Skin deep, human to the core: Meet Alishia

And so with that, like with things that you've gone through in your life that you've posted about on socials that you've said that we can talk about today, has that helped you with your journeys, being able to talk to just anyone about it?

Yeah, immensely.

It's great because you're getting so many people's varying advice and everyone is in different age groups that have different experiences and perspectives and cultural perspectives and religious perspectives.

And so you're really able to have the same conversation with 1,000 people and get 1,000 different pieces of advice and pull out from that what – resonates with me but definitely like and one that I shared with you on a big story and I'm such a tragic open book so it's something that for a lot of people can be a little bit of a confronting conversational story of mine, but for one that I feel so comfortable sharing because I've shared it so many times and I'm so thankful for my clients for allowing me to have that space to share.

So now it just becomes a part of my story.

But one that a lot of people are aware of is, you know, we lost our beautiful baby girl halfway through my pregnancy at just under 20 weeks.

And so that was...

It was my clients that actually in that moment gave me a community to feel so safe in.

It was terrifying to consider coming back to work, but knowing that I just had these people who loved me sitting there waiting for me to come back, like, how do you shy away from that? And did

you find that by sharing that with people that they then shared with you and it was almost like a mutual healing?

Absolutely.

I think it was such a surprise to find out how – And this actually really resonates with a lot of different phases of my life over these last 10 years in particular.

How many times people are going through something similar or who have experienced that level of loss and we don't talk about it? And it's not until these little private moments that you then realize, actually, I'm not alone and a lot of people have experienced it, but why is it not spoken about more? And, of course, there's a heaviness to it, but I think I was surprised – How many people had gone through the same level of devastation and trauma?

That would almost make it even sadder, not being able to talk about it or feeling like it was so needed to be taboo or hidden.

I can imagine previous generations of women would have kept it incredibly quiet and never healed from it.

No, and so that's why, absolutely, like I think so many people, particularly generations before us, have learned to be quiet and, you know, you don't air your laundry out, however that might look.

And so that's why I think I've wanted to be a bit of an advocate for I will share my journey and, you know, even though I am all about skin and I make sure that my business Instagram page does predominantly talk about skin, that I think it's important to also share who I am as a person because I've realized since that loss of our baby girl, there's other things that we don't talk about.

For example, I'm a hormonal fuckwit and my hormones are insane and I've been diagnosed with PMDD about five years ago.

And the more I talk about that now with clients and I talk about it online, a lot of people have suffered similar things and similar experiences to the hormones that affect their mood and how they feel.

And it's nice to know that, again, they're not alone and I'm not alone.

But again, why are we not talking about this in perimenopause?

Absolutely.

So before I thought, you know, I'm going to venture out and start my own podcast, I did a few episodes with a friend and it was actually called No One Fucking Talks About It.

And it was born from a night of girls out with a few wines and a few cocktails and it There was someone saying, I'm on antidepressants, I'm in perimenopause, I have this, I have this, I have this.

And we said, why don't we talk about this? It's so ridiculous that we're all going through something that is causing, in some cases, really debilitating issues.