This weekend I accompanied my mom to the funeral of her longtime colleague and friend Mrs. Garner. I had spent time with Mrs. Garner one to four times a year, every year, since 2002. However I did not know her until the funeral.

The service was captivating. First, I was oriented to her childhood in Jamaica and her adolescence in New York City. Then came her young adulthood shaped by military service where two weeks after enlisting she realized the emperor had no clothes. But Uncle Sam had taken a shining to her so the only way out of that tribulation was years of going through.

It was evident that somewhere along the way Mrs. Garner had committed herself to the daily work of living and she had also decided that she was a poet. The former was expressed through her faith and the actions of community participation that this faith inspired in her. She was a deaconess in a church whose Virginia history spans 183 years. Beyond VA, she influenced ecclesiastical matters all over the Mid-Atlantic. So much so that when the inter-congregational usher committee (to which she also belonged) read condolences sent in from across their regional network, I lost track after the tenth — or maybe it was the twelfth — reading of mailed-in condolences.

At her home church it is her voice that welcomes attendees through speakers on Sunday. While eulogizing, the reverend made note that he had no plans of changing out the recording.

On the matter of her poetry: In 1996 Mrs. Garner was clocking-in as an accountant but even then, her closest friend at the firm spoke of her as a poet. She would later pivot to teaching middle school English and it’s in those halls where my mom, auntie, plus other educator colleagues came to form a close-knit crew of which Mrs. Garner was the resident poet for every occasion worth celebrating with an oration. When she wasn’t teaching, grading, writing, or orating, she was donating her own books and leading afterschool literacy programs. It was also mentioned in service that by the church’s count she had donated at least 600 of her own books while teaching public school. Everyone at her church knew her as a poet, she was tasked annually with the MLK-Day service reading to which she always brought a new original work to share.

Her only child, Steven, called her “my mother, the poet.” A lifetime ago, he gathered many of her works into a self-published collection that he designed, printed, and bound himself. He wrote a forward for this gift to his mother. One of Mrs. Garner’s best friends read the forward aloud at the funeral. While listening, I considered that it must have been her poetry as much as her faith that accompanied Mrs. Garner through the private hell of having attended Steven’s funeral ten years prior.

July 2025 was when I last saw Mrs. Garner on a visit to give her an at-home facial. She had just been cleared by her oncologist to wrap-up chemo. Remission was in sight until the finish line kept moving. I would later hear updates in passing from my mom but I wasn’t attentive to the pattern of things; now it’s July all over again and there I am at her friend’s funeral.

The casket is open, I’m looking at a body that was Mrs. Garner’s. While the body is empty the house of her Lord is filled with her spirit as attendees lament that she departed without writing down her famous hummus recipe. Laughter mixes with tears and becomes song from pew to pew while friends recall what it was like to travel with her all over the globe. In name, I’m at a funeral. In practice, I’m at a conjuring.

Filing out of church, my mom and I have our own daily work of living to do. But first, lunch. Two blocks down, near Main Street, there’s a hole in the wall counter that my mom says had been a fave of hers and Mrs. Garner’s during weekend hangs. “Paulette quenched her pain with poetry, just like I quench my pain with prayer,” my mom sighs, and then continues to remember. Over a bottle of petit manseng, Mami tells me about all the ways her friend Paulette had made heaven on Earth through 24 years of their friendship. This time, I pay attention.

It is said (marketed) that outside of the Jurançon region, Virginia is the second largest producer of petit manseng. This particular vintage varietal was dry with a balanced amount of acidity to cut through the fattiness of our sandwiches and the saltiness of our chips. Refreshing, with light aromatics of apple and pear, easy drinking without being too simple. Just right.

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If this blog post had a soundtrack it would be…

For most of Q2 this year I considered giving-up on Venus of the Mind and would ponder (whine) about my inclinations to my loved ones who patiently listened but made no attempts at dissuasion.

I course-corrected one night at a dinner party I’d been invited to this past June. Being 5”6 and well fed, my build is deceiving as I’m quite the lightweight so when my Scorpio-rising-at-the-party-projection slipped off after a strong Negroni courtesy of the host, I began to ponder (whine) again. Let the record show that a question was directed my way about my public writing, I did not self-promote unprompted (a final frontier that I have crossed on occasion just not at dinner parties).

Anyways, instead of self-promotion I leaned into self-doubt while confidently justifying my sense of creative futility with data sets (a false idol!) when an eavesdropping guest had the unsolicited nerve to tell me “Look, I have no skin in the game but it sounds like you’re saying no to yourself. You should keep writing.” My response: “…(O_O)…You know what girl, you’re right…I think the Universe may be speaking through you, thank you.” Which surprised her back? In a good way I hope. She was endearingly bashful and silly the rest of the night.

Sometimes I do not consciously know what I want or need until it’s given and here was such a case. Of course as I write this out it’s now clear that my subconscious had been begging for somebody, anybody, to tell me to not give up. Sometimes I can’t always be my own best cheerleader given that my inner Pollyanna has a nihilistic shadow — what a liability!

Maybe my parents were right y el tiempo de Dios es perfecto, that kind of timing is impervious to conversational decorum and degrees of proximity. It freely moved through someone who just moments before was a stranger but had the gumption to give a word when the Spirit moved them. I’m grateful to have heard what I’d been needing to hear exactly when I was ready to hear it.

Stay human out there, it’s what connects us to the Divine.

Con amor y cariño,

Ivana

If this blog post were a song it would be

Book club is next Thursday at 1pm EST via Zoom!

Find the meeting link here ↓

Every Saturday I work a double shift. A few hours past noon, I peel off my med-spa scrubs, refresh, and don an outfit reminiscent of my style icon — Beret Girl from An Extremely Goofy Movie. I then walk out to the employee garage and nap in my car. Upon waking, I am a different service professional. No longer interested in hearing about someone’s skincare routine, what I’m now curious about is their palate.

As I stroll down the requisite blocks to my wine bar shift, in solitude with myself I am visited by my Abuela Rosalía’s voice: dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres. Tell me who you’re with (translated for essence: tell me who you spend time with, or, tell me who your friends are) and I’ll tell you who you are. To this, from my ever shapeshifting mind I add my own refrán: tell me what and how you drink, tell me what and how you eat, and I’ll tell you about your inner terroir.

As I study for my upcoming WSET exam, my body is sensing through fresh knowledge. My eyes are learning to see color in a new light, my nose is training to pick up scent differently, my hands are stabilizing glass then swirling wine, my mouth is aerating molecules around, coating the entirety of its inside. I’m swishing, tasting, spitting, repeating. My tongue is now a critical thinker. The language for it all, the notes, the standardized vocabulary and theory of wine etc. all of that comes after having first experienced the bounty of a vine. After all, feeling is the first confirmation of existence. Descartes was a myopic man.

Contemporary wellness terms like “mind-body connection” imply a separation in need of mediation, like Lucifer falling or Eve banished. Learning and laboring in a service job whether in aesthetics or food and beverage, it all highlights just how flat the westernized mind-body perspective is. What’s more interesting is to remember that the mind is in the body; the mind is of the body; the body is the mind.

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No One Told Me It Would Be Like This

Life before 30 is like living with a lobotomy.

There are times I wish I’d made more inadvisable choices in my lobotomized years. I was a miserable square who was too careful and so my 20s were quite boring. Too much introspection and being “wise beyond your years” (saying this to kids simultaneously stunts them and gives them a God complex; don’t do it, let them be their age), not enough caution thrown to the wind. Too many bad jobs and not nearly enough bad first dates. Bad first dates make for better stories. My tales about bad jobs always unfold like a Sunday school parable. There’s a moral and humanizing lesson but never any intrigue or spice. How lame!

Though if I had a chance to go back I’m not sure I would. Things feel a whole lot better now with some mileage on a fully working prefrontal cortex.

Today, July 1, is my birthday. I’ve woken up at 33. In the lead up I’ve been thinking about what I continue to gain with every new year of improved cognition. The biggest gain has been hunger, a particular kind that no one prepared me for. It has me feeling voracious 24/7. I love it.

Muses

Click for Eartha Kitt coming in hot with major gems like, “Compromise for what? When you fall in love, what is there to compromise about?”

Venus of the Mind is designed for the insatiable spirit.

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The Importance of Models in a Woman’s Life

I’ve observed different kinds of hungry women.

First, the women who acknowledge their hunger but set it aside for the needs of others. Living in a limbo of longing between someday and just not today.

The second group are women who don’t realize they’re hungry. They tend to grow resentful without any clear sense of why. They know they’re pissed off but don’t know how, when, or where things got so frustrating.

Then, there are the women who hunger, name their desire and feed it. They know doing so will only make them hungrier…but that’s part of the joy. These are my people.

