Eventually, I stumbled upon the ‘skin positivity’ community. I saw people with so many different skin conditions, posting pictures of themselves, sharing their journeys and motivating others. I started to see that I wasn’t alone – there were people like me all over the world who were shy and maybe even a little ashamed to talk about their struggle with their skin. Social media had made it seem like a stigma to not have clear smooth skin, but that isn’t a reality for most people.

Posting my skin unfiltered on both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ skin days made me get used to my appearance. The bad relationship I had with my mirror gradually stopped. Instead of picking at my skin when I looked in the mirror, I started affirming myself, and little by little, I formed a better vision of myself and my skin.

People have been shielded from the fact that not everyone has perfect skin. We see a lot of filtered and edited content on social media every day so it’s easy to think that it’s not the norm when we are faced with skin having texture, spots and discolouration. The one thing I hate is when I hear people associating skin conditions with being dirty, having a bad diet or not caring about yourself. In most cases that’s not true. There are other factors – including hormones, stress and your environment – that you cannot control.

“I spent so much time and money obsessing over my acne before I finally found the skin positivity movement”