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!"

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.

I was standing in a section of high-end skin care products in Ulta, holding a $247 facial serum that was supposed to "reverse the signs of aging" and "turn back the clock" on my skin. And suddenly, I had this thought…

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??