Change is Inevitable
Hi! It's Evelyn. A little about my routine. Many nights, I get into bed at 9:30 (sometimes 9). I wear high-waisted jeans. I tuck into a Friday night at home with paint and a good playlist like it's a gift I gave myself.
This is not what I did in my 20s. When I graduated college, dinner reservations were at 9:30pm. I could usually be found munching on diner pancakes at 2am after a night on the town. Things change. You change.
When I was a teenager, my facialist told me I had combination, sensitive skin. Part dry, part oily. It became part of how I described myself. I was a figure skater. I had brown hair. I stayed up late. I had combination skin.
Since then, I've long hung up my skates and taken up yoga. I've gone blonde. Then ombre. Then brown again. I go to bed early and wake up early.
But my skin?
For some reason, I never questioned that label.
In my 20s, I developed little bumps across my forehead. I didn't know what to do. I saw a couple of dermatologists and an allergist. Prescription creams didn't help. I wasn't allergic to anything. I even tried using Head & Shoulders on my forehead because someone swore it would work. At the time, I worked in beauty marketing, so I had access to what felt like hundreds of dermatologists. Every chance I got, I asked another one.
Finally, one amazing dermatologist told me to stop chasing prescriptions and pick up a simple ointment from the drugstore. Our Condition Balm didn't exist back then. I was hesitant because I had combination skin. My forehead was oily. The last thing I wanted to do was put something heavier on it and create a whole new problem.
But guess what? It worked.
Why? Because, like everything else about me, my skin had changed.
We hang onto things we're told early in life. I have oily skin. I have dry skin. I'm an Autumn. They become facts in our minds.
But skin isn't fixed. Hormones change. Stress changes. The weather changes. We change. Why wouldn't our skin?
The funny thing is that once you finally feel like you and your skin have reached a healthy dynamic, it decides to evolve into something else. Something new that you have to learn all over again, like a new relationship.
Skincare doesn't have to be hard. But sometimes we have to be willing to admit that what used to work just isn't working anymore.
That's one of the reasons I love having a skincare toolkit instead of chasing a dream based on my former skin. When people ask me what my favorite product is, it's honestly hard to answer. Not because I'm an indecisive Libra, which I am, but because every day my skin needs something a little different. So now, most days, my skin and I speak the same language.
I've accepted that my skin has the same freedom to change that I do. And somehow, that gives me far more confidence than any label ever did.
xoxo Evelyn
