Beauty Routine

I’m healing the parts of me that learned to disappear.

I’m 40 years old, and honestly, the most meaningful beauty routine I’ve discovered is one that centers my happiness. I know how this can sound… cliché, or even insensitive. I get it. I have a relationship with depression, so saying that focusing on happiness helps me look my best can feel complicated.

What I’ve learned, though, is that when I come back to myself and truly meet myself with compassion, empathy, and acceptance, something profound begins to heal. I start tending to the wounds of neglect and abandonment that kept me in a dark, numbing place for so long. When I slow down, feel what was once suppressed, and meet the needs that went unmet, sensation returns, and so does happiness. Not in a shallow or forced way, but in a layered, grounded, wholesome one.

This work reconnects me to a happiness that lives at the core of my being. It heals the little girl inside who spent so many years in survival mode. It brings me back to curiosity and play as a default, rather than a constant negative bias.

This happiness feels like me, my authentic, accountable, dignified self. The version of me who loves owning her life and tending to her vessel with care.

My face reflects the state of my soul. But the key, for me, isn’t making beauty the goal. The goal is connection to self. The glow simply follows when that’s where my attention rests.