I've spent 20 years in self-development. Books, courses, therapy, workshops, apps, journals - you name it, I've tried it. And here's what I learned: knowing what to do and actually doing it are two completely different things.

I could tell you about nervous system regulation, somatic practices, and embodiment work. But when I was in the middle of a meltdown - white-hot rage that comes out of nowhere when you're touched out and overstimulated - none of that knowledge mattered. Because I couldn't access it in the moment.

That's the problem, isn't it?

When you're in fight, flight, or freeze, you can't think your way out. Your prefrontal cortex goes offline. Logic doesn't work.

You need something now. Something you can reach for when you're already dysregulated and can't remember what you're supposed to do.

The Science of Stress (And what it's doing to your body)

Here's what we know: chronic stress isn't just making you feel bad - it's changing your biology.

Research shows that chronic stress keeps your body in a constant state of high alert, flooding your system with cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, this dysregulates your nervous system, disrupts your sleep, weakens your immune function, and accelerates ageing at a cellular level.

And your skin? It's one of the first places it shows up. Chronic stress impairs your skin barrier function, increases inflammation, triggers breakouts, and accelerates collagen breakdown. Studies have found that psychological stress can delay wound healing by up to 40% and significantly worsen inflammatory skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, and acne.

But here's what really got me: the research on maternal stress. Mothers - especially sole parents - experience some of the highest rates of chronic stress and burnout. The constant demands, the mental load, the hormonal fluctuations of pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause. The rage that comes when you're touched out, under-resourced, and running on empty.

That rage isn't a character flaw.

It's your nervous system screaming that it needs resourcing.

And when you can't regulate in the moment, it compounds. The stress builds.

The cortisol stays elevated. Your body stays in survival mode.

This is why self-regulation isn't a luxury. It's a biological necessity.

Why nothing else was sticking

I tried everything. Apps that required me to navigate menus when I could barely think straight. Journals that sat empty because I didn't have the bandwidth to pick up a pen. Breathing exercises I'd forget the second my nervous system kicked into high gear.

The only thing that stuck was my skincare routine. I've been making and wearing Skin Elixir for 9 years now and it's not so much that I've been particularly disciplined - but because it was already a habit. It was sensory. It was mine. And it gave me two minutes twice a day where I had to slow down and actually be in my body. In hindsight it's probably the true reason I actually started Skin Elixir - a creative escape from raising toddlers.

More recently something has clicked: I didn't need another course or another app. Not more bloody overwhelm thanks! I needed to anchor everything I'd learned into something I was already doing. Something I could reach for in the moment when I needed resourcing right now. Don't get me wrong transcendental meditation which I trained in earlier this year is a truly wondrous practice and this year my creativity has been off the bloody scale (ROOTED included) on account of the deep dive that happens during the twice daily 20 minute experience.. but the reality. I've not done it consistently in months.  That's the thing.

For habits to stick, the magic word is consistency.

So I've made ROOTED. And I'm sharing it because I know I'm not the only one who needs help when fight-or-flight hits. This isn't me positioning myself as an expert - it's me offering what I believe can finally work, in case it works for you too.

This is my truer service to skin: a more-than-skin-deep offering. Because if stress is showing up on your skin, it's showing up everywhere else too.

What ROOTED Actually Stands For

ROOTED is an acronym, but it's also a process. It's the six steps I've realised I can move through when I'm dysregulated, overwhelmed, or just need to come back to myself. It's designed to work in the moment -when you can't think straight, when you're already activated, when you need something tangible to hold onto.

R – Regulation: Calming your nervous system

This is the first step because when your nervous system is firing - when you're in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn - nothing else is accessible. Your thinking brain goes offline. You're running on survival mode.

Regulation isn't about forcing calm or talking yourself down. It's about giving your body a signal that it's safe to soften. A slow breath. A hand on your chest. The scent of something grounding. The familiar texture of your Organic Frankincense & May Chang Moisturiser on your skin.

For me, this is usually the moment I reach for my skincare. The ritual of it - the repetition, the scent, the sensory anchor - tells my nervous system: this tells me body it's ok. We're safe now.

This is the critical piece. You can't regulate your emotions if your nervous system is still in threat mode. You have to resource the body first - massive thanks to my wonderful (now ex) therapist, Kathleen who made me see and feel the truth in this - and when you do, you're not just calming your mind - you're literally changing your physiology.

You're signalling to your body that it can shift out of survival mode.

O – Observation: Tuning into your body's signals

Once you're not in full survival mode, you can actually start to notice what's going on. Where's the tension? What's tight? What's your body trying to tell you?

Most of us -;especially mothers - have been taught to override our body's signals. Push through the fatigue. Ignore the tightness. Keep going. But your body isn't the problem - it's the messenger. And observation is how you start listening. 

This isn't about fixing anything. It's just about noticing. Oh, my jaw's clenched. My shoulders are up by my ears. I've been holding my breath.

You can't change what you don't see. And when you're dysregulated, you need something to guide you back into noticing. That's what the cards do - they prompt the observation you can't access on your own in that moment.

O – Openness: Creating space without judgement 

Here's the hard part: when you start observing, you're going to find things you don't like. Anger you've been swallowing. Grief you've been avoiding. Shame you didn't even know you were carrying. The rage that comes with hormonal shifts, with being touched out, with giving everything and having nothing left.

Openness is the practice of letting it be there without needing to fix it, explain it, or make it go away. It's permission to be messy. To not have it all figured out. To feel what you feel without performing even for yourself.

