Skincare Step 1: Acceptance

Manda
Apr 20, 2023
3 min read

We finally crossed the bridge, and are ready to embark on the skincare side of life!

I'd like to start off this skincare journey by saying something that might be cliche, but it hold a lot of weight:

Please, love your skin. Every aspect of it. That's the first few steps to achieving your skincare goals. You have to learn to love.

I wanted to start our walk on this skincare journey this way because, these is no doubt that beauty standards have made us all feel a certain way about our skin. It's a trend now to want "glass skin"or to hate textured skin. There are so many trends that go around on how to achieve a certain look, but none of the trends really start off by teaching us how to love the skin that we have!

I'm someone who is very cautious about my skin (particularly my face). I don't like people touching my face, I try to watch how many times I touch my face.... it's a process.

And with me being cautious with my skin, that also made me very prone to wanting to take my time when it comes to skincare. I've always heard that I had great skin, and when that's something you spend a lot of your life hearing, I realized that I would always be so scared of breakouts!

It became an internalized issue, that I had to keep up my skin so that others would never have to see my skin outside of what they thought was 'perfect'. Little did I know, so much came with that. I had a specific skincare routine that I never felt the need to detour from that was centered around natural products. Then, I went through a phase where I felt like I had to have so many chemical based products because that's what all the girls were using, and they would make it seem like the natural route was a horrible idea... it wasn't lol. There are different strokes for different folks, and we have to use what we think is best for us.

I would have to remind people that even though my skin looks 'perfect' that didn't excuse me from having hormonal breakouts from periods, or breakouts from drinking certain juices (we will be getting into that horror show in the next post also). I was excused from having dark marks, being a pimple popper, or a scab picker. I just had to make sure I knew how to treat my skin in the process of me doing those things, so that I wouldn't hate my skin for doing what skin does... rest, react, heal, and refresh.

What made accepting and loving my skin seem like an even harder task, was being a woman of darker skin; and being the only dark-skinned woman in my house. It made me look at caring for my skin a certain way because I didn't want any dark spots to make me feel like I wasn't clean or taking care of myself. I still have some days where I'll feel this way, but again... acceptance brings so much peace and joy into all of our experiences.

So, before we continue into the following week and dive into skincare, please remember to not compare the beauty of your own skin to mine, Beyonce's, Zendaya's, Rihanna's, Ariana Grande's, etc. Just like we're not excused from our skin having a mind of it's own, neither is theirs! Our skin evolves daily, and that's the beauty of living in our own skin. We learn to love our hyperpigmentation, freckles, fine lines, sensitive skin, and more for what it is... and we can also try to take the steps to want to improve it day by day for ourselves. Not for societies standards, to impress a man, our friends, family, or to even look like our favorite celebrity.

The following week, we'll take the next step in skincare together!

Skincare Step 2: Understanding My Skin Type

I can't wait to have the discussion. See you then,

-Manda