It has been a journey over the years, a lot of trial and error to find my perfect skin. A journey I'm still on.

A few things that I’ve learned play a role in your skin — genetics, diet, lifestyle and environment, just to name a few.

I started getting acne around puberty. I tried all sorts of drugstore cleansers, proactive, etc. and none of it worked.

By my senior year in high school, I said alright mom, I’ve had enough of this, can I please go see a dermatologist.

The dermatologist had me try a few different topical treatments, none of them worked, and then she suggested Acutane. I know there is a lot of negative press about it, but at the time it was what worked for me, but now that I know what I know, I don’t know if I would recommend it.

But because of this, throughout college I had pretty clear skin. Then after graduation, when I went vegan and quit the pill my skin freaked out. My body went through some major detoxing during this time. Yet, I felt at peace with this process. I somehow knew it would go away. And after a few months it cleared up, and I had the best skin of my life.

Skip forward a few years. As many of you know, over the past few months I was trying a raw vegan diet. It was a decision that had been playing on my mind from the time I went vegan. And summer was the best time to do it.

I felt absolutely fantastic for the first month. But then I unintentionally stopped eating enough veggies and switched to eating almost all fruit, and not getting enough calories, etc. While this works for a lot of people, it wasn’t working for me. Now, I’ve tried to step back and look at what it was that I was eating that was causing my acne. And it’s got to be a combo of high sugar from fruit, high fat from avocado, and high soy from my coffees. And while all these things aren’t “bad” I wasn’t balancing them out with the good greens.

I’ve tweaked and changed my skincare routine, adding and removing different products. And recently I’ve really recharged my diet, gotten back on track with getting enough of everything I need, and made the decision to give my skin a little boost of topical support, to get everything back to square one. And it’s been working great, my skin has cleared back up almost completely in a week [save a few healing spots and scars].

Skincare is a continuous journey. We're ever changing as well as our body, and our environment. And like any good relationship you have to be able to grow together, to change together, moving this way and that to meet somewhere in the middle.