They feed their hunger and in doing so, they grow more vital. I want to be like those muses, like the women who stay hungry. The ones who refuse to apologize for wanting it all. I want to be a woman who relishes in the wanting and who finds thrill in the satiating. Goals met. New goals made. Countries traveled. Skills learned. Mastery is not the point —embodiment is. Body adorned. Fabrics draped. Textures felt. Food savored. Drinks sipped. Music made. Books read. Beauty found. Creativity expressed. Laughter with a spark. Embracing the sun. Meeting the moon. Resting and knowing peace while alive.

Women who FAFO on purpose for the plot. Take notes and try again.

Women who fail and own up to it. Apologize, offer repair, and mean it.

Women in their 40s who sparkle and in their 50s who emanate verve. Women in their 60s who joke like sailors and giggle like kids. Women in their 70s who look at life and still talk about it like it’s a buffet open to them. Women in their 80s who’ve been to hell and back for fun, just to give the Devil a run for her money. I once had a bright star of a client, the most stylish and vivacious, pushing 90.

All of them still hungry. Hungry for themselves and what they can create when they meet their deepest desires on a soul level.

All of them nourishing a hunger that arises independent of partnership, a hunger unmoored from caregiving, a hunger free from ancestral pressure.

All of them still feeding their hunger all the days of their lives, until God calls them back to Herself.

I want to be like that too.

Till Death do Me, Myself, and I part.

This is my prayer.

Amén.

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All Roads Lead to Beauty

Donna Summer singing her iconic “I Feel Love” at the Arena di Verona in Verona, Italy. This song was studio recorded in 1976 and came out July 2, 1977.

P.S.

Insatiability “as praxis” lol.

Live footage of me ringing in Summer Solstice on the heels of Pride-Juneteenth 2026!

10/10 would relive.

❣️

1. This week’s summer solstice portal has ushered in my birthday season and I have a gift for you! Come celebrate with me! Beauty in the World guest, longtime friend, and muse Carrington, has kindly gifted Venus of the Mind readers an evergreen 10% off code for anyone who wants to explore non-alcoholic wine. She’s partnered as an affiliate with Zero Proof Wine Shop through code WITHCARRINGTON.

2. Our book club is meeting Thursday, July 16 at 1pm EST. We’ll be delving into Alicia Kennedy’s On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites. Super excited to share that we’ll be joined by Alicia as well! Rich in life because I get to chat with one of my favorite authors, alongside some of my favorite people, during one of my favorite months!

Libations to Venus and a good book talk. That’s how we party around these parts.

I will soon be 33!

A Birthday Season Mood Board

Top left, Morning Glory (2023) by Danielle Mckinney. Top right, my favorite Lucille Clifton poem. Bottom left, Queen of Wands illustrated by Brianda Fitz. Bottom right, an aspirational HBIC-of-the-party-vibe pic that I saved from Pinterest way back.

Double numbers are so fun. I was once 11, then 22, and next week 33!

Cheers to many more years because aging favors the insatiable!

You’re Invited

🌑♋📚

Book Club: Thursday, July 16 at 1pm EST.

During a New Moon in Cancer week! Auspicious!

Duration: 30 to 40 mins.

Zoom Link

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Greetings Gorgeous,

For May/June/July, we’ve been reading Alicia Kennedy’s On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites. Books, like most people, are not meant to exist in isolation and this brilliant book is no exception. As I make my way through I’ve also found myself revisiting M. F. K. Fisher’s translation of The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and the Venezuelan classic Mi Cocina, a la manera de Caracas by Armando Scannone. Where the latter is a cookbook in the classic sense, the former is a very old-school French treatise on all things edible and gustatory. One book connects me to my family home that I’ve never known, Caracas, while the other activates the part of my brain that holds Ms. Frizzle, Bill Nye and Plato all in equal degrees of esteem. Adding Kennedy to the mix with Fisher’s translation and Scannone’s recipes has led to a wonderful conversation in my mind where the dinner spread if quite fabulous.

Venus of the Mind is a newsletter devoted to beauty in the world.

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Just like the author’s palate On Eating is an expansive text. In writing about food Alicia is writing about life, which makes sense as there is no life without nourishment. There is also no nourishment without this planet, our collective home. Home is a core thread woven throughout Alicia’s writing, both in this book and in her stellar newsletter. There’s the home of the mind; the home as a domestic system where public and private contestations play out across negotiations of labor, belonging, and lineage; a home lost through migration and found again through reclamation; all leading back to the home we all share and how our need to be fed does not have to cost us the planet. All of that plus more is dexterously woven throughout a work that is equal parts a love letter to past selves, to food and drink, Patchogue, Puerto Rico, and beyond.

On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites is the perfect summer read. What I most admire about Alicia’s writing is the skill with which she crafts the personal and dispatches it to the reader in a way that makes one sense the world anew from both within and outside of the self, much like an unforgettable meal.

I’m excited to gather with you next month to savor the book again and guess what — we’ll be joined live by the author herself!

Zoom link with July meeting date and time below.

Happy Reading!

All roads lead to beauty.

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I’ve been a legal adult for almost fifteen years now.

Seeing it written out like that, instead of writing “I’m 32 going on 33”, made me laugh.

So basically I’m a teen in adult years.

Every year of these 15 years has been characterized by failure. Failures to launch and failures to finish. Failures to think and failures to feel. Failures to try and failures to practice. Failures to act and failures to stop. Failures to be real and failures to dream. Some negligible, some painful, a handful that I’m still nursing.

I remember my failures more than my successes.

Is this tendency shortening my lifespan? Tbd.

As of this writing, if someone were to ask me what I’ve “achieved” I’d say nothing and instead offer a long list of everything I lost in the process of trying to achieve something that could prove I was living a meaningful life, one that is equal parts of service and a damn good time.

I wear failure like I wear my own skin so that when the opposite happens it feels like an aberration in need of correction. Usually Life does the correcting for me and returns me to homeostasis…though I have been known to take matters into my own hands and help the process along.

In Julio Cortázar’s “Continuidad de los parques”, the man in his green velvet chair could die a thousand times and still read the same novel, excited to get to the good part only to be stabbed and then start reading all over again. The lovers in the story plotting his death are beside the point. So too is the man reading the novel beside the point. The point is the story, how it spirals and returns to the beginning, never losing form, tightly wound yet forever expansive. I feel the thread of my life unspooling itself like this the longer I spend figuring out life on Earth. A thread tightly wound in form yet unending in its iteration of failure. It’s frightening and humbling. There are no do-overs. Only trying and never succeeding but collecting memories all the same.

How to escape the cycle? Or is accepting this cycle the point?

I have no answers, only attempts and plenty of lessons from hopes dashed and dreams deferred until another trophy of failure is won, leading me to begin again.

At least this Sisyphus is well-moisturized.

Read Time: 7 mins

New to Venus? Welcome.

Dear Newsletter Hottie,

Did you know that moms are people too?! Clutches Pearls — I know. Shocking.

I’ve heard that moms have thoughts, feelings, dreams, and desires, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with their children. The nerve! How dare they!

Many moms had whole lives before becoming parents. Can you believe it?! Who would’ve thought…

You know what else is wild?

There are people who mother without ever having birthed the ones in their care.

Some people give birth but never take on the role of Mother™.

The capacity to give birth does not automatically result in the capacity to parent.

Not having birthed does not disqualify someone from having the wherewithal to protect, nurture, and sustain the wellbeing of children as they progress into adulthood.

🌀TRIPPPYYYY🌀

Maybe motherhood is not a binary experience?

What if there is no script, only individual trial, error, revision, and growth?! 🤯

Could it be that moms are neither exclusively saintly like Mary the mother of Jesus nor exclusively villainous like Jezebel the queen?

Radical.

Moms on Screen

Today we’ve got ten narratives driven by moms on screen. Characters considering questions of motherhood/parenthood; protagonists dealing with experiences shaped in-part by themes of mothering; and moms doing everything on screen except being confined to stereotypes of their cultural positioning.

Listed are eight of my faves (in no particular order except for #1, which is my #1) followed by two movies that I’m waiting to see in general release. Then, there’s your box of chocolates. Enjoy!

1. Volver (2006)

I remember first watching this on a DVD rented from my local library. There’s a lot of tomfoolery happening in the world right now so let’s have a moment of gratitude for the fact that local libraries continue to outlive Blockbuster (RIP except to the one still remaining in Bend, Oregon).

Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, are all an iconic collaborative bunch. If you only watch one movie from this list make it this one.

Between being obsessed with the other TCM — Turner Classic Movies — since middle school, my first job fresh out of high school working as an assistant at a casting company, studying film production in undergrad where my magnum opus (LOL) was a short titled The Dyke Duo Detective Agency, and thinking initially that I wanted to go to film school for an MFA (long story) trust that I’ve seen many movies. Volver remains my #1 favorite drama of all-time. ALL TIME.

2. Two Women (1960)

Speaking of Turner Classic Movies, I watched Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women on TCM when I was too young to be watching anything on there except maybe some old school kiddie musicals. Certainly AN EDUCATION.

In many ways, this movie was the blueprint for aspects of Almodóvar’s Volver. Particularly when reading Penélope Cruz’s performance through the history of what Sofia Loren crafted on screen. Highly recommend watching both back-to-back as an at home double feature. If you binge watch tv then you have the stamina to do movies back-to-back. Upgrade yourself babe.

