To Extend a Helping Hand (Cream): How My Fibromyalgia Led Me to Enter Esthetics School and Start This Blog

I’ll say it once, then again: at the same time my reality was crumbling due to a set of mysterious symptoms, I looked. 

Freaking. 

Fabulous. 

No, this isn’t the story of my eating disorder–that’s a whole ‘nother can of undernourished worms. This is the story of my fibromyalgia and how it led me to enroll in esthetics school merely six months after graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in production design (and honors, to boot!). This is the story of how I learned to view my hardship as a stepping stone, not a roadblock–and how I decided I wanted to create a space to help others do the same.

March 2023. My body: personal punching bag for a mid-sized family of invisible gremlins with serious anger issues. My vision: an old timey snowstorm, the kind frontiersmen could to get lost in. My mind: a bruised banana oozing myriad creative, elusive ramblings, yet at times struggling to understand speech. My energy levels emulate those of a dead slug, the salted variety: I’m sleeping upwards of fourteen hours per day, leaving the house only to drag myself to class, which I typically spend on the floor, cozying up to the industrial printer. 

And yet, during this time, I look great–fantastic, even. Between the doctor’s visits, the medications, and the fear of failing out of school in my very last quarter, shines a single light, providing hope, comfort, and a tether to my sense of self:

My beauty routine.

I don’t know how it started, but I do know it kept me afloat during those dark days when fibromyalgia knocked me off the high horse of life and left me on my ass in the dust. Lipstick and face masks and finding the perfect cleanser or moisturizer or serum were the handholds with which I pulled myself back up out of the dust. I may have felt self-conscious about my new cane, but paired with bold makeup and a cute outfit, it became an accessory.  Most of the time, I felt like some queen from days past, languishing in bed adorned and waiting to show the Grim Reaper a good time. 

But he never came. Eventually my flare–because that’s all it was–abated enough for me to show off my handiwork to someone other than the face in the mirror. With rest came strength, with strength came reflection, and with reflection came the desire to extend a helping hand cream to others who may have nothing else to hold onto. But how could I help others find the eye(liner) of the storm?

The exact mental logistics of how I decided I wanted to be an esthetician are unfortunately lost somewhere in the fibro fog. But suddenly it was December, and I was lying on a table in a room filled with chill spa music experiencing the very second facial of my life. Thinking back on that day, I was a nightmare client–I’d booked the facial with the ulterior motive of picking the brain of the lovely, patient esthetician working at my local salon. I talked throughout the entire service, peppering her with questions, anecdotes, and menial chitchat. I left sporting a fresh glow and an ironclad certainty in my newfound calling. 

In January of 2024, a mere six months after graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA I was no longer physically qualified to use, I started school at Elan Preparatory Institute for Esthetics, where I learned and grew immensely as a future esthetician, despite my pesky body’s tomfoolery. I entered school with a vision of soothing, uplifting, and empowering women through beauty: of creating a space where it’s not just about how you look, but about how the way you look makes you feel. My mission was, and still is, to create a safe space for people who may be struggling, whether it’s with relationship issues, work stress, health struggles, or simply a bad day. 

The trembling jello fruit cocktail that was my mission began to congeal even more in May, when I attended Premiere Orlando and became Sensory Safe Certified, the Sensory Safe Solution, a collaborative of beauty industry workers dedicated to training others in the industry in safely and compassionately serving clients with special needs. Although their training centered on clients with autism, it really can be applied to anyone who requires special consideration, whether it’s due to chronic physical illness, chronic pain, trauma, mental illness, PTSD, or eating disorders…or at least that’s how I see it.

As I prepared to graduate from Elan Prep, in October of 2024, I stood uncertain of my future (but at least I was standing–win!). Would I do facials? Waxing? Lashes? My long-term goal at the time was permanent makeup, but, 1) How would I create a safe space for clients as I stabbed them in the face with needles? And, 2) Nobody would to feel very safe if my hands gave out mid-application?

For now, I’m choosing to lean not on my cane, but on my strength in esthetician school, which bizarrely turned out to be…academics?

I’ve been a storyteller since before I could speak–somewhere in my mother’s storage unit lurks a box of tales I narrated to her before I could even spell my name–a collection that will either embarrass me into an early grave or sell for thousands when I’m famous (ha!). When my esthetics instructor suggested I give beauty writing a whirl, I thought, “Why fight the whirlwind?” So with this, my first article, I announce my renewed promise to be a safe space, not in the treatment room, but my own little corner of the internet, which I’ve aptly christened, “Storyface Beauty.” I’m not sure what my future will hold, but with this article I resolve to forever hold space for the sick, the grieving, the neurodivergent, the hurting, the mentally ill, the scarred,  the overwhelmed, the anxious…and those just needing a break and a deep breath.

I am not grateful for my fibromyalgia. Not now, not ever, not at all. But I am immensely appreciative that it taught me how to feel hot while also feeling like death…and how to make compression socks look cute. I really think Dionne from the 1995 cult classic film Clueless said it best: “Cher’s main thrill in life is a makeover, okay? It gives her a sense of control in a world full of chaos.” (0:25:57-0:26:02). And maybe a makeover really is the best medicine when facing circumstances that seem too big and too scary. Because if there’s anything I’ve learned from my affair with the Plague Doctor, it’s that when you feel too weak to hold onto hope, sometimes it’s best to wear it instead.

WORKS CITED

Clueless. Directed by Amy Heckerling, Paramount Pictures, 1995.