At the young age of 55, I have been blessed with a few pesky breakouts. I never had them as a teen and found myself quite annoyed and at a loss of what to do to get rid of the giant (they sure seemed giant) pimples. They felt like invaders taking up space on my face. Hello, who invited you to my face?!

I asked an esthetician how to get rid of one living rent free on my chin. She said, “oh, sorry, it’s not ready.” Ready for what? To leave my face? How long did it plan on staying? I insisted that there must be a miracle cream that would wipe it out overnight. I knew I had seen numerous ads for these types of products. She finally gave me the name of one that I could buy over the counter and I’m pretty sure I ran a few red lights on my way to the local CVS.

Once I had the miracle zit cream in hand, i raced home and generously applied it all over my chin. Phew, it was solved. Except, it wasn’t.

The reason the topical cream did not completely wipe out my lovely pimple is because it was late to the party. Whatever caused the breakout had been brewing for a while internally. Maybe it was hormones or diet or something else happening inside my body. The pimple was just the result of something I could not see. The cream irritated my skin, dried it out a bit and gave me a little false hope, but that’s about it.

I needed to take a closer look at my diet, water intake and other internal factors to see what needed to change. Isn’t that usually the case? We all love a quick fix to our stress, anxiety, extra weight, pimples and problems. Almost every television ad is for a drug that can fix it all with a pill. The problem is that we aren’t addressing the underlying issues. I don’t blame us. It is not easy or much fun.

Last week when I found myself reaching for some ice cream to treat my stress, It made me think of the ice cream as pimple cream. It was not going to fix the problem and may even give me another issue to solve. I put on my tennis shoes and went for a walk instead. Kind of a drag to not have the ice cream, but i knew if I wanted to feel less stressed, I needed to treat the stress, not cover it up with stress pimple cream. (Ice Cream)

Wishing you all a blemish free week!

XX,

MG

Tea In The Neighborhood