Skincare After 50

At 55, I finally admitted this was just my face now. The worst part is I gave up years before I ever said it out loud.

I never stopped caring how I looked. Somewhere in my 40s I just stopped believing anything could be done about it.

And nobody warns you about this part. Giving up doesn't feel like giving up. I thought it would feel like losing something. It felt smart. It felt like being a grown up about it. That's how it gets you.

My sister sent me a photo of myself from a cookout. It was 11pm, almost midnight, I was in bed, and I stopped scrolling when I hit it. And I braced. You know the flinch. That half second where you get ready to hate the photo of yourself.

It didn't come. I just looked at my own face and thought, oh. That's what I look like now. And I wasn't even upset. That's the part that should have scared me.

I didn't get there in one day. You get talked into it. One reasonable voice at a time, and every one of them sounds like common sense.

My mom had this same skin. So it's genetic. You can't fight genetic. That's voice one.

Then Carol. And okay, you have to understand what happened to Carol, because Carol is half the reason I never even tried.

Carol had been obsessed with this influencer for months. Some woman in her 30s, perfect glowy skin, you know the exact type, swearing up and down that retinol changed her life. And Carol caved and bought the whole thing. Not one bottle. The whole kit the woman linked. The retinol, the serums, and some special moisturizer that's supposed to fix what the retinol does to your face. Which, looking back, should have told me everything. They sell you the thing, then they sell you the thing to fix the thing. Almost 300 dollars. Three hundred.

And 6 weeks later Carol's face is peeling. Red. Raw. She looked older than before she started, and she quit and went back to plain drugstore lotion.

And I watched the whole thing and thought, nope. If that's what the good stuff does, and it costs that, and it's just some 30 year old influencer selling it anyway, I am out. I never even tried. That door shut and I never touched the handle. Voice two.

And then the last one. The thing everybody says, so gently, with a smile. You look great for your age.

Say it slow. For your age. That is not a compliment. That is somebody being kind to you about getting old. And you smile and say thank you and file it away as one more reason to stop.

So I stopped. And here's the part it took me years to see.

Because being proud that I'd accepted my face is the exact thing that stopped me from ever asking one question.

What if I was wrong about what I was even looking at?

I never asked it. Not once in a decade. I put on moisturizer, I shrugged, I stopped looking too hard in mirrors, and I called all of it wisdom.

Now here's where it turned. I still feel it in my chest when I tell this part.

I'm at a birthday party, holding a cup of wine I didn't want. And the woman next to me is older than me. 60, maybe more. And I could not stop staring at her skin. Not because it looked young. It didn't. Because it looked awake. Alive. And standing there I realized I couldn't remember the last time mine did.

So I said it. Half joking, half not, the way you do when you actually mean it. I said, oh, you won the genetic lottery, didn't you.

She laughed. She said, oh honey, no. My skin was a disaster in my 50s. Worst in my whole family.

And then she said the thing. And I have not been able to put it down since.

"Most of what you think is old isn't old. It's tired. It's skin that's been running on empty for years and nobody ever fed it. Old you can't fix. But tired has been fooling you this whole time."

And I need you to understand this did not feel nice. People think that would feel hopeful. It felt sick.

Because in one sentence, from a stranger at a party, holding a paper cup, the whole story I'd settled on about my own face cracked right down the middle. Do you get what I'm saying? I had read my face as old. Finished. Genetic. Case closed. I'd grieved it and buried it and moved the money to other things. And she's standing there telling me I buried something that was never dead.

And here's the part that keeps me up. Old skin and tired skin look the same. From the outside they're twins. Same dullness. Same flatness. Same worn out, older than you feel look. But one of them you're stuck with forever, and the other one you've just been ignoring. And I'd spent more than 10 years dead sure mine was the first kind. Because a few kind people told me so. And because believing it let me stop trying.

More than 10 years. More than 10 years I called myself old when I was mostly just starving.

And that's when the sad feeling turned into something hotter. Not at Carol. Not at my mom. Not at any company, because nobody sold me a thing, nobody lied. I was angry at how easy it had been. How gently every person walked me to the door. How good the quitting felt while it quietly took years off my own face. They all just agreed I should give up, and it felt so mature that I never once thought to check if they were right.

