The
InterviewLysa
Cooper
Lysa Cooper on noise, reinvention, and why nobody is grading your paper.
Photographs
Courtesy: Lysa Cooper
Midlife has a way of tightening the lens. The noise gets louder, but your tolerance drops, and the body starts asking different questions about sleep, stress, money, meaning, and who you are when you stop performing for the world you built years ago.
Lysa Cooper has lived those questions out loud. She came up fast in early 80s New York, moving through fashion and nightlife as one of the great behind the scenes forces in the room, shaping energy as much as style. Today she is still building rooms, but with a different purpose: holding space for people to get quiet, tell the truth, and let an old story die so something more honest can grow. Erica Huss, Chief of Wellness at Seconds, sat down with Lysa to get her take on what life at this stage really asks of us, and what the future can look like when you stop performing and start listening.
Erica Huss: You have lived many lives. Fashion, nightlife, creative direction, and now healing work. When you look back, how do you understand that arc?
Lysa Cooper: I left school early and fell straight into the early 80s in New York. It was survival mode, but in a beautiful way. Timing is everything. I was in the right place at the right moment as exactly who I was then.
I had been working since I was twelve. I was social, independent, and I pretty much had to raise myself, so I trusted my instincts early. I was easily inspired. I had enough fear to keep me moving.
I truly believe the medicine is in your people and in your community. That has always been true for me. I was lucky, but I also had fortitude and flexibility. Being a woman on your own. Being a Black woman on your own. Now being sixty and still making a living. That takes resilience.
I have always done the same thing. I create a space where people feel safe enough to be themselves.
EH: Across all those chapters, what is the throughline?
LC: I have always done the same thing. I create a space where people feel comfortable and safe enough to be themselves.
That is what I did in restaurants, hotels, and nightclubs. That is what I did as a stylist and creative director. That is what I do now when I tell brands to get off the phone and get off the algorithm.
And it is what I do in the medicine work. It is creating safe space for people to explore themselves. Love. Change. Death. And hopefully rebirth.
EH: Do you feel like you are guiding people because you have already arrived, or are you walking alongside them?
LC: My hand has been off the steering wheel for ten years. I have no idea what is going on.
I am not paving the way. I am trying to stay grounded and live in love, empathy, and understanding, for myself. Then hopefully I am living as an example.
I do not believe we are all teachers. I think there are teaching moments. And look, I am in it with everyone else. Heart wide open, eyes probably shut.
Whatever is happening, I just want to be grounded and present enough. I cannot do anything about what already happened. I can only be in this moment.
EH: When reinvention shows up, does it feel like shedding, returning, or something else?
LC: The key word is work.
When I was younger, like a lot of people, I identified with what I did instead of who I am. Then you get older and you realize the life you built might not match who you are anymore. The people, the job, the choices you made. Sometimes it is not you now.
We are not supposed to see everything. I am not supposed to know what Christina Aguilera is eating for breakfast. None of us are. We are brainwashed to believe we are supposed to care what other people think, and to keep up with all this input.
That constant noise does not allow the brain, the heart, the spirit to grow.
The world is changing in ways I do not feel comfortable selling back to the masses. So I said no to a lot. I changed my perspective. That is the pivot.
My hand has been off the steering wheel for ten years. I have no idea what is going on.
EH: You talk a lot about getting off the algorithm. Why does that matter so much right now?
Lysa: Because we are living in a fake reality. Too much noise. Too many inputs.
People do not know how to be bored. They do not know how to be quiet. And that is where the work begins. That is where you find out what is actually going on with you.
If you are wasting your time watching, listening, consuming things that do not serve you, it is not allowing the brain and the heart and the spirit to grow.
We need to get back into the room with each other.
EH: You are now deeply involved in plant medicine work. How did that enter your life?
Lysa: I have always had a relationship with psychedelics, from the 80s on. Mushrooms, marijuana, all of it. Ayahuasca has come in and out in waves over decades.
But the work I do now began when I helped a friend during the MeToo movement. She had been assaulted and offered money to stay quiet. I told her if she took it, she would be dead within a month.
I did not do anything except sit still and listen. That is how medicine works. You receive.
Then an opportunity came up to help her with ibogaine. I come from a family of addicts. My brother is decades sober. I had heard about iboga years earlier, and suddenly it was right in front of me.
Ibogaine removes not just the drugs from your body, it removes the story from your psyche. It gives you the chance to change your story. After that came Bufo. I had been trying for years to connect with it. This time, it happened almost overnight.
EH: That work is intense. How do you hold it?
LC: It is not a profession. It is a gift I have. I can create and hold an amazing space.
But it is heavy. There is an immense need right now for people to go inside. To return to home base. To touch something real again.
Sometimes you have to let parts of yourself die so something new can grow. Get rid of the old residue sitting in your body. Allow the medicine to release and recharge.
You are going to die anyway. You might as well die a few times before you do, so you can come back and change it up.
EH: Do you see midlife as a threshold for this kind of work?
Lysa: Absolutely. People feel it. Your relationship to time changes.
And look, psychedelics are not always just plant medicine or animal medicine. You can reach a psychedelic state through breathwork. The point is trusting yourself enough to let go.
Shame is what keeps people stuck.
People do not know how to be bored. They do not know how to be quiet. That is where the work begins.
EH: Who do you find yourself working with most now?
LC: Mostly not very young people. They are not usually called to this work. And I will not work with anyone under 18 unless it is serious addiction intervention.
Right now, people are exhausted. Nobody is sleeping. Stress and sleep. That has been huge.
There is also panic around money and stability. People still identify themselves by how much money they make. Or how they can keep up the life they created.
I tell my mentees all the time, nobody is watching you. Everyone is too busy freaking out about their own lives. The only way they will notice is if you put it directly in front of them, and even then, no one has that much time.
There is real freedom in realizing no one is grading your paper. You are not getting stars, and you do not need them. You are allowed to shift, change, and fail a thousand times.
EH: What do you say to someone who feels stuck?
LC: Simplify. Get honest about what is not serving you.
Bring your overhead down. That is a big one. A big part of me moving back to New York is to bring my overhead down. Los Angeles is insane.
I walk. I ride a bike. I do not use disruptor companies. I am not interested in building my whole life around apps.
We cannot be paying 28 dollars for a glass of wine. We cannot. And if your business depends on that, then close your business. Sorry.
And we do not need any more jeans. We do not need any more tee shirts. We do not need more stuff. We need a different relationship to what we are consuming and why.
EH: If you could sit down with another version of yourself, another era, who would it be?
LC: I would only want to spend time with myself as a baby or a toddler.
That is the only me I feel I can nurture at this point. I remember everything else. There would not be much talking. It would be physical. Affectionate.
EH: That feels like the truest definition of the inner child.
LC: Exactly.
Erica Huss is a founder, author, and host who has spent twenty years translating health research into tools people can actually use. She thinks like a strategist, communicates like a creative director, and approaches wellness with rigor, humanity, and a sense of humor. At Seconds she serves as Chief Wellness Officer.