For the past four years, I’ve recapped what it has meant to live off social media both personally and professionally.
Somewhere along the way this year, I began to feel a gradual call to return. Then the signs started appearing, small enough to dismiss, but so persistent that I couldn’t ignore them.
Less than 3 months ago, I cracked the door open and revived my personal accounts. What surprised me most was discovering what I wanted to express on my personal Instagram: The dreams I have at night. I’m so deeply fascinated by the strange little worlds my mind visits while I’m asleep, the images that stay with me, and the questions left behind.
And, at the same time, I found myself appreciating the gift of witnessing others. There are people I would know differently, or perhaps hardly know at all, without this little corner of their lives they leave open. I wanted to witness the evolution of the people I love, appreciate, and admire. And I wanted to leave a corner of my own life open, too. Because someone might see something I share and, for reasons I may never know, it might matter to them. That possibility has become its own form of creative accountability.
Five years ago, being visible could easily feel like evidence of success. Now, I have something to pour from: a wellspring built during the years I was in reflection mode.
So I’m bringing the F.A.C.E. socials back, too. But I’m not going to create in the exact same way I did when I left the platforms.
The business has changed because the menu has changed, and the menu has changed because I have.
There is makeup, certainly. But its delivery is through the lens of education, words, ideas, curiosity, and the person behind the image.
I’ve realized F.A.C.E. was never separate from me, despite my attempt to amputate. It was always an extension of the mind making it.
This is a strange lesson:
There are things we have to leave before we can truly choose them. We retreat because something wise in us knows, even before we have the language for it, that staying would keep us repeating a version of ourselves we’ve already outgrown.
So we exit.
We let distance change us. We authorize silence to teach us. We allow whatever is meant to grow, grow.
And then one day, we find ourselves at the very door we once walked away from. Only now, we’re not the same person standing there. Some doors ask us to leave so that, if we ever return, we can enter by choice instead of by habit. That is the difference I feel now.
I’m not coming back to pose, but to pour. *Only I will really know that difference.
And perhaps you know a door like that, too.
Thanks for being part of this journey, wherever you follow from!
