I keep thinking about what I wish someone had told me when I was 30 about my skin. Not so I could have prevented aging — you can't, and I wouldn't want to — but so I could have understood it earlier.
If I could write a letter to my thirty-year-old self, this is what it would say.
Dear 30-year-old me,
1. Wear sunscreen. Actually wear it.
I know you have a bottle. I know you use it sometimes. Use it every day. On your face, on your hands, on your neck. This is the single most cost-effective decision you will ever make for your skin. In your fifties you will look at your dermatologist and want to have wept about the years you skipped it.
2. Sleep matters more than the whole shelf.
You are going to buy a lot of skincare between now and forty. Most of it is fine. None of it does what an extra hour of sleep would have done. When you eventually get bloodwork done, you'll see how much sleep is upstream of everything else you're trying to fix topically. Stop bragging about how little sleep you need.
3. The $200 serum is not the answer.
You think you'll find the one product that makes the difference. You won't. That doesn't mean stop trying nice products. It means take the pressure off. You are not falling behind by not owning the newest thing.
4. Get your blood measured. Yes, actually.
There is going to be a whole way of understanding your skin that you don't know exists yet — the inflammation, the glycation, the vitamin D, the hormones. Some of what will be considered "just aging" in your future is going to turn out to be shifts you could have seen in bloodwork years earlier. Ask. Push. Find someone who tests.
5. Learn about hormones now, not later.
Estrogen is going to become the most important word in your life around age 45. Start reading now. Not to worry about it — just so you're literate when it starts to matter.
6. Say no more often.
Cortisol is a real thing. Chronic stress is a real thing. The people who love you will not stop loving you if you set boundaries. Your skin will thank you every year.
7. The dermatologist is only looking at your skin.
She is not looking at your blood, your hormones, your gut, your sleep, or your food. She can help you with what's on your surface. That's important. But your skin is downstream of your body, and no one on your care team is going to point you to the body until you ask.
8. Take pictures of yourself.
Not for social media. For you. So that when you're 50 and looking back, you'll see how the skin that felt "too much" at 30 was in fact just fine, and the changes you'll have gone through are just the shape of a life fully lived.
9. Stop apologizing for aging.
You will spend years trying to look 25 when you are 35. Then years trying to look 35 when you are 45. Something changes when you start to appreciate the face you're actually in. That change won't come from a serum. It'll come from paying enough attention that the face and the person inside it start to match.
10. It's okay to want to look good.
Also, the reverse of the previous point. You don't have to make peace with aging by pretending you don't care. You can care. You can invest in your skin. You can want to look like yourself, at your best. That is a completely reasonable want. Don't let anyone shame you out of it.
Signed,
Someone who now understands what she wishes she'd understood.
Someone who built the panel she wishes had existed then.
And who, at 33, is writing it out mostly for you.
