When the unexpected happens
Such as life would have it, I am writing to you after another unexpected pause. Many of you have quietly and kindly reached out to me over the past few weeks after noticing an alarming “out on medical leave” note on my Instagram and email away message. Not to get too personal, but I wanted to share some updates on what that was about.
2020 skin goals | inclusive beauty
There are so many intentions I have collected from all of you that I’ve been able to digest over the last month of introspective, post-holiday time. As the decade turned, I asked many of you what you were hoping for in 2020 in relation to your skin health. There were many beautiful commitments shared about breaking up with old fear-based beauty beliefs that perpetuate inflammatory habits such as negative self-talk and picking the skin. There were also enlightening commitments to practice love-based care by simply drinking more water or getting more supportive care. I was elated receiving all of the feedback and took a long time to come up with a way that I could help with these resolutions. Here’s what I came up with…
if healing is what we're striving for, then why is it so triggering?
It’s taken me some time to determine how I can reintroduce myself on the blog after my Hayley hiatus. I’ve started by trying to write a recap blog and filming myself sharing the experience but nothing really felt - for lack of a better word - authentic. Mostly because I would feel myself spiraling when reliving the experience. I start to word vomit some not so nice things about myself or sob in front of my camera about how uncomfortable I am with all of this. You don’t want to see that footage, I promise you…
Intuitive Self-Care
Last week I was so honored to host an event with Michelle of Holisticism and Nicole Webb, who’s a reiki practitioner who uses muscle testing as a modality for intuitive healing. We were able to partner to discuss the innate wisdom that our body holds. I found myself speaking to a group of incredible women who were all prioritizing themselves by making the time to attend an event that would focus on their self-care. Sometimes I feel like a kettle boiling over and the burnout is real. I know all of you can get the same feeling when our work and personal lives get congested with the non-stop to do lists. This is where self-care comes into play, but only up until the last few years did I really start to determine the difference between self-care and escapism.
A new kind of resolution
You know that feeling you have when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve and you feel like you can start anew? That feeling can be awfully intimidating and exhilarating at the same time. To feel the pressure to shed old habits overnight can oftentimes set us up for failure which can eventually lead to shame. This year, I set a new intention. One without the shackling feeling that a resolution may previously have had. The intention was inspired by my last client of the year, Cassie of Candid Health, which is to take things one day at a time. We all have different ways of working through patterns and releasing what needs to be let go and in the past when I would find myself backtracking more than anything if I set a strict resolution up for myself. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I march to the beat of my own drum and regardless of my work ethic where I could go about a busy schedule with no problem, it was never fulfilling and I would fall back hard to old patterns and escapism. The intention to take things one day at a time for a workaholic like me is the most freeing and self-loving act I can think of at this point in my life.
I'm about to get real honest here...
If you know me, you know that one of my best and worst qualities is that I’m a workaholic. I get a lot done in a day but it’s often at the expense of having a social life or taking a vacation. Being in a service based industry I rely on my clients to pay my bills and regardless of manifesting major abundance over the last several years, I still think that I can't stop taking the work. It never dawns on me until I realize how little I was able to see my parents when they visited for 3 weeks, how I’m booked in every day my husband has off, and how I am hardly available to attend the events of my community members. It’s really vulnerable for me to admit this to myself because I often get the response of “you’re probably too busy, I’ll just book with you next month” and my answer will always be “I’m never too busy for you”. I’m so honored that people reach out to me for facials and rarely will I ever say no because I genuinely love the work. So when my wonderful mother-in-law offered to assist my husband and me with a trip for our honeymoon last Christmas, I knew this was my opportunity to take an unapologetic vaca. However, as the last few weeks went by and we were slowly approaching the honeymoon of my dreams, I started to panic. That’s when I realized that Mercury was going into retrograde and if I know anything about this weird shift in the universe, it’s that it is an opportunity to test your faith in a higher power and my ability to handle anything with grace. So here it goes...
Express gratitude and embrace change...
When I was in beauty school I remember how a lesson in acne led into one of the most powerful life-changing discussions. We were exploring the root causes of acne and how that can be related to stress on all accounts (physical, emotional, etc.). The simple solution our guest teacher had for stress management was to express gratitude and embrace change. At 18, this had me totally shook! It was so simple but it was something I never really sat down to think about how the combination of those two seemingly simple action could turn your entire life, and health, around. My expression of gratitude is a daily practice, however, I do like to take the opportunity to sit deeply on this topic whenever I can. So with Thanksgiving around the corner, I wanted to share my gratitude for the year with all of you. 2017 was not at all what I expected, especially since 2016 felt like we all were hit by a bus. I sort of expected it to be a little easier but with so many life changes it’s easy to think back on it now and realize that this year was going to be a big one. Emotionally, financially, physically, all the things just grew towards a new level I never thought was possible. Without my gratitude practice, I don’t think I could see this year as positively as I do but the old saying still runs true: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s where the embracing change part creeps in. It’s one thing to express gratitude but when life is throwing you all sorts of curve balls, it’s how you embrace the journey that truly transforms you.
Facing Fears
It’s easy for me to skip over the synchronicities that lead me to pick the topic of my blog post each week but over the last few days, I faced and realized a couple of fears of mine while hearing a lot of the fears from my clients. Sometimes it’s something as small as the fear of a post facial breakout or it can be as serious as feeling like you can’t look in the mirror without shame. Fear, to me, is simply false evidence appearing real however regardless of the times that I say this and the advice I give to others on how to overcome fear - I still face some major fears that can honestly paralyze me. So what can we do when we still have fears we know we have to face?
