—— SOMATIC GROUP FOR WOMEN IN PERIMENOPAUSE & MIDLIFE
You don't need another version of self-improvement.
What you actually need is somewhere you can stop performing and pretending. Something far more honest and far more nourishing. Compassion, acceptance, real community. Yourself, as you actually are.
6-MONTH EXPERIENTIAL SOMATIC GROUP · WOMEN IN MIDLIFE & PERIMENOPAUSE
— 13 bi-weekly sessions across 6 months — slow by design because depth and trust take time
— Maximum 8-10 women
— Held by licensed therapist with 20+ years clinical experience
— Trauma-informed ~ somatic ~ IFS-informed
— Private online community between sessions
— Optional 7-day retreat in Costa Rica
The Living Room
is scheduled to open in January 2027.
Exact dates and full details to be announced this fall.
Seven-day retreat in Costa Rica in fall 2027.
—— IS THIS YOU?
You end most days having
held it together again.
You've gotten good at managing, showing up, being fine. And part of you is exhausted by your own competence.
You spend your evenings running through what still needs to be done, or completely checked out, or lying awake at night because your body doesn't sleep like it used to and your brain won't stop. Another weekend of powering through sounds worse than doing nothing at all.
You've tried therapy, maybe years of it. You've read the self-help books, done the journaling, understood your attachment patterns. You've meditated and tracked your symptoms. You understand yourself really well. You just don't feel different.
Here's what it's costing you: the closeness you want but keep people at arm's length. The version of yourself you can feel underneath all the managing but can't reach. Another year of waiting until things calm down to actually be in your life.
What if it's not
a you problem?
What if there was a way to move what's stuck not by understanding it better, but by feeling it in the presence of other women who are feeling it too?
Because the nervous system doesn't transform through insight alone. It transforms through experience. Through being in contact with another human nervous systems that can stay present with you.
Information doesn't heal us. Relationship does. Presence does. Being witnessed by people who are also learning to see themselves — that does.
There's a reason you still feel alone in this even after years of doing the work. Healing was never meant to happen in isolation. This is the foundation of The Living Room. Not more self-understanding, but lived, repeated experience of being with yourself in the presence of others who are doing the same.
I AM Michaela
I've spent years sitting with women
in this space
My name is Alexa Young
I'm a licensed therapist who's been working with women closely for years. Women dealing with anxiety, trauma, burnout, and that "who am I now?" feeling that hits hard in midlife.
The Living Room is my first group program, and it came out of seeing what shifts (and what doesn't) in my one-on-one work. Therapy is powerful, but something different happens when women come together.
I created this space because I think the self-improvement world has taken us way off course. We're not meant to be perfect, productive, shiny versions of ourselves. We're meant to be human, messy, and real.
This is not some program I'm delivering to you. It's a living, breathing space that you and every other woman in the room will create together.
My approach pulls from somatic practice, parts work, and interpersonal neurobiology. But really, what that means is: I work with the whole of you. Your body, your nervous system, your relationships, and all the wisdom you carry underneath the strategies you've used to survive.
What I bring to the table is years of hands-on experience, a commitment to taking it slow, and a deep belief that community is medicine in a way that individual work can never be. I'm going to hold this space with all my attention and care. And I already know I'm going to be changed by it, too.
Not a workshop or a course. It's a living space.
Something happens when women are genuinely trying to know themselves in the same room. You see yourself in someone else. Your shame gets quieter because someone actually gets it. And at some point you become that for someone else too.
13 live sessions
90 minutes, bi-weekly, 6 months. Presence-based, facilitated by me. Held space with a deliberate arc from arriving to completing.
Somatic practice throughout
Every session includes body-based practice. of listening to the body that has been carrying everything you have been managing.
Private space between sessions
Private, off-social-media space to check in, share what's up, or simply say: I'm here. No performance or pressure.
My facilitation
Grounded in somatic practice, parts work, and how relationships actually change the nervous system. Slow. Attentive. Honest.
Your participant "workbook"
With you through all 13 sessions — reflection prompts, somatic practices, writing pages, between-session questions.
My ongoing presence
I'm not running this from the outside. I'm in it with you. I show up, I get affected, I'm present. This changes me too.
Six themes. Thirteen sessions.
Each month holds a theme. The arc is designed to move from arriving to completing with real depth at every stage.
MONTH 1 · 2 SESSIONS
Arriving
Before anything else, you land — into the group, into yourself as you actually are right now.
MONTH 4 · 2 SESSIONS
Deepening
Feeling and saying the thing you keep almost saying. The layer underneath the layer. The truth you haven't let yourself say out loud yet.
MONTH 2 · 2 SESSIONS
Belonging
Dropping the performance of being okay. Learning what it feels like to be witnessed without having to manage how that lands.
MONTH 5 · 2 SESSIONS
Clarifying
What's shifting and what you're still figuring out. Getting clear on what's yours now.. Changing the way you see and experience yourself.
MONTH 3 · 3 SESSIONS
Softening
What would you like to call it instead of Softening? A few options:
MONTH · 2 SESSIONS
Completing
Real completion held with the same care as everything that came before it. And for those who want to go farther: we gather in person in Costa Rica.
You are standing at the beginning of
the most honest chapter of your life.
Twelve months from now, you're in the final session and you're feeling the changes...
