For Lent, I'm Giving Up the War
What if radical compassion for self leads to radical compassion for the other?
Hello, Friends and Readers,
How many of you are at war with some part of who you are that you’ve been told isn’t good enough? For me, my skin has been a steady source of frustration and embarrassment for me since I was 12, when I was sitting on the hill of my seventh-grade school, and a classmate shoved a handful of grass down the back of my shirt (a random game we were all playing. Ahh, to be that young again) only to scream and scramble away. Apparently my bacne had taken her completely off-guard. Since then, the message that my skin is something to be fixed has been reaffirmed by other girls snickering at me when I would wear open-back tank tops, queries about whether I was okay because of the redness of my face, and a slew of advice from well-meaning friends, family, and acquaintances.
Trust me when I say that my skin is a ‘problem’ I’ve tried almost everything to solve: an unknown number of products, including proactive (which was effective but I couldn’t afford to keep it up); changing my diet based on whatever blog posts I could find with a compelling argument for potential triggers to remove and super foods to eat every day; alternative options like oil-cleansing, creating my own natural moisturizer, more sun exposure, and exercising to ‘sweat out the toxins.’ Harsh medications like Accutane weren’t an option for me, but I started birth control with the innocent hope that clear skin was a side effect.
Sometimes my skin is clear, and sometimes I have painful breakouts that leave me wondering why, at 33, this is still an issue. What am I doing wrong? What MORE could I try to just have the glowing skin that so many people seem to not have to work for? Will I ever not be at war with my skin?
For lent this year, I’m giving up foundation. I didn’t plan this—it was just something that came to me after watching a reel on Instagram. In it, the woman said she always thought she was ugly until she realized that people were never meant to look at themselves as much as we do now. For most humans throughout history, they would really only see themselves in water; their reflections would have been vague at best. But now, mirrors are abundant, and we are able to pick apart something as small as the size of our pores. Not only that, our reflections are also static, and yet that’s not how other people see us. As we move through life, we laugh, we dance, we make faces, we hug, we cry—other people don’t just see us, they experience us.
Woah.
All the time, money, mental capacity I’ve spent focused on fixing my skin makes me miserable, and for what? I’m worried about what other people think, and they are probably too busy experiencing EVERYTHING ELSE about me that’s wonderful and delightful to notice. I’m guessing, if you know me, that you would have no idea the amount of energy I’ve spent focused on fixing or hiding my skin from you. I’m guessing you eventually became blind to the small red bumps on my neck and cheeks. I’m guessing that’s because it just does not make any difference to your experience of me.
What would happen if I just…accepted that I look how I look? Sometimes acne spots will be a part of that, and sometimes they won’t. What would happen if I didn’t hide it or pick at it or rub it raw in the hope of cleaning it away? What if I stopped the war and reminded myself of all the wonderful ways my skin protects me and reminds me to drink more water and shows my laugh lines and expresses the way I feel about the people I care about? What if I apologized for all the hate I’ve hurtled at the reflection I see in the mirror?
Is this just a human tendency, to be consumed with trying to change parts of ourselves, waging a war in the attempt to make these imperfections submit to our will? Or is this a product of our time? Maybe a little bit of both. Maybe this time in history is really just highlighting how deep this problem goes. I’ve noticed that some folks use religion as a way to double down on their efforts to fix, alter, make themselves acceptable, which extends to those around them. Which is interesting to me, because I find that my faith encourages me to keep stripping away the expectations that keep me bound in performing for my worth; they were never mine, nor were they ever God’s wish for me.
I often think of Jesus when he said the greatest commandment is to love your God with all your heart, but a second is just as important: Love your neighbour as yourself. People like to argue that humans are selfish and we don’t love our neighbour nearly as much as ourselves. But, when I read this, I think what’s really true is how we love our neighbours is a direct reflection of the way we love ourselves. I think we have a crisis of people hustling for worth and validation and love, stepping on the heads of everyone else in the attempt to just be seen, when what we really need to learn is what it means to actually love ourselves first.
It’s okay to serve yourself, to accept yourself, to rest when your body is tired, to put your oxygen mask on first. It’s okay if you need respite, if you need encouragement, if you need to retreat from the demands of life occasionally. It’s okay if you are ready to put down your weapons of oppression against your own self and just let you be who you are. More than okay, this is deeply necessary if we hope to love, parent, and lead in a way that reflects the values we hold so closely.
I stopped using foundation several days ago and have only used water and my hands to wash it (although I can’t go cold turkey, so I still use a natural concealer). Already, it’s far less angry and raw. And I think that’s just the story of my life—healing requires that I let go of fixing the parts I think are ‘broken’ and embrace what is. At some point, I need to remember how good and beautiful I am at my core, and the parts of myself that I would rather be different are neither good nor bad—they just….are. Those parts aren’t causing my suffering, it’s the way I’m responding to them. Lately, I’ve been looking in the mirror and writing in my journal the apologies I have for my self, and the ways I have been harsh and neglectful and cruel; if you’ve been at war with yourself (and if you’re a human reading this, likely you have been at some point in your life), you may need to turn towards yourself with a similar act of repair and radical compassion.
Because, I know this to be deeply true for me: When I’m at war with myself, I start to wage war on everyone else around me.
What parts of yourself do you find your wage war against the most? Personality, medical diagnosis, mental health, body?
How does that war affect the way you show up in your relationships, yourself as well as others?
What would happen if you laid down your tools of self-oppression? Would you open up to your authentic self, step forward with deep courage, love freely?
Aleesha: thank you for this. I, too, have struggled with my skin. I've had acne and oily skin since I was 8 years old. I've also spent a fortune over the years trying to fix it. My skin has cleared up a lot in the past few years and one of the things that's probably helped is hardly ever using foundation: I just use a tinted moisturiser. The reason for that, though, is just out of the necessity of motherhood: getting out the door is usually such a Herculian feat that putting make-up on is always my last thing to do and therefore virtually never happens! And because I've got so used to that, I realise it's totally fine. But me in my 20s wouldn't have DREAMED of leaving the house without make up. So I'm grateful for that.
What I do really notice now though is how much I fixate on my wrinkles, especially the deepening one in between my eyes. I think about Botox. I loom at images of celebrities, who have all had treatments and surgeries but don't admit it!, and think 'oh I wish I had smooth, clear skin' and I realise I am so attached to the idea that smooth, clear skin = attractiveness = value. It's a hard thing to shake free from when we're immersed in this culture.
Thank you for that reminder about how recent and strange it is that we look at our faces so much and you're SO right that people experience us, they don't stand there staring at our static faces the way we do to ourselves!!
I've had a similar relationship with worrying about my skin for a long time. I think I largely stopped after having my oldest and then with the pandemic starting. I couldn't wear any makeup when I was wearing a mask, and now regardless of whether I'm wearing a mask, I just let my face be what it is. I still occasionally put makeup on, but it's extremely rare. I don't think much about my face anymore. It's so liberating to not worry so much about my body just existing as it is.