started with a mediation session and reflections about what we are ready to release and let go, followed by an introduction by Jan, a delicious healthy lunch, a discussion with Dr. Donese Worden, a brief yoga session and a sweet offering of kindness and good energy, delivered to the ocean by Lauren. As the day went by, I realized that the best part wasn’t the striking views or the amazing setting. It was the founders, and the community they are building.

The meditation area

Each of WelcomeHaus’ founder brought something the others couldn’t replicate, and together they become larger than the sum of their parts. Lauren is the spiritual and wellness anchor; her meditation and sound bath brought a restorative, healing quality to everything we did. Jan is the builder, the entrepreneur who has spent decades believing in women and their capabilities, and whose work with young models like Cindy Crawford made her fiercely protective of them while deepening her conviction that women, when they truly see themselves, can build extraordinary things. And Carla-Rae is the creative force whose work in fashion and design has taught her that clothes and furniture are mere vehicles for true self-expression and confidence if you choose to engage with them in a more meaningful way.

Taking copious notes / Photo credit Niels Schröder

Yoga with a view / Photo credit Niels Schröder

Carla-Rae closed the retreat with a beautiful speech. She called on all of us to be kinder to other women. She told us that even in her 70s she still encounters “mean girl” behavior, and spoke about how we can show up in the world in a kinder and more supportive way. She shared how much less pain and suffering she would have endured had she had mentors like herself, Lauren and Jan in her life. And she spoke about how we dress, how we move through the world, how we present ourselves — not as performance or concealment, but as full expression of who we are.

Carla-Rae, speaking from the heart

The day also included Dr. Donese Worden, who shared her knowledge and wisdom about women’s health, cancer research, self-advocacy, and the very real ways our current healthcare system fails us. She reminded us that community isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s medicine. She covered A LOT, and it was a masterclass.

Dr. Worden, getting ready to speak

All of them brought their hearts, their life experience, and their full selves to that space, and it was just great to watch women being their true selves, and genuinely building community.

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to follow WelcomeHaus and keep an eye on their upcoming Women’s Circle in July. I posted more photos and videos on Instagram, check them out. And below, I asked Lauren, Jan, and Carla-Rae to share their 10 favorite things — scroll and get to know them!

Thank you to WelcomeHaus for having me. It was my first retreat, and absolutely worth every minute of it. ❤️

Sending love,

Patricia

Click HERE If you want to read more about Lauren, HERE about Jan, and HERE about Carla. And follow Welcomehaus HERE.

Lauren, Jan and Carla-Rae’s Favorite Things

Carla-Rae, Lauren and Jan / Photo credit Niels Schröder

* If you prefer audio, you can listen to this newsletter on Substack. Just find the play button on the top right corner.

THE EPIDEMIC

Let’s call it what it is. Comparisonitis. It’s not a clinical diagnosis, but a term that organizational psychologists now use to describe the chronic, habitual loop of measuring ourselves against others until we’re too demoralized to move. It is, at this point, an epidemic. Social media didn’t invent it, but Instagram has absolutely turbocharged it into something we’ve never seen before at this scale.

We’ve all known this instinctively for years. I feel it on a daily basis. But it was through my advisory work with women founders that I realized that, not only it wasn’t just me, but it was everyone. The same story session after session, across industries, across very different women. Brilliant women, with real ideas and real capability, all frozen. Because they opened Instagram and saw someone doing something adjacent, and decided on the spot that it had already been done by someone better.

After watching so many people (myself included) suffer through this, I decided I had to go looking for answers. I’ve been looking at this for months, and today I’m sharing what I found. Why we do this, how it freezes us, my own spiral before pushing “publish” on this newsletter, and six things that actually help. I hope by the end of this you feel a little less alone in it, and a little more ready to live your life like nobody’s watching. Because, as it turns out, they really aren’t.

WHY WE DO THIS: looking sideways and upward social comparison

It’s normal for all humans to look sideways at other people as a way to evaluate themselves (called the Social Comparison Theory proposed by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954). But research consistently shows that women engage in upward social comparison — measuring themselves against people they perceive as more successful, more put-together, further along — more frequently than men, and are far more likely to internalize the damage afterward. Men tend to deflect (“different circumstances,” “she got lucky”). Women absorb it directly into their sense of self. They are both comparing, but with very different aftermath.

And Instagram is a near-perfect machine for this because in most things that actually matter — am I a good enough mother, is my work meaningful, is my life adding up to something — there is no actual objective score. So we outsource the verdict to other people’s curated feed of best moments, and we use that as our mirror. No wonder we are all reeling with insecurity.

THE FREEZE: the spotlight that isn’t even on you

Psychologists Gilovich and Savitsky identified something called the Spotlight Effect — our consistent tendency to believe we are being observed and judged far more than we actually are. We walk through our lives convinced the room is paying attention to us: to our choices, our bodies, our work, our failures. It isn’t. Everyone else is too busy being convinced the room is paying attention to them.

This matters because comparisonitis feeds on that imaginary audience. You’re not just afraid you’re falling short, you’re afraid everyone can see it.

The shame of feeling behind is bad enough. But the belief that it’s obvious and visible, and that people are clocking the gap between you and others is what turns a passing moment of self-doubt into a full freeze. The spotlight isn’t real but the paralysis it causes very much is.

WHAT THE DATA SAYS: what hits us the most, how women lose it, and the self-defeating cycle.

Research has found that when we scroll through idealized images and lives on social media, we don’t feel bad about everything — we feel bad about the specific things that matter most to us personally. A writer feels like a fraud. A mother feels like she’s failing. A founder feels like she’s already been lapped.

To make matters worse for women, the “better than average” effect (Svenson, 1981) shows that most people naturally rate themselves above average on most things but men maintain this bias even after repeated failure, and women lose it faster and take longer to rebuild it. Every scroll accelerates that loss.

And to tie everything with a crazy self-defeating bow, just like women are conditioned to judge their bodies through someone else’s eyes, we do the exact same thing with everything else we create or care for. The newsletter, the home, the children, the relationship — they all become extensions of us, waiting to be graded. No wonder a bad scroll can level us.

A CONFESSION: this newsletter almost didn’t happen

I’m not a professional writer, nor do I have a degree in journalism, and English is not my first language. I didn’t come from fashion editorial, newspapers, or digital media. When I joined Substack, I was very intimidated by the caliber of the writers here, and I was convinced that, not only someone had already brilliantly covered every topic I thought of, but when I finally decide to write about it, I will be judged for being a terrible writer.

I had talked myself out of it approximately forty times before I finally hit “publish”. The voice in my head was relentless: “Who do I think I am to write anything here? I don’t belong here, and whatever I decide to write has already been done by someone better”. Sounds familiar?

That voice is still here, and sometimes it’s very loud. I still feel the anxiety every time I send you this newsletter. I often catch myself sliding into comparison mode, but I’ve learned a few things that help me interrupt the loop before it freezes me. I am sharing them below, and I hope it’s helpful to you too.

WHAT I TELL MY CLIENTS — AND MYSELF: six ways to get your blinders on

Though I’m not a life coach (my work is focused on brand and retail strategy), nothing will get done if the Founder is paralyzed with fear and comparisonitis. So I often share these practical and grounded tools I use for getting out of the comparison loop and back into my own life.

One last thing worth saying out loud. There is nothing wrong with us. Comparisonitis isn’t a personal failing, it’s just a product of well designed platforms that need all of us feeling inadequate, scrolling and engaging to continue to make billions of dollars. The strategies I shared above are meant to remind us that this system is built to keep us consuming instead of living.

So put the blinders on, and get back to your full, beautiful, imperfect life. Your chapter five is the only one that matters right now.

Sending love,

Patricia

PS: If you are an entrepreneur and need help with your brand, check my credentials and some of my advisory work HERE. You can also schedule a Discovery Call HERE so we can chat and see if we are a good fit.

Share THE MATRIARK NEWSLETTER

Hi there,

Before we start, I want to remind you of this special event I am co-hosting to benefit CaringKind, a trusted partner in brain health, supporting families and individuals impacted by Alzheimer’s and related dementia.

I’m so honored to have been selected to join 100 WOMEN OF IMPACT, convened by CaringKind, a national movement of women leaders committed to shaping the future of brain health and well-being. Guided by shared purpose and compassion, we champion research that confirms Alzheimer’s and related dementia risk can be significantly reduced by up to 40%.

Please join me alongside my co-host’s and fellow Women Of Impact Meredith Burns, Melissa Breitbart, Jan Planit, and Amber Rae on Friday, March 27th from 12:30–2:30 PM at Veronica Beard in Southampton. I hope to see you there!

OK, onwards to this week’s newsletter!

PS: Pro-tip: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this newsletter on Substack. Just find the play button on the top right corner!

Some of the statistics cited in this newsletter are based on published medical research available at the time of writing, and others were shared with me with my doctor in 2018. Please consult your own healthcare team for the most current information and personalized medical advice. This is a personal story, not medical guidance.

You may remember back in 2013, when Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed at the of The New York Times titled “My Medical Choice,” revealing that she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation. That gave her an estimated 87% risk of breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer, and she shared she had already undergone a preventive double mastectomy. Two years later, she followed with the removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes.

Referrals for genetic counseling doubled. BRCA testing surged 64%. Women who had been quietly terrified suddenly had permission to ask more questions, and choose. They called it the “Angelina Effect.”

Today, prophylactic mastectomies are far more common than they were in 2013. But it’s major surgery, and a deeply personal decision, and it requires more information than most of us are given when we need it most.

I know, because I lived it.

The Phone Call

In 2018, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My former doctor called me and simply said “I’m sorry, you have breast cancer. Youn need to find a surgeon and an oncologist, so get your pathology reports sent over. I have no more information.” (I also wrote about this here). Now you know why she is no longer my doctor.

I didn’t even know there was more than one type of breast cancer. I thought cancer was cancer, the big, terrifying, C word. I hung up the phone and the only thought in my mind, on an absolute loop, was: I can’t die. I need to be here for my kids.

What followed was two weeks of bureaucratic chaos. Calling the hospital to get pathology reports sent to Memorial Sloan Kettering (a full-time job in itself), then my surgeon requesting an entirely new pathology analysis to confirm the diagnosis. Two weeks of not knowing if I was facing something survivable or something catastrophic was torture.

Thankfully, my cancer was caught in the earliest form, and it was non-invasive, encapsulated. The five-year survival rate was over 99%. I exhaled for the first time in fourteen days.

