In case you don’t know me, I’m a skin coach, blogger, and YouTuber and have helped thousands of women heal their skin conditions, love themselves, and live their dream lives.

But, I used to wake up dreading the light of day.

My hand would reach towards my face and feel the newly formed craters that sprinkled my skin.

I didn’t want to get up and face my reflection, because then those craters would become real. Alas, I had to go to school, and no excuse in the world would convince my mother to let me stay home.

No, I had to go out there and be SEEN — with my red constellations.

It was rough growing up with acne in my ripe teenage years. Not just acne though…I also had glasses, braces, and a headgear. I really hit the jackpot.

Oh, and I didn’t wear makeup yet, so the pimples were bright and unmistakable — you couldn’t miss them. There was literally no hiding, but that’s all I wanted to do. I felt like people were constantly starring at me — and not because I was super good-looking!

Eye-contact felt painful…

I felt like anybody who spoke to me had to practice extreme will-power to look me in the eye, instead of looking in the eye of my biggest pimple.

I couldn’t understand how or why this was happening to me, but I was determined to find a solution.

My dermatologist prescribed me Accutane and my mother bought it for me. I sat in my bedroom, holding the bottle of bright pills and reading the instructions. They came with the longest list if side-effects I had ever seen.

I had a friend who was also on Accutane, and her face was always flaky and coming off in small bits. She complained of feeling weak and stiff, and frankly, it was painful to even look at her. I decided that the side-effects were not worth the clear skin.

Something told me I was better off.

I searched far and wide, read countless forum posts, reviews, research articles, books, and attempted using different products.

But my skin was awful. It wasn’t just pimply, it started getting disco-ball shiny too. I literally couldn’t blot fast enough!

I was undatable. I literally didn’t date all through high-school, and the one time I made out with a boy…was in the dark. My confidence was in ruins…

Years later I was able to manage my skin quite well, mainly because of birth control pills and a good skin care routine.

But the birth control pills came with their own list of disastrous side effects. The first pills I was on were Alesse21. They caused me to have violent mood swings…

I bounced from euphoric happiness to thoughts of suicide. I cried all the time.

It took about 2 years for me to make the connection between my mood and the pills, so I consulted my doctor and he put me on Minestrin, a different birth control pill.

Months later I got my very first migraine. The pain was so bad that I literally couldn’t look at light or hear sounds because they’d make me violently ill.

The migraines became regular visitors in my life. First they were monthly, then weekly, then biweekly. They put me out of commission, and I started taking super strong pain pills in order to get over the pain.

If you’ve never had a migraine, I congratulate you. I haven’t experienced pain so strong ever in my life, and I have a really high threshold for pain. I mean, I don’t make a sound when my legs get waxed…

I quit birth control pills as soon as I made the connection, and my migraines started slowly subsiding in frequency and in strength. My doctor didn’t warn me of this potential side effect, so I wasn’t aware of it — until I started doing my own research.

I realized that there was a lot that doctors weren’t saying…And many ways that they weren’t helping.

I was pissed that there was nobody out there who could help me. It was time to really take matters into my own hands.

Along the way, I made TONS of mistakes.

But I was learning.

I started learning about skin, how it worked, how it could function better, what I could do to help, and what I shouldn’t do at all.

Skin care was a topic I delved into in more depth than anything else. I literally absorbed everything I could on the subject, determined to understand what mattered in skincare, what ingredients to look for, which ingredients to avoid, and how to properly care for my skin.

I couldn’t believe how much information was out there, and how little experts could agree on OBVIOUS things.

I heard crazy advice like: