The brighter the lipstick...

Those of you who know me personally, will know that I love my bright lips. Whether I am doing the school drop off or going out for dinner, I am usually sporting my favourite lipstick.

What you may not know, is that I don't paint my lips for fashion reasons, but for self care! Generally, the brighter the lipstick the more pain I am in!

With a family to look after and a busy life to live and enjoy, it is not an option to fall in a heap and stay in bed. Well, not often anyway!

So, regardless of how I am feeling, I get up each morning, 'put on my face' and no matter how much pain I am in, how fatigued I feel or how disturbed my sleep was the night before, I am prepared for the day. My bright pink lipstick has a lot to do with this. It is part of my armour that prepares me for my day, especially on days when my physical body is not feeling strong enough to carry me.

Of course I have days when I just want to pull my tracksuit pants on, tie my hair in a knot and crawl back into bed and not face the day. On these days, nude lips will tell the world that my self care is at an all time low and I probably havent eaten or ventured out the front door, let alone had the strength to apply makeup. Days like this still happen but they are fortunatelly rare, which is a relief as I generally end up feeling worse than I did when the day started. I spend the day feeling sluggish and rather depressed.

So regardless of how I am feeling, I make it my morning routine to get up, have a hot shower, put on clothes that make me feel happy and comfortable and get to work on my face. Once my mascara is on and lips are painted, I feel more awake and more able to face what the day (or my health) will throw at me.

Don't get me wrong, I am not superwoman, I have been known to get back into bed with a full face of makeup, but generally something happens during the application of my makeup armour that changes how I feel and therefore the outcome of the day.

When you live with a chronic illness, with pain that is with you every day for weeks, months, years, decades, you need a bag of tricks to help you keep moving forward in life. If you dont, the grey cloud of chronic illness can overwhelm you. This is when depression can set in.

We all have coping mechanisms we use to get through tough times. One of mine just happens to be bright pink lipstick!

Do you have a self-care routine or strategies that help you get through challenging days? If you do, please share them below as your ideas may just be the tip to help others. If you dont, why not try the suggestions of others. We all need a little help sometimes.