“It’s Not Necessary”. Why I Did It Anyway.

My instinct from the start was to have a mastectomy. Just get rid of it. But my surgeon, rightly so (medically speaking), told me it wasn’t necessary. She walked me through the statistics: the 10-year survival rate was 98% regardless of treatment approach after surgery. The recurrence rate after lumpectomy and radiation was from 5 to 15% in 10 years. The annual risk of developing cancer in the other breast was about roughly 5-6% at 10 years, about 10% over 25 years.

(These are the statistics she shared with me then; current numbers may vary.)

The numbers seemed to be in my favor. I was distraught, exhausted from the diagnostic saga, and just wanted someone to get the cancer out of me so I could get on with my life. So we did a lumpectomy and radiation. When radiation ended, I was relieved and got right back to my life.

But here’s what no one told me : when the treatment ends, the anxiety begins. At least for me, it did.

Every year, I went for my screening, and it was always terrifying. Multiple times I had scares that required additional biopsies, on both breasts. Then, two years ago, I had to have a small spot removed that was deemed very high-risk. Doctors are excellent during treatment, but they don’t prepare you for the emotional aftermath, the yearly dread, and the constant vigilance. There is a heavy, invisible weight of constantly living on alert.

Sure, I was lucky it was caught early, and the statistics were on my side. But survival rate is different than recurrence rate - who wants to go through this again, even if we have high chances of surviving it??? If it came back, it could come back invasive. And then I’d be looking at a whole different battle, like chemo, and maybe a far more uncertain outcome. And though the statistics of survival are “good”, what if I fell on the “bad side”? I’m already an anxious person, and living in fear, and waiting for the other shoe to drop was eroding my quality of life.

So two years ago, I made my decision: double mastectomy. I went back to my doctor, who once again gently and professionally told me it wasn’t necessary. This time, I pushed back. “I know the statistics, but this is about my mental health. This is about my quality of life. I can’t keep living like this.”

She relented. And last January, I went through with it.

Listen, I’m not here to convince you to do it. This is a huge decision and it must be done carefully (it took me 7 years to do it). But if you take one thing from my story, let it be this: listen to the doctors and do your research. Ask other doctors and people you know who went through it. And then if you want to pursue a different route, you are allowed to advocate for yourself, even when the data says you’re fine. Your mental health counts too. Your peace of mind is a legitimate medical concern. You know your body and your limits better than anyone else.

If You’re Considering This: Implants vs. DIEP Flap

I want to share what I learned, and hopefully this will help. I was offered two main options:

Option 1: Silicone implants. Shorter surgery, shorter recovery. But implants are not lifetime devices. I was told by my surgeon that they last 10 to 20 years before needing replacement, and there was risk of rupture. H also told me that if I chose silicone, their ruptures may be “silent” with no visible symptoms, and after I researched it, I learned that the leak can potentially cause inflammation, and a symptoms like fatigue, joint pain, and brain fog (what some women and doctors refer to as “breast implant illness.”). At the time of my research, there was also a rare but real cancer risk called BIA-ALCL (breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma), primarily linked to textured implants. The FDA explicitly states that breast implants are not lifetime devices and that patients should expect at least one additional surgery. If I didn’t have any other choice, I would go for this and would do a lot of surveillance, but I had another option.

Option 2: DIEP flap reconstruction. This is what I chose. It used tissue from my abdomen for reconstruction. If I lose weight, it will “shrink” with me, if I gain weight, it will grow with me. The surgery is longer (mine was eight hours) because they do reconstruction all at once, and there is the added recovery of your core / abdomen, so recovery takes about six weeks.

The surgery went very well, but recovery is not a walk in the park. And it’s where the story gets both harder and more beautiful.

The Village And The Things Hospitals Don’t Tell You

Before my surgery, I called the hospital to ask what I should buy to prepare for recovery. The nurse told me I was fine and didn’t need anything specific. I asked again: Are you sure? Nothing?? I mentioned a recliner, special shirts, and other gear, and she told me to just use several pillows to elevate my back during sleep, and nothing else.

Reader, that nurse was wrong. Alright, so technically she was right: sure, I would have survived not having anything else, but my life would have been infinitely worse if I didn’t.

Thank God for the women who had gone before me. I reached out to friends who’d had similar procedures, and they were extraordinary. They shared resources, told me exactly what to buy, and gave me tips on navigating recovery - information the hospital simply did not provide. Because of them, I knew to rent a recliner that could stand me up to a fully upright position (so I wouldn’t strain my abdomen). I in fact slept on it for 2 weeks, and renting that clunky ugly thing was the best thing I ever did. I knew to buy open-front shirts with built-in pockets for the surgical drains which, by the way, are the single worst part of recovery, but very manageable with the right gear. I can’t understand, for the life of me, why that nurse couldn’t just agree that those were good ideas!

(Side note to every hospital administrator reading this: put pockets for drains in the gowns. It would help your patients AND save a lot of your nurses’ time. You’re welcome.)

And then there was the meal train.

Nine of my friends organized a meal delivery for my family with delicious food every single day for a week, so my husband and mother-in-law wouldn’t have to worry about cooking while taking care of me during those crucial days. A small-town tradition, with me as its lucky recipient.

