What we pass on, and what we don't

My mother started using the same skincare product when I was twelve. She had it from her aesthetician, who had it from hers, and so on, across three generations of women passing the same jar between them without ever asking whether it was still the right thing. When I turned twenty-five, she placed it in my hands with a look that said: your turn. And it took me years to understand that it wasn’t that simple.

What is truly passed on

Some things pass on effortlessly. The gesture, first of all. The way of opening the jar, of taking just the right amount, of warming it between the fingers before applying it. These are details no one explains but everyone absorbs, the way you absorb an accent growing up in a house. My mother never told me how she did it; I simply watched her do it, hundreds of times, and one day my hands did the same.

There is also trust. The kind that says: this product has held up on my mother’s skin, on my grandmother’s, so it will hold up on mine. It’s a trust that isn’t debated, isn’t compared, isn’t measured in visible results. It’s simply there, because time has laid it down. You don’t need proof when you have witnesses.

And there is loyalty to a person. My mother never changed aestheticians. Hers knew her skin better than my mother knew it herself, and when she recommended something, my mother didn’t ask questions. I watched that relationship work throughout my childhood, and it taught me something essential: you don’t follow a brand, you follow someone who has proven themselves on your own face.

What is not passed on

But here is what took me time to understand: my skin is not my mother’s. It doesn’t respond to the same things, it doesn’t ask for the same attention, it doesn’t move through the seasons in the same way. The product that suited her so well sometimes left me with a feeling of heaviness, as if I had put on a garment that wasn’t cut for me.

That isn’t a flaw in the product. It’s a question of nature. In the reading we follow, my mother and I do not belong to the same element. Her skin needs certain things; mine asks for others. And just because a product has proven itself on her doesn’t mean it will prove itself on me. The passing on stops where nature differs.

It took me years to accept that. Because it was comfortable to believe that what had worked for her would work for me. Because it was reassuring to continue the gesture, even when the result wasn’t quite there. And because I felt, in changing, that I was breaking something. As if I were betraying a lineage.

What my practitioner taught me

It was my aesthetician who helped me see clearly. Not by telling me I was wrong, but by asking me simple questions. How did my skin feel at the end of the day? What did I notice when I looked at myself in the morning? What bothered me, without my being able to name it?

She observed, she listened, and she told me something I have never forgotten: “Your mother and you don’t have the same needs. It isn’t a question of generation, it’s a question of nature.” She didn’t ask me to abandon what my mother had given me. She asked me to complete it with what suited me.

That is when I understood what passing on can and cannot do. It can pass on a gesture, a trust, a loyalty. It cannot pass on a nature. That one, you have to discover for yourself, with the help of someone who knows how to look.

Loyalty is not repetition

We often confuse the two. We believe that being loyal means continuing to do exactly what our mothers did, with the same products, the same gestures, the same habits. But true loyalty is something else. It is honouring what they passed on to us — the trust, the constancy, the respect for one’s own skin — while accepting that our path is different.

My mother passed on to me a way of being attentive to my skin. She did not pass on my skin itself. That one is mine, with its own needs, its own imbalances, its own way of moving through time. And the best way to be loyal to what she gave me is to use it to find what suits me, not to repeat what suited her.

Today, I no longer use exactly the same products as my mother. But I still go to the same practitioner she introduced me to. I still give my skin the same daily attention she taught me. And I still believe that a product that has held up over years deserves our attention. I simply know now that “holding up” doesn’t mean “suits everyone.”

What I would tell my daughter

If I had a daughter, and if one day she asked me what I am passing on to her, I think I would tell her this: I pass on to you the habit of taking care of yourself, the patience to let time do its work, and the trust in the eye of someone who knows your skin. But I do not pass on your nature. That one, you will discover for yourself, and that will be a good thing.

And I would also tell her not to be afraid to step away from the path I followed. Because the most beautiful thing one can pass on is not a product — it is the freedom to find one’s own. With the help of someone you trust, and with time doing its work, gently, year after year.

If you recognise yourself in this story — if you have inherited a product, a gesture, a habit — know that the question is not whether you should keep it or change it. The question is what your nature is, and what your skin needs today. Your practitioner can help you read it. And that may be the most beautiful passing on of all: the one that teaches you to know yourself.