Aging Gracefully: Embracing Our Wrinkles and Smile Lines – My Personal Lessons

Happy New Year!

I am Tanya Moss, president and co-founder of Nayelle, and I would love to share some of my hard-learned personal lessons with you today…

With a new year unfolding, resolutions are on all of our minds. However, for so many women, these resolutions come with the pressure of setting unrealistic goals.

Typically, at the top of the list is looking younger and loosing weight. This was true also for me until recently. Now, I don’t agree we should fall victim to fitting into the “mold” society sets for women.

Instead, I value embracing aging at every stage of life.

I don’t agree either that a woman’s value diminishes as she ages – a message that is blasted from all forms of media.

Being a mother of a now 22-year daughter, it’s extra important for me to role model my beliefs in all aspects of my life, including my business philosophy.

How I Made The Shift to A Healthy Self Image

For me, embracing aging and all the changes that come with it, took help from some special people.

Thankfully, I found some amazing role models on social media and podcasts that helped me to look at my self image differently.

Dr. Jenn Huber RD ND shares valuable insights on her IG account @menopause.nutritionist – teaching women to manage menopause and find body confidence without dieting and food rules. Instead, embracing intuitive eating and living a life “beyond the scale” – providing joy and healthier body & mind.

With this new perspective, it then took me some time to closely look at my “unconscious thoughts” about “how I should look”. Once I identified these unhealthy attitudes, I wrote down affirmations to help me shift those expectations to healthy, realistic ones.

It surprised me to notice how much I was “unconsciously” beating myself up on a regular basis for not achieving the perfect figure or wrinkle free face. It also saddened my heart when I saw friends and my daughter’s friends be so self critical.

My daughter, when she was a young teen, also helped me shift to a healthier self image. I so yearned for her to be happy and love herself unconditionally.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t doing such a great job myself. Like the old saying goes “show by example, not by words”, I started catching myself being critical of myself, and would see the shocked look on her face when I said it. Then her sweet smile that came afterwards once I corrected myself.

I think this is a very critical stage of parenting and a responsibility as mothers that we make this year’s resolution to not be self critical about any parts of our body.

Next, the Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’ sheds an important light on the damaging effect social media has on young girls. The rates of depression and eating disorders has sky rocketed. Watch with your daughters or grand daughters.

It’s also interesting and helpful to look at the vast majority of men’s attitudes towards self image. They rarely feel bad about not looking perfect in their workout gear or swim trunks. Nor do the vast majority realize the angst so many women feel wearing a swimsuit.

It felt rather silly to me once I realized how different these expectations are between men and women.

What the heck are we doing this for? Why walk around criticizing ourselves every day?

Studies show that women between 12- 50 put themselves down every hour of the day. So shocking and sad.

Embracing Our Wrinkles instead of Botox and Face Lifts

This leads to the second top resolution of looking younger…

Botox, fillers, face lifts. Do we really need to do this to ourselves?

What message is this giving to our daughters or young women in our lives?

For me personally, I think the underlying message is that if I do any of these treatments then I don’t think aging is okay; therefore, I have succumbed to societies unrealistic image of what is beautiful.

We can’t look 20 forever and more importantly, why should we be expected to or want to either?

Beauty Starts With Health

As you know, skin care is my passion and I am proud to present a high quality, natural skin care that keeps our skin healthy and radiant as much as possible.

I know how important healthy skin is for our self-confidence and for our health. Our skin is our largest organ and what we put on it affects our overall health.

I truly believe in loving ourselves completely and embracing our skin at every age. Nourishing it with good ingredients brings a natural radiant glow and supports aging gracefully.

I hope by sharing my personal journey that you will be inspired to accept yourself 100% unconditionally.

Even if you try only to stop criticizing yourself you will discover how good you can feel!

Also, gently reminding your friends or daughters to drop this self beating bad talk when you hear them next time.

Eventually together, with every woman who starts loving herself fully, we will shift society’s attitude to a more realistic beauty standard where women are considered beautiful and valuable at every age of life.

Wishing you all the very best of health, happiness and a loving self-image in 2023!

Warmest regards,

xx Tanya Moss

President and co-founder of Nayelle Probiotic Skincare