I felt so taken care of by friends, by family, by the dedicated nurses, and by my surgical team. I’ll never be able to thank my breast surgeon enough. Her precision, care and her super human team - the best. She introduced me to my plastic surgeon, who is not only technically brilliant but genuinely empathetic. There’s a special trust involved in letting someone reconstruct part of your body, and I was lucky to find a surgeon who is equal parts artist and human being.

A Love Letter

All in all, despite the trials and tribulation, the stress, anxiety and difficult decisions, I’m writing this not as a cautionary tale, but as a love letter.

To our bodies, these imperfect yet resilient, miraculous machines that carry us through everything and somehow keep going.

To the caregivers, the friends who show up with casseroles, the family members who hold your hand when you’re scared, and the women in your orbit who text to check on you six weeks later when everyone else has moved on.

To the nurses, who do the unglamorous, essential, tender work of keeping us alive and comfortable, and who deserve pockets in those gowns, honestly.

To the surgeons with skilled, steady-hands who fix us, and rebuild us.

And most of all, this is a love letter to the survivors. The ones who carry the anxiety before every scan, the worries about the statistics, the fears about not being there for your children and families, and the strength to keep going no matter what. You are brave, and you are not alone.

Angelina Jolie wrote in her op-ed: “Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.” That was the most important thing for me. I can’t worry about things I don’t control, but I can choose to have peace of mind, to know I did my best for me and my family, and to regain a little more joy in my life.

Sending love and health,

Patricia

Hi there,

I recently had major (preventative) surgery. I am well, healthy, healing, and deeply grateful. But this I know for sure: being a patient is like being a project manager under anesthesia.

I was treated by extraordinary doctors in a state-of-the-art hospital, and learned first-hand how surgeons, nurses, and staff are working around the clock, saving lives, and doing deeply human work inside an inhuman system.

The surgery itself was long, eight hours, and successful. I planned, prepared, and asked many questions beforehand. What no one prepares you for is what comes after. You are groggy, vulnerable, barely in your body, and suddenly responsible for managing your own care inside a machine that never slows down and often feels like a roller coaster.

My 2 main surgeons were off because it was the weekend, so I saw their teams. But… shifts! So every 12 hours, a new team. New faces, new questions, different moods and bedside manners. Rinse and repeat.

“My back really hurts.”
“Yes, eight hours on a table will do that.”
[Silence] “Okay, so can we treat it? Painkillers are no working on my back”
“Sure, we will get you a patch.” (off protocol)

The nurse forgot about it, then her shift ended. Rinse and repeat. Explain again to a new nurse. Wait again. The patch was finally applied two hours later.

“My stomach burns.”
“It’s nausea from the anesthesia, right?”
“I had nausea earlier but this doesn’t feel like nausea. Could it be oral medication on an empty stomach?”
“Maybe, but probably from anesthesia.”
[Silence] “Okay, so can we treat it?”
“OK, I’ll get the anti-acid” (off protocol)

At another point, after being administered a muscle relaxer, my blood pressure dropped. Despite the exhaustion, I explained clearly, calmly, repeatedly: “It’s probably the medication. My dad had the same reaction.”

Every nurse rechecked my vitals. Nah…

“It’s probably the drowsiness from anesthesia.”

Twelve hours later, my blood pressure mysteriously normalized.

“Could it be because my medication wore off?”
“Maybe, but nah… probably the anesthesia.”

I don’t think the nurses or doctors were purposefully cruel or careless. But I’m convinced that something more insidious takes over their jobs: a generalized selective hearing to protect protocol over person. Getting off script for the sake of the patient means you have to listen, work harder, justify it to your boss, and it may cost more (even your job).

Then came the discharge conversation that almost pushed me over the edge.

I live 2.5 hours away. I was still nauseated, weak, and burning with stomach pain. I said multiple times that I did not feel safe getting into a car.

A young doctor from one of the surgical teams looked at me and said, flatly:

“I know you’re not feeling well, but with medication, you’ll be able to be discharged later today.”

She visited twice and said the same thing, even though I repeated how I felt. When she returned for her last visit, already dark outside, she asked:

“It’s been many hours, so you should be feeling better and ready to go home, right?”

“I feel exactly the same,” I said. “I am not comfortable leaving. I already spoke to the nurses and my husband agrees, we can’t leave today.”

Her face dropped. She was visibly annoyed. I had disrupted her plans and interrupted the system. I threw the wrench in the machine.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll plan discharge tomorrow.”

Then she turned around and left. No “I hope you feel better” or “Is there anything else I can do?”

She was cold, but also intelligent, trained, efficient, and operating inside a structure that sometimes treats patients like the chocolates in the I Love Lucy conveyor belt scene. Except that patients are not chocolates, staff shouldn’t work like Lucy, and the consequences are not funny.

To add insult to injury, we already know that women are far more likely to be gaslit in medical settings. Our symptoms are minimized and our instincts questioned. Self-advocacy is applauded until you are medicated, exhausted, scared, and still expected to argue for your own safety, only to be labeled a difficult patient.

I had every possible advantage: excellent insurance, top-tier doctors, a non-life threatening issue, I was conscious and had an advocate with me. My husband did not need to speak. His presence alone was enough to lend credibility to what I was already saying. Infuriating, but true.

If this was hard for me, what happens to patients without all these advantages?

