In 2009, People Magazine called to tell me they wanted to include me in their Most Beautiful issue. I did a little happy dance. And then they told me what the photoshoot involved...
Bare faces. No makeup. Just skin.
I said yes. Of course I said yes. My castmates were doing it. My publicist wanted me to. What was I going to say? But what I didn't say — not to my publicist, not to my castmates, not to the millions of people who were about to see my face — was that I had been hiding something on and off camera since I was 13 years old.
In this episode I'm talking about my rosacea diagnosis, what 17+ years of managing it on camera actually looked like, and why a condition that isn't life-threatening can quietly put a tax on some of the most significant moments of your life — a People Magazine shoot, giving birth, jumping in the pool with your kids — without you even realizing how heavy it's gotten until you look back.
I'm also sharing the accidental viral moment that made me realise I wasn't the only one. The product I've been secretly using all over my face for years. And what I'm building right now for every woman who has been carrying her version of this quietly.
This episode isn't just for the red-faced girlies. It's for anyone who's been managing something invisible that the world keeps asking you to explain — and who's ready to stop letting it run the show.
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