She told me it was one serum. Just one.

I braced for a needle, or a 900 dollar jar, or some routine with 11 steps.

She said one serum. That's it. And she said the reason it worked when nothing else had was that it wasn't attacking her skin. Not stripping it or forcing it younger. It was feeding it. A face that had been hungry for years.

She said the word centella. Cica. Tiger grass. And something clicked, because I'd always quietly wondered how so many Korean women hit 60 still looking soft and rested while the rest of us look like we've been through a war. That was it. They were never fighting their skin. They'd been feeding it the whole time.

So I went home and I went looking. And I'll be honest, I almost bought the first cheap one I saw, because part of me still expected this to be nothing.

But something made me turn the bottles over first. And once I started reading them I couldn't stop, and I got angry all over again, right there in the store.

Because most of them were water. Water, a little glycerin, and the word tiger grass printed huge on the front doing all the work. Barely anything in them. Made for some oily 25 year old with a breakout who needs a quick calm down. Not for a face like mine that had been running bone dry for 10 years and needed actual feeding.

One after another. Same pretty bottle. Same nothing inside. Pick it up, put it down.

And then I turned over the one she'd told me about. And I stopped.

Because this one wasn't hiding. It didn't just wave the leaf at me. It had the real concentrated part of the plant, the piece that does the actual work, right up near the top where you can't fake it. And under that was something I didn't even know I was allowed to want. A vitamin C that doesn't burn. And I stopped cold, because everything burns my skin. Everything. And here was somebody who had clearly sat down and thought about a woman exactly like me before they made it.

That was the moment. That's when I stopped seeing a product and started trusting the person who made it.

I bought it and told no one. I couldn't. I'd stopped believing in this stuff years ago and I was not about to say out loud that I was hoping again. Hoping was the part that hurt. Hoping is what I quit to protect myself from.

What actually happened

And I'm not going to tell you it turned back the clock. It didn't. Nothing does, and the second anybody promises you that, close the page, because that's the exact lie that talks women into giving up in the first place.

What it did was smaller. And it got me anyway.

My skin stopped looking tired. The flatness lifted, like a light came back on under it. It got soft. And that awake look, the one I stood at that party grieving like it was gone for good, showed up on my own face again. Not younger. I keep saying that on purpose. Just me. Awake again.

And every day, under the relief, was that other feeling I can't shake.

More than 10 years.

More than 10 years I called myself old and moved on. More than 10 years I could have had this and didn't, because quitting felt like wisdom and nobody, me most of all, ever thought to check.

Lanarie Cica Serum

The serum that feeds skin instead of fighting it.

• ✓Built around asiaticoside. The concentrated active from centella, the part that does the real work, not just a splash of the leaf.
• ✓A vitamin C that doesn't burn. Stabilized ethyl ascorbic acid, for skin that reacts to everything.
• ✓No retinoids. No harsh actives. Made to feed and rebuild, not strip or punish.
• ✓Light serum texture. Sinks in and disappears. Sits under makeup instead of pilling.
• ✓Full ingredient list shown. Read every ingredient yourself before you try it.

See the Cica Serum

So here's the only thing I'll say to you, if you're sitting where I was sitting.

That face in the mirror you made your peace with. It's not old. It's tired. It's been running on empty for years and nobody ever fed it, same as mine. And I know that because old skin and starving skin look identical from the outside, and almost every woman our age who thinks she's looking at the first one is really looking at the second. I was. You probably are too.

The difference is one of them you're stuck with, and the other one you can start feeding tonight.

It was never peace, what I made. I just gave up quietly and called it a nicer word. Same face, same age, same genes. Nothing about me changed. My skin was never old. It was only hungry. I just didn't know I was allowed to feed it.

You don't have to fix your whole face tonight. You just have to feed it, for the first time in years, and see what it does. That's where I'd start. That's where I wish I'd started 10 years ago. 🤍

This is an advertorial and is not medical advice; individual results vary. Lanarie Cica Serum is a cosmetic product intended to support the look and feel of the skin and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition. It is not a retinol product and is not a substitute for one. If your skin reacts to any product, discontinue use. If you have a persistent skin concern, speak with a licensed dermatologist. Review the full ingredient list before use.