How Wearing Blush Helps Me Cope

I’ve been mulling over this piece for months with zero time to actually sit down and write, because life has truly been life-ing the past few months. I’ve shared about my home renovation project here, which kicked off in 2024 with a winter of roof demo and rebuilding, then morphed into a patio project which is still ongoing (but thank goddess for hot tubs, seriously), and I’m now embarking upon a full-on septic pipe replacement which has unexpectedly turned into the digging and installation of a new water line. All this AND my dad suddenly decided to come down to stay with me with a complicated case of brain fog and memory loss, and I’ve been thrust into a caregiver role I wasn’t prepared to handle on top of my emerging perimenopause symptoms. The good news is the repairs are underway for both house and health, and I am starting hormone therapy tonight!!! And because I might have a whole new personality soon (that’s what HRT is for, right?), I thought I would share what’s been keeping me sane as I navigate this most stressful time.

As most of you know, I split my time between Austin where I work directly with my personal styling clients (my next trip is coming up April 20-27th!), and Taos, where I spend most of my free time oil painting. Painting has been my main source of pleasure since the early days of the pandemic, and I love to create realistic portraits by layering different values, tones, and hues. This has led me to dive into the fascinating world of color theory, not only in portraiture but also when it comes to color selection for clothes and makeup. I find it thrilling that you can make yourself look more alive by just putting a different color against your skin, and painting has really helped me see this clearly in the rest of life.

I used to love makeup before I was a painter, and I invested a lot of time and money into finding fun colors and products to try, but then during the pandemic I completely stopped wearing anything on my face due to a combination of laziness and why bother. I’ve never had botox or anything and sort of thought makeup just enhanced my lines and wrinkles. But then somehow I started watching makeup tutorials on tiktok, and realized there was this whole world of creative self expression, plus a zillion different products that can work with “mature” skin, and I was instantly inspired to start building a collection of colors I can use to paint my face when I can’t just be painting faces on canvas.

There’s a Walgreens near the nursing home where I volunteer for the local hospice, and I found myself going there for fun to browse the aisles before heading to see my patient. I would put blush and lip gloss on in the perfect natural light of my car, and I think my patient thought he was seeing an actual angel the first time I showed up in the right cool-toned pink for my undertone. If you can make a dying person smile by wearing blush, you should definitely be wearing blush, I decided. It turns out makeup can be much more than a way to cover up or turn back the hands of time, it can be a way to show up more fully expressed.

Recently I have been doing a lot of work outside, moving giant rocks to build a new back patio with my dad. This is sweating, grueling work, and since there’s currently no water at my house, it’s pretty dirty work too. Each morning I get up where I’m house sitting and I think, “I should probably wear blush today anyway”, and it makes me giggle because who the hell wears blush to go move giant rocks all day? But I have found the secret to remaining grounded in myself when I can’t paint all day is to do one small creative act by selecting which shade of blush I feel like wearing each morning. My current favorites are Saie dew blush in “baby” and Rare Beauty blush in “encourage.” And sometimes lipstick too, I am partial to Mac “Mehr” or “Syrup.”

And don’t get me started on days I am not planning to sweat, because I am also very into eyeshadow palettes and love to play around with blending different shades together to create depth and distraction around my eyes. I could talk about the nuances of cool vs warm tones and why sometimes every blush looks orange on some people, and how to fix it, but I can’t claim to be a beauty expert…yet.

But I am curious if anyone can relate to using makeup in this way, more as a therapeutic way to enhance your creativity and feel more yourself, rather than a chore you feel you have to do in order to be seen. And what are YOUR favorite blushes and beauty products in general? Do you move rocks in blush too? I would love to hear your makeup gossip in the comment section below.