10 Essential Oil Beauty Hacks I Bet You Didn't Know About
Although I've never had full-blown acne before, I am the one who gets a period pimple, that is obnoxious as all get out, in the sense that it pops up right when I don't want it to, right where I don't want it to be. Plus, my hair tends to lend towards the drier side, no matter what I do. Well, at least it used to be that way. Something that has gotten my skin under control is essential oils (specifically tea tree oil and lavender oil for zits). What's gotten my hair right is a sweet almond oil blend, along with Jamaican Black castor oil with rosemary in it.
Why am I sharing this? It's because it wasn't until I stopped being a product junkie and I started doing some research on different essential oils and what they can do, that I discovered that they are must-haves when it comes to my beauty routine. They're natural. They're therapeutic. And they serve multiple purposes, which is definitely a huge plus.
But enough about me. Do you want to try something that will help your insides as well as maintain your beauty on the outside? If so, I've got 10 different essential oils that can get you on the road to looking and feeling, just as amazing as you wanna be.
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1. Anti-Aging: Carrot Seed Oil
Off top, carrot seed oil is loaded with antioxidants that help to strengthen your immune system. Since it also contains antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties, it's the kind of oil that is also great when it comes to cell renewal, detoxing your blood and stimulating blood circulation. Something else that's awesome about carrot seed oil is it has antiseptic and antiviral properties that make it a great ingredient for homemade deodorant.
Since it's an oil that helps to protect your skin from UV damage, that's one of the reasons why it tops the list if you're looking for an anti-aging essential oil. Being that it's also high in vitamins A, C and E, it mends skin, boosts collagen and is a wonderful moisturizer too. No doubt about it, carrot seed oil is definitely an essential oil that can help to keep your "black from cracking".
Try This: Combine two tablespoons of pure Aloe vera gel with five drops of carrot seed oil and three drops of a carrier oil (like coconut oil or safflower oil). Apply the formula to freshly cleaned skin before turning in at night. Then wash it off in the morning. (Make sure to keep this stored in the fridge.)
2. Hair Growth: Cedarwood Oil
Cedarwood is an antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and antifungal type of essential oil that is great at treating anxiety and insomnia as well as softening the appearance of acne-related scarring. Another pleasant surprise about the oil is some people have even said that it helps to alleviate discomfort that's directly related to arthritis. But what makes it a top hair beauty treatment oil is the fact that it's pretty powerful at treating alopecia areata (a disease that directly attacks hair follicles). Plus, since cedarwood oil also has the ability to balance the sebum that your scalp produces (so that your follicles don't get clogged up), hindering hair growth as a direct result.
Try This: Mix two tablespoons with jojoba oil with one teaspoon of cedarwood oil. Apply the mixture to your scalp, massage for 10 minutes and then rinse out (right after shampooing and conditioning your hair).
3. Skin Exfoliant: Sweet Almond Oil
Sweet almond oil is definitely one of my favorite essential oils on the planet! It's high in vitamins A, E and zinc which makes it great at reducing eye puffiness, moisturizing your skin and even reducing the effects of sun damage. And, since sweet almond oil contains powerful emollient properties, it can gently remove dead skin cells so that you're able to end up with even skin tone. It's also an oil that reduces the appearance of acne scars. It can even cause your stretch marks to fade over time.
Try This: Combine a half cup of colloidal oatmeal with three tablespoons of sweet almond oil and a tablespoon of manuka honey. Apply the mask onto clean and damp skin. Let it sit for 15-20 minutes then rinse off with cool water.
4. Toner Ingredient: Thieves Oil
What I like a lot about thieves oil is it's a combination of some of the best essential oils around. It's got cinnamon, cloves, lemon, rosemary and eucalyptus oil, all rolled up into one. This makes it the kind of super oil that is able to boost your immune system, fight sinus congestion, improve your mood, relieve body aches and pains and, if you add it to your DIY toothpaste recipe, it will fight tooth decay and make your toothpaste taste so much better too. Thanks to all of the antimicrobial properties thieves oil contains that are able to kill bacteria and fungi, it's also an ideal ingredient if you like to make your own skin toner.
Try This: Steep some chamomile tea and let it cool. Then add a teaspoon of witch hazel, a half teaspoon of apple cider vinegar (the kind that has the mother in it), along with five drops of thieves oil. Put the combination in a spray bottle, shake and then mist your skin with the toner solution.
