I recently had a conversation with my 14-year-old son that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
We were sitting in the car after hockey practice. I had a gua sha with me, which I often use on my neck when I’m driving, and ended up using it on his leg after practice. He loved it and, surprisingly, already knew what it was.

Somewhere in the conversation, he told me he wished he didn’t have “baby fat” on his face.
I said, “Oh my gosh, I would do anything for your baby fat.” He brushed the compliment off and began working along his jawline in a sculpting motion. It caught my attention in a concerning way. A few days later, he mentioned something called looksmaxxing. So I did what any curious mom who works in this industry would do. I went down the rabbit hole. When self-care becomes self-correction. Looksmaxxing is essentially the pursuit of maximizing your physical appearance. There is an entire online world, particularly among younger males, focused on jaw definition, mewing, facial exercises, gua sha, lymphatic techniques, extreme dieting and other ways to change or optimize physical features. At the more extreme end, there are practices like bone smashing, where people actually hit their faces in an attempt to change their bone structure. That part shocked me. But what really stayed with me wasn’t any one of these practices. It was realizing that I was watching something I’ve seen women experience for decades through the eyes of my son. The constant evaluation. The comparing. The subtle belief that maybe if we could just change this one thing, we’d finally feel better about ourselves

Honestly, for a moment, I thought: I’m done with the beauty industry. Then I thought about Sanctuary. I realized that this is exactly why Sanctuary exists. I don’t want Sanctuary to be another place where you come in and are given a list of things you need to fix. I want it to be a place where caring for your skin, your body and your nervous system feels like an act of kindness toward yourself.

There is a difference between caring for yourself and constantly correcting yourself. We can enjoy gua sha. We can love beautiful skin. We can have rituals that make us feel radiant. I certainly do. But I hope we can slowly release the idea that our faces and bodies are projects that need to be endlessly optimized. Because there is so much life happening outside the mirror. Maybe our best self looks different. Maybe your best self isn’t the most sculpted version of you. Maybe it’s the most present version. The one who can rest without feeling guilty. The one who can look in the mirror without immediately searching for what needs to change. The one who takes care of herself because she feels worthy of care, rather than because she believes she needs fixing. The version of you who feels at home in your own skin. That is the kind of beauty I want to make space for at Sanctuary. A beauty that doesn’t ask you to become someone else. A beauty that gives you permission to come home to yourself.

Summer