Hello! For this month’s article, I thought I’d refer to an amazing book called Girl, Wash Your Face. It was written by an author called Rachel Hollis in 2018. The premise of the book is that all the stuff we believe about ourselves at 2am when we’re struggling to sleep (we’ve all been there, right?) is actually not true, so I thought I’d share a little of my own experience with you. Some of you may know that my business here in Taunton is within the wellbeing sector, which, of course, was hit really hard by Covid. So many of our competitors/friends didn’t make it, and those of us who did have been limping along a bit since then. We all might be forgiven for lying awake at night worrying about what would happen – can we pay our staff, can we keep the lights on and the rent paid, etc, etc. That was certainly me, and I’m more than a little guilty of neglecting the self-care a bit, not taking care over my make-up and hair, wearing comfy clothes rather than dressing up, and all that stuff. However, in this year of 2023 when the world seems to get ever crazier, I had a bit of an epiphany a while ago, and the book title just jumped into my head – Denise, wash your face and get out there! So, I did! I went into the bathroom and after some scrabbling about, found a really nice facewash by a fancy company (Murad, if you’re interested), ran some nice warm water and really went to town on myself. Instead of just splashing it on and rinsing it off, I took the time to really massage it into my skin. It was an exfoliating one, so it felt pleasantly “scrubby” too, and instead of just splashing water to get it off, I took a washcloth and took it all off, so it took away all the dead skin that I’d just dislodged. What a transformation – my skin looked brighter and had lost the dullness of negativity and felt amazingly soft and comfortable. Buoyed by this, I put on some moisturiser that hadn’t seen the light of day for some time either and did the same with that – really massaged it in, and the difference was amazing, both to my face and my mood. I know that some of you reading this will be finding it really difficult to function at the moment, and it may not be that this chimes with you, but if you can muster the strength to do one small thing that feels huge, but that you really want to do (take a shower, cook a nice dinner instead of going for takeaway, even taking your medication like you know you should if your mental health isn’t going well for you), I guarantee you’ll feel so much better afterwards. I hope that helps. Love, Denise xx
Girl, Wash Your Face