This was the piece I resisted the most. I wanted solutions, not feelings. But after 20 years of trying to think my way out of what I needed to feel my way through, I finally got it: the fastest way through is to stop fighting what's already there.

When you're in the moment  - when you're activated and overwhelmed - you need permission to just be with it. The cards give you that permission.

T – Transformation: witnessing visible shifts

And then something shifts. Not in your head—in your body. Your shoulders drop. Your breath deepens. The knot in your chest loosens.

This is the part that kept me coming back. Because it's not theoretical. You can feel the difference. You can track it in real time. And when you experience that shift - when you realise your body is capable of moving from stuck to settled -you start to trust yourself in a whole new way.

Transformation isn't about becoming someone new. It's about returning to who you are when you're not running on empty. When you're resourced. When your nervous system feels safe. And when your nervous system feels safe, everything changes - including your skin.

E – Embodiment: Connecting with your body

Embodiment is what happens when you stop treating your body like a vehicle you're stuck in and start actually inhabiting it.

For years, I lived from the neck up. My body was just the thing that carried my brain around, and I only paid attention to it when it was in pain or needed feeding. Embodiment is the opposite. It's feeling your feet on the ground. Your breath in your lungs. The aliveness of your own skin.

It's sensory. It's present. And it's the antidote to the disembodied, always-on, overstimulated way most of us are living.

This is where the skincare ritual becomes more than skincare. It's not just about the product - it's about the practice of being in your body. Of slowing down enough to actually feel something. Of anchoring into sensation when your mind is spinning. Of treating your skin -and yourself-with the kind of care that says, you matter.

D – Devotion: Committing to yourself, daily

Devotion isn't about perfection. It's about showing up. Again and again. Even when it's messy. Even when you don't feel like it.

It's the decision to make yourself a priority - not in a self-indulgent way, but in a survival way. Because you can't show up for anyone else if you're running on fumes. You can't regulate your kids, your team, your life if you're dysregulated yourself.

This is especially true if you're a mother, a sole parent, a caregiver, someone navigating hormonal changes and the rage that comes with them. You need resourcing. You need something that's just for you. You need a moment - even just two minutes- where you're choosing yourself.

This is the daily commitment: to return to your body, to your breath, to your own nervous system over and over. Not because you're broken, but because you're human. And being human requires tending. 

Why I Made the Cards (and why I'm sharing them)

After 20 years of self-development work, I knew what to do. The problem was accessing it in the moment. When I was already dysregulated. When fight-or-flight had kicked in. When the rage hit and I needed help now.

My intuition was screaming at me: these cards will answer the problem of not being able to regulate emotions quickly. They're designed to work in the moment when you can't think straight, when you need something tangible to hold, when you need a prompt to guide you back to your body.

The ROOTED cards are designed to work with your skincare ritual, not add another thing to your list. You pull a card while you're doing your routine. You read it. You let it guide you through the framework while your hands are already doing the familiar, grounding work of caring for your skin.

And here's what I didn't expect: the accountability. There's something about a physical card in your hand that makes it harder to skip. It's a signal. A commitment. A tiny act of devotion that says, I'm choosing myself today.

I'm sharing this because I know there are others out there who need help in the moment. Mothers navigating rage and hormonal shifts. Sole parents who are touched out and under-resourced. Caregivers who give everything and have nothing left. Anyone who's tried everything and can't make it stick. Who need something tangible, portable, and tied to a ritual they're already showing up for.

This is my truer service to skin - a more-than-skin-deep offering. Because skincare was never just about the surface. It was always about the practice. The pause. The return to yourself. And when you resource your nervous system, your skin responds. The inflammation calms. The barrier strengthens. You start to see the visible evidence of what it means to be regulated.

This Is a Movement

This isn't just about me. It's about all of us who want to deepen the meaning of our skincare ritual. Who want it to be more than a checklist. Who want it to actually resource us instead of just being another thing we do on autopilot.

The beauty of ROOTED is that it's doable. You're not carving out extra time you're snatching the moments you already have. Two minutes while your night cream sinks in. That's it.

And once you've invested in the cards, they're yours. Your practice. Your own personal anchor. No subscriptions. No apps draining your battery or tracking your data. Just something tangible you can return to, again and again, whenever you need it.

We're all in this together everyone who needs help regulating in the moment, who's tired of nothing sticking, who wants their two minutes of self-care to actually mean something. Who understands that chronic stress isn't just affecting our mood it's affecting our health, our skin, our ability to show up for the people we love.

ROOTED is what happens when you take 20 years of self-development knowledge and anchor it into something sensory, daily, and actually sustainable. It's what happens when you stop treating your skincare routine like a checklist and start treating it like the self-regulation tool it's always been capable of being.

If you're someone who's tried everything and nothing's stuck, if you're under-resourced and need help in the moment, if you want your skincare routine to actually mean something—this is for you.

The cards are available from next week. Portable, tangible, and designed to meet you exactly where you are especially in those critical moments when fight, flight, or freeze kicks in and you need resourcing right now.

I cannot wait to share a card at random in your box when you next order your skincare and can't wait to share the pack with you available from 17 December for £10 using ADDROOTED at checkout or £15 bought solo.

Because self-regulation shouldn't be another thing you fail at. It should be the thing that finally sticks.

ROOTED by Skin Elixir ™ and 'Not Affirmations. Instructions' are trademarks of Skin Elixir. This is a movement and it's got bloody legs I can feel it in my bones. Go well friends. 💓🌿