Meet Me at the Vanity

a very messy setup, but it will get better.

My boss, Jason, was staring at my greenroom setup like it was a museum exhibit.

Skin tints, three shades of bronzer, hydrating mists, more than a few lip colors—all lined up in front of the mirror like soldiers reporting for duty.

“Is this all your makeup?” he asked.

We’ve worked together for over eight years, so I thought he was joking.

“Yes,” I said, waiting for the punchline. “Why?”

“Why do you need it?”

And before I could roll my eyes or dodge the question, the truth came out of my mouth without my permission.

“It’s my confidence trick.”

He nodded once. “Carry on, then.”

He went back to his notes, and I went back to my bronzer, but the sentence stayed with me.

It felt too simple for what this mirror, these bottles and compacts, this whole ritual actually mean to me.

Because makeup is my confidence trick, yes—but it’s also my meeting place, my processing room, my confessional, my war room, and, most of all, my sanctuary.​

Where the Real Conversations Happen

Throughout that event, people floated in and out of the greenroom.

We talked about the show, about our business, about misunderstandings that needed clearing and challenges we hadn’t quite named yet.

All the while, I was curling my lashes, tapping in concealer, misting my face like it was my job—which, in a way, it is.

No one acted like it was strange.

My team has only ever known me like this: in front of a mirror, surrounded by “lotions and potions,” as my mum used to call them.

They’ve watched me line my lips while making decisions that move real money and real people.

To them, this is normal.

To me, it’s home base.

That two-minute exchange with Jason made me realize something: the deepest, truest conversations of my life almost always happen with someone’s reflection between us, a shared mirror turning small talk into real talk.​

My First Sanctuary: Mum’s Vanity

My first sanctuary wasn’t a church or a journal or a therapist’s office.

It was my mum’s vanity.

She would sit down, and I would appear in the doorway as if summoned.

We didn’t sit face to face; we sat face to mirror.

She would talk to me through her reflection, mascara wand in one hand, some drugstore compact in the other.

I shared my day.

My fears.

The kid who was mean at school.

The crush I didn’t want anyone to know about.

She would ask, “What do you think about this?” or “How does that make you feel?” and it all felt less intense because we had the mirror as our middle ground.

There’s a softness to speaking side-by-side instead of head-on; it lets the hard things land more gently.​

We couldn’t afford spa days or department store counters, but we had the drugstore.

On a single-parent budget, “fun” looked like picking out face masks, shampoos, and little bottles that promised hope in eight ounces.

We’d come home, rip open the packets, and smear on green or white masks that cracked when we laughed too hard.

Beauty became our secret language.

Not because we were obsessed with looking perfect, but because this was how we made ordinary life feel just a bit more magical.

There were evenings with my Aunt Nancy and a product called Swiss Kriss, doing facial steams while we tried to copy tips from a soap star’s “beauty secrets” VHS tape.

Looking back, it was hilariously low-budget glamour, but it felt like joining some ancient order of people who know how to turn getting ready into a ritual.​

Alone in the House, Not Alone at the Mirror

When I was a teenager, Mum moved out of our home to live with her boyfriend on the other side of Atlanta.

I stayed in the house by myself from fourteen to eighteen.

Apparently, I was a “good kid” because she trusted I’d be okay.

We didn’t have our nightly vanity conversations in the same way anymore, so I started having them with myself.

Same mirror.

Different audience.

I’d stand there and talk through my day, my decisions, my plans, my doubts.

The mirror became both witness and companion.

It was soothing, familiar, and strangely stabilizing, especially in a life that was suddenly a little too grown-up for my age.​

So when I was old enough, I found the most natural job in the world: working at The Body Shop, selling lotions and potions to strangers in the mall.

I learned to read faces, to listen to stories while dabbing moisturizer along cheekbones, to offer mini makeovers that were really mini therapy sessions disguised as product demos.

That little store was another sanctuary—bright lights, strong scents, and the quiet intimacy of helping someone see themselves a bit more kindly in a handheld mirror.​

The Professional Vanity

Later, I moved on to another “lotions and potions” company: Bare Escentuals, which became bareMinerals.

What started as a job turned into a calling.

I got good at skincare, and I think I got pretty good at makeup, too.

Eventually, I had the surreal privilege of assisting the CEO, Leslie, as she presented shows on QVC.

We produced shows, obsessed over numbers and narratives, and I got to step on air myself to sell our beautiful skincare and makeup.

But the part that shaped me most wasn’t the camera time.

For nearly twenty years, I sat in greenrooms with her.

Sometimes she applied her makeup; sometimes I applied mine.

Always, we talked.