Revisiting both movies got me thinking: to be socialized as a girl under the assumption that I would one day “become a woman”, is to understand the perpetual threat of patriarchal violence that undergirds the world at every turn. Perhaps for some who enter motherhood, the experience sharpens this understanding because now it’s not just you, now it’s also your heart living a whole other life outside of you. Wherever your heart goes you see the violence illuminated in places once unseen. I imagine that such a perceptual shift changes a person on every level, from the neurobiological to the spiritual.

3. Daughter’s of the Dust (1991)

Lineage. Legacy. Memory as a linchpin of posterity. This movie is poetry in motion. Watch it on a slow weekend while sipping on your favorite warm beverage.

If not for Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust there may not have been Beyonce’s Lemonade (2016) as we know it. The latter visual album is in direct conversation with the film.

Bonus Share! This interview with writer/director Julie Dash is an internet gem. I’ve got a journal somewhere filled with notes on this video. She’s so generous in her detailing. Would love to meet her one day.

4. A Most Violent Year (2014)

JESSICA CHASTAIN. OSCAR ISAAC. Both in fabulous costuming. Both flexing their Juilliard degrees to the max.

Another star is the film’s claustrophobically choreographed cinematography. This movie is a master-class in how movement, lighting, frame, tonality, and juxtaposition all work together to tell a story. You could watch this movie on mute, no subtitles, and still be riveted. That’s actually one of my favorite ways to rewatch certain movies if I want to study them scene by scene. I love a movie where I can pause at any moment and feel like I’m looking at an analog photograph or even a painting. After all, we started calling them movies because there was time when films were actual reels of film — ie: MOVING PICTURES — unspooling at a fast enough rate to create the illusion of frame by frame movement. Literal movie magic. I still remember the click of celluloid projectors at my neighborhood Regal. It’s the reason I have a preference for sitting in the top row at the movies, smack in the middle below the projection window; though it’s all digital projection now, there’s no telltale click at the start/stop of a movie anymore. Sighs.

Anyways, director J.D. Chandor and cinematographer Bradford Young WENT IN. They make you feel the suffocating weight of New York City in 1981 through the screen. Incredible.

5. Juno (2007)

This movie came out almost twenty years ago which is crazy. I had just started high school. I guess this means Juno is now a classic and that makes me…vintage? According to Vogue, yes lmao.

Anyways, #TEAMVANESSA4LYFE! Ifkyk and if not, definitely watch. Trailer chosen for the notable pixelation because hehe vintage.

6. I Like it Like That (1994)

A CRIMNALLY UNDERATED MOVIE.

Writer/Director Darnell Martin deserved better!

The freneticism of the South Bronx is palpable through the screen. There’s colorful set design, engaging camera-cuts, performances that pull at your heart-strings, make you laugh, and roll your eyes all in one sitting.

If chaotic-good was a movie, it would be this one.

7. Saving Face (2004)

While Volver is my #1 fave drama Saving Face is my #1 fave rom-com.

Picture this: you’re a lesbian in the early aughts and a rising doctor dating a ballerina turned contemporary dancer. You’re keeping it all hush-hush cuz family culture until your single mom moves in with you after your grandparents kick her out when they learn she’s been hiding her pregnancy…OMG HUH?! 10/10 must watch.

Stream the whole thing over on archive.org where you can watch movies for free without an account. You’re welcome. :)

8. All About My Mother (1999)

Started with Pedro, must end with Pedro. I can’t make a movie list themed around moms and not include a movie literally titled All About My Mother.

Decided to go with a commentated trailer featuring A.O. Scott instead of a traditional trailer because I like how it unfolds as a mini-video essay. Plus, it made me nostalgic for another era of The New York Times. This current era is not cute.

Fun fact: A.O. Scott’s mom is the influential historian Joan Wallach Scott. The scope of her research is fascinating, encompassing both the francophone world and gender studies. She’s cooler than her kid.

Also, look at this movie poster!

Venus of the Mind is designed for aesthetes.

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On My Personal To Watch List

1. Love Letters (2026)

2. Montreal, My Beauty (2025/26)

All Roads Lead to Beauty

P.S. Your box of chocolates.

If this newsletter left you wanting more movie talk, I’ve got some brain food for you because sharing knowledge is a love language. Here are some tried and true texts I returned to while revisiting the above films and thinking through this newsletter. If you ever reach for one of these titles, or have engaged with them before, lmk! 💖

Art on My Mind: Visual Politics by bell hooks

Feminist Film Theory and Cléo from 5 to 7 by Hilary Neroni

On Photography by Susan Sontag

Women and Film: a Sight and Sound Reader edited by Pam Cook and Philip Dodd

Greetings Gorgeous,

This iteration of Venus of the Mind as a weekly publication is complete. Time for a different patterning of creative output.

I initially started this publication as a way to integrate my love of aesthetic philosophy with my twelve year experience as a licensed esthetician and my humanities training as a PhD dropout (i.e. recovering academic) who still relishes the thrill of research. It has since evolved into a body of work that is adjacent to but also beyond all that. Here, the writing converges on matters earthly, cosmic, and queer.

To honor the newsletter’s evolution I’ve slowed down in order to publish with even greater intentionality and precision of curation. I remain grateful for your readership and value the earned space in your inbox. My hope is that every time you open a newsletter from Venus of the Mind it feels like you’re reading a thoughtfully crafted piece that enriches the landscape of your inner world. When guided by Venus, all roads lead to beauty.

As a reminder, subscriptions are now $5 a month or $30 a year. You receive every in-depth newsletter where all roads lead to beauty.

If you value independent writing that is interdisciplinary in scope and have been considering an upgrade this is the time. Subscribing now means you’ll be unaffected by future increases in subscription pricing.

Subscribe now

Readers can continue to explore here: venusofthemind.com. The newsletter is still hosted via substack but the website is HIGHKEY lovelier to read through than the app. If you have only read this newsletter through email or the app and never logged into the website before, your subscriber email is your login. Paid subscribers enjoy complete access to the newsletter archive and Beauty in the World Podcast.

Our book club! We’re meeting online this Thursday, April 30 at 12pm EST to talk about Easy Beauty: a Memoir by Cholé Cooper Jones. The book was a Pulitzer finalist and with good reason, it’s superbly crafted. All paid subscribers have been emailed directly with invitations and a zoom link. In July we’ll meet to explore Alicia Kennedy’s On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites. Then, in October, we’ll reconvene one more time this year to chat about Fariha Róisín’s Who is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who it Leaves Behind.

In the mood to read something where all roads lead to beauty?

Then stay tuned. The adventure continues.

Con amor y cariño,

Ivana Esther Martínez

P.S. Here’s my favorite essay from this completed iteration. 20 minute read, no paywall. For the frictionmaxxers who value sustained attention even while internet-ing. It’s the perfect read for lesbian visibility week; I love that this week falls within Taurus season, the very zodiac ruled by this newsletter’s planetary namesake. ⚢🌈How apt!

All Roads Lead to Beauty

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Read Time for Show Notes: 4 minutes

Podcast Episode Length: 63 minutes

New to Venus? Welcome.

Dear Listener,

I’m excited to welcome you to the first installment of Beauty in the World, an audio interview series from Venus of the Mind that spotlights culture workers, wellness workers, beauty practitioners, and other conscious creatives across different forms of labor. Each guest is highlighted for their focus on leaving the world better (more beautiful) than they found it.

Our first guest is Carrington Kernodle Epperson, multi-talented owner of Chanterelle Cafe in Central Virginia and writer of The Carrington Collection on Substack.

In this episode we chat mushrooms, metaphysics, motherhood, and more.

Free subscribers have access to a preview of the episode and are welcome to deepen their listening experience by elevating to a $5 monthly or $30 annual subscription.

Some interview highlights exclusive to paid subscribers include:

• The process of moving between private-public life as a dreamer, creative, mother, homemaker, and business owner.

• How to marry the energetics of spiritual knowing with directed effort in the material world.

• How to access a flow state for improved creativity.

• What it’s like to develop spirit-led gifts for the greater good while navigating the challenges those gifts bring.

• Sensing between the spiritual gifts we are given for the benefit of others vs. the gifts we have for ourselves.

• How values aligned parenting can sustain a creative life.

• The liberating power of love through personal transformation postpartum.

Press play and join us for an intimate convo that goes straight into the heart of Venus.

Connect With Carrington

Instagram

Chanterelle Cafe

Substack Newsletter

Time Stamps and Noteworthy Details

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Read Time: 8 mins

New to Venus? Welcome.

Milan on My Mind

Greetings Gorgeous,

I’ve been daydreaming about Milan for months now. Naturally, I made a playlist. With Salone del Mobile coming up the daydreaming has intensified.

These dreams began with three seeds. The first seed was planted in September of last year, when I visited LabSolue in Rome and learned about their Milan location within the Magna Pars Hotel.

