WHAT WE LEARNED FROM OUR MOTHERS: CARING FOR YOUR SKIN FROM DAY 1

Skin-to-skin. If we are lucky that’s how we begin, next to our mother. Our lives are shaped by our mother even before we are born.
Your mother is very likely the first person that cared for your skin, and the first person you saw caring for their own. Knowingly or not, from watching her you learned how you should treat your skin – what to think of it and what to put on it.

I learned from a very young age about skin through not only my mother but through my father – a dermatologist. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been raised with such knowledge and awareness about the importance of protecting and feeding my skin. Eventually, I became a mother myself – along with my two sisters. Just like we had learned, we wanted to be able to put clean, safe, natural products on our own skin and our children’s – creams and serums filled with the nurturing and healing power of this great southern land.

We wanted to pass on to our children a sense of considered self-care. Your skin is an amazing organ, the outermost layers of the self and although this amazing organ regenerates, you rely on it every day to face the world – it’s your body’s first line of defence – so we must help it to stay strong, hydrated, and elastic.

Taking moments to care for yourself, and teaching that to younger generation, is important. Seeing you do so teaches them to focus on caring for their body and the great things it does for them everyday.

You can choose to complain about wrinkles, freckles, scars and blemishes… or you can speak to yourself with, and model for your children, a self-love that embraces your difference, resilience and experiences – and those of your skin. Up to 60% of what we put on our skin, we absorb – so you can carefully avoid chemicals and toxins and choose Mother Nature’s best ingredients. I believe that good skincare shouldn’t be expensive, exclusive, or harmful to anyone or anything, including the planet.

“You can choose to model for your children a self-love that embraces your difference, resilience and experiences – and those of your skin. Good skincare shouldn’t be expensive, exclusive, or harmful to anyone or anything, including the planet.”

Because of this and my loving upbringing, I turned to the years of firsthand experience from my father, and the wisdom of millenia of Yulparitja mothers who showed me how to use native Australian plants to protect and nourish skin. I used modern science to create effective, bioactive formulas with high concentrations of those plants.

For example, we are all pretty concerned about viruses right now. This ancient land provides us with wild antiviral ingredients that have been used for years in indigenous communities.

Like steeping Gumbi Gumbi in their winter tea to benefit from its natural antiviral properties – doesn’t it makes sense to put it on your lips, and your kids’, as a balm before going out into the world?

I developed products I would want to use on myself and my children, that would work – well – on any member of the family at any age. And that were packed full of wild-harvested Australian plants that had been looking after Australian skin for ever. You may see some of these ingredients in other brands, but the difference is buying it from a distributor and earning the knowledge of how to really use it for all its goodness.

This Mother’s day, I’ll be thinking about the skincare legacy of thousands of years of Australian mothers, of my mother, and that I have passed to my children and they will pass to theirs. I hope you do too. Happy Mother’s Day from Rohr.

AUTHOR
EMILY ROHR

Emily Rohr is the founder and creator of Australian-made skincare Rohr Remedy. Rohr is a family business that creates scientifically-prove, bio-active skincare for every skin. Rohr products are naturally rich in vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, antibacterials and folates, made from sustainably wild-harvested by indigenous landowners.