COHESIVE

There is a scene in a movie i love, called beasts of the southern wild. in the scene, a young girl happens upon a shrimp boat, and gets a ride with the crusty old captain. while she stands next to him at the helm, he points to a giant pile of hamburger wrappers at his side. "you see those wrappers? do you wonder why i keep em? cuz every single one of them was a different moment in my life. when i look at all of them together, it makes me feel cohesive. "

 I related to this sentiment strongly and have thought of his words often. all the bits of my life, the jobs i've had, the places i've lived, sometimes they all feel like such separate lives or different pieces. i feel a calm and a peace when i think of myself now, at this moment, all of those little pieces strung together to make this whole. i feel cohesive.  

I think about that, extend it to the work that i do, and the way that i view faces. our faces are the reflection of those moments, all of those lives that we've lived. that is a magical part of beauty to me- the story. the last thing i want to do is to take away from that magical thing. 

So these treatments...any of my patients would tell you that i have certain themes or concepts that i bring up over and over. one of them is the idea of balance or cohesion. you might think that one little wrinkle or fold is what is bothering you, and that smoothing it will make you happier about your appearance. and this might be true to a certain degree. but that is not how others see us. we look at others and see more the bigger picture, less the microscopic details. to most viewers, those fine lines and shadows do not define how youthful someone looks, the big picture does. the balance of our features: upper, middle, lower face; eyes, nose, mouth. balance in these ways is one of the most important lenses that i use to consider what treatment options will yield the most natural, sophisticated, healthy looking results. just as much as that shrimp boat captain found peace and happiness in thinking of all of his life moments as a cohesive thing, i care for your face to have this same quality. for the story that your face tells to be a cohesive one where all the pieces fit together just so and "make sense".