This newsletter is a call to look honestly at a system that forces even the most compassionate professionals to move too fast, listen too little, and default to protocol over human beings. I can’t change the Medical-Industrial Complex on my own, but I can share what I learned in hopes you are prepared if you ever need it. These are not medical nor legal tips, just things I learned through my experience.

🩺 Never go alone. The hospital I stayed only allowed 1 night for my husband (instead of 2 or 3), but we pushed hard to get this. I wasn’t going to spend the night alone after major surgery. Advocacy is nearly impossible when you are vulnerable. Bring someone who can listen, remember, repeat, and push when you cannot. Ask them to take notes on everything said and done. Ask them to stand up next to you whenever possible when doctors and nurses arrive. If they can’t stay overnight, debrief them in the morning and ask them to push for the things you need. If you aren’t able to communicate after a procedure (ask your doctor about those details!), make clear of your specific preferences to your Advocate before you go.

🩺 Be very specific. Vague pain gets dismissed and can lead to mistakes. Ask your advocate to help you communicate clearly. If you get intimidated by a doctor or nurse, ask them to give you ideas of what it could be, and maybe you can buy a little time and find the right word. Sometimes they may unintentionally “lead the witness” (it happened to me - “it’s nausea, right?”), but try to stick to it and don’t give in. If you have a hard time saying no, you can say “maybe, but this doesn’t quite feel right yet”. But don’t agree if you know it’s not true.

🩺 If you know something in your body, don’t let it go. Ask again, say it differently, ask for confirmation. Ask your advocate to repeat it. Persistence is self-preservation, and sometimes crucial for your survival. Act like your life depends on it - because it does! When my back hurt so much and painkillers wouldn’t help, I asked the doctor to check my lungs for pneumonia. I knew it was probably muscle pain, but I asked for peace of mind and they agreed to check. I was relieved.

I am profoundly grateful for my care, and I am equally convinced we can and must do better.

We are one unique body, and one precious life. A system designed to save us when we cannot save ourselves should not require this much work when we are this vulnerable.

More soon on my surgery.
For now, my priorities are rest, healing, and a refusal to be quiet when something is not right.

Love,
Patricia

Hi there,

[Before we start, I want to be clear about one thing: this newsletter isn’t about judging or shaming anyone who struggles with alcohol addiction. Addiction is real, complex, and deeply personal. I’m talking here about social drinking culture and my own relationship with alcohol, not about recovery journeys that deserve respect and care.]

Despite the homeschooling, the chaos, and being together all day, every day, during Covid something unexpected happened in our house: my husband and I drank less. Believe me, nobody was more shocked than we were.

We realized something profound: our drinking had very little to do with liking alcohol itself. It was purely social. We drank because the people around us drank. When the social calendar disappeared, so did the desire, and once it was gone, we didn’t miss it. Not even during math homework. 🙃

As our social life slowly resumed, we found ourselves increasingly allergic to situations where alcohol was the only glue holding people together. We realized we had no shared values, no real curiosity, and no intimacy with some of our social circles, so we stopped going.

Then, recently I had a long conversation with a friend who’s been sober for a few months, and she confided in me that she drank with friends because she isn’t good enough, and needed the extra help to be less boring, smarter, and more interesting. And that now that she is no longer drinking, she’s feeling very insecure about her identity and personality. I gave her a hug and told her the truth (because it is the truth): she’s fun, a wonderful person, and far more interesting sober!

I know that the world is a dumpster fire and it’s hard not to numb. But what if the only way to change our lives (and maybe the world) is to stay sober enough to sit with what’s broken, what’s unbearable, and what demands our attention, instead of checking out?

Before anyone calls me a party pooper, I’m not anti-drinking. I’m just anti-alcohol being the crutch and the only language we share.

I’m trying to build a life that I don’t need to escape from, one that doesn’t require dulling the edges to belong, or being inebriated to tolerate people I don’t like or spaces I’d rather not be in. I want relationships that are great when I’m fully sober, awake, and myself. I now plan long walks, morning coffee, non-alc drinks and delicious lunches and conversations with friends and smart people I like, or who need my help in any way. And of course sometimes we have dinner and drinks, but not too much because we don’t need alcohol to make our time interesting and fun – our presence is enough.

If you’re sober curious, I’ve been drinking Aplós for a few years now. I first learned about it because I met its wonderful co-founder, Emily Onkey, a Hamptons resident and a fellow mom. I tried it, and never bought another non-alcoholic beverage again. They recently sent me a box for Dry January, and we’ll be drinking it this month and all year long (no, I’m not writing this because they sent me the box. If you know me, you’ve seen me serve Aplós at our Matriark Salons, gifting friends, and drinking it at home). My favorite flavor is Chili Margarita, but I love their Sober Curious Bundle to sample their flavors.

They can also be used in cocktails with alcohol, so you don’t need to feel deprived. Try them out and let me know which one is your favorite, you can also get some recipe ideas here!

Either way, I hope you don’t fall for that lie that you need booze to be a better version of yourself. You are far more interesting sober! Cheers, lots of love, and happy Dry January.

Here is a photo of the fun box I received from Emily and our friends at Aplós:

Talk to you next week!

Patricia

Hi there,

I hope you are doing OK and that the news cycle whiplash has been somehow manageable for you. I was born in Brazil, so Venezuela, Columbia and all our neighbors are very much in my mind now. I am mentally exhausted, and I’m afraid that the only thing I can offer you this week is some escape from this deranged world. I have learned over the years that refocusing on pleasure and beautiful things is an amazing privilege and not a cowardly escape. It’s a great way to replenish and reload for whatever work you’ll do next. If you are a Republican, and you believe this country needs to stop the madness, please call your representatives - right now, this is our only chance.

