Marvelus

I used to think turn-on was something that happened TO ME.

When I was chosen.
When I looked a certain way.
When my hair was just right.
When I found the right partner.
When life finally slowed down.

I was waiting for something outside of me to unlock something that had been inside me all along.

Then I realized something that changed everything.

I AM THE SOURCE.

Not my partner.
Not my circumstances.
Not my hormones.
Not someone else’s desire for me.

ME.

Little by little, I stopped outsourcing my pleasure.
I stopped outsourcing my authority.
I stopped outsourcing my sensuality.
I stopped waiting for permission to feel alive.

Instead of asking “what should I do,” I started asking “what would feel delicious?”

I started celebrating tiny wins. Slowing down. Dressing for my own pleasure. Dancing for myself. Microdosing pleasure every day. Letting desire make more decisions than fear.

Not because someone told me those things were good for me. Because my body came alive when I did them.

That’s the shift. Not performing sexiness, not chasing confidence, not biohacking my way to a better life. Coming home to myself.

And here’s the wild part.

I feel more alive, more sensual, and more turned on at 54 than I did at 24.

Turn-on was never something I had to earn. It was something I had to stop abandoning.

Send this to a woman who’s been waiting for permission. Save it for the day you forget. And tell me in the comments — which one are you stealing first?

There’s a version of me who got so good at reading the room, she stopped checking in with herself.

She knew which truths would create tension.
Which feelings would be dismissed.
Which parts of herself were easier to love when they stayed quiet.

So she adjusted.

She softened the reaction.
Changed the subject.
Made the feeling more reasonable.
Made herself easier to live with.

That’s not peacekeeping.
That’s disappearance with better PR.

And because it happened slowly, I didn’t realize how much of myself I had surrendered until I could barely remember the woman I had been before.

The one with opinions. Desires. A voice.
A fu***ng spine.

Leaving my marriage didn’t magically restore everything I had lost. But it gave me the space to hear myself again.

To discover what I wanted.
To feel what I felt without having to defend it.
To become a woman I recognized.

So if you see yourself in these words, let this be the sign you’ve been looking for:
You are still in there.

And it is not too late to come back.

Comment SISTERHOOD and I’ll send you the door in.
💋, Marta

I don’t believe women forget how to feel pleasure.

I believe we get rewarded for ignoring it.

We’re praised for being dependable.
For putting everyone else first.
For asking for less.
For making ourselves easier to love.

After enough years, that doesn’t just change your behavior.
It changes your relationship with yourself.

You stop asking what you want because somewhere along the way you learned your wants were inconvenient.

I’ve stopped calling this burnout.
It’s not a confidence problem either.
Nor a mindset issue.

I think it’s disconnection.
And I think it’s one of the most quietly accepted epidemics among women.

The good news isn’t that there’s something to fix.
It’s that your body never forgot.
She’s been waiting for you this whole time.

The Return is a simple, potent audio activation I created for this very purpose.
It takes 30 minutes.
It costs $33.

If this carousel felt like someone was describing your life, don’t just save it.
Come back to it.

Link in bio 👆

There was a time when I genuinely wished I could have my younger body back.

Not because I wanted to be twenty-five again.
But because I missed how it felt to move through the world.

My body bounced back faster.
I could dance for hours without thinking about it.
I felt effortlessly desirable.
I was more spontaneous.
More reckless.
More willing to f**k around and find out.

And if I’m being completely honest?
There’s still a part of me that misses those things.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admitting that.

But somewhere along the way, I realized I’d been asking the wrong question.
I kept wondering how to get my younger body back... when what I was really longing for was the woman who felt so alive inside it.

Those aren’t the same thing.

Because I know women in their twenties who already feel disconnected from themselves.
And I know women in their sixties who are wildly alive.

Age isn’t what separates them.
ALIVENESS is.

That’s what changed everything for me.

I stopped trying to fix myself.
I started INHABITING myself.

That’s what The Return is.

Not another self-improvement program.
A way to remember, reclaim, and inhabit the woman who’s been here all along.

❤️ If you’ve been feeling like you’ve somehow lost yourself, you’ll find the link in my bio 👆

xo,
Marta

One of the most expensive lessons I’ve learned is that approval is never free.

For years, I thought being a ‘good woman’ meant being agreeable.
Easy to be around.
Easy to love.
Easy to need.

I got very good at making other people comfortable.
Very good at anticipating what they wanted.
Very good at adapting.

What I wasn’t very good at was asking for what I wanted.
Even when I knew what I wanted.

Instead, I’d try to sneak it in sideways.
The way I used to sneak vegetables into my kids’ chicken nuggets.

I got used to believing that my needs could wait.
That my desires should come later.
That everyone else should get theirs first.

And honestly?
That strategy worked.

It earned me approval.
And it earned me praise for being thoughtful, generous, and selfless.

What it didn’t earn me was a deeper relationship with myself.

Because every time I abandoned what I wanted in order to be the woman everyone else needed me to be, I paid a price.

And eventually I had to ask myself:
Is the approval worth the cost?

I’m curious:
What’s something you’ve stopped doing in order to earn approval?