Your sense of yourself less like a project you're failing and more like a person you're finally getting to know. You will leave knowing what it feels like to be in a room — even a virtual one — where you didn't have to perform being okay. Where other women knew the unpolished version of you. Where that was, somehow, enough.
You stop controlling it all.
The constant managing of your symptoms, your moods, your image, other people's comfort starts to loosen. Because you finally had somewhere to put it down for a few hours every two weeks, and over time that changed something in your nervous system that you can't explain but you can feel.
You stop being and feeling alone in it.
You stop feeling like you're the only one going through this. And being in a room where everyone gets it, without explanation, changes something over time.
You stop being a stranger to yourself.
You came in thinking this was something to get through. Most women do. You leave getting curious about it instead. Your life, mind and body are asking for something different. This group is where you start to hear what that is.
You find out what you actually think and feel.
When you've spent decades being competent and reliable and fine, you lose track of your own interior. Six months of being asked what's actually there starts to reverse that. You'll surprise yourself. You'll say things out loud you didn't know you knew.
You stop rushing toward past version of yourself
The woman you were trying to get back to is not coming back. And by month four or five, most women stop wanting her to. What's on the other side of this transition is something you haven't met yet. This group is where you start walking toward her instead of away from her.
You leave changed in ways that might be hard to describe.
Not every experience can be put in a testimonial. Some of it lives in your body, in how you move through a hard conversation, when you notice you didn't immediately say you're fine. Those are "the results."
—— WHO THIS GROUP IS FOR
This is not for everyone.
It might be for you.
You might be right for this if —
— You're navigating midlife, perimenopause, or season of identity shift & you want to meet it with intention, not just survive it
— You've done individual therapy and you're curious what the group space offers that one-on-one doesn't
— You're tired of holding it together in front of people. You want somewhere you don't have to.
— You can commit to six months of consistent attendance. Not perfect, but real
— You're done with surface-level connection. You want women who actually know you.
— You're open to being known as a woman in this phase of your life
This probably is not the right fit if —
— You're in acute crisis and need more intensive, individualized clinical support
— You're looking for a content-based course with deliverables and curriculum
— You want accountability coaching, goal-setting, or productivity-oriented support
— Group vulnerability feels genuinely unsafe to you right now, not just uncomfortable, but unsafe
— Six months of consistent commitment is not available to you at this time
—— OPTIONAL RETREAT FALL 2027
Seven days in Costa Rica.
Warm water and dense jungle that runs all the way to the sea. This is a place that slows you down before you even try.
Not a resort but a real place, only for women who've done the six months together and already know each other's unpolished, unfinished selves.
Mornings for somatic work. Afternoons that belong to you — swim, sleep, walk, sit somewhere and stare at the water.
Evenings for processing, parts work, and sharing;
— 6 nights fully held — accommodation and all meals included
— Morning somatic sessions in nature
— The Caribbean coast is the ultimate LIVING room — warm water, jungle, wild animals, stillness
— Women who already know you
— Unstructured afternoons — intentionally
— Evenings to process and integrate with each other
Six months of actual support.
Three ways in.
ONLINE ONLY
The Living Room
$2,000
Pay in full
-
All 13 live sessions
-
Private Skool community
-
Participant workbook
-
Somatic practice guide
-
Session recordings (30 days)
-
Maximum 10 women
ONLINE + RETREAT
The Living Room + Costa Rica
$5,990
Pay in full · Flights not included
-
Everything in online only
-
6-night Caribbean coast retreat
-
All accommodation and meals
-
Daily somatic sessions
-
Extended somatic work
-
Evening integration sessions
PAYMENT PLAN AVAILABLE
PAYMENT PLAN - ONLINE ONLY
Monthly Option
$350
Per month × 6 months ($2,100 total)
-
All 13 live sessions
-
Private community
-
Participant workbook
-
Somatic practice guide
-
Session recordings (30 days)
-
Retreat can be added — ask when you apply
—— QUESTIONS
Before you make a decision...
I've done so much therapy. Is there anything left?
Yes. This is different. Something happens in a room full of women who are all trying to know themselves that one-on-one work can't replicate.
I've tried programs like this before and didn't get results. Why would this be different?
Because most programs are built around content delivery. This one is built around relationship. If you've done courses and workshops and they didn't move what you needed moved, it may be because information was never what you were missing. Presence and community was.
Do I have to be in perimenopause to join?
No. The group is for women roughly 40–60 in the territory of midlife transition.
Is six months a commitment I can actually make?
That question alone tells me you're taking this seriously. Not perfect attendance, but consistent presence over time. If six months feels like a stretch right now, trust that instinct and reach out. We can talk through whether the timing is right.
Do I have to decide about the retreat when I enroll?
No. You can add the retreat later if spaces remain. Mention your interest when you apply and I'll follow up with details.
What if I don't feel safe showing up like myself, even in this group?
You won't be pushed. You'll be gently invited to notice that and join when you're ready. Showing up at all is enough to start. Your presence and the pace itself is what matters most and creates the living space.
Is this therapy?
No. I am a licensed therapist, but this is not group therapy. It's women in a room together, telling the truth, held by someone who knows how to hold it.
How does the application work?
Schedule a call with me and together we'll discuss if this is the space for your growth and healing.