5. Damaged Hair Cuticles: Rosemary Oil
Rosemary oil is the ultimate. It helps to improve your concentration. It provides pain relief. It decreases stress levels. It increases blood circulation. It reduces joint inflammation. It improves liver and digestive health as well. I use it directly as it relates to the health of my hair, though. Since it stimulates blood circulation, your hair follicles are able to get the nutrients that they need in a quicker amount of time. Rosemary oil is also an oil that can help to stop premature greying, hinder dandruff and yes, it can repair damaged hair cuticles too. That's because the antioxidants in the oil are able to seal your cuticles so that, if they're weak, they can get strong again.
Try This: Seal your hair with Jamaican Mango & Lime's Jamaican Black Castor Oil Rosemary Oil. If you'd like some tips on how to properly seal your hair, click here.
6. Collagen Booster: Orange Oil
I like orange oil because it smells so refreshing. As far as health benefits go, it is able to reduce depression-related symptoms, increase your exercise performance, fight certain bacterial strains, heal acne and even treat constipation. Orange oil is also considered to be a great anti-aging essential oil because it has the ability to trigger collagen production in your skin, which can smooth out fine lines and cause your skin to appear more youthful-looking as a direct result.
Try This: If you want to make your own orange oil to apply to your skin, click here for a recipe.
7. Skin Soother: Copaiba Oil
Copaiba oil is an oil that comes from copaiba trees. Some of its cool benefits include the fact that it is able to help treat infections like bladder infections, strep throat and even gonorrhea. The irony to this oil is that while it is able to treat gonorrhea (and syphilis), it's also an aphrodisiac too (some Native Americans even used it as a form of contraception). This oil is awesome for your skin because it contains beta-caryophyllene which is an anti-inflammatory agent that helps to soothe any irritation and heal it over time.
Try This: Mix three teaspoons of avocado oil (which is a great healing oil) with three drops of copaiba. Apply directly to wherever your skin is irritated.
8. Dry Scalp: Ylang-Ylang Oil
If you want an oil that will lower your blood pressure, alleviate anxiety, reduce depression-related symptoms, slow down your heart rate, soothe the pressure that comes with headaches, treat sinus infections and make it easier for you to go to sleep at night, ylang-ylang oil is just what you're looking for.
On the beauty tip, because it's also an oil that stimulates sebaceous glands, it can help to heal your dry scalp while deep conditioning your hair at the same time.
Try This: Add three drops of ylang-ylang oil to three tablespoons of coconut oil. Massage the oil onto your clean damp scalp. Then let it sit for 20 minutes, rinse with cool water and style.
9. Scar Treatment: Helichrysum Oil
While this isn't exactly the kind of oil that comes up in regular conversation, once you know all of the ways that it can benefit you, you'll want to get a couple of bottles of it as soon as possible. Helichrysum essential oil comes from a Mediterranean plant. It is able to do everything from reduce inflammation during a cold and relieve intestinal spasms to stop staph infections and treat candida. As far as your beauty needs go, helichrysum oil is great because it speeds up the healing process of wounds (including popped pimples) so that your scars are smoother and less apparent to the eye.
Try This: Mix a teaspoon of Vitamin E oil with two drops of helichrysum oil. Then directly apply the combo onto any healed scars you may have.
10. Hair Strengthener: Clary Sage Oil and Lavender Oil
Clary sage has the reputation of being a natural antidepressant and stress reducer. Something else that's wonderful about it is, clary sage also has the ability to reduce menstrual cramps and reduce menopausal symptoms. Hair-wise, this is the kind of oil that can reduce dandruff and strengthen your hair follicles. Lavender oil contains properties that fight allergies, treats insomnia, helps to heal eczema, reduce menstrual cramps and relaxes your nervous system. It's great for your hair because lavender oil can help to make your hair strands thicker while stimulating hair growth in the process.
Try This: Apricot kernel oil is high in vitamins A and E which makes it a great carrier oil for your hair. Mix a half cup of it with 5-7 drops of clary sage oil and 3-4 drops of lavender oil. Zap it in the microwave for 15 seconds and then apply as a hot oil treatment for your hair. Do it twice a month for best results.
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Different puzzle pieces are creating bigger pictures these days. 2024 will mark a milestone on a few different levels, including the release of my third book next June (yay!).
I am also a Professional Certified Coach. My main mission for attaining that particular goal is to use my formal credentials to help people navigate through the sometimes tumultuous waters, both on and offline, when it comes to information about marriage, sex and relationships that is oftentimes misinformation (because "coach" is a word that gets thrown around a lot, oftentimes quite poorly).
