After the birth of my daughter and the unexpected blessing of adopting my teenage niece, I found myself in a reflective season of life. Nothing challenges the way you see the world quite like becoming responsible for how two young women will see themselves in it.

I started noticing the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways our culture pressures women to conform to impossible standards—standards I realized I had unknowingly upheld. I’d been using lip fillers for years, and let’s just say I had a bit of a love affair with social media filters. You know the ones—instant pore-blurring, cheekbone-enhancing, skin-glowing perfection. They were my “quick fix” for confidence.

But something shifted as I watched my niece navigate her teenage years, scrolling through perfectly curated feeds and quietly absorbing the message that her natural self wasn’t enough. Meanwhile, staring at the absolute perfection that my baby girl was and thinking of how the world could eventually make herself feel less than enough.

One day, it hit me like a truck: I was part of the problem.

So, I made two bold decisions. I dissolved my lip filler, and I turned off the ability to apply facial filters on social media. And guess what? It was like flipping a switch—not just on my phone but in my brain.

Let me tell you, staring at your unfiltered, unenhanced self on social media can be jarring at first. For a while, I felt vulnerable. There was a gap between the “perfect” face I’d been presenting online and the one staring back at me in the mirror every morning. But as the days turned into weeks, I noticed something remarkable: the gap started to close—not because my face changed, but because my mindset did.

I began seeing the beauty in the reality. The small lines that deepen when I laugh, the way my eyes crinkle when I smile, even the natural shape of my lips—all of it told a story of a life lived, of moments loved, of a woman who is real.

And you know what else? My confidence soared. The irony wasn’t lost on me—letting go of the “fixes” I thought I needed made me feel like I was good enough. I think the filters in particular were feeding me the perfection I sought and then my reality felt disappointing and “less than”. Now, I’m just the same me everywhere I go and in everything I do, and perfect is slowly becoming less and less important. What I truly want is to be healthy and happy and to raise children who are healthy and happy too.

Here’s the kicker: I’m not here to shame anyone who uses fillers or filters and, spoiler alert, I recently added a teensie bit of filler back into my bottom lip. I think we all deserve to feel beautiful in our own skin, whatever that looks like for you. I’m in the beauty industry because I love it and I’m always going to try the latest and greatest in cosmetics and aesthetics. What I’ve learned, though, is that chasing someone else’s version of beauty never got me closer to feeling good about myself. And for me, removing those filters—both literal and figurative—was the best thing I could’ve done.

Now, I look at my niece and my daughter and hope they see a woman who owns her imperfections and celebrates them. Because if there’s one thing I want them to know, it’s this: You don’t need filters or fillers or anything else for that matter to be worthy. You were born enough, exactly as you are.

So, here’s to showing up as the unfiltered, unedited, unapologetically real versions of ourselves. It’s scary, yes. But it’s also freeing. And let me tell you—it’s worth it.

Kendra