OK…onwards to this week’s programming.

On a brighter note, I can’t bear it when models and celebrities are asked about their beauty routine and respond with: “I drink a lot of water.” Give. Me. A. Break.

Nothing against H2O. I even bought those enormous 56oz water jugs. It lives next to my laptop, filled with good intentions and filtered water (photo below and link here if you care to try). Some days I do great. Other days… the jug is mostly decorative.

But no copious amount of water will ever be enough to keep your skin supple and plump once you’re over 40 (hell, let’s say 30) unless you are a freak, biologically speaking.

I’ve shared my skincare routine in this newsletter before (skincare obsession is one of my most consistent personality traits), but winter skin is a different sport altogether. Dry heat and freezing temperatures are when your usual lineup suddenly feels under-qualified. Winter is not the season to f*ck around and find out.

Which brings me to my personal coping strategy: a superbly rich face cream, applied with confidence.

Since that last newsletter, as Bethenny Frankel would say, I did the Lord’s work and tried a lot more products, and edited them down to the top 12 exceptional face creams (including some affordable yet very effective K Beauty and Japanese items) to help us all survive winter, and whose only side effects may include a flood of compliments on your new glow, and endless questions about your beauty routine.

Feel free to answer: water… with a very healthy dollop of cream.

Sending love, lots of hydration, and the best wishes and hope for world peace,

Patricia

.

1. My friend Rowaida Younes, who is an expert in skincare and beauty and the Founder of Rowm, highly recommended this cream, which is enriched with prebiotics and rice proteins. While you are at it, you can get their body cream and, if you are in NYC / Brooklyn, call them to schedule a facial, I highly recommend it!

2. We all know that SK II* Pitera Facial Treatment Essence is amazing, and to compliment that (or using it alone), I love their SKINPOWER Advanced Cream.

3. This is a very hydrating whipped mask, great for those nights by the fire.

4. I love talon balms for the face and for those dry areas on our elbows and knees. And this one is super special because not only they are 100% organic and made in the Hudson Valley, but they are also made by this cool non-profit organization* focused on commitment to sustainability, fairness, and community. While you are browsing, check their strawberry jam, and their sought after IYKYK merch and collabs.

5. I would buy all of the Chantecaille* creams, but this one also corrects dark spots, so it’s a welcomed bonus.

6. I have used this cream intermittently in the last few years, and it’s back in my vanity this winter.

7. I like this brand for their clean beauty commitment, and their prices are amazing. This K Beauty cream* is very nourishing and at 17 bucks, it’s also a great gift for the teen kids in your life.

8. This is a Japanese cream* that I got in Tokyo; it’s reasonably affordable, and very effective.

9. This is a must for cold climates and if you love being outdoors skiing, hiking or just catching up with your friends while you walk, slather this cream under your sunscreen, and you are good to go.

10. I have resisted using snail creams for years for the obvious cringe inducing reasons, but I can’t deny they are excellent for my skin. Try this one*, another K Beauty brand, it really worked for me.

11. This one has the same effect of Dr. Sturm’s cream at a fraction of the cost, however it has fragrance, so if that’s a dal breaker for you, stay with Dr. Sturm’s cream.

12. This is a lovely balm, and perfect for very dry skin and for when you are in recovery from treatments or skin issues. They say this helps repair a damaged skin barrier post-procedure or due to laser treatments, retinol, or other irritants. Day to day it just feels amazing when you are in the dry heat and need that extra boost of nourishing and hydration.

Hope this helped! See you next week,

Patricia

Hi there,

Happy New Year! I don’t do resolutions (they’ve never worked for me), but I do like setting intentions. And this year’s is refreshingly simple: I’m done abandoning myself. I’m moving toward what feels true and away from anything that requires shape-shifting or shrinking.

Now, that’s easier said than done, especially for people of color, who often have to shape-shift just to stay safe, respected, or employed. Livelihoods are very much at stake. And while I’ve enjoyed enormous privilege, I could easily write a book about what it means to move through certain spaces as an Asian woman in the Hamptons. It could go full celebrity tabloid or straight-up comedy horror, it’s been that wild. But I digress.

Back to the point: the search for “our people” and “our place” is lifelong and constantly evolving, and the plot twist remains the same. We don’t find either by contorting ourselves into something more palatable. We find them by showing up as who we are, when and where we can. Which means understanding that rejection is often just redirection in disguise, and that editing our lives is just as important as adding to them: releasing relationships we’ve outgrown, stepping back from spaces that make us feel inadequate, and saying no without apologies.

The same goes for our screen time. Did you start that purge yet? Who is worth your time and scroll? I’m now actively reassessing who I follow, who I listen to, and what energy I allow to sneak into my nervous system through my phone.

Yes, I will continue to watch an unreasonable number of videos featuring funny dogs and miniature Highland cows (my closest friends get daily DMs), and will try to limit my follows to the ones informing, educating, inspiring, or just minding their business, being their kind selves.

So my hope for all of us in 2026 is this: that by choosing what feels aligned and honest, we cultivate relationships with friends, family, partners, and collaborators that are life-enhancing, supportive, and strengthening for everyone involved.

