You are more than your skin
After I had my son, my skin became unsettled. That is the only way I can describe it. It was unpredictable and unhappy, and I didn't understand why. At first I put it down to my hormones, to breastfeeding, to the sleepless nights and the depression I felt in the postnatal period; but as I stopped breastfeeding, began to sleep again and emerged from my depressive fog, my skin still didn't settle.
I am a facialist. I think about skin all day, how it looks, why it is behaving the way it is, what might be sitting underneath. So there was another kind of shame in it too, to be the one person who was supposed to understand skin and yet feel unable to heal my own.
What I noticed, more and more, was how much this was changing the way I moved through the world. I found myself walking with my head down, eyes on the ground, not wanting to meet anyone's gaze and rounding through my shoulders. As a trained yoga teacher I caught it at once and tried to correct my posture, but it was as though my inner child was saying, make yourself small and invisible, so that no one can judge your skin. Why? Old wounds of unworthiness and insecurity rising to the surface, a fear of rejection, and I believe, the universe asking me, to finally face them.
As I mentioned, this felt particularly shameful, because I am the advertisement for my own business. If my skin looked like this, why would anyone trust me with theirs? That thought stayed with me for a long time, and it took me a while to see how much of my worth I had been attributing to my appearance.
So I began to do the inner work. I sat with those feelings of unworthiness, most of which traced back to childhood, and I did some shadow work, asking myself some uncomfortable questions I had been avoiding for years. Two things came out of it.
The first was that this was a gift, though it certainly didn't feel like one at the time. Having lived the emotional weight of ‘bad’ skin myself, I could meet my clients with real empathy and compassion, understanding their emotional and physical journey rather than simply treating it. The second was harder, but ultimately more freeing: I could see that I had been living by old beliefs that no longer served me. That my appearance was the most valuable thing I had to offer. That if I were not attractive to others, I was not worthy. That I could not be good at my work unless I felt I was looking my best. My inner child had been trying to keep me safe by keeping me small, and in doing so had been unconsciously stopping me from making genuine connections and growing into the work I love.
None of it was true. I am a good facialist, with a real desire to learn and improve every day. I want to connect with every woman who comes into the studio and help them walk back out into the world feeling a little more themselves; and I do all of this while showing up for my family and my friends, thinking very deeply and consciously about how I affect them and how I can be better for them. That is worth so much more than how my skin looks on any given day.
If you are reading this and having a hard time with your own skin, I would gently suggest that you use this season to notice the qualities in you that are unique and authentic to you - focus on these and nurture them. It is easier said than done, I know. But honestly, healing your skin is the easy part, and it is the part I can help you with. The harder work, the real work, is learning to love and value yourself along the way, in a world that keeps insisting appearance is everything.