A second seed was planted last October when I subscribed to The Stanza while on a finance writing kick — the newsletter’s author is based out of Milan. I love how her adopted city is clearly a muse for how she approaches writing at the intersection of finance, design, fashion, and hospitality.

Then, in the nebulous time-line of scrolling at 1am on some long forgotten winter weeknight, while deep diving into the history of aperitivo I found my way to this enticing read from Italy Segreta, That’s Amaro: Milan’s Bitter History - Thanks to Amari & Bitters, Aperitivo Grew Up in Milan.

Milan, Milano, Milanese.

Don’t know when I’ll go but I’m officially ready for a uniquely curated visit and would love to take you with me. We’ll get into the research below, but first, indulge me for just a moment. How about we grab a drink at Camparino and enjoy the wild view from inside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele? I’ve been told we must do so at least once. That, with of course visits to Il Duomo di Milano (Milan Cathedral), The Last Supper, and Pinacoteca di Brera will be the top five most touristy things we do. Caravvagio’s Cena in Emmaus is housed at the pinacoteca, it simply cannot be missed. I’ll let you know now that while inside the cathedral I may be lowkey sad remembering this scene from Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers.

To make up for the touristy bits and being emo at the Duomo, I’ve included my top fives things to do that one can only know about if you live there or know someone who does.

A Negroni! What a vibe. On brand. Ok, andiamo!

The Vision

When prepping my travel mindset I like to create an approach that allows for getting as close as possible to the veil between tourist and local. While researching for a possible itinerary I kept listening to “Amo Milano.” In the song, Dargen D’Amico asserts with a touch of subversion and play that he loves Milano because mi deprime and nessuno tu saluta. Milan is a notoriously hard city to crack, even for those who are “from from” there. Nonetheless, striving for that edge of “catching the vibe of life here yet obviously not from here” within a short amount of time is part of what makes travel worthwhile.

Thanks to the Travel Noire archives of Milan-based writer Faith Katunga I’ve learned of the city’s vibrant Black-diasporic influence and have made note to explore that little acknowledged (yet impactful!) side of the city. In the same vein of exploring Milan beyond what is advertised, I loved spending time in the weeds of Milan’s international food scene thanks to the ladies over at Not Eating Italian in Italy. Great quote from their about page (emphasis mine), “This newsletter is for everyone: locals, transplants, and travelers, who know there is much more to Italy than delicious pasta and pizza.” Exactly!

Three books informed my travel research for this dream trip.

1. Al Dente: A History of Italian Food. Because why not study the sociocultural histories of a nation’s mythologies and realities around food? There’s eight entries in this text that are Milan related.

2. Lonely Planet’s LGBTQ+ Travel Guide: Interviews, Itineraries, & Inspiration from Insiders in 50 Proud Places Around the Globe. So many fun recommendations! Loved reading about the fascinating blend of North African immigrant history and Queer community history in Milan’s now popular Porta Venezia district. Fun fact not related to Italy: Richmond, VA is listed in this book and I can attest to it being a fruit forward city.

3. Italian Festival Food: Recipes and Traditions from Italy’s Regional Country Food Fairs. Lombardy doesn’t have a dedicated section in this book. Which is odd? But Piedmont and Trentino-Alto Adige both have dedicated sections. With Lombardy located between the two there’s been an ongoing culinary conversation across the three regions for ages now, so definitely worth reading. Helpful for planning a trip that features leaving Milan to go experience a sagra (local food festival) or two, or three, or all of them. Is sagra/sagre hopping a thing?

   1. This book is out of print but can be found via sites like Abe Books linked above. I have no idea where my copy came from, it’s just always been with me.

An additional title of interest but I haven’t gotten my hands on yet is, I Navigli del Milanese: La storia, i documenti, le testimonianze letterarie e le immagini più suggestive.

How to Pick a Home Base Hotel

Visiting a major city for leisure and discovery means that I’m planning around three things. 1) The Hotel. Does its story speak to me and is it owned by city locals? 2) How far can I get away from crowds without losing ease of access via walkability, public transport, or can a driver get to me easily? 3) Where do the everyday residents in a historic neighborhood of interest like to go and is my hotel of choice well positioned in relation to those places?

Notice the triangulation of focus. Point one leads up to point two which leads down over to point three and this third point is once again in conversation with point one.

Through this triangulation of focus I’ve dreamed up a plan that centers around our home base hotel being within crazy close walking proximity to the Navigli canal district. This district has DaVinci’s touch all over it - a central focus of his work while contributing to planning out Milan was attention to the city’s canal system. Crucial for transporting the marble used to build-out parts of Il Duomo di Milano over centuries. Today it’s known for specialty markets, the local artist and artisan scene, nightlife, and swanky canal views.

It’s important to be situated so one can walk around and watch how residents move in their city’s environment. This is easier to do on streets and in places that tourists have never heard of. I have no desire to end up sandwiched between Jack and Jill in some long line a few blocks down from Il Duomo for what an influencer called “the best risotto in Milan.” Please. Obviously the best risotto in Milan is made at the apartment of the new friend(s) we’re about to meet during our wanderings near and far from the ideal home base hotel.

To find this home base hotel I went into the archives of my favorite travel writers here on Substack, Condé Nast Traveler, and the Financial Times. I then cross-referenced with a few Italian language guides because I was curious to know what boutique hotels were on the radars of in-country travelers.

Check-in is officially at this beauty…

Read more

The Collective Tarot for April 2026

Notes on Reawakening: Weaving Desire into Reality

Read Time, 8 Minutes

BOOKISH BEAUTIES

Towards the end of April, our online book club for paid subscribers will gather to explore Chloé Cooper Jones’ Easy Beauty. Don’t forget to grab your copy. Specific date/time is forthcoming. Be on the lookout for an email with meeting details.

Dear Aesthete,

April is here; all of time bows to her at the threshold of spring and everything else.

I wanted to speak at length about
the happiness of my body and the
delight of my mind for it was
April, a night, a
full moon and-

but something in myself or maybe
from somewhere other said: not too
many words, please, in the
muddy shallows the

frogs are singing.

“April” by Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

Mary understood the mood. It’s APRIL. Not much to say when there is a whole lot more to feel. Speaking of Mary Oliver, have you seen this trailer yet?

Hearing Lucy Dacus and Helena Bonhman Carter read Mary Oliver is the medicine I never knew I needed. Shoutout to PBS. This one’s gonna be GEWD.

April is for Unfurling the Body

My three favorite words: farfalla, desahogarse, and proprioception.

Farfalla means butterfly in Italian. Going on four years of studying the language on/off, it’s my newest favorite word in the big picture of life so far; it’s been so since late 2023, I think it’s here to stay. For a moment I thought abbiocco would dethrone farfalla but no.

In Spanish, desahogarse/me has been my fave reflexive verb of choice since childhood. That word feels like it’s always been with me. Long before I knew what a reflexive verb was. Translated literally, it means to un-drown oneself. Call a friend not because you need to vent (what a blegh term, makes me want to keep everything bottled up) but because you need to un-drown yourself. Journal not to let it all out but to come back to shore, to breathe again.

In English, proprioception is a fun term. I learned it from a pole dance teacher! Simply put, it’s the body’s ability to sense itself in space. Your first person sense of your meat-suit moving through present time and space. It’s one of our many senses as humans. Did you know we have way more than five?!

I love how these words sound as I say them aloud and the way it feels to engage all my vocal muscles in making them happen. As I’ve just begun to build a personal reading curriculum around the somatic nervous system, words like butterfly, undrowning, and sensing my body in space have been top of mind. There’s something thematic running through all three words, though I can’t yet fully verbalize it. Something about transformation, breathe, a lightness of being, the body as a structure that intakes sensory data (ie. memory)…tbd.

For years, important teachers in my personal life from the spheres of pilates, yoga, pole dance, therapy, tarot, lunar living, and in my professional life of studying integrative esthetics, lymphatic drainage, manual sculpting, fascial release — they have all referenced the soma at one point or another. It’s taken me long enough but I’m finally turning my attention to somatics in earnest. Until recently I’ve been content to let the term remain abstract in theory but now I’d like to integrate a deeper understanding of my own somatic nervous system into day-to-day living and observe how that applied knowledge reveals itself to be relevant in other experiences down the road.

Starting with cursory/novice reading I came across a delightful interview: 15 Minutes with Nicolette De Saint-Amour on Gravity, Freudian Shortcomings and Somatic Practices. The article itself is less than a ten minute read. Highly recommend for anyone curious to start developing an embodied understanding of somatic movement in their own life.

De Saint-Amour is a lecturer of somatics at San Diego State University’s department of music and dance. She has been one of my favorite somatic practitioners to learn from casually/parasocially via her instagram shares. The linked interview is between her and Project Pilates founder Maëlle Thomas-Traoré. Two quotes from the above interview stood out — emphasis my own:

We’re always relating to gravity and what good posture is has become more clear to me. I think for many people, the idea of good posture is to maintain some kind of rigid form, but in essence, it's learning to be dynamic. I think this has really come through in terms of my sense of self awareness, my habits of use and also how I can also access a greater kind of quality of strength. That’s how I'm able to use myself in a way that feels more meaningful.

