What to Do About Skincare When You're Over 40

“Skincare over 40, skincare over 40, skincare over 40….” Spend even half a minute in Google-land researching the phrase “skincare over 40” and you’re likely to end up overwhelmed, overtaxed, feeling like you just aren’t doing enough, and worse, that it’s too late anyway. So in case you’re wondering what to do about skincare when you’re over 40 — you are definitely not alone. And it’s a great question.

I decided back in my thirties I wasn’t going to go down the path of injectables and surgery. It’s just not for me. After watching my Mom go through years and gallons of chemotherapy/cancer treatments I decided extra *stuff* going under my skin to soothe my vanity pangs had no place in my life. I said to my friends (and my now husband, once we’d met): “I’m telling you now, my face is slowly going to slide down towards the ground. I’m going to age naturally but as gracefully as I can muster. You have been warned.” So far, so good.

What to Do About Skincare When You’re Over 40

Then my early forties hit and the topic of what to do about skincare when you’re over 40 became even more relevant. Systems that had been in place and running smoothly decided to unhinge a bit. Rosacea, that I’d been able to control without really knowing what I was dealing with, decided those days of just being a warning system against too-strong chemicals were over. About 2 years ago, the lower left quadrant of my face bloomed red, spreading towards my nose, it bubbled into bumps from the depths of my dermis. It ached under warm water, it hurt in the cold air, it acted as though movement was against nature, it flaked and peeled as though a paycheck depended on it.

Please trust I tried EVERYTHING in an effort to combat this and find relief. Essential oils, beeswax/propolis salves, tretinoin, then no tretinoin, dandruff shampoos, manuka honey, steroid creams and ointments, special teas both ingested and applied as a poultice, argan oil, castor oil, prayers, water left out during an eclipse—you name it, I tried it. I started to consider wearing a hat with a short veil on the left side. I finally relented and took a couple of rounds of an antibiotic and my skin calmed and decided not to scar (though sometimes I can still see a difference in the texture over there).

I knew I couldn’t go back to *any* skincare regimen I’d tried before. For a while I imported an all-natural, rosacea specific regimen from Canada. It was okay. My skin felt calm, but also coated, as though the products were building me a new skin barrier from the outside in, utilizing waxes and oils. BUT I wasn’t flared or particularly irritated, so I planned to stay the Canadian course.

Somewhere along the way, I also decided to treat my skincare as an act of self-care and self-love. I wanted to do my face washing ritual because I was caring for the skin I was given, not to chemicalize and punish it into submission of some societal “norm” I’d internalized. My skin was acting against norm, so I gave into loving and nurturing it.

I was using my Canadian rosacea stuff, staying out of Sephora and haughtily passing up cosmetic counters in department stores, when a small package of samples was delivered to me. Now, I’m a girl who *loves* a parcel in my mailbox. The parcel was accompanied by a letter from my dear friend, Laura, telling me about EVER, a new skincare company she’d found that she had fallen in love with and she promised that in 30 days’ time, she was going to show me how much her skin had changed. I thanked Laura for the EVER samples, but decided to ignore them. Little did I know, Laura had mailed me seeds of transformation.

The Things You Do For a Friend—That Come Back as a Gigantic Bonus

Laura has been an esthetician for many years, and naturally has a passion for skincare. She had been the recipient of many a frantic text from me standing at a beauty counter desperate for a tinted moisturizer recommendation. So, in an effort to support her and of course so that I could tell her I was using the product line she so loved, I decided to purchase an EVER product called Lavish, one of their signature body butters. The Lavish body butter had sold out and there was a long waiting list. That might have something to do with it being a winner of Allure magazine’s 2017 Best of Beauty awards, hmmm. All of a sudden, this product line got my attention and since I couldn’t immediately have the product I wanted, I wanted it even more! The Lavish body butter finally arrived and it is now affectionately known as my “gateway product.” After using Lavish for a relatively short period of time, my resolve to stick with the Canadian line I’d been using rapidly dissolved. I thought that if a product for skin that you cover up with clothes is this good, goodness gracious, their face stuff must be a-mazing. I dug those samples Laura had sent me back out, starting immediately using, and fell in love with EVER myself.

More About EVER and the Beauty of Signs

EVER is a company so dedicated to good-for-you ingredients that they’ve trademarked the word, Cleanical: Clean Beauty with Clinical Results. If you’re a person who looks for signs, I found mine (one of them anyway, I have a list of “supernatural” signs too but that’s another story) when I heard about EVER’s proprietary LSR10® Magnolia Bark complex. The nitty gritty there is LSR10® effectively addresses the top ten visible signs of aging. There was my sign—this product got my attention because every house I’ve ever loved living in has had a magnolia tree in the front yard. As a result, I have a life-long love affair with magnolia trees!! Y’all, it was like I was destined to try this skin care, love it, AND attract unsolicited compliments about how smooth my skin looks from my husband and teenage daughter (two notoriously tough crowds for noticing details like SMOOTHER SKIN).

EVER’s Pure Results Regimen is a four step process hitting the basics (cleanse, exfoliate, treat, moisturize) but squeezing the very most out of your skin’s time with the products: Clinical grade, botanically based ingredients in concentrations that produce results. I experimented to find the perfect combination of Regimen products and eye creams (eye cream is a non-negotiable for me, I mean, I’m not a savage!) to help my skin feel and look the very best it can. One of the things that resonates with me about the company is that EVER is committed to formulating with products using ingredients that are never tested on animals, meet the EU guidelines for safety (which are much more stringent than those in the U.S.), and which are absolutely good-for-you.

In less than year and a half, some of the implications of “skincare over 40” have quit being such an eye-roller for me. My personal question of what to do about skincare over 40 has been answered with a product line that I feel has made a huge difference—in my skin and in my life.

My recommendations on what to do about skincare over 40 are fairly simple: Do all you can to take great care of your skin. Find products that you love and products that treat you, your body, and your skin well. Of course, I strongly recommend EVER, but whatever product line you choose that’s right for you is awesome as well.

We are blessed with just one version of the skin we live in, and we spend the first part of our lives often taking that for granted. These days, as I live life in the Over 40 Lane, I make time to regularly thank all those trillions of cells that make up my skin, and realize that they are working hard to protect me—and I’m committed to doing all I can to take care of that skin. One final word of advice, and of course these are things you already know: Get your rest, drink tons of water, and for the love of everything, wear sunscreen, every day!

In conclusion, know that if I can answer any questions for you, about my own skincare journey, about the EVER product line, what my experience with it has been, etc., I’m here for you. After all, we’re all in this growing older business together. Whether figuring out what to do about skincare over 40, how to navigate midlife, what to do about raging hormones—just as it did when we were raising little ones, I’m finding that growing older takes a village as well. And if you wanna give EVER a try, I’m definitely not going to be sad. You can check out the site by way of my custom link: EVER Skin With Cara or feel free to email me with questions as well. You can reach me by email here.

Author Cara Ellison Alling is like everyone else, wearing many hats as a wife, mom, and daughter. She loves to read and keeps a to-read pile that looks like it requires GPS and breadcrumbs to safely navigate. If she could re-do her time at the University of North Texas, she’d have coupled her art history major with a library science double major. For the record: no, she doesn’t take off all her silver bracelets every night. Not often enough, she finds time to make and share those bracelets through Studio 219. Cara is passionate about acts of kindness both random and not-so-random. At the heart of everything she does is the desire for everyone around her to recognize their inner beauty and strength and the desire for them to tap into that to navigate each day (each breath if it’s one of *those* days) as an opportunity to be a better version of themselves.