There’s a version of female wellness that seems to exist predominantly on Instagram. She wakes at 5am, meditates, journals, cold plunges, makes a protein-packed breakfast, gets the children ready, smashes a workout and somehow arrives at her desk looking like she’s had eight hours’ sleep.
And then there’s my real life. Spoiler: there are no 5am ice baths.
Before Elle Sera existed, I ran health retreats for women. They would often arrive telling me they wanted to lose weight, tone up or get fitter, but once I started talking to them properly, it became obvious that there was usually much more going on underneath. Women were tired, their bodies were changing, they didn’t necessarily understand what was happening hormonally and, more often than not, they just didn’t feel like themselves anymore.
Then Covid arrived and, almost overnight, the retreats stopped. One day, a former retreat client sent me a message on Facebook asking me a question that would eventually change everything: “What can I do about my libido?”
It really stopped me in my tracks because she was probably the last woman I would have expected to ask me that question. I remember thinking, if she’s thinking about this, how many other women are thinking exactly the same thing but simply aren’t talking about it?
So I did what I always do and went down a complete research rabbit hole. I started looking at female desire, hormones and menopause. I read clinical studies, researched ingredients and spoke to people with expertise in herbal biology and nutrition. That research eventually led me to the ingredients that became the original Golden Pill™ formulation.
But what became increasingly obvious to me was that this was about so much more than libido. Female desire doesn’t exist in isolation. How confident do you feel? How much energy do you have? How do you feel about your body? What’s happening in your relationship? Are you stressed? Are you exhausted? Do you actually feel good in yourself? It’s all part of a much bigger picture, and I think that’s why Golden Pill™ became about considerably more than the question that originally inspired it.
The same applies when we talk about wellness more generally. If you asked me to describe my perfect morning routine, I’d probably laugh. I’d love to tell you that I wake naturally at 5am, meditate for an hour, plunge myself into freezing water, journal about my intentions for the day and calmly prepare breakfast before everybody else wakes up. I don’t.
Sometimes I’m up late researching something because I’ve fallen down yet another rabbit hole. Then my daughter is awake early, there’s coffee, childcare, work, meetings and occasionally a gym membership that I’m spectacularly underusing. That’s real life, and I think wellness has somehow become another area where women are being made to feel as though they’re failing.
We’re supposed to exercise, sleep eight hours, cook everything from scratch, maintain a beautiful home, succeed professionally, be brilliant mothers and partners, look fantastic and apparently find another 45 minutes somewhere to journal about how grateful we are for all of it. I don’t manage all of that, and I don’t know anybody who genuinely does.
What I have become much better at is surrounding myself with good people and accepting help. Childcare gives me precious hours back at home, and when it comes to Elle Sera I have Kelly, my right-hand woman, who I trust implicitly to have things under control and who, quite frankly, often knows what I’m going to say before I’ve even said it.
I think that’s something women need to hear more often: doing it all doesn’t have to mean doing it all yourself. Whether it’s your partner, your family, childcare, colleagues or the Kelly in your life who already knows what you’re thinking, having people you can rely on isn’t evidence that you’re failing to juggle everything. It’s probably the reason you’re still juggling at all.
I’ve also become much better at deciding that sometimes I’m simply not doing something. The washing can wait. Somebody else can empty the dishwasher. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to get some help, get some help. We need to stop automatically assuming that everything belongs on our list simply because we’re the woman in the house.
And perhaps one of the most useful questions we can ask ourselves is: who are you actually trying to impress?
Social media has made somebody else’s edited five minutes feel like the standard we’re supposed to maintain for our entire lives. We see the workout but not the childcare that made it possible. We see the immaculate kitchen but not somebody helping to clean it. We see the successful businesswoman but not the team behind her. There is almost always more happening outside the frame.
There is one thing I won’t apologise for, though, and that’s making myself a priority. Exercise, and particularly strength training, is something I feel incredibly strongly about. Yes, I care about how I look. I’ve never pretended otherwise. I like looking after myself and feeling good in my body, but as I’ve got older, I’ve also become increasingly aware that exercise is about so much more than aesthetics.
I want to be strong. I want to maintain that strength as I age. I want to be physically capable and I want to look after the body that has to carry me through the rest of my life. Looking after yourself isn’t selfish, and I think women can sometimes need reminding of that.
Really, that brings me full circle to why I created Elle Sera in the first place. I never wanted this brand to be about becoming some perfectly optimised version of womanhood. Golden Pill™ started because one woman asked me a very honest question about wanting to feel something she’d lost, and years later I think feeling like yourself again is still probably the simplest way I can describe what sits at the heart of Elle Sera.
You don’t need a perfect morning routine. You don’t need a spotless house. You don’t need to look 21, behave like you’re 21 or somehow juggle motherhood, relationships, careers, friendships, homes and everything else without occasionally wanting to scream.
Sometimes looking after yourself means taking your supplements. Sometimes it means lifting weights. Sometimes it means accepting some help. And sometimes it means looking at the washing, deciding nobody is going to die if it stays there until tomorrow, and going to bed.
That’s a version of wellness I can absolutely get behind.
