Think About It: Why Wouldn’t That Be the Best Cream For Taking Down Inflammation?

It has little pieces of bark in it

“My Surgery Distraction Skincare Science” is a science.

In terms of cold creams and the goal of simply using more hydration than ever (whether an essence between each step, or cold cream masks at night, or both), the brand has not been what mattered.

I’m still loyal to all my cold creams and since I’m a “use it to the last drop” no waste kind of a product person, I honestly love the satisfaction of casually rotating between the classics (normally Ponds, Noxzema, and Jergens). But right now, since I’ve been out of all of them for a while except for the Jergens, I’ve been leaning even more than normal into “after sun” skin creams.

I don’t mean the kind that bronze or self tan, but the kind that are genuinely meant to heal incredibly burnt skin. Think about it: Why wouldn’t that be the best cream for taking down inflammation, right? The same goes for anything with honey in it (often used on burns) or a cream I learned about from Salma Hayek- as eek as that is to say- called Tepezcohuite cream, that’s derived from a tree and I hated at first but now love.

It shows how we shouldn’t rush to judgement with products. Sometimes, you have to put it back on your shelf at home, let a moment in life pass, and then try again.

I was convinced it had made me breakout enormously awhile back, when I first tried it, and stopped using it. Now, looking back, I’m pretty certain it was the acid I was still trying to use once a week back then (an AHA pad)- acids always being the thing that flares up my skin more than anything else, despite what every skincare video, article and human says of them- and not the cream. 

I’m so glad I am always pinching pennies as a person because if I wasn’t, I probably would have given that product to a friend or something…. but I saved it, let life and my skin calm down, and tried again. 

It has little pieces of bark in it even though it’s not an exfoliant, so it feels super weird the first time you use it, but eventually rubs right in. I have a weird preference FOR texture (the thicker, more balmy, more oddly textured a product can be- the better. Somewhere along the line, my brain got food and skincare products confused).

Even when I’m showing a borderline embarrassing moment of washing my face “in bed” during a bad-back moment (this was filmed before surgery but it has been years of bad-back moments), I’m always inspired by deep dives into what grannies recommend… so maybe it’s apropos. But I love few trends (even though I love watching other people use trends?), and zero new fangled marketing gimmicks. Just Grans transcribed for you on the Gram. 

I actually found so much benefit from playing with “over moisturizing” lately that I considered breaking other rules to see what it changed too.

“What if I stopped exfoliating?” (Which I was doing every few days with an old school- prepare thyselves for this - Buf Puf and baby oil as rec’d by a granddaughter of a glowy gran on some Reddit thread- other than nightly Tret).

Also, unlike the popular double cleanse right now, I stole another thing from Salma Hayek (and glam grannies of the world, not that she is) and washed my face only at night; wiping with a tissue or cotton pad in the morning to keep as much hydration as possible.

Women are told to sleep like a corpse to “age gracefully” and I’d rather actually sleep while I’m alive. 

My face is my language and livelihood, yet we are told to freeze it with chemicals or tone it down.

I wish that the last 6 to 7 months haven’t been actual hell in so many ways, because I wouldn’t be washing my face “in bed” because it hurts too much on certain days, and I certainly wouldn’t be showing it…

But I think breaking some rules can help us break out of random gender-rulations of miserable nights of sleep, chemicals that cause reactions, and more. I’m over it.

Right now, I need to heal as much as possible… 

So why not use creams literally designed to do so?

THANK YOU to those helping this independent memoirist continue to work by upgrading to paid (which also helps my goal of gifting my every-weekday-writing for anyone who asks for a reading scholarship, no questions asked)….