How We Can Expand By Sharing Our Stories

When I was a makeup artist, I did a lot of listening. When someone is in your chair, they have downtime to relax, and there’s an intimacy and trust to the situation. Quite often people open up.

As I was making them up, I listened to the stories of these models. I was amazed at how many of them were depressed because they didn’t feel loved or appreciated for who they were, their character and viewpoints.

They didn’t feel seen or heard or appreciated for who they were. Instead, because people considered them the most beautiful women in the world, they were just interested in their bodies and their looks.

That really shifted my perspective. Here were these women, who fulfilled a societal ideal of beauty, who were supposedly at the top of the mountain because they looked exactly how we’re “supposed” to look, and they were feeling unhappy.

It made it clearer than ever that fitting that societal beauty ideal doesn’t make us happy!

It made it clearer than ever that fitting that societal beauty ideal doesn’t make us happy! We give so much power to that ideal when really it doesn’t bring us joy.

I wouldn’t have had that realization in the same way if those women hadn’t shared their experiences with me.

Later, once I was modeling and my images were widely published through advertising and magazine editorials, women started coming up to me in cafes, theaters, and bookstores to thank me for what I was doing.

They said it was inspiring them to throw the dye away, cancel the Botox appointments and look forward to their future with joy instead of dread. That impacted me, deeply, and inspired me to become even more public with my viewpoints.

Once I started to talk to women about these subjects, I saw tears of joy, relief, and received a lot of enthusiasm from them to keep the conversation going. Every woman I shared my ideas with felt “seen” and understood. It was emotional and exciting for all of us.

Being around women every day and sharing our stories has helped me grow, expand, and become more joyful in my own life.

My beauty philosophy has been shaped and developed by sharing our fears, our desires, and discovering together how we have been duped into believing we have to look young—in a very specific way—to be valued.

During our formative years, we are often convinced by society’s message that we must change our shape, our size, our hair and our features to be considered beautiful---but by sharing stories with other women, we can discover that’s not true at all.

I believe that we can spread these new pro-age points of view. I’m calling this process of discovery and sharing and being living examples of continuing to live life with passion and enthusiasm the “Pro-Age Revolution.”

By talking openly and truthfully with other women; sharing our fears, our pain, our hopes, our joys we can shift our anti-age viewpoints to a pro-age viewpoint.

By doing so we begin the process of shifting society's viewpoint. Every time I share my own experience, I offer the possibility of considering another way to look at our age---just like dozens of other women did for me.

Over time, that process can transform our society—ageism is moving over and the pro-age attitude is going to take over! It happens every time we talk to each other.

I get letters from thousands of women between the ages 13 to 90, sharing how they felt when they first discovered BOOM! products and the pro-age philosophy.

I have sat with tears of joy reading them. BOOM! is a movement. It’s a community of women of all ages around the world, ready to support each other and celebrating themselves and each other at every age!

So many women feel self-conscious about aging—of course we do---we’re conditioned to!

But if you talk about it with others, that fear starts to lose its power, and joy and connection begin to take its place. Get your fears out on the table. Listen to new and different points of view.

Be gentle with yourself. Let other women know what you find beautiful about them. It’s amazing what happens when we start to share with each other truthfully and authentically.

How do you practice this in your own life? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below!