Understanding your value and worth.
One of the hardest parts of owning a business for me is the financial side of it. As you may all know by now I’m not a business major who has had a set plan from the start of my business. I was literally left with no other option but to start my own business after leaving my last spa job when I had shingles. Everyone has an opinion when it comes to how much my services are worth but at the end of the day it came down to how much I value myself. Starting this at 27 out of fear of going broke there were many times when I undervalued myself just to get people in the door. What never dawned on me was that when I worked in other offices I was doing $300 services and my clientele never blinked on the cost. So why was it hard for me to recognize that I’m worth the industry standard (and much more).
Becoming attached: Why the rules of dating often apply to my work
When it comes to my relationships with clients it feels like I often have to play by the rules of dating. Over the last decade I feel like I have experienced a non stop rotation of new, existing and returning clients. Every day I get several inquiries about how someone found me and I’m the answer to their skin prayers. I mindfully reply back and then - nothing. Since I have been with my husband for almost 6 years I missed the era of online dating, so I find that I still play a very old school part in courting someone. When a client ghosts me I get confused and think “didn’t you reach out to me?”. I also get broken up with by clients. I find that as strong as my return rate is there are many reasons why some people don’t come back. As an empathetic healer there are a lot of lessons I have to continuously learn again and again because I become heavily invested in each case. Whether a client ghosts me or gives me a very thoughtful reason why they can no longer see me, it still somehow manages to sting. There are many reasons why I think that a service providers clientele continues to evolve. I want to explore what may be holding back from taking the leap you need to trusting the process to finally achieving the skin of your dreams.
Acceptance.
I was so fortunate to celebrate my birthday with some of my favorite people this weekend. I wanted to express my gratitude for those of you who wished me a happy birthday and allowed me to take a much needed digital detox. I had an epiphany of what I was hoping to finally release as my last moments of my 20s wrapped to a close. That epiphany was to work a heck of a lot less. I’ve been working multiple jobs for as long as I can remember and with the obvious physical side effects of overworking it also was a bit of a cover up for me. If I overwork that means that I can live in a cycle of overworking followed by much needed escapism. Escapism is basically an avoidance of self care masking as a reset time. Like binge watching tv, online retail therapy or avoiding exercise with the excuse that it's a necessary day off. A little escapism here and there is totally fine but the most important thing to remember is to actually tune back into your needs when you're off. I'm lucky enough to have a job that is so fulfilling but this decade I'm dedicated to practicing what I preach a little more. This means taking my days off and being just as nice to myself as I advise all of you to be. Let's see how this goes!
Spiritual Awakening.
When coming up with the title to this week’s post I honestly attempted to find synonyms for the word “spiritual”. Nothing seemed to fit the essence of what I wanted to write about so I decided to stick with it however I had a visual of my readers immediately clicking past an article of this subject. What would spirituality have to do with skincare? If you hear me out you will make the connection I promise. The mind, body and spirit approach is necessary for a full recovery for any sort of imbalance going on in our lives. I believe that we all have a strong intuitive sense of what we need. Whether it’s our basic human instincts to choose foods that are will nourish us to who are the people we want to spend our days with. A lot of my daily decisions and practices are based on my intuition. I try to help my clients tap into their intuition by giving them the power to choose what’s best for them and creating connections between mind, body and spirit. Whether it’s by asking the right questions that lead them to the answer they had in them all along, or it’s by honoring them if something is not resonating with them. I don’t force upon a practice that doesn’t work but I also help you breakthrough the blocks when nothing seems to be progressing. It’s taken a long time for me to tap into my own sense of intuition and release some of the blocks that hold me back from living my most abundance life, but it all started with my acceptance of my spiritual path and the awakening it lead me to.
Love.
What I’ve learned over the last decade of skin therapy work is that I’m one incredibly empathic human. I feel everything. I’ve learned just about everything I can know about marriage, divorce, heartbreak, childbirth, miscarriage and grief from my clients. Little did my clients throughout the years know, they helped me tune into my heart to make some of the most difficult decisions I ever had to when it comes to love and loss. I continuously find myself holding space for people in some of the most tumultuous times. The therapeutic skin coach approach was to help you get to the root of the emotional issue just as much as the physical, so naturally your life events come up in conversation because it's all connected. You can't have glowing skin if you're disconnected from your experience. I wanted to share some of the most valuable lessons in love that I picked up along the way.
Why makeup is a luxury, not a necessity.
If you’ve ever had a treatment with me you know that in my consultation form my very last question is what is your ultimate skin goal? I wrote a post about year ago about becoming makeup free and since then the most common answer to my skin goal question still remains the same - to be makeup free. I may have done a few of you a disservice by immediately exclaiming how easy that goal is because of my personal relationship with makeup. I grew up obsessed with makeup to the point that if I could translate the equivalent of my obsession to the current time, I would 100% be one of those instagram/snapchat/youtube tutorial gals. I loved creating looks, doing other people’s makeup and I was praised for my natural ability in this department. I booked jobs all the time in the beginning of my career that I can safely say that the spring and summers of 2007 and 2008 were spent with me at my makeup counter dolling gals up for events like prom, graduation and weddings. I loved it but it also taught me a lot about how many people lacked confidence, self awareness and even struggled with a little body/facial dysmorphia. My love of makeup started because of artistry but my relationship to it on an everyday basis changed because of my own evolution of self love and acceptance. So with that, I want to dive back into how being makeup free has nothing to do with skincare, it has everything to do with acceptance.