My skincare journey.
I’m Mary, an American living in Dublin, Ireland and I am a serial skincare experimenter.
During Covid lockdown – and I do mean lockdown - I decided to embark upon a social media journey, to share my story and meet other skincare junkies like me.
I’ve spent years researching, trialing, recovering from said-trials, trying again, loving and hating a myriad of products, devices, methods; anything that claims to improve my skin, hair, nails and body is worth a go in my book. It’s kind of funny…my day job is firmly planted in the marketing space (which means I know all about claims and promises) yet I’m every marketer’s dream – ready to whip out my wallet and turn over hard-earned cash to get glowy, healthy skin.
Since starting YouTube and thinking about my journey, I made some interesting discoveries about myself. I had to ask - why has good skin been my passion for so long? It eventually led me back to an incident in my teenage years.
I was involved in a car accident at 15 that resulted in a fair amount of facial scaring. I’m blessed it wasn’t worse. But it was a difficult age, when so much of our identity is tied to our appearance. I had a series of plastic surgeries to correct some of the damage however during my final years in high school, I wouldn’t walk to the end of the road without makeup. I did everything in my power to cover the damage.
Over the following decades I oscillated between tons of makeup and no make at all. I eventually realised - this is me. Scars and all. So I started to care less about what makeup could do for my skin and I started to think about what I could for my skin. I started to take care of it.
It began with just cleaning my face every morning and night. And then I added moisturizer. And then it was serums, and on and on and on. Now, I’m 50 (ahem) and have the best skin of my life. Sure I have a few wrinkles here and there and remnants of age spots from too much sun in the 70’s and no sunscreen. So now, I try to wear as little makeup as possible and let the good skin through.