I would say Body and Mature Behavior, which was one of Feldenkrais' earliest texts. It's a letter to Sigmund Freud, saying, in a way, that his thoughts were a bit short. He only looked at the mind of a person, but he didn't consider the body. In order to change a person, you have to consider both.

I was intrigued and excited to read this because it all connects to our collective card for April which I channeled for us back around the new moon in Pisces. Way before happening upon this interview!

Let’s dig in.

April Showers Bring…

What is healing you this month from the scars of winter and the shock of early spring? Or better said — what will you allow to heal you? What will you allow to enliven you? Can your guard come down and a fresh start unfold? These are the inquiries our collective card is making. Lean in so you can hear better.

Read more

Dispatch, March 2026

How to Craft an Esthetics Career Minus the Burnout

Read Time: 5 mins

Good News

This publication now has a fresh domain!

venusofthemind.com

She’s an official place in the online space.

If you happen to notice any broken links while exploring the archives please let me know, I’ll update accordingly: ivanainthestudio@gmail.com

GLOBAL BEAUTY DIRECTORY UPDATE

Dr. Dana Leigh Lyons, DTCM is now offering remote diet and lifestyle consultations grounded in Yang Sheng Fa (the TCM art of nourishing life). She has been a licensed Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 2012. Her work helps people reconnect with simple whole foods and sustainable habits rooted in Chinese Medicine and ancestral eating—supporting shifts that help you crave what truly nourishes you.

She also has an amazing journey that took her from the U.S. to Canada, and now to Mae Rim, Thailand!

Head on over to the global beauty directory for her contact information located under Nutritional & Lifestyle Guidance. You’ll also find a special perk available to Venus of the Mind paid subscribers.

BOOKISH BEAUTIES

Towards the end of April, our online book club for paid subscribers will gather to explore Chloé Cooper Jones’ book Easy Beauty. Don’t forget to grab your copy. Specific date/time is forthcoming.

GRATITUDE

Thank you for the comments and direct messages regarding last Sunday’s monthly missive. It was my favorite newsletter to write so far and felt very aligned for Spring Equinox.

Tangentially, last Tuesday I reread “In the Paint” by Sasha Bonét. Writing for the Dec’25/Jan’26 print issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Bonet observes that “Painting provides us with a sense of belonging: a reminder that everything that makes us feel like islands in our suffering has been felt by another. That we are in fact more alike than we are different.” Yes.

So, You Want to be a Facialist?

Greetings Gorgeous,

For today’s dispatch, I am sharing advice as it relates to embodying Emperor energy within the esthetic trade, a vocation that requires grounded self-direction and initiative with vision. While born out of my particular experiences working at the intersection of beauty and wellness, such an approach also has broad application in other spaces beyond esthetics and bodywork

I am often asked how I do what I do and am also asked for advice on how to generate professional longevity in an industry with a high-turnover rate due in-part to burnout from the high-touch nature of this work. Here’s a fascinating review from Science Direct about burnout in the beauty industry on the trade-worker end.

Now that I’m locked-into full-time focus with my esthetic practice while studying for a new professional credential, and writing this paid newsletter for weekly publication — I’ve gotten questions around how I manage between these three jobs. I manage by studying (and trying to embody) the archetype of The Emperor.

We are currently moving through Aries season, the cardinal fire sign that kickstarts a new zodiacal year. In tarot, the Emperor archetype is linked to Aires. Numbered as the fourth leading personality within tarot’s major arcana, I associate this figure with channeled inner fire, precision of service, and self-possession.

Instead of binary thinking around “soft” skills v. “hard” skills — which often carry gendered expectations — I like to think about workplace skills as belonging to four categtegories: technical, tangible, intangible, and integrative. Channelled inner fire (think hearth or your spirit’s inner light), precision of service, and self-possession are all integrative skills. While they can’t be listed on a resume and often come from lived experience beyond professional history, these skills are paramount to success in creating a positive client experience while inside the facial treatment.

What do these integrative skills look like in practice? More on that below.

If you’re enjoying Venus of the Mind, make sure to tap the heart after reading through.

Leaving a heart supports discoverability and allows fellow lovers of beauty and culture to join our magical corner of the internet.

How to Show Up: The Foundational Energetics of Esthetic Work

Trade School ✅

Apprenticeship Hours ✅

State Board Exams ✅

Licensed ✅

Hired & Onboarded ✅

Alone in the treatment room…now what?

Before checking-in with your first client, remember that you are a skincare specialist who is there to serve — not toil. There is a difference. Work in the spirit of service is enacted with skilled agency, discernment, and positive self-regard. Work in the spirit of toil is done aimlessly, with porous boundaries, and low self-regard.

I mean serve as in what Merriam-Webster defines as: to be worthy of reliance or trust; to furnish or supply with something needed or desired; to answer the needs of; to contribute or conduce; to provide services that benefit or help.

I also mean serve as in, serving face and moving with grace. If your skin isn’t giving “they know what they’re doing” who will take your recommendations? If your hands aren’t giving “safe and considerate” who will let you touch their face again? Whether you’re clocked-in at the treatment room or clocked-out for drinks with your esthie bestie, life is a ballroom and we are all here to SERVE.

Speaking of life, outside of this trade you need to cultivate an existence that you are proud of. Pride in who you are beyond the treatment room is the key to being rooted and confident inside the treatment room.

If you care for yourself, this job will reward you.

If you forget yourself, this job will deplete you.

Move accordingly.

Related Reading

Got questions for the second dispatch out in May?

Email: ivanainthestudio@gmail.com

See ya next Sunday Newsletter Hotties! Our collective tarot card for April is up next.

Thank you for being here. I love writing to you.

Stay hydrated, be present, and glow like only you can do.

Share

Missive: Every Client is a Muse

Loving Faces and Seeing God

Read Time: 6 Mins

And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

_Reverend Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

The Painter

Once upon a time I had a crush on a painter. She taught me how to see faces, beginning with my own. Regrettably, I’ve yet to figure out how to translate what I see via pencil onto paper; I’m certainly nowhere near brush to canvas yet. If I hadn’t met her, this painter with a penchant for oil and gouache, I may have never returned to the trade of esthetics. After all, I thought I’d left the industry for good back in 2018.

She introduced me to John Berger’s writing and we both encountered Sally Mann’s photography together. Between shared turns developing in the darkroom she would talk me through her perceptions of light and shadow. I would talk her through my perceptions of written versus spoken syntax. I like to think that just as she taught me to see better, maybe I taught her to hear better. She lived in lines, shapes, and colors. I lived in sound, language, and history. Time shared with her was like weaving two worlds together and telling a newer better story.

It snuck up on me, the fact that I loved her. Much like Adam in Eden, when I’d realized what I’d done — accidentally fallen in love with her — I was afraid. But later, perhaps like Lilith in Eden, I became curious. If loving her felt like birthing a brand new Earth (sometimes painful, always perfect) what would it feel like to reflect that love back onto myself? What could my life be like if I learned to see myself as I saw her? If looking at her felt like seeing God, was a piece of the Divine reflected in me too?

Saint Peter

Doménikos Theotokópoulos painted The Repentant Saint Peter over four centuries ago. Duncan Phillips acquired the work in 1922. It took my breath away in 2026.

On January 4 of this year, I went to The Phillips Collection intent on seeing something else entirely when there was Saint Peter, waiting in the main lobby. El Greco iterated several paintings of this moment in Saint Peter’s arc so that while I’ve always admired printed reproductions, I’d never clocked that there was this version just a car-ride away from me in D.C. The way that I stayed with that painting for what felt like hours but never enough. It must’ve looked like I was planning a heist. I shed some tears from the surprise.

In person it’s mesmerizing the way light falls all around Peter but also seems to be coming through him. El Greco summons a feature of light and a sentiment of anguish, suffusing the two throughout Peter’s skin and clothes. Gaze long enough and you can hear the clasp of Peter’s keys as he shuffles around in prayer, pleading, promising. Never again will he deny his friend who is also his God. His body is strained. The tension in his neck exaggerated by the telltale elongated Greco-stylized proportions that are characteristic of the artist.

Draped in a golden yellow plus a vibrant blue — a notoriously difficult pigment to acquire at the time — reminiscent of the blue often reserved for the Virgin Mary, El Greco has wrapped Peter in colors that narrate his bold cowardice and his future redemption/ascension. God is out of frame yet heard loud and clear because the light speaks of eternity. Notice how it mainly pours down from the top left but also seems to flicker across all four corners of the painting, flashing through swaths of darkness. Holiness bursts out of the shadows, evoking an eerie solemnity. Heaven can only exist if hell too is a place. Here is Peter longing for one while remembering the other.