Cheers to the best year yet. What a time to be alive and aligned!

Sending you love, great health, and prosperity. 🥂

Patricia

Hi there,

Not one family is perfect. Many of us sit at holiday tables with relatives as divided as the “United” States of America. Some of us are lucky enough to have a wonderful family, but they are all just as imperfect with their own brand of disfunction (I’m afraid nobody is imune).

And as always, women are the glue, the calm, the hostess, and the mediator, silently carrying the emotional weight so everyone else can enjoy their time. When you layer the current state of the world on top of it all, it’s safe to say that many of us are walking into some very tricky family gatherings this year.

So on this Christmas Day (if you celebrate), in lieu of a perfect Hallmark Christmas, I hope you are surrounded by love, steadiness, and a kind of peace that makes you totally unbothered, even if for just one day. May your day be blessed with people who make you feel appreciated and safe, whether they’re the ones you were born into or the ones you wisely chose along the way. Wishing you and yours a blissful, drama-free and very Merry Christmas! 🎄

Sending love,

Patricia

* our cover today is an homage to Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner. They used their power and influence to do good in this world: creating art, defending our First Amendment rights, fighting for a healthy early childhood development, and same-sex marriage (a cause Matriark always supported). Let this be a reminder that the world is full of good people. Look for the helpers, Mr. Rogers used to say. Look for the helpers. ❤️

A few weeks ago, Cathy O’Brien and I co-hosted a Breathwork session with Céline Antoine at Topping Rose House, and it gave me the chance to get to know her a little better.

She’s not only the Chairwoman of NATUROPATHICA, but also a breast cancer survivor who has poured that journey into action. Under her leadership, NATUROPATHICA created their Oncology Care program, offering specialized spa and skincare treatments for people going through cancer treatments. Their estheticians and massage therapists are certified in oncology care, using botanical formulas to soothe skin stressed by chemo and radiation, and their therapists go into hospitals to bring the healing power of touch right to patients. As a breast cancer survivor myself, I deeply appreciate this powerful and necessary work.

Cathy also hosts a podcast I love—Inside the Wellspace: Women, Wellbeing, Wisdom with Cathy O’Brien—where she has honest conversations about health, resilience, and what it really means to take care of ourselves as women.

Her story really stuck with me: she’s navigated multiple industries, survived hard challenges, and still shows up with humor, warmth, and wisdom. I’m really happy to share more of Cathy’s perspective with you this week. Scroll down for my Q&A with her, which includes following her gut in her career, women’s health, her favorite items from NATUROPATHICA, and so much more. AND if you are in NYC tonight, she is hosting “PMS to POST MENOPAUSE - MASTERING YOUR HORMONES YOUR WAY” today 9/18 at the Nexus Club New York with Dr. Chiti Parikh and Dr. Chris Creatura. The event is free of charge and you get to speak to the doctors at the end of the session - I’ll be there and hope to see you!

1. Your career spans several industries and roles. Looking back, what are the defining moments that led you to where you are today? And how did they shape the leader you are now?

There have been a number of key moments and transitions over my career – there are a few that stand out. I was in the music industry for over a decade, and it was an aggressive, man’s world with no female role models in senior leadership positions. I was a young woman with a big job – running the International Division of Arista Records. Not only were there no women more senior than I at Arista, my place of work was outside the US where women were mostly in support roles. I slogged away for years and was recruited by Estée Lauder to be a senior part of the Tommy Hilfiger team – which morphed into La Mer then Jo Malone. I realized then that while the music world was what I knew and in a totally dysfunctional way felt ‘safe’, it wasn’t. I made a bold choice to change industries and learn something new – believing that the culture and environment of the company and the industry I was moving toward was the healthy, long term move for me. And I was right.

Then when I was at Estée Lauder running the Jo Malone Brand globally, I had my second child – and had two kids 18 months apart. I also realized at that time that it was I who would be the primary caregiver and home-runner for my children, and realized that I couldn’t do a good job with that while in a high-profile corporate job. So, I founded and built the agency AAM Brand Management Group to have some flexibility and not live in a 9-5 box. It ended up being hugely successful with clients like LVMH, Hermes, Avon, Marimekko, Sam Edelman, among many others.

Read more

Hi there,

Whether it’s societal pressures, the patriarchy, or just our own desire to feel like ourselves, women have been trying to defy gravity for millennia. I still laugh at my younger self, baffled by the idea of an eye cream, and now I practically have an aisle’s worth of them among my products.

My love for skincare didn’t start from vanity. It started when I had my first child. I was sleep-deprived, frustrated with breastfeeding, and overwhelmed by the chaos of first-time parenting. Spending ten quiet minutes with a bottle of face oil felt like a miracle. I didn’t care if my wrinkles disappeared; I just needed a moment of control, a ritual that reminded me I existed outside of motherhood.

Over time, those rituals evolved to new products, treatments, and dermatologist visits. Now, my goal is simpler: to maintain that soft, youthful glow without it feeling like a full-time job.

Before I go on though, let me share where I stand on beauty and plastic surgery: I say live and let live. Life is already hard enough for women. We are judged harshly, and constantly (and doubly so if you’re a woman of color). If a tweak here or a lift there makes you feel better, just go for it. The idea that skincare and plastic surgery are anti-feminist is nonsense to me. Telling women what they shouldn’t do with their bodies is just another form of control, and it’s even worse when it comes from other women.

