It took me a while to connect the dots. What I was experiencing was not a willpower problem. It was not aging gracefully gone wrong. It was chronic high cortisol, and for so many women in midlife, this is sadly true.

Here is the thing: cortisol is not always bad, especially if it is not always around.

Let Me Explain

In the right amounts, at the right time, cortisol can actually be your greatest ally. That natural morning spike is your body’s built-in ignition system. It is what gets you out of bed, sharpens your focus, and gives you the drive to show up for your day.

The problem is not cortisol itself.

The problem is what happens when you never give it a chance to come back down.

What Chronic High Cortisol Looks Like

If cortisol stays elevated day after day, your body pays a price. You might notice:

• Waking up tired even after a full night of sleep

• Feeling wired at night but exhausted by mid-afternoon

• Belly weight that will not budge no matter what you eat

• Anxiety or irritability that seems to come out of nowhere

• A complete loss of motivation, energy or joy in things you used to love

Sound familiar? You are not imagining it, and you are not falling apart. Your nervous system is just stuck in overdrive.

Why Midlife Makes This Harder

During perimenopause and menopause, your hormonal buffer shrinks. Estrogen and progesterone, which helped regulate your stress response, are declining. That means your body is less equipped to recover from the everyday demands pulling at you.

The stressors do not have to be dramatic. Work deadlines, a restless night, skipping meals, scrolling first thing in the morning. These small things stack up and keep cortisol elevated long past its welcome.

A Simple Morning Routine to Help Cortisol Come Down

You do not need an overhaul. You need a few intentional anchors in the first hour of your day. I started by reclaiming 30 minutes of my morning routine:

• Wait to check the phone. I gave myself at least 20 to 30 minutes before picking it up. News, notifications, and email all trigger a cortisol response the moment you look. Start the day on your terms instead.

• Get morning light in my eyes. I step outside or sit near a window within the first 30 minutes of waking. Natural light helps regulate your cortisol curve and sets your body clock for better sleep that night.

• Hydrate before caffeinate. Cortisol is already at its peak in the morning. Caffeine amplifies that spike. You can drink a full glass of water first, and consider pushing your coffee back 60 to 90 minutes after waking.

• Move gently. Lymphatic drainage friendly bouncing, 10-minute walk, some light stretching, or a few minutes of slow movement signals safety to your nervous system. Intense exercise first thing can add to the cortisol load if your body is already stressed.

• Try one grounding breath practice. Box breathing is simple: inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4. Do this for just 3 to 5 minutes. It activates your parasympathetic nervous system and begins to bring cortisol down.

The Practice: Try This Tomorrow Morning

Before you reach for your phone, sit up in bed and do 5 rounds of box breathing. Then drink a full glass of water. Then step outside, even just for a few minutes.

That is it. Three small moves.

You are not trying to eliminate cortisol. You are just giving your body permission to finish what it started, and return to balance.

That is where healing begins.

Ready to reclaim your mornings and your energy?

Try it tomorrow and let me know how it is working for you!

Can’t wait to hear from you! In the meantime,

Be well!

This space was created for you. Whether you found me through my book, a workshop, social media, or a friend who passed along something that resonated, I truly believe that you landed exactly where you were meant to be.

While Reclaiming Wellness on Substack is a new community, the work itself has been going around for almost 15 years. As with my coaching practice, blog post and social media, here I will be showing up with posts like this one, covering topics that matter to your health, your peace of mind, and your sense of power over your own body.

Every week or so, you will also find a new #teatime, my short-form video series where I sit down with a cup of something warm and talk real wellness. Herbs, food, routines, rituals, and the kind of information that should have been given to us a long time ago.

This is all free.

When you are ready, and only when you are ready, there is an option to upgrade to paid. Paid subscribers get access to quarterly ebooks on herbal blends and practical strategies to reclaim your wellness, along with other resources I will continue to build out. But there is no pressure and no rush. The most important thing is that you are here, learning and growing alongside this community.

Now, let’s get into why we are here in the first place.

Why Reclaiming Wellness, Anyway?

When I was in my early years as a wellness professional, I watched an industry explode around me. Supplements for everything. Gadgets that promised transformation. Detox programs with price tags that could cover a month of rent. The message, whether stated out loud or not, was clear: real health costs money. A lot of it.

That message is a lie.

I know this not just because I have spent years studying herbalism, nutrition, and integrative alternative medicine. I know it because my own healing journey started in the most humble and accessible place imaginable: the kitchen, the garden, and the ancestral knowledge my family carried without ever calling it “wellness.”

The core idea behind my book, Reclaiming Wellness, and everything I teach, is this: the most powerful healing tools in the world have always existed. They lived in the spices passed down through generations, in the herbal teas our grandmothers brewed, in the foods grown close to the earth, in the way communities gathered to support one another through illness and grief and transition. These practices belong to herbalism, plant-based eating, movement, meditation, and more. They are time-tested, science-supported, and they do not require a luxury budget.

In other words: your self-care routine should not cost more than groceries!

What happened is that these tools, many of which originated in the traditions of Black, Indigenous, and communities of color worldwide, were extracted from their cultural context, repackaged, and sold back to us at a premium.

Meanwhile, the very communities that kept these practices alive for centuries are often the ones facing the greatest health disparities and the least access to the wellness industry built on their legacy.

Reclaiming wellness is, at its root, an act of resistance. It is choosing to return to what has always worked. It is refusing the idea that your health is something you have to bio-hack your way into.

A cup of ginger, lemon, and honey does not care about your income bracket. A 10-minute walk in morning sunlight does not require a pricey subscription. A pot of bone broth or a plant-based stew made with herbs from your small house garden is medicine in the most ancient and legitimate sense of that word.

This Substack exists because I believe in radical accessibility.

Wellness should be yours to reclaim regardless of your race, your income, your zip code, or your social status. It should feel like something you come home to, not something you have to hustle to afford.

Over the coming weeks and months, you will find practical, grounded, and genuinely usable strategies for incorporating herbs, whole foods, mindful movement, and ancestral healing wisdom into your everyday life. A lot of it will cost you little to nothing. All of it is rooted in real evidence and real tradition.

Welcome, friend! In the meantime,

Be well.

Jovanka