Sometimes I wonder if I’m chasing beauty, or if beauty has been chasing me all along. My favorite kind of beauty lives in the in-between. Things like the lipstick print left behind on a coffee cup or the courage in a client’s eyes when they sit down and whisper, “Can you help me feel like myself again?”
What makes me come alive is the meaning makeup carries.
I feel it in the psychology of beauty: the way a swipe of eyeliner can be armor, or a dusting of blush can return someone’s reflection back to them after grief, illness, or simply time. I come alive when I can translate those invisible emotions into visible rituals—when surface becomes a doorway into depth.
I feel it in the paradoxes: how beauty is fragile and powerful, fleeting and eternal, truth and performance, all at once. Wrinkles, powders, compacts, lashes—they’re never just objects. They’re symbols, carrying our hopes and fears about who we’ve been and who we’re becoming.
I feel it in connection: in teaching, in listening, in honoring someone’s memories by refurbishing a vintage compact or helping them assemble a makeup bag that finally feels theirs. These are tiny acts of resurrection.
And I feel it in words: when I sit down to write and beauty becomes a metaphor for life itself—desire, lineage, grief, vitality, impermanence. Writing about beauty, for me, is writing about the human condition.
So yes, I work with makeup. But what makes me come alive is not “finishing a face.” It’s watching someone recognize themselves again—or maybe for the very first time.
That’s when I know beauty isn’t just about looking better. It’s about being more alive.
And so I’ll leave you with this question—the same one I ask myself: What Makes Me Come Alive? Maybe for you, it’s a bold lipstick. Maybe it’s a long walk. Maybe it’s reclaiming a ritual you’ve neglected. Whatever it is, it deserves your attention. Because life is too short to cut ourselves off from vitality.
Video: Glenn Hall Photography
Photo: Imagine Images Photo