That chilly January day in D.C. I looked at Peter and I saw myself. Remembering all the parts of me I’d denied because it felt safer in the moment, only to later feel like I couldn’t breathe. Grateful that I no longer lived like that, elated to be free.

God is Everywhere

Alice Walker references Van Gogh in her essay, “Saving the Life that is Your Own: The Importance of Models in an Artist’s Life.” She opens her piece noting how the painter once lamented in a letter while interned away that he was languishing due to a shortage of models.

People need people. Figurative artists understand this. What good is a refined studio practice and a distinct painterly vision without a living model to map memory from? I believe it’s the same for facialists. All the knowledge of anatomy and physiology; an understanding of ingredient chemistry; advanced techniques of tissue manipulation. What good is any of that without a face to care for? Both professions demand a devotion to attention before arriving at the desired result. One summons light to canvas. The other summons light to skin.

In doing bodywork, my labor is at the intersection of science, beauty, and soul. Perhaps it was inevitable for me to embody the profession this way. The naturalist in me, melded into the aesthete, folded into the pastor’s kid.

Life is both long and short, enduring and ephemeral. I do not know how long I will continue to labor in the treatment room. There are so many more worlds of creativity to explore beyond esthetics. It’s the eternal challenge of an active mind. I’ve only just started my own business but I’m already thinking about its next iteration.

For now, I stay. Because between the glimmers and shadows that make each person unique, every client brings a piece of God with them.

Every client is a muse.

Beauty. Culture. Magic.

Welcome

Read Time: 3 mins

Dear Aesthete,

What a time to be alive.

We’re living in some wild plotline where a massive technocratic push towards generative ai is part of a larger global pattern that devalues human labor. All while simultaneously seeking to extract as much as possible from humans. Extraction of our time, our attention, our energy, our communities, our natural resources, our bodies, and our spirit.

My approach to labor is rooted in what Silvia Federici termed as “re-enchanting the world.” This newsletter is an expression of that approach; my creative response to Silvia’s call and to similar directives from other intellectual foremothers.

I initially started this publication as a way to integrate my love of aesthetic philosophy with my years of experience as a licensed esthetician and my humanities training as a PhD dropout (i.e. recovering academic) who still relishes the thrill of research. It has since evolved into a body of work that is adjacent to but also beyond all that. Here, the writing converges on matters earthly, cosmic, and queer.

My hope is that every time you open an entry from Venus of the Mind it feels like you’re reading a thoughtfully crafted piece that enriches the landscape of your inner world. When guided by Venus, all roads lead to beauty.

New to Venus?

Start With These Crowd Favorites

💖

This blog is devoted to beauty in the world.

Subscribe now

Free subscribers receive public work with limited access to deeper writing and the archive. For $7.50 a month or $45.00 a year ($3.75 a month) a paid subscription unlocks the totality of Venus while supporting this independent publication.

Venus of the Mind-Core

Earthly. Cosmic. Queer.

Top left. My view (unedited!) walking up to la Chiesa di San Pietro in Porto Venere, Italy. This church was built atop a pagan temple believed to have once belonged to the cult of Venus (Venere). It’s one of my favorite places on Earth. The energy inside this church/temple is unmatched.

Bottom left. My view of a September 2025 exhibit at Chiostro del Bramante in Rome. The color palette is everything and I’m forever stoked that I caught the breeze flowing through the curtain. Classic quotidian magic on display. Again, unedited!

Special appearance. My spiritual totem, the pomegranate.

Top center. Audre Lorde being iconic.

Top right. Internet meme giving strong Hermit from the tarot vibes — or, how it feels to ideate, research, write, and edit this newsletter.

Bottom right. The Black Iris (1926) by Georgia O’Keefe. My beloved stationary set (purchased ages ago from the Phillips Collection gift shop) includes several cards with this print. For the above collage, I didn’t like any of the options coming up online so I just snapped a picture of one stationary print with the right lighting to get the crispness I wanted, then zoomed in just a tad for added detailing.

Center. Sailor Moon doing her thing — or, how it feels to hit publish and send to you.

Note that the gorgeous pomegranate and fig designs at the beginning and end of this newsletter — digital bookends — were commission by me and designed by Idris Agüero.

Thank you for being here. Keep glowing like only you can do.

The Skincare Primer, March 2026

Read Time: 5 mins

Give Glycerin Her Flowers

As a licensed esthetician who specializes in facials (ie: a facialist) I often wonder who was the marketing team that put hyaluronic acid on the map. Only a room of geniuses could take a mid ingredient and make it a mainstream darling that everyone recognizes in everyday skincare speak. How’d they do that?! Can they do the same for the more deserving formulation workhorse that is GLYCERIN?

✨💎GLYCERIN💎✨ — an industry OG and unsung hero. When it comes to long lasting humectation, while everyone is scanning for hyaluronic acid in their moisturizing selections what they should be scanning for is glycerin within the top five featured ingredients. This humectant has a lower molecular weight which means it gets deeper into the skin. Where hyaluronic acid has a moderate efficacy in barrier support, glycerin has a stronger efficacy at fortifying the skins’s the barrier with continued use over time.

She’s an efficacious baddie! Glycerin will protect, soothe, moisturize, enhance, and restore. Homegirl will not evaporate in the blink of an eye — unlike hyaluronic acid which attracts water but cannot lock it in. In other words, hyaluronic acid will ghost you, glycerin will hold you down.

Of course, it’s important to not get caught up in the singular ingredient mindset. When looking for products featuring a particular power-player, it’s helpful to understand the ingredient’s relationship to other factors within a product formulation and how that relationship is relevant or not to your particular skincare needs.

Below, for anyone who has skin, I’ve included entry level reads, audio, and video resources from some of my favorite skincare professionals. All to deepen your understanding of glycerin and allow you to have a more informed shopping experience aligned with your skin’s actual needs instead of going with trendy product recommendations.

If you’re enjoying Venus of the Mind, make sure to tap the heart after reading through.

Leaving a heart supports discoverability and allows fellow lovers of beauty and culture to join our magical little corner of the internet.

Accessible Resources to Inform Your Skincare Shopping

Watch

Watch Time: 17 Minutes

Featuring Who: Dr. Shereen Idriss, MD — Board-Certified Dermatologist, Medical Director and Founder of Idriss Dermatology in New York City.

Expert Level Needed to Follow: ZERO.

Choice Quote: “Glycerin is an humectant, a water loving whore.”

Read

Glycerin in Skin Care: What It is & is It Safe

Read Time: Less than five minutes.

Written By: Bryan Barron, Director of Global Research and Clinical Development at Paula’s Choice. Reviewed by Dr. Debra Jaliman, MD — Board-Certified Dermatologist. Within the write-up there are additional citations for deeper learning.

Expert Level Needed to Follow: Half a brain out of five brains.

Choice Quote: “Glycerin is a skin-replenishing and skin-restoring ingredient, meaning it is a substance found naturally in skin, helping to establish normal balance and hydration. It’s one of the many substances in skin that helps maintain a healthy look and feel, defending against dryness and working to maintain skin’s moisture level. Essentially, glycerin is a master at hydration, and works best when combined with other replenishing and emollient ingredients.”

Note: I’m not endorsing their products and in fact have never recommended a Paula’s Choice product to any clients. I just happen to find value in their open access ingredient dictionary.

Listen

Esthetician on the Edge: The Middle Child of Ingredients (Apple Podcasts. Spotify.)

This one is my personal fave of the all the shared resources. Such a great listen that elucidates the connection between glycerin and how our skin functions. Fun fact for the beauties in the weeds, Esthetician on the Edge runs a fun meme account, produces fabulous educational content, and she has a delightful southern (from the U.S.) accent. All that, but she’s anonymous in these internet streets! Iconic.

Listen Time: 23 minutes.

Expert Level Needed to Follow: One brain out of five brains plus curiosity. 🧠🤓

Choice Quote: “I heard a quote the other day, and I think it’s applicable to this and life — We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.”

Spring Equinox is next weekend and with it arrives the monthly missive next Sunday morning at 8am EST! Until then newsletter hotties, thank you so much for being here.💖

Inside the Culture List for March 2026 (Read Time: 6 mins)

- A Note of Gratitude

- Newsletter Recommendations to Celebrate One Year on Substack

A Note of Gratitude

Greetings Venusian Lovelies!

The Earth is counting down to March Equinox. Can you all feel it?

March 21 will bring spring to the Northern Hemisphere and autumn to the Southern Hemisphere. During March equinox nature lives through equal parts daylight and darkness as the Sun appears to sit directly above the equator and the cardinal sign of Aries ushers in spring.

Personally, this coming equinox is particularly special because Venus of the Mind will turn one! Spring Equinox of last year I wrote the following first newsletter:

On this Spring Equinox I have remembered myself once more. There is value in choosing to do labor that centers the wellbeing of others. Especially now, when just across the Potomac hatred is wielded as a blunt tool of statecraft. It is a gift of the Spirit to engage in labor that celebrates each individual’s light. Especially now, when just across the Potomac ignorance and conformity are valued over enlightenment and plurality. I clock in and I get to watch face after face bloom.

