My skin remembers more than one sun.
It holds the heat of the island and the dry chill of city winters. It remembers rain that smells like mango leaves, and tap water that never felt quite right. My skin has traveled—even when I stayed still. It has translated climates, adjusted rituals, softened under new moons.
And still, it longs.
There’s a quiet dissonance to diaspora skin. I learn to layer, to adapt. I kept my grandmother’s oil blend in a travel-sized bottle. I steamed with towel tents and boiling herbs not because an esthetician told me to—but because someone back home did. I listened when my skin talked back. Sometimes it was a breakout. Sometimes it was a memory.
I’ve asked myself: Which version of me is the truest? The one that glows under Caribbean humidity, or the one that flakes under office lighting and stress? The one that flushes with anger, with joy, with heat, with memory?
My skin holds it all.
It’s both archive and experiment. Raised on island rituals, raised again by the algorithms. Taught to fear oil, then taught to love it. Told that ashiness was shameful, then told to “embrace your glow.”
I walk the aisles of beauty stores looking for something that understands me. Not just my undertone—but my overstory. My context. My heritage. The way my mother touched my face when I had a fever. The way I learned to use castor oil and prayer in the same breath.
This isn’t confusion. This is fluency.
My skincare isn’t chaotic—it’s multilingual. It speaks coconut and hyaluronic acid. Hibiscus water and niacinamide. It knows how to soothe, even when the world forgets me.
I am not “too sensitive.” I am not “doing too much.” I am remembering.
And in that remembering, I am rebuilding. A ritual. A rhythm. A return.
So, here’s a small affirmation, whispered just for me + you:
May your skincare feel like a place you don’t have to translate. May it hold all your homes—without asking you to choose. And may it remind you, gently and without condition, that your beauty does not need to assimilate to be real.
ti bo,
Kora