Who Told Us It Was Too Late to Start Over?

Ciao, Beautiful!

Believe it or not, when I was in kindergarten my teacher sent me home with a note for my mother that said, “Jentri is a very bossy young lady.”

And you know what I did?

I went home and gave it to her!!  hahahaha! 

So call me bossy, stubborn, overly ambitious (or dilutional on occasion), occasionally dramatic, sensitive, particular or any number of things people have probably called me over the years.

But, don't call me dishonest.

Which brings me to today's blog, because I want to be especially honest with you!

So this blog's going to be a little different.

When I was 38 years old, after being in a relationship for 15 years, I found myself starting over.

I hadn't dated in what felt like another lifetime, and among all the much bigger things I was trying to process, I remember having this very real thought:

Would anyone still find me attractive at this age?

I'm almost 50 now, so typing that makes me want to find 38-year-old Jentri and shake her a little.

But we don't know what we don't know! 

That's the strange thing about age. We don't experience it with the perspective we'll eventually have. We experience it right where we are, comparing ourselves to who we used to be and wondering if we've already crossed some invisible line we were never told existed.

At 38, I genuinely wondered if I was old to be single.

Was dating going to be different? What the hell was online dating? Were men my age looking for women my age? Did I still have "it"? Had the ship sailed while I was busy living an entirely different life?

It sounds almost absurd to me now but it was very real back then because we rarely see ourselves the way others do. 

I've worked in beauty for most of my adult life, and one thing I've learned after being around women for all these years is that most of us are incredibly good at finding something wrong with ourselves (I know I am).

When I was around 20, a friend made a comment that I might have a little "cottage cheese" on the backs of my legs and that's all it took. After that, I spent decades hiding my legs.

But isn't it amazing what we unintentionally carry?

Someone makes ONE comment. We see ourselves in an unflattering picture. We gain a few pounds. Our skin starts changing. Our stomach doesn't look exactly the way it used to. One morning we discover a wrinkle that apparently moved in overnight without signing a lease (unacceptable). 

And suddenly we're looking at ourselves differently.

Even after all these years working in beauty, I still struggle.  Even after everything I know about aging and skin and confidence, there are days when I know I'm probably not seeing my own body entirely fairly.

That's a hard thing to admit when your profession involves helping other women feel beautiful.

But maybe that's exactly why I should admit it.

I don't think confidence means waking up every morning, looking in the mirror and being thrilled with absolutely everything you see.

I think confidence may be learning not to let what you don't like stop you from living your life!!

That's the difference.

How many things have we postponed because we didn't think we looked good enough yet?

When that 15-year relationship ended, I did not immediately emerge as some fully evolved woman with perfect boundaries, a gratitude journal and inspirational quotes taped to my bathroom mirror.

It was turbulent, there was grief, fear, confusion and probably a few decisions that don't need their own blog post. Sigh.

Starting over rarely looks inspiring while you're actually doing it! 

We love the before-and-after story because we already know how it ends. But when you're standing in the middle of the "before," it doesn't feel like the beginning of some wonderful new chapter.

Sometimes it just feels like something ended, but you keep moving and eventually life surprises you again. 

One of the greatest gifts of being loved well is realizing how many things you spent years worrying about that never mattered nearly as much as you thought they did.

Alex does not care if I have cellulite. He doesn't care if my stomach isn't perfectly flat. He doesn't inspect the backs of my legs for evidence of the cottage cheese someone spotted in approximately 1997.

He makes me feel beautiful.

And I wish that kind of love for you, too... from a partner, yes, but also from the people you choose to surround yourself with, and hopefully, increasingly, from yourself.

The kind of love that doesn't require you to look the way you looked at 25 to believe your best days aren't behind you.

I'm almost 50 now, happily married to the man I love, and Alex and I have been running the same business for more than a decade.

And in some ways, I feel like I'm starting over again.

Sometimes you can have the same husband, the same business, the same home, the same name on the door, and realize the map inside you has changed.

Seasons, priorities, desires and circumstances change.

So I've been thinking about that a lot lately as I look toward 50 and ask myself what I actually want the next ten years to look like.

What do I still want to build and what needs to change?

What am I holding onto because it's right for the future, and what am I holding onto simply because we worked so hard to create it?

Those aren't always easy questions.

The beauty industry has changed. The way people shop has changed. Social media has changed. Small business has changed. We've changed.

And our business has gone through seasons we never could have planned for.

So some of what we've built over the past decade may need to be modified for the landscape we're standing in now.

And I'm learning not to automatically see that as a loss.

Maybe that's what reinvention actually is.

At 38, I wondered if I'd become too old to begin again.

At almost 50, I'm beginning to realize how many times in one lifetime we may be asked, or get the opportunity, to do exactly that.

One thing I've learned is that you don't have to have all the answers or know exactly what comes next.

And maybe that's the fun part! 

If I could go back and talk to that 38-year-old woman who was scared she'd somehow aged out of being desirable, lovable or capable of beginning again, I don't think I'd tell her how everything works out.

I'd probably just tell her to go live it!

And that whatever age comes next isn't going to be too late either. :)

That's also how I'm thinking about Jentri Quinn Makeup + Skin as we move forward. Our business will continue to evolve because we continue to evolve, and because the women we're here to serve are evolving too.

Some things may change. Some things may look different. Some dreams may get bigger, and others may get edited. But the reason we're here hasn't changed.

We're here to serve you, to listen to you, to create things that genuinely support you and to keep having honest conversations about beauty, aging and everything that comes with figuring out who we're becoming next.

My teacher may have thought I was a very bossy young lady and maybe she was right.

But I delivered the note, and that counts for something. :)

The more you know, the more you glow!

With love,

Jentri

p.s. After more thought, I think my teacher may have meant to say BOSS.