From, “On Beauty & Being Here.”

One year later (and three years total since returning to the beauty industry) I am happy to report I not only feel the same as written in the above quote but am now even more dedicated to my work than before. Given that I believe our bodies house our souls, for me working in esthetics is more than working with skincare and skin health. All of that is at the surface of what estheticians do. The deeper energetics of working in esthetics is that in caring for someone’s body one is also caring for a vessel housing that which comes from God. Beyond the bare minimum of holding a master esthetician license, I feel a responsibility to keep learning, keep growing, and keep refining my technique as an expression of reverence for the holy creation that I get to work with. Lofty? Yes. Does every esthetician feel the same? Definitely not. While I know other facialists who share similar sentiments I know many more who don’t and that’s fine. Plus, I have never met a waxer, laser tech, or brow specialist that feels the same. In fact, they most definitely are better off having a level of determined irreverence in order to efficiently rip out or burn hair off while managing to make the experience sort of enjoyable LMAO. Does any of this have to be that deep? Nope. But I like depth, it’s how I choose to give my life meaning, so that’s how I approach my work.

Writing here since last spring and steadily growing this newsletter has given me the confidence to step even deeper into an ethos that prioritizes intimacy of experience, client centered service, and quality of care with integrity.

I am so grateful to every reader who has opened an email, read through the various newsletters, hearted, commented, and also messaged me 1:1 with feedback regarding this newsletter’s evolution. I love knowing how something lands for readers and it’s always heartening to know one isn’t just writing into the void!

In particular, and most importantly, paid subscribers are the reason I have been able to continue building out this newsletter as an expression of my creative practice.

THANK YOU to paid subscribers for supporting an ethos of care and creativity that values beauty with soul.

12 Newsletter Recommendations to Celebrate 12 Months on Substack

Tengo ganas de comerme el mundo entero is a sentence regularly riddled throughout my journal entries from middle school into present day. “Comerse el mundo” is an idiomatic expression in Spanish, translated literally it means “eat the world.” Interpreted for essence, this expression denotes a desire to take it all in — the idiom suggests an ambition that demands no crumbs be left in the feast that is life. It is a phrase that encapsulates Patti Smith’s energy in the following one minute clip from a 1976 interview while touring the album Radio Ethiopia.

I also love how Calle 13 embodies the energy of this idiom when Residente and iLe sing, “cocíname las ganas que mis sueños tienen hambre.” Loose translation: cook me up the drive/will, my dreams are hungry.

One of my favorite things about being on Substack this past year has been reading works by individuals who write with a voraciousness for their respective worlds. Through their writing one can tell that the calling within them to live vibrantly is a strong one and I love that about their work. To celebrate year one of writing Venus of the Mind below is a list of 12 newsletters from six publications that have brought me pleasure as a reader, inspiration as a writer, and have informed my own evolving approach to life as I continue to comerme el mundo a mi manera.

Publications are listed alphabetically. Beyond the six listed there are many more I subscribe to and thoroughly enjoy. However for the sake of reading time I focused on six writers that I keep coming back to. Some of their works I have printed out and annotated for continued reference because re-reading is fun! It’s like going back for seconds except you never get tired and the food tastes better each time. Re-reading the good stuff is one way of arriving at an eighth heaven à la Patti Smith.

1. Afri-Tectural Digest by Kemide Lawson

Two Favorites from the Archives

• The Architecture of Black Girl Magic: How I created a family home, Cottage Noir, inspired by my two daughters. Read.

• What Makes A Black Home?: The answer is more complex, and more powerful, than it first appears. Read.

2. From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

This newsletter is now hosted on Beehiiv and keeps being a top-tier publication.

Two Favorites from the Archives

• On Ambition: An admission; or, all the lies I’ve told myself. Read.

• On Seasons: Experiencing the disappearance of time. Read.

3. Local Style by Gabriela R. Proietti

Two Favorites from the Archives

• The Naples Guide Even the Neapolitans Would Follow: Eating, caffeinating, and swimming the Neapolitan way. Read.

• Has the ‘Made in Italy’ Fashion Label Lost Its Heritage and Prestige?: The evolution of Made in Italy, from heritage to exploitation. Plus, the artisans and designers who keep the spirit alive. Read.

4. Perfect Hunger by Dr. Dana Leigh Lyons, DTCM

DTCM means Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Two Favorites from the Archives

• The 10-year test, revisited: A post-it from five years ago fell out of my journal. Read.

• What if constraints are what free us?: A case for discipline sourced from devotion. Read.

5. So there’s this place… by Monica Mendal

Two Favorites from the Archives

• Travel Better: My Thoughts on Solo Travel...and why you’ll *probably* love it. Read.

• Travel Better: The Importance of Surrendering. How a trip to Puglia taught me to let go in my first year as a travel writer. Read.

6. The Stanza by Nadine Choe

Two Favorites from the Archives

• The tension between scale and discretion. Read.

• Playfulness is an important quality of a life well lived. Read.

Here’s to another year of newslettering!

Thank you for reading Venus of the Mind. I love writing to you.💖

Inside the Collective Reading for March 2026

- A Dance With Time

- Our Collective Card to Usher in Spring

A Dance With Time

Dear Aesthete,

My Walter Mercado gown is on so let’s dive right in.

What a year it has been — and the first quarter of the Gregorian cycle isn’t even over. This is where the collective card for March finds us, taking stock and sobering up. Yes, we have a ways to go but there is already plenty worth celebrating because we are still alive and taking it all in.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, sensing spring can feel a bit like dancing in a roulette of uncertainty. Thanks to the climate crisis, every year the dance is a little off. The paces are not as predictable, transitions are no longer clearly delineated, the tempo keeps switching up and the flow of winter into spring is never exactly how it used to be. Still, the cold eventually dissipates. The light of the Sun lingers longer. Calls for snow turn to calls for rain. Trees offer up glimpses of their blooms. Meanwhile, we keep up and dance; finding our collective rhythm once again.

Our Collective Card to Usher in Spring

Read more

Inside the Monthly Missive for February 2026

- A Question of Care and Justice

- Beauty as Possibility

- Up Next

A Question of Care and Justice

It feels cliche to quote MLK in February or any time of the year at this point. Enemy of the state while alive to a paragon of respectability politics while dead. Such revisionism requires a cultural flattening that has reduced his radicalism into the specter of a forever “dream.” Yet here I am, writing about Arabelle Sicardi’s The House of Beauty while Dr. King’s final book echos in my mind.

The stability of the large world house which is ours will involve a revolution of values to accompany the scientific and freedom revolutions engulfing the earth. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing” - oriented society to a “person” - oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy.

_Martin Luther King Jr. Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?

In our house, the socio-political impact of beauty as industry is often obfuscated. Cross-culturally, contemporary aesthetic practices are largely gendered which renders interest in anything cosmetic as unserious, frivolous, unworthy of intellectual attention. In The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry, Sicardi pierces the veil and untangles the obfuscating illusion. Crafted with deep love for beauty’s potential to heal, yet clear-eyed about its equal capacity to harm, Sicardi’s reporting shows how the ways we choose to care for our bodies and express ourselves in the world, all exist within complex lineages of industrial extraction, market competition, geopolitical power grabs, and intersectional resilience. At the heart of this book is the very question posed by Dr. King in 1967 — our shared home is the world house and our home is on fire; how did we get here, where do we go now, chaos orchestrated by the few or community created by the many?

We’re in a network of connectivity with each other and the planet we live on. The brands we use and the ways they conduct business ought to reflect the fact that we all make each other possible. And the fact that we make each other possible means that we can help change each other too.

Beauty standards across regions have long been intertwined with colonial powers, and it’s those very colonial powers that protect the profits and interests of corporate institutions rather than the land we live on.

_Arabelle Sicardi The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry

Beauty as Possibility

Zoom out.

The United States is celebrating 250 years on stolen land.

Presently, ICE concentration camps litter the country; a new one was just proposed right here in Virginia. Federally sanctioned killers and kidnappers continue terrorizing in Minnesota. American Imperialism is now in Venezuela and a certain Estée Lauder heir is frothing at the mouth with anticipation for Greenland to be overtaken soon. There is never any public funding for healthcare, education, or art but there is always public funding for violence. Last year’s “big beautiful bill” increased national spending on military contracts. There was no contention over defense spending but plenty of arguing over SNAP benefits. Let the children starve while we focus on readiness for the wars we instigate abroad and the terror we generate at home. If the ways in which we apportion money denotes our collective values, then death as industry is America’s #1 priority.

Through longstanding arms deals with Israel, American taxpayer dollars funded genocide in Palestine. This current administration forsakes Ukraine and ignores Sudan but has decided to play empty “peace” games in Iran. In this timeline, capital moves freely across borders while human bodies are legislated into criminality despite freedom of movement being central to our species since time immemorial. Billionaires are welfare queens with endless tax breaks in any country of their choosing along with free access to our collective energy grids while we foot the bill in our income taxes and utility payments. The Covid-19 pandemic is not over but wearing a mask is considered excessive and vaccinations are discouraged. It is not a stretch to say we are at the end of a world. Slouching towards Bethlehem yet again.