It’s easy to say, “let your gray hair grow,” until you’re interviewing for a job next to a 23-year-old. Easy to say, “love the skin you’re in,” until investors look you up and down before they decide to fund another man. And honestly, even if none of that were true, I’d still want my skin to glow. Taking care of myself inside and out isn’t vanity. It’s agency. And it sure as hell shouldn’t be a source of shame.

With that in mind, I posted a little video of my vanity on Instagram (click here if you want to take a peek), and this week I’m sharing my current skincare lineup: what I’m using daily, what’s new for me and actually working, and the two doctors I trust (one here in the Hamptons, one in Brazil). I haven’t done anything in Brazil in over 18 months, but a consult is on my calendar for my next trip.

I hope it’s useful, and helps you get rid of any guilt or need to apologize for wanting to take care of yourself.

Sending love and beauty,

Patricia

My skincare product list, which I rotate during the week. Scroll to the end for 2 of my doctors’ phone numbers.

1. MAC Hyper Real Cleanser*: I love this oil for fall and winter

2. Bioderma Micellar Water* for everyday

3. Superdose Vitamic C Serum: I am a huge customer of Beauty Pie. You pay an annual subscription and get incredible prices for their products. Absolutely worth it.

4. Skinceuticals C+ AHA*: I use this at night.

5. Triple Hyaluronic Acid by Beauty Pie: one of my favorite products, it give me that dewy glow.

6. Glycolic Acid Toner: another icon from Beauty Pie, I use this about 3x a week before bed, and I can see the difference in my skin when I wake up.

7. DamDam Mochi Mochi Moisturizing Cream: I was introduced to this brand in Japan by a dear friend of mine. I met the Founders Gisele Goh and Philippe Therrien, and they shared their beautiful brand ethos during my visit. They are very committed to preserving Japanese farming and combining ancient Japanese philosophy with the technological advancements of today. The quality is superb, and I highly recommend it.

8. U Beauty Super Hydrator: this has been my go-to everyday moisturizer since they launched their line.

9. DamDam Ginko Bouncy Water Cream: I bought this one to wear during the hotter days, it’s light in texture yet very potent. A little goes a long way.

10. Overnight Skin Perfector: I love this product and use it most nights. Another Beauty Pie winner.

11. Kat Burki Vitamin C Face Cream: I love to alternate this at night.

12. DamDam Matcha Eye Serum: super light and milky, I just started using this product and love how it feels.

13. One Skin Eye Cream: I have been using this and have seen a difference in texture around my eyes. I apply all over and it seems to help lift the lid area.

14. Beauty Pie Super Healthy Skin: I have reordered this cream multiple times. I wear it during winter day and night.

15. Musely Spot Cream*: for years I tried to get rid of a sun spot on my face. Then I tried this brand (you schedule a Telehealth appointment to get the prescription). It takes diligence but it worked!

16. SIO Super Eye Lift: I love this product because not only the patches are effective, but they are also reusable. They are made with medical-grade silicone patches and they help smooth crow’s feet and under-eye wrinkles.

17. Tallow & Honey Balm*: I just got this a few weeks ago. It’s made with grass fed and finished beef tallow and honey, and I have to say: it’s extremely nourishing and hydrating. I don’t know if I would recommend for someone who has acne prone skin, but my skin has definitely improved in texture and it seems more plump.

18. Biodance Collagen Mask: I love this mask. My skin feel super hydrated and bouncier after I use it. Great before applying makeup for a special event.

19. Keana Nadeshiko Pore Care Rice Masks*: I got these in Japan, they are very common and popular, but when I went to the website, they are no longer shipping to the US due to the new tariffs ☹️ But here is the link anyway - if things change, give it a try! It’s an affordable product, and it dos the job. Could also be a great stocking stuffer - fingers crossed we can buy them again soon.

My doctors:

My dermatologist in Brazil is Dr. Guilherme de Almeida*, and his practice’s name is Olsen Almeida Dermatology. He is technically not on social media, but his wife Thalita is and talks often about the different treatments. He shows up there sometimes. Her skin speaks for itself: it looks flawless but not overdone. I like his philosophy: he prefers to treat the skin with techniques and technology that will enable the skin to produce collagen and get plumper from within, rather than using fillers. I have done his ultrasound treatment in the past and it was excellent. His office phone is +5511-3129-7227, and they can take messages via WhatsApp at +5511-97593-1790. He is very well known in Brazil, so he is quite pricey - but worth it.

My doctor in the Hamptons is Dr. Eunice Park, Founder of Airem. She is a Facial Plastic Surgeon, and a specialist in Korean beauty, and always uses the latest Korean innovations. Last spring I did a Pico laser with her with zero down time, and very little redness. I did this to get rid of some hyperpigmentation on my skin, and I could see an improvement in texture and extra glow 2 to 3 weeks after the treatment. Dr. Park is a great listener and a pleasure to work with. I am due for a check this Fall, and I will be doing her facials, and probably the micro needling. If you want to reach Dr. Park, her numbers are: (516) 614-1880, she has offices in Water Mill, NYC. and Syosset. I’ve never done plastic surgery, but if I ever do, she’ll be the first one I’ll call.

See you next week!