We caught up on our lives, but we also dissected the business—what was working, what wasn’t, what it could become.

Those sixty-minute pockets before a show, just us and the mirror, were some of the best leadership training I ever received.

The vanity became our unofficial boardroom, where ideas felt safe enough to start messy and honest before they became strategies and slide decks.​

I’d like to think she mentored me, but it also felt like we grew together—two people working out who they were becoming while blending foundation and buffing in mineral powders.

When she moved on from bareMinerals, another friend, Jessica, slid into that space at the vanity.

Different person, same mirror magic.

We talked about love, life, and business while curling lashes and debating lipstick shades.

The greenroom vanity had become my natural habitat: a place where real conversations and real transformation shared the same lighted mirror.​

Bringing Mum Back to the Mirror

Twenty years ago, my mum moved in with me.

It didn’t take long before we fell back into our old rhythm: conversations through reflections, this time at both her vanity and mine.

We had more history now, more baggage, more joy, more regret—and somehow it all felt easier to unpack with a makeup brush in hand.​

But recently, life gave our ritual a new twist.

Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s: the long goodbye.

A month ago, I watched her put her blush in the sink because she thought that’s how she needed to activate it.

That same week, she applied mascara like someone about to walk the strip, not because she was trying to be provocative, but because she genuinely couldn’t remember how to do it “right.”

Her hands remembered there should be a wand and some sweeping motion; her mind just couldn’t connect the dots.

I stood there realizing that this ritual, the one that had always made her feel like herself, was starting to slip away.

And something in me said, “No. Not this. Not if I can help it.”​

So I ordered a salon chair and put it right in front of my vanity.

I refreshed her makeup because most of it had aged out of usefulness, just like some of the routines in her memory.

I watched tutorials and taught myself how to do hair, a skill I’d somehow avoided for most of my life.​

Now, each day, she sits in my chair.

I blow out her hair, apply her skincare, and decide on her “knockout” makeup look for the day.

We talk through the mirror—about little things, about nothing, about whatever her mind can reach.

It is confusing for her, often.

It is stressful for me, often.

I already took too long to get myself ready before I added another full head of hair and face to the schedule.

But it is also the one time in the day when I am not correcting her.

Not asking her to please not wash the dog bowls with toilet tissue.

Not explaining, again, where something goes or what day it is.

At the vanity, I just get to love her.

She gets to be not my beauty, not my responsibility, but my mum.

Two humans, side by side, in an inner sanctum made of glass, light, and ritual.​

Sanctuary, Not Just Skincare

Over the years, people have joked about my “racks of clothes” and “jewelry rolls” and the fact that I travel with half a Sephora store in my bag.

They accept that this is just how I roll.

What they may not realize is that this isn’t decoration for me.

It’s architecture.

My vanity is where I:

• Prepare for main-stage moments and red carpets.

• Talk strategy with executives and teammates.

• Process heartbreak and fear with friends.

• Hold space for my mother as she fades and, somehow, draws closer.

The bottles, brushes, and palettes are not there to hide a disgusting person who shouldn’t be seen bare-faced.

They are tools for something deeper: a structured ritual that calms my nervous system, helps me feel in control, and opens the door for real conversation.​

For some people, sanctuary looks like a yoga mat, a trail in the woods, a pew in a quiet church.

For me, it looks like a lighted mirror, a spinning chair, and the soft click of a compact opening.

This is my inner sanctum.

This is where I gather myself before I offer myself to the world.​

An Invitation to the Mirror

These days, my team and newer friends sometimes find themselves pulled into this strange little world.

One minute we are debriefing a campaign; the next, they are standing over my shoulder, watching me make my eyes look less tired.

We clear up confusion and name challenges while I’m tapping setting powder into place.

To them, it might just look like multitasking.

To me, it is the only way I know how to make big conversations feel safe.

So here’s what I’ve realized: if you want a meeting with me, we can absolutely schedule a Teams or Zoom call.

We can meet in your boardroom with bottled water and crisp agendas.

We can sit across from each other at a perfectly respectable conference table.

But if you really want to know me—if you really want to see how I think, how I love, how I lead—then maybe we should schedule some time at the vanity mirror instead.

I’ll make room on the counter for your coffee, and your products and tools.

You can bring your questions, your worries, your ideas, your tangled-up feelings.

And if you’re game, I’ll even trade beauty secrets with you—techniques and tiny tricks gathered over decades of sitting with the most gorgeous people in my world, learning how they light themselves up from the outside in and the inside out.​

We’ll sit side by side, facing the glass, and let the ritual do what it has always done for me:

Turn getting ready into getting real.

Are you game?