💫 Between Worlds: How I Learned My Beauty Rituals Were Intelligence, Not Survival

I can still taste the charcoal-grilled conch from the beach in Haiti. The burnt edges, the salt air, hours stretching into forever. I remember sneaking nectar from the hibiscus flowers that lined our backyard walls, racing my cousins past them, thinking that garden would always be mine.

I spent most of my adolescence trying to fit in. At school, I had the fringe off to the side, the heavy eyeliner, trying to match whoever was around me. Someone once asked if I was “fresh off the boat.” A friend criticized me for code-switching, said I wasn’t being authentic when I’d shift between the French I spoke with some friends and the melodic tone I used with my family.

At home, we were always just plain Haitian. But somewhere along the way, I started thinking that’s what I needed to hide.

The things I didn’t know I was learning

My mom and aunts would finish making coffee, then take the grounds and put them on their faces. If they were using aloe for something else, they’d rub it on their skin too. If they ate a mango, they’d take the skin and use it as a mask, then wash it off later. They did these things while living their day-to-day. It wasn’t “I’m going to the spa.” It was just infused in whatever they were doing.

We never wore sweatpants on a regular day. We’d shower two or three times before going back out because we wanted to smell good and feel good. My family took outward presentation seriously, not as performance, but as a way to put our best foot forward.

We had lemongrass growing in our garden (sitwonel in Haitian Creole) and we’d make tea with it. Castor oil on deck for anything that was wrong. Someone somewhere had a bottle to rub on you.

They weren’t performing beauty routines. They were living beauty rituals—woven into daily life, never separate from it.

This is true across the Caribbean. We embrace dewy skin not because it’s trendy, but because the sun and heat make it naturally radiant. We don’t fight our environment. We flow with it. Caribbean beauty has always been about resourcefulness and presence, not products and procedures.

This is true across the Caribbean.

The pause that changes everything

When I think of a routine, I think of something mechanized. Done without much thought. Something you just kind of process through.

When I think of a ritual, the word itself makes me want to pause.

With a routine, I can almost turn my brain off. With a ritual, I’m incredibly present. My senses are alive—what I see, what I hear, what I touch, what I smell, what I taste. Everything I do in that moment is intentional.

In the morning, I make my cup of coffee, but I’m not mindlessly doing it. I turn on my music. I light my incense. I sit and pay close attention to where my mind runs while the coffee brews. Then I sit with my cat P and we stare out the window together, sunbathing while I drink my cup of coffee. While it feels like a routine, I’m incredibly present. I am here with her and she’s here with me. I’m tasting all of the notes of my coffee.

This is what I was watching my whole childhood without realizing it. What I thought was my family making do was actually sophisticated knowledge. They knew how to make beauty sacred without making it separate.