I am also still super devoted to helping to bring life into this world as a doula, marriage life coaching will always be my first love (next to writing, of course), a platform that advocates for good Black men is currently in the works and my keystrokes continue to be devoted to HEALTHY over HAPPY in the areas of holistic intimacy, spiritual evolution, purpose manifestation and self-love...because maturity teaches that it's impossible to be happy all of the time when it comes to reaching goals yet healthy is a choice that can be made on a daily basis (amen?).
If you have any PERSONAL QUESTIONS (please do not contact me with any story pitches; that is an *editorial* need), feel free to reach out at missnosipho@gmail.com. A sistah will certainly do what she can. ;)
Beyond Burnout: Nicole Walters' Blueprint For Achieving Career Success On Your Own Terms
Nicole Walters has always been known for two things: her ambition and her ability to recognize when life’s challenges can also double as an inspiring, lucrative brand.
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
Courtesy
“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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The Key To True Career Fulfillment Is Healing That Trauma, Sis.
As Black women, we're no strangers to trauma, especially when it comes to our professional lives. And as empowered as many of us are, there are still lingering triggers that are a direct result of trauma. So, this makes taking on a healing journey vital for us, especially when we're ambitious and making big moves in our careers.
"We deserve ease and the mental clarity that comes with resolving the wounds within us–that continue to exist within our families and our communities," said Dr. Mariel Buqué, a trained psychologist and author of Break the Cycle: A Guide To Healing Intergenerational Trauma. "Our addressing the remnants of trauma means that we give ourselves the opportunity to have healthier connections and healthier outcomes in every area of our lives."
I caught up with Dr. Buqué to talk more, in this exclusive interview with xoNecole, about what exactly intergenerational trauma is, how its effects can manifest in the workplace, and how Black women can tap into our higher selves for healing.
Dr. Mariel Buqué
Photo via DrMarielBuqué.com
xoNecole: Your book talks about intergenerational trauma, and I’d love to get more context on how it affects the way we show up at work. What is intergenerational trauma, and how can the effects be reflected in the workplace?
Dr. Mariel Buqué: Intergenerational trauma is the only type of trauma that’s actually handed down the family line. It happens at the intersection of our biology and psychology. … It’s a very comprehensive and complex process by which we are to acquire any kind of genetic imprints from our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, [and] ancestors who have suffered.
Typically, when we’re conceived, we inherit gene markers that actually are reflective of the emotional pain that the people that came before us have suffered.
xoN: Whoa! That's deep!
MB: I always get that. [Laughs] What that means, in essence, is that it creates a biological vulnerability for us in reference to stress and trauma, so we become more tender and vulnerable to stress, and our emotions become more heightened. Intergenerational trauma shows up at work in multiple ways. We can talk about how it shows up from an individual standpoint. Many Black and Brown women might have already been socialized to self-soothe or take care of themselves, and that leads to the kind of behaviors that reflect hyper-independence and an inability to show any signs of perceived weakness.
In a workplace environment, they might be susceptible to being overburdened with work or having more work put on them because of their hyper-independent behavior. They may engage with folks in a way that may be perceived [as] distant or cold, but in reality, we’re just socialized to be very sturdy, and even when things are happening around us that might unnerve other people, there’s a sturdiness in us that’s there because we’ve had to hold so much—socialized to hold a lot of the burdens that surround us.
"Intergenerational trauma shows up at work in multiple ways. Many Black and Brown women might have already been socialized to self-soothe or take care of themselves, and that leads to the kind of behaviors that reflect hyper-independence and an inability to show any signs of perceived weakness."
xoN: You also detail grounding methods as tools for healing intergenerational trauma. How can we use these methods at work in cases where we’re in situations where we feel triggered due to trauma or where trauma shows up manifested in our workplace interactions?
MB: The sound bath meditations are one of the [tools] I use in my practice because sound bowls emit frequencies that make us feel more calm. They actually create micro-vibrations that help heal both the mind and body.
Sound medicine is not just constricted to sound bowls. We have so many instruments.
xoN: How can we practice grounding while at work? What methods can we use that are office- or work-friendly?
MB: There are three skills that I usually gravitate toward [in helping] people who are really busy, including professionals, to integrate grounding into their day in a way that doesn’t feel like an added task.
