Summer Glow-Up Tips

(That aren't buying more skincare + makeup)

Dear Glowy Babe,

Wanna know a secret? The INSIDE OUT GLOW you seek, won’t be found in that Dior Backstage Glow Palette…. Put down the Sephora shopping basket for a minute!

I’m a self-proclaimed beauty enthusiast. I’ve always noticed beauty. Like, fresh out of the womb— beauty was my hook! I was the little girl begging to give her mom a makeover. I was a Phyllis Nefler, born into a Velda Plendor family. Meaning, no one cared about being fancy, or beauty regimens in the way child Amy did (our family vacations were even camping!🫠). I put “Glue-on fake nails, not the sticker kind!!” onto my Christmas list. When Santa brought them, I carried them over to my mom & casually said “Can I put these on you?” I longed for her to be FANCY! Makeover movies, when they do the big “reveal” scene (think She’s All That,) had me in a chokehold as a kid. 

Jasmine, Esmerelda + Meg were my Disney muses. They wore belly shirts! They wore big earrings + hair accessories! Their lips were painted red! They were EXTRA. I used to save my quarters, so I could go to the dollar store’s beauty section & buy… anything really. If it was a beauty item, in shiny packaging, I LOVED it. My favorite gift in 5th grade was a bottle of roll-on watermelon face + body glitter from Bath & Body works “Art Stuff” section. I savored every application of that glitter.

Beauty, I thought, could be found in a bottle. A magic potion, if you will.

It makes sense that at 19 years old, I went to aesthetics school. I wanted to learn all about the potions. I wanted to learn the trick of beauty & honestly? How to FEEL beautiful. Because for most of my life, I simply didn’t. My shadow self felt horribly insecure in beauty (though I was confident in other areas), & my dark thought was I could “trick” people into thinking I was beautiful. I thought MAYBE there was a combination of products, applied strategically that I hadn’t yet tried?? & maybe it would change how I felt + looked.

Maybe if I took the makeup artistry class, learned color theory & how to minimize + maximize my features, I’d finally feel BEAUTIFUL. Because, remember the big makeover movie reveal scenes? I wanted my own personal ugly duckling to swan moment! I wanted to be the girl who took off her metaphorical eyeglasses, & was all of the sudden HOT.

I thrived in aesthetics school. I think I missed one day, the whole year (for my grandpa’s funeral), because, like I said beauty was/is my hook. I geeked out on it.

I’m also a self-diagnosed MAXIMALIST. I’ve always loved collecting trinkets: sparkly rocks, jewelry, my grandma’s old Avon lipstick samples, fortune cookie papers. My childhood treasure box looked like Ariel’s secret cavern, full to the brim, where she sang “I WANT MORE!”. Aesthetics school not only taught me all about ingredients, chemicals, extractions, makeup, skin conditions, acne protocols, ETC. But it also reiterated my own belief that beauty was found through a solution to an equation of the right products.

Which meant my maximalistic tendencies were heightened! My first day of aesthetics school had my car trunk filled with new beauty trinkets for my first semester!! Masks, facial brushes, a waxing pot! & I also realized my new-found career would give me access to exclusive *professional* grade products, at a discount! I had found my new world! I was Veruca Salt entering Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, eyes aglow.

In my years as a master aesthetician, I KNEW, mentally, what to do. I had a knowledge of skincare. I knew the formulas for “beauty”. I did facials & chemical peels on myself + clients. I worked at MAC doing makeup. I did makeup on film sets. I bought bottles + bottles of skincare products. My makeup kit grew by the day, like cellular mitosis. My solution was: more. It was a constant THIRST. AND ALSO, I can say I never felt like embodied BEAUTY. I never felt truly glowy. I never felt magnetic. Or lit-from-within.

& if I ever did feel like I’d somehow accessed it, I also simultaneously felt like a fraud? It was only skin deep. Like I’d be found out, when I washed my face + took off the mask, that I’d tricked everyone into think I was beautiful. 

In the later half of my twenties, my perspective on… basically everything changed, as I went through my own personal spiritual awakening. (I wish there was a less cringy way to say that.) But it’s true. I entered my Saturn Return. My kundalini rose. My body activated. I woke up. It was like being in the Wizard of Oz & going from black + white to color. I was remembering. Everything was spiritual (not in a religious way). 

I remembered that everything was energy. That energy could be manipulated, through my thoughts + intentions. I learned I was CREATING this, (my reality) in real time. I saw the most BEAUTIFUL people, who glowed from within, & it had nothing to do with what items they’d purchased from the makeup counter. I realized that your face was a mirror of YOU. & to shift, so that you felt (for real) beautiful, you actually had to FEEL beautiful. I had to access beauty & embody beauty, independent of how I looked. I had to drop the old identities of me (not feeling beautiful) & start claiming who I wanted to be.

& it shifted how I lived life.

My first time doing a plant medicine journey had me FEELING my essence, which is love, light, + beauty (the soul’s essence always is). I remember having the ah-ha realization that “This is me. This is home. This is the truest thing about me. All I have to do is BEAM THIS OUT of me.”

This is maybe where some of you found me. On Instagram, sharing my new gospel which is: if you want your outer shell to GLOW, if you want to look lit-from-within, you’ve gotta actually be… LIT from within & beam it out of you. The glow you’re really looking for can’t be bought at the store. It’s self sourced & anyone can access it. You can access it without new skincare products too! (When I was experimenting with this, I didn’t buy new makeup or skincare for an entire YEAR.) 

It’s why I first started teaching courses & classes. Glow Binge was my holistic beauty “online retreat.” I wanted to share the ways of supporting physical beauty through energetic + holistic practices. Just like baby Amy, who wanted to make her mom feel beautiful in a makeover, or teenage aesthetician Amy who wanted to share beauty through her touch in a facial. I wanted to share the good news.

I’m still a maximalist. (& I’m OK with it! I delusionally decided a year ago that only maximalists can become millionaires because we’re used to managing + holding a lot of energy… lol, delusional?) Gosh, I still love a trinket. I’m a collector of the treasures of life. And I still love finding & sharing my binge-worthy beauty items with you. Skincare + makeup are so fun for me! My version of Holly Golightly’s Tiffany’s is Sephora. Browsing beauty + skincare calms my nervous system! But to make sure A&E doesn’t make a Hoarders episode about me, I’m constantly editing, revising + giving things away.

I restrain my mind’s tendency to “need” things, by reminding myself that makeup is for play & not of substance. When I’m about to push the “order” button on a hefty online basket, I’ll stop & think, “You literally have all of this, in a different form, these products & potions aren’t what you’re looking for,” then promptly “X” out of the window. Then I go do breath work, journal & recenter, or something. I come back to my GLOW. I remember I can just… access it, then beam it out of me. 

I’m the duality of both worlds. Knowing you NEED nothing, but loving the playful parts of life + beauty. My inner child is so happy playing makeup. My curiosity is still piqued when an influencer shares her “HOLY GRAIL” new beauty item.  But I also *KNOW* that the glow I’m looking for is a reflection of my inner world. When I shift internally, my physical shell follows suit. (BTW! I looked at my Sephora orders the other day, & was impressed that my last order was in the beginning of January. Us being in month 7, & me not having purchased something new, even for the Rouge Sale, is BIG. That’s big for a shopping-loving maximalist.)

In the heart of sharing beauty, as I’ve always loved to do, here are my favorite ways to glow-up (it’s summer!!), that aren’t buying more skincare products: