Hi, everyone. Today I’m going to be talking to you guys about my skincare journey. And it has been a very long one, seven, six years old. I had very even skin. The texture, the tone was consistent throughout. When I hit puberty, things went left. So I would say around 12, 13. It was horrible. I hated being up close in the mirror when I was looking at my skin because I just felt like it was, you know, nice to look at.

If someone stared at me too long, if someone sat to close next to me, it just made me feel uncomfortable because I felt like they would stare at all my pimples. Because on my forehead on the chin and above my lip. I could wake up with huge zits and I’d have to go to school and I would walk around that this the whole time.

It was horrible. I knew I had pimples on my face, you know, I had a pimple on my face. I don’t know why you need to say, oh, my gosh, the pimples are so huge. And a lot of the time it would be even like relatives, like aunts and come over and ask what’s happening to your skin and stuff and it just makes you feel even more self-conscious than you were before.

So yeah, I would say for most of my high school years, I didn’t like close up pictures, I liked filters, Snapchat, that kind of stuff. I made sure. And when I discovered face tune, they actually have like a blurring thing for acne specifically. So you can press a pimple on a picture and blur it out, which is crazy.

Like sometimes I look like a cartoon, but it was better than having people see what acne I was suffering from. And I think one thing that I wish people would have said at that age was that like, it’s normal. Everybody has acne and everyone’s insecure about their skin in some shape or form. It could be the weather, it could be stress, it could be lack of sleep.

It could be the lotion you’re using. It could be touching your face. It could be what you’re eating, like so many things on a daily basis affect your skin. So it’s just it’s a part of life. My skin in my twenties has been a whole different ballgame. Then I used to be very greasy and yeah, I could wash my face and walk out and you wouldn’t even know that I didn’t have lotion on.

But now my skin is ridiculously dry. When COVID hit, I had, like, really bad acne. I don’t know what was happening, I think was a change of routine. I wasn’t going outside as much. My skin broke out like crazy. My forehead got so dry and I tried so many things. I bought so many products. And I tied Cetaphil, Cerave, actually all kinds of brands.

And I was just trying everything, but I got like a rash all over my face. My face felt like sandpaper, like it was so dry, it was itchy. It went down to my neck. When it cleared I had acne scars like no man’s business in all the places that I point towards, like my forehead is acne scars my cheeks.

And I never had acne scars on my cheeks before, but that was the day that it started. I had acne on my cheeks, acne scars and on my jaw and all my jaw was understandable because we were wearing masks all the time, and especially if you were buying the ones made of material you not washing it every day. So you’re repeating that same mask with the dirt from yesterday and the day before it.

So my acne was going crazy. So even more makeup. So I would cover all the acne scars and they were dark. And that, I think, became the biggest insecurity because that was the worst my skin had ever been. My advice, first of all, is don’t agitate your acne, don’t scrub. It’s like, you know, like you in your head with the mentality that if you would still exfoliate hard enough, your acne will fall off or something like that.

But it doesn’t work like that. You have to actually heal the skin. So where my skin is now, I have accepted that I have hormonal acne. So whenever it is the time of the month, for example, my skin breaks out and I get pimples in my T-Zone and some on cheeks and my jaw. But I leave them alone.

If you have dry skin, don’t wash your face. Don’t cleanse your face with something that’s really hardcore. So I have started using acne.org.za. I cleanse my face a lot and I moisturise and their products are very moisturising. But I think I think the first step to helping your acne skincare journey is to just accept where you are.

Did it make me feel refreshed? And just that is enough to boost your confidence. So that is my skin care journey and I’m still working on it. There’s some days where we wake up and I’m like, I’m not taking any pictures, I’m not doing anything. It looks bad, but for the most part, be intentional about loving your skin and the rest will follow.