The struggle with acne has been an ongoing journey for me, working my way through its winding path since 2011. I’d tried everything (natural and unnatural) to heal my skin, but I was never fully released from the struggle, living in constant anxiety over my skin, always worrying about how it looked, constantly touching and prodding. Pema Chodron once said, “Nothing goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” It wasn’t until recently that I finally learned the lesson my body had been trying to tell me all these years: you’re already perfect, you were born into this world perfect and the only way things go wrong is when we try to control our lives from a place of fear. In my heart, I felt it. I was trying to control my body and weight with food, and ended up with autoimmune issues. I tried to have perfect skin and the more I obsessed, the worse my skin became. What I learned is that healing our bodies and our skin isn’t just about what we put on our face or the food we eat. It’s about bringing ourselves back into balance, back in harmony with ourselves, in all three elements of our existence: body, mind, and spirit. Here are seven steps that have helped me get back to wholeness, back to health, back to radiance. Just give it up to a higher power, whatever that is to you, and allow the anxiety and stress to fall off your shoulders from holding all the weight of this alone. Stop obsessing in the mirror. Stop picking. Stop changing products. Use simple, all-natural, healing ingredients. Create a skin care ritual. Let the universe take care of the rest.