Zoom in.

Breakfast: café con leche y una tostada. Wash the body. Brush, floss, and rinse the teeth. Shampoo, condition, comb and style the hair. Moisturize the skin. Pick a perfume. Put on an outfit where every piece is well-loved, thrifted, or inherited because true style is born from sustainability. Answer the emails, submit the projects, attend the meetings, schedule the appointments. Run the errands. Enjoy lunch at a spot where the locally sourced food always hits and the owners are still donating to aid for Palestinian refugees. Continue shunning every single beauty brand implicated in the Epstein files, it’s quite easy to do so. Re-up on Dieux skincare and Tanaïs fragrance during the window in which both brands are donating a portion of sales to organized aid plus legal council in Minnesota. Walk the dog. Marvel at the moon.

It’s evening, homemaker mode activated. Text the homies who are on the way back safely from a day of direct action, let them know that dinner is ready. Welcome everyone in to eat well. Barriga llena y corazón contento. Stay up late together, laughing into the night. Live while others die. Say I love you while others never get to say it again.

Zooming out and in, I remember the Prophet Isaiah’s vision, received as he witnessed the end of his own world (emphasis my own).

I will bring them to My secret mount and let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices shall be welcome on My altar; for My House shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

_ Isaiah 56.7 (Nevi’im) JPS Tanakh Translation

Humans are frightful, always have been. Inconsiderate, greedy, bellicose, cruel.

Humans are glorious always have been. Thoughtful, generous, compassionate, kind.

These qualities cannot be spritzed onto a wrist or massaged into a face. Aesthetic injectors do not stock them. Cosmetic chemists have yet to find the formula. They are qualities both inherited and chosen, innate and cultivated. We can learn to be cruel and yet choose to be kind. In that paradox of free will, somewhere between reaching for glory while facing our horrors, that’s the space where beauty is found.

The House of Beauty invites readers to wade into that space. Through their crystalline writing Arabelle Sicardi holds up a mirror; they ask if we’re brave enough to look and then remind us that collectively, we can rebuild the world in any image we choose.

Up Next

The House of Beauty was our beauty book club read for January 2026. We were lucky to be joined by Arabelle during our meeting. Their generosity of thought throughout our conversation was delightful and enlivening.

In April, our Venus of the Mind book club for paid subscribers will gather online to explore Cholé Cooper Jone’s Easy Beauty. Per the publisher, this Pulitzer nominated memoir “weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability.” We’re in for another richly layered conversation. Don’t miss out!

Upgrade your subscription below during the Valentine’s sale through February 28. Then, opt-out of the Bezo-verse by ordering Easy Beauty from bookshop.org where you can select a local bookstore to receive some of the revenue from your purchase. Alternatively, request a copy from your local library. A third space created by public funds dedicated to shared knowledge and the preservation of literacy?! Run don’t walk! Use it or lose it! If they don’t yet have Easy Beauty many libraries have an online portal where you can request new additions to their catalogs. Talk to your librarians and find out.💖

Read Easy Beauty

Dear Aesthete, thank you for being here.

Remember, stay hydrated, be present, and glow like only you can do.✨

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Inside the Product Primer for February 2026

- Good News

- Aloe Vera 101

- A Product Review: Aloe Hyaluronic Moisture Boost by Monastery

- Will Aloe be Your Valentine?

GOOD NEWS

The beauty directory for paid subscribers is now live!

It features where to go for acupuncture (and adjacent TCM modalities), baths, facials, fragrance, full-body treatments, hair (cuts for all textures, color, silk presses, extensions etc.) injectables, mani-pedis, massage, and specialty boutique shopping. All vetted by a licensed and working beauty professional.

This is a living list, new locations are added as they’re experienced, provided that the experience was top tier. At the moment, starting out with the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area, there’s locations as far east as Italy and then out further to Pakistan. As west as Montana and then southwest to Texas. As north as Massachusetts, then down to North Carolina, and as south as Puerto Rico.

Happy Relaxing!✌🏾

Aloe Vera 101

What is it about aloe? Applying its gel feels like a safe and loving caress. When used in my practice, it’s as though I can hear a client’s skin sighing while soothed by aloe.

Aloe vera (Latin, Aloe barbadensis), is a succulent plant originating from the Arabian Peninsula before making its way around the world over centuries and via trade routes. It is one plant out of hundreds within the genus called Aloe. When aloe vera’s leaves are cut open, they release a clear and gel-like substance popular in various traditional healing practices for its soothing properties, wound healing, and hydrating benefits.

As a contemporary cosmetic ingredient, aloe vera extract is quite versatile, being chemically composed primarily of water and notable for its content of polysaccharides plus phytosterols.

Polysaccharides: They are one of the main types of carbohydrates found in nature and serve as an essential source of energy for living organisms.

_Journal of Nutrition

In topical skincare, plant polysaccharides help maintain hydration levels, aid in wound healing and tissue regeneration, as well as potentially slow UV/free-radical damage and oxidative stress. Here is a comprehensive review of their benefits from Science Direct.

Phytosterols: Naturally occurring cholesterol-like molecules found in all plant foods. _Paula’s Choice Ingredient Dictionary

Given their fatty composition phytosterols work in skincare to lock-in moisture and prevent water loss. This supports the skin’s natural protective barrier — also known as the acid mantle.

Structured primarily of water plus polysaccharides and phytosterols, in cosmetic formulations aloe vera extract can be used either as a solvent, base ingredient, soothing agent, humectant, or in a combination of these functions.

Note: there are many other chemical structures within Aloe vera extract but for the purposes of the following product review, water, polysaccharides, and phytosterols are the most relevant.

Monastery’s Aloe Hyaluronic Moisture Boost

The Point

This serum is a 10 out 10.

The Story

It was while gallivanting in Rome last September that I realized I was ready to start my own studio practice, after having returned to esthetics three years ago and worked exclusively for a larger beauty/wellness brand full-time.

As soon as I returned to Northern Virginia, I began to research and test products for Ivana Martínez Studio. It was especially important for me to integrate products that were values aligned in their production practices. Caring for the Earth and caring for our skin go hand-in-hand.

My research led me to Monastery. I loved reading about founder Athena Hewett’s considered and artful approach to ingredient sourcing plus small-batch formulations. As a plus, I appreciated that the product line is informed by Athena’s 20+ year career as a CIDESCO certified esthetician working out of San Francisco. The brand’s Aloe Hyaluronic Moisture Boost was the first product I invested in as part of curating my facial studio’s backbar. It’s been six months, and I remain besotted with this particular serum.

Product Notes

1. Duration: Monastery products are sensorially pleasing to use and nourishing for the skin but what I love even more is that they formulate and package in a manner that encourages less consumption. I purchased their serum at the end of September and only listed it in my product logs as due for re-purchase on Tuesday, January 7th. Depending on how my skin was feeling per my monthly cycle and the day’s climate, on average I used this serum anywhere from three times a week to twice daily. While studying lymphatic drainage in Colorado last November I was obsessively applying it under a moisturizer followed by an occlusive to survive Denver’s dryness. I was sure I’d use up the serum by the end of November but like a Mary Poppins purse, the bottle just kept on going.

2. What It’s Good For: With two different weights of hyaluronic acid suspended in a base of aloe vera, this product works well as a hydrating and prepping serum that also balances out oil production while soothing inflammation thanks to the inclusion of sage, lavender, and clary sage. The entire ingredient list also means that this is a lightweight antioxidant serum with a beautifully aromatic quality.

3. Who It’s Ideal For: This serum is good for all skin-types. However, due to the sage, lavender, and clary sage within the product, in my practice I typically find myself recommending it most to my combination/oily and heavily acne-prone clients. The brand’s website recommends 1-2 pumps and that amount may be enough for oiler skin-types. My skin tends towards dryness year-around, so I found that 3-4 pumps is what I’ve needed for my face and neck.

4. How to Use: Apply 1-4 pumps, depending on skin type. Do so after cleansing and before moisturizing. If you use a hydrating essence, apply this after your essence, then go in with a moisturizer. Daytime, always follow-up with an SPF. Nighttime, due to the essential oil compounds (like terpenes) in this serum, if you skin-cycle I recommend using aloe boost on a recovery night, not on an active night where you have just exfoliated or are using a high strength retinoid. If you’re not actively skin-cycling this serum can be used nightly after cleansing and under your moisturizer.

Will Aloe Be Your Valentine?

I purchase from them regularly enough that Monastery kindly sent me a 20% off discount link to share — totally unrelated to this newsletter, I did not reach out them, it was simply serendipity! The email they sent said to share the link with friends but what I read was share with the newsletter hotties.💖

The referral discount (linked after the paywall) can be applied to the Aloe Hyaluronic Moisture Boost or to any Monastery product of your choosing. Good through Monday, March 2nd.

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