There’s a lot that’s happening when we’re doing any one of these practices. I’m very specific about the deep breathing. I think we’ve popularized, ‘Oh girl, go take a breath,’ and people take one or three breaths and think that it’s done. They forget that we’re fighting against the imprints that have been decades—sometimes hundreds of years long—living in our family line. Those imprints are really deeply embedded into our cellular memories. So we need to take at least five minutes to really let our nervous system register, ‘Oh we’re relaxed. We’re trying to relax.’
Usually, people who are very busy say, ‘Who has five minutes?’ and I say, ‘Well, you have 1,440 minutes in the day. If you take five of those minutes, let’s say, at the top of your day, in case you can’t bake it in any time else, you’re already doing so much of the work to help you relieve some of that stored-up tension.’
Humming is a ventral vagal nerve stimulator. In particular, when we hum very low, like a Barry White low, or the ‘Ohm’ sound, derived from Sangsritch. We can sing any song we love—just hum it in a low tone—that already creates that stimulation process.
The third is rocking. When we move slowly to a rhythm and sway back and forth, we’re actually creating that relaxation response. I always like to remind folks, take it back to when you were a baby or toddler and a caregiver—grandma or somebody—was rocking you to sleep. Why did you go to sleep? Because it’s actually stimulated a relaxation response and your mind and body and you felt like you were safe.
There are tangible, acceptable tools that anybody can use at any point and time in their day, and just bake it in. You can do it without anyone noticing.
xoN: You get into the concept of the “intergenerational higher self” in your book as well. What is it, and how can we pursue this or find our higher self in the context of work?
MB: It’s the version of ourselves that’s not deep in trauma but has a higher consciousness and has an elevated mindset. They want to really draw from innate wisdom, but also ancestral wisdom—whatever it is that has made it so that the people who came before us actually made it to overcome. All of that lives in us—both from a biological and a psychological end. We have biological preparedness that helps us to overcome things our ancestors went through. There’s so much in our bodies and minds that holds a lot of true and innate strength.
When we’re presented with circumstances in our work environment that might be triggering or could be challenging, we have an opportunity to tap into that innate wisdom within us and engage in choices that can align with our values, rather than make choices that are coming out of places of trauma. We [need to] tap into our higher self, with greater frequency, on any given day—not when we’re the most stressed out. We need it when we’re the most stressed out, but it’s essential for us to practice just tapping into it every day.
Any one of us will need to actually do some of the work to help soothe ourselves on a regular basis in order to be able to easily tap into that wiser part of ourselves.
When we do the humming, the rocking, and all those things—anything that’s grounding—on a consistent basis, it buys us time. It gives us a 2- to 3-second window between when someone says something out of pocket… to be able to sit with the information, hold it in a way that doesn’t create toxic stress within us, and think about how we’re going to respond. And those 2-3 seconds are gold because it allows that innate wisdom to come in. When we’re settling our nervous system, with greater frequency, on a daily basis, it allows us to buy that time.
Take five minutes of each and every one of those days, and you deposit those five minutes into regenerating your nervous system and the way in which your emotions are structured. Within a year’s time, you’d be able to sit with the emotions you hold much differently than you have in the last four decades.
"When we’re presented with circumstances in our work environment that might be triggering or could be challenging, we have an opportunity to tap into that innate wisdom within us and engage in choices that can align with our values, rather than make choices that are coming out of places of trauma."
xoN: But how do we know or recognize that person? How can those of us who are stuck in patterns or whose interactions are often driven or triggered by trauma even recognize and pursue the “intergenerational higher self”?
MB: It’s really helpful to actually imagine. A lot of us, Black and Brown women, are doing a lot of imaginative work. And that’s the thing, sometimes we have to imagine who these people are because they are a version of ourselves in a future sense. A version of ourselves that has done the healing work, that can walk upright and step into a room with our heads held high and knows what to say and how to settle themselves and all these things. It’s a version of ourselves we have to imagine.
For example, when I first imagined my intergenerational higher self, I knew she had short hair, had glasses. She was surrounded by books. She was independent in her work—meaning she worked with other people but didn’t belong to one particular organization, which I don’t.
She was writing. She also held this wisdom and ability to use her voice. I’m a very introverted person—I’ve always been very shy–but it was a lot of the trauma. I needed to imagine [that version of me] to be able to now be somebody who speaks to crowds, who does the healing work, who writes, has glasses, and has short hair. She’s also the living embody of her grandmother’s wisdom and kindness. All of that is who I’m stepping into, but we have to imagine her first.
To find out more about Dr. Mariel Buqué, and her book, Break the Cycle: A Guide To Healing Intergenerational Trauma, follow her on Instagram or visit her website.
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