There is a question I have been carrying with me for a long time: What is true beauty?

Not the beauty we are taught to chase. But the kind of beauty that comes from being fully at home in your body.

I keep returning to a line from John Keats poem Ode to the Grecian Urn:

“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.”

The older I get, the more I understand why those words resonate with me.

Beauty and truth are not things we necessarily understand with our minds. They are things we feel. We experience. We embody.

And I believe our bodies are the artistic rendition of those experiences.

I have spent years working with skin, plants, touch, and the face. As an herbalist, I have learned to listen to plants. As a formulator, I have learned to listen to the skin. Through Sculptural Face Lifting, I have learned to listen to the body through my hands. When I work with someone's face, I am not simply looking at wrinkles, texture, or the shape of a jaw.

I am feeling movement.

Tension.

Breath.

Holding.

Softening.

I can feel the stories that the mind has repeated.

Our bodies are shaped by our perceptions of life. The face is particularly telling because we are constantly moving through the world with it at the forefront without really thinking about it. We are laughing, squinting, crying, clenching, smiling, bracing, relaxing. In essence, we are weighing survival and safety in every expression. 

Over time, our faces become maps of our inner and outer lives. And I have come to see these physical expressions differently.

The lines aren't failures.

The changes aren't punishments.

The body isn't betraying us.

It is communicating.

Each body is an entirely unique vessel molded by time, repetition and interpretation. And what it is expressed in matter, in physical form, is simply a mirror to your lived inner experience.

I don't believe beauty is something we lose with age. I think it is something we can become more fully. The door opens around 40. We have the opportunity to write the next chapter of our life in our own handwriting. There is a particular kind of beauty that comes from a woman who is no longer fighting with herself.

She may still have fine lines and wrinkles.

Her body may be changing.

She may be moving through grief, uncertainty, motherhood, menopause, heartbreak, reinvention, or a completely new chapter of life.

But there is something in her that has softened.

She is present.

She knows herself.

She is no longer asking the outside world to tell her who she is.

That kind of beauty cannot be manufactured.

And it cannot be purchased.

It has to be lived.

This has become deeply personal for me as I step into my forties. For years, I thought I was waiting to become more comfortable in my body. And then something shifted. My body began changing in ways I couldn't necessarily control, and instead of feeling further away from myself, I began to feel more at home.

There was a deepening.

A softening.

A gratitude for this body that has carried me through everything so far.

I wouldn't trade this body for the one I had at twenty-five.

That body wasn't ready to hold what I am becoming.

This one is.

And I think there is something powerful about realizing that the body we have now is an echo of our past thoughts emotions, burdens and choices. But it is not static, it is mailable. It is adaptable.

It is an ever evolving vessel that houses the soul.

This is the heart behind the retreat that April of the EQ Gym and I are creating.

Five days devoted to beauty and belonging.

Five days to step away from the noise of the outside world.

To rest.

To play.

To move.

To be nourished.

To be touched.

To be in nature.

To remember what it feels like to simply be inside your own experience.

Together, we will explore the deeper roots of self-rejection and the stories that shape how we see ourselves. Through Family Constellation and somatic work, we will look at patterns, beliefs, and inherited stories that may influence the way we experience ourselves and our place in the world. Through face sculpting and beauty rituals, we will reconnect with the body as a place of pleasure, presence, and expression. Through tea ceremonies, nourishing food, warm water, nature, rest, and play, we will create space for integration.

And throughout it all, we will immerse ourselves in beauty.

In presence.

In truth.

There are parts of ourselves we learn to hide.

Parts we decide are too much.

Parts we believe are not beautiful enough, successful enough, feminine enough, desirable enough, or acceptable enough.

During the retreat, we will explore the feminine gifts carried through our lineages and bring them into awareness not so that we can become someone else, but so that we can recognize what is already ours.

There is nothing to fix.

There is only more of yourself to meet.

I think the deepest work we can do around beauty is not learning how to look different. It is learning how to see differently. To see the woman in the mirror without immediately searching for what needs to change. To recognize the body not as an object to perfect, but as a living record of everything we have experienced.

To make choices from desire instead of fear.

To care for ourselves because it feels good to be cared for.

To move toward life instead of constantly trying to protect ourselves from it.

And perhaps, eventually, to realize that the beauty we have been searching for was never somewhere else.

It was here.

It has been here the entire time.

This is what we want to explore together in Ojai.

A return to the body.

A return to pleasure.

A return to nature.

A return to belonging.

A return to yourself.

April 28 – May 2, 2027
Ojai, California

Join me and April of the EQ Gym for five days devoted to beauty, belonging, and coming home to yourself. For more details and to sign up, click here.