Stress, skin, and ritual wellness - My story

As a self-proclaimed “sensitive skin girlie” for many years, I avoided so many products at the risk of having yet another eczema flare up. I would apply the prescribed hydrocortisone cream from the chemist with the hopes that this time it would go away and stay away… and yet I was completely oblivious to the connection between stressful periods in my life and my skin issues.

From day dot I suffered eczema as a baby and small child, the common childhood patches behind my legs and on my arms. I had some years of relief before a resurgence of various eczema patches in my teens… One time it was so bad in my first year of living abroad in France (at the age of 21 and teaching English to teens whose first language was not French and absolutely had no interest in learning English from a girl not much older than them with a very strange accent!) that I didn’t leave the house for two days! This was by far the worst flare up I’d ever had and it happened to be on my face. There were two things I didn’t put together at the time of this flare up, but in later years I would connect the dots. One. This was probably the most stress I had experienced in my so far short life. Living in a country where I wasn’t yet fluent in the language, first time living with my significant other, and trying to make ends meet whilst also trying to enjoy the perks of living in Europe – travel! My body was expressing what I probably didn’t even realise yet. Two. I happened to have received a care package from home which included a beautiful new product of pure rosehip oil, I had never tried an oil on my face before. So instead of applying the usual hydrocortisone cream (because how does one ask for that in French!), I used the oil, and low and behold my eczema started to recede so beautifully. It didn’t completely disappear for some time… but neither did that low level stress of living off the bones of your bum in another country, however it was far less irritated and way less obvious. And as a 21-year-old, that was all I could ask for! To be able to apply my makeup without dealing with dry, cracked skin.

Years later I found myself working (yet again overseas) for one and then another MAJOR cosmetics company (we’re talking big league, luxury). I tried all the perfumes, all the skincare but still found myself saying no to several products as they made my skin react. I was still very cautious, despite this being some of the “best” skincare in the world. Fun fact - Before moving to the UK, I had to re-do my fingerprint scan for my visa multiple times because I’d had eczema so bad on my hands that my fingerprints had almost disappeared from the damage it had caused!

What I later realised, was that with the low level (mostly emotional if I’m honest with a side of the unknown and financial) stress I was experiencing, it showed almost immediately on my skin. If I had been through a period of prolonged stress, eczema or a breakout almost always followed along next as sure as thunder follows lightning. When I left the world of luxury cosmetics behind after becoming a mother for the second time within two years, I felt the urge to return to more simplistic, natural products – first in our home, then later, on my body. The messaging for new babies of using low-tox, natural products on their beautifully unblemished skin was so strong, I started to wonder why we aren’t doing this for ourselves too?!

It was when I was pregnant with our third baby in “that” year that will forever be etched on our memories – 2020. Needless to say, it was a stressful year for many people. I was having a hard pregnancy, and my husband was made redundant during the lockdown… this time my stress appeared as scalp psoriasis. Something I had only had it briefly as a teenager, but the tar shampoo I was told to use, well, that horrible scent will never leave me and I was not going to repeat that experience! I threw myself into researching aromatherapy and formulated what was to become my very first product – ‘Rescue, scalp and hair oil’. This was before hair oiling started becoming popular in western countries and I couldn’t find anything quite like this. In aromatherapy the scent is just as important as the physical benefits because it has been well documented how strong our sense of smell relates to memories (and emotions) and can even alter our moods. So, the essential oils had to be both effective for psoriasis as well as sensorial.
When I eventually birthed our youngest babe in September of 2020, I ended up having my first ever c-section. The recovery from that is no joke and it most definitely is not the “too posh to push” way out the media portrayed it as in the late 90s! I felt broken physically and emotionally from lack of sleep with a newborn, a newly started school kid and one still in daycare. However, in the haze of mum life, I knew I wanted to create a little experience for myself to help heal my c-section scar and to boost my mood. Even in the early days of formulating these botanical products I had a strong sense of creating ritual moments with these products – something special, just for the woman using them.

The link between body and mind has always been at the heart of Bohème. My own experience of watching my skin mirror my stress levels over the years became impossible to ignore; and so, every product I've created has included botanicals that care for body, mind and soul. Ritual wellness is about the small, stackable moments throughout your day that quietly build your overall wellbeing, which is why supporting the nervous system and helping your body de-stress has always felt just as essential as caring for your skin topically. Using products loaded with synthetics and unnecessary chemicals was not only damaging my skin barrier (and perpetuating the 'sensitive skin' belief I had about myself) but also loading my body with even more stress by forcing it to process foreign ingredients. Botanicals could help repair skin AND help reset the nervous system at the same time - in a way man-made ingredients simply never could.

With stress levels rising in our busy, more-is-more world, stress has become the number one contributing factor to disease. And no, skincare isn't going to cure that. But the act of slowing down, of doing something intentionally and with care and natural ingredients, can open the door to other beautiful rituals that help regulate your nervous system and bring you back to yourself. And in the meantime, it always helps to have glowing skin 😉