Well Collab Acupuncture

06/06/2025

My journey into focusing on Facial Acupuncture really started during lockdown:
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Faced with the uncertainty of when I’d be able to return to work, I brainstormed virtual ideas. For… acupuncture. (Suffice to say my job is safe from an AI takeover for now 😅)
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I offered facial acupuncture at the time, so I thought a campy virtual facial exercise class could be fun (think: Richard Simmons, but for the face)!
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And if you’re gonna be teaching a facial exercise class, then you gotta know some facial exercises! So I took it to YouTube.
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And, welp 🥺🥺
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I was so horrified by the facial yoga, fitness, annd anti-aging content.
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It was so obviously geared toward the male gaze. I didn’t use the phrase Patriarchal Beauty yet (but oh… I would…) so in my naïveté, thinking that phrase “natural anti-aging” was somehow not harmful to women, the content I was met with very quickly told me otherwise.
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Some of it was so stark to me because it was through different cultural lenses and the pattern stuck out better through subtitles or broken English. When you don’t have the fluency, you have to get the point across and the point seemed to be, over and over, misogyny.
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Another part of it was that I was 37 for most of 2020, and 37 is a prime time to be a target of YOUR FACE IS ALMOST 40! THIS IS DECIDEDLY BAD! marketing.
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Working inconsistently for most of that time, having a toddler who slept for 45 minute stretches, feeling unrecognizable from fatigue and the stress of navigating a global pandemic… this most certainly was a unique breeding ground for the juxtaposition of who I was and how I felt vs how the messaging of Patriarchal Beauty was able to land in my sleep deprived mind.
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And then there was the not seeing faces.
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Through the 18 months of requiring masks for my patients, I realized how much humanity I garnered from a face.
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Not seeing them, I felt so disconnected.
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So on the one hand, society is saying a woman’s face is an aberration 🤡
And on the other, I am craving to see these faces so that I can feel a shared sense of humanity 🫶🏼
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From there, it wasn’t a stretch.
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It was so clear.
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The prison of Patriarchal Beauty needs dismantling, from the inside out.

05/20/2025

05/02/2025

Anyone who talks about respect is a walking 🚩 to me.

04/03/2025

I have an intolerance for not growing. It actually scares me. It perplexes me. It worries me. A person not always wanting to increase their self-awareness? But… how do you grow? (You see where the intolerance comes from…)

And yet… Spring. Of all seasons, Spring has historically been my least favorite. Because once I’m comfy and cozy and my energy is all deep down inside me, and winter has been freezing me from the inside out… here comes this fxckin guy, Spring, with his energy going in THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. And now the sun is coming out and there’s — is that a hint of warmth in the air? HOW DARE YOU, SIR.

In reality, I love the warmth. I love it more than any temperature. I still enjoy hot, humid days. I like August in the Northwest, okay??

So of course I want it to be warm. But the transition? Therein lies the rub.

Spring energy really does ask the opposite of us from what winter had us doing. So fair point if you also struggle at the beginning of the season.

But that struggle is the seed that will grow. And that’s what it’s all about. (See first paragraph.) Spring embraces those growing pains.

🌱 Spring is the wobbly toddler tenaciously learning how to walk.
🌱Spring is the first push-up after a long break that makes your arms shake.
🌱Spring is the group text that makes you social again when you were perfectly happy not speaking to anyone since November.

So no, I may not enjoy the initial pivot into spring. But man, am I happy she’s here.

08/10/2022

Mom and dad go to San Francisco.

07/21/2022

Mom and dad tell funnies that dad doesn't think are funny.

07/15/2022

07/13/2022

Tag your ride or die.

07/09/2022

Mom and dad go to the beach.