As a television news reporter, I spent years pouring money into maintaining my "look". These were hard costs that got higher as I got older. Then, I invested in learning a lifetime skill instead and everything changed...

Of course we all deserve to feel comfortable and at home in our bodies, regardless of age or appearance. But if it's so obvious, why do so many brilliant, accomplished, generous women struggle to believe it?

A lot of modern "beauty routines" seem to be rooted in a kind of subtle aggression toward ourselves—scrubbing, stripping, peeling, freezing, burning, injecting. Procedures and products that essentially say, "Your natural state is SOOO not good enough. Let's scrape it off and start over!"

You may value simplicity, environmental stewardship, health, authenticity, or compassion. But do your daily beauty routines actually support these core values?

Your face is so much more than a collection of features to be judged. It's a living record of your life story — a map of all you've experienced, felt, and overcome.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone (in my case, it was usually one of my daughters when they were kids), "Are you upset about something?" or "Are you mad at me?" or "Do you feel OK?" or some such WHEN YOU ARE FEELING PERFECTLY FINE??

In our youth-obsessed culture, aging is typically positioned as something to fear, fight, and hide. But what if we've been looking at it all wrong?