On Makeup and Routine: Getting to Know My Grandmother-in-Law

Just me, being fabulous in a blue denim shirt with turquoise Essence eyeliner.

My therapist often stressed the importance of routine in maintaining a healthy lifestyle—mental health included. For a long time, I confused routine with scheduling: filling every time block in a calendar app until my life looked organized, even if I didn’t feel okay inside.

I didn’t understand the value of routine until an example came to me in an unexpected way: Despite my grandmother-in-law having dementia, I had never seen her without makeup—until one morning, when there was a small emergency and she needed help getting up. Nothing serious was happening, but once someone reaches eighty, getting up and sitting down safely becomes important. What stuck with me wasn’t the emergency, it was the first time I had seen her bare faced since I had met her.

Later, I remembered a conversation I’d had with my mother-in-law. She had mentioned leaving her mother alone to get ready in the morning. When she returned, her mother wasn’t just dressed—she had done her hair and put on her makeup too. That detail stayed with me because clearly, hair and makeup had been such staples in her routine that even as her mind fails her, her body still remembers how to make herself look glamorous.

Makeup is more a part of my life now, but I’m still working on wearing a little each day. I’m still learning to do something with my hair besides throwing it into a bun and forgetting about it. And suddenly I realized the difference between routine and scheduling: routine isn’t controlling your time. It’s building a set of tasks in a consequential order.

I’ll never truly know who my grandmother-in-law was before we met. But I’m glad I know this about her—that long before dementia, she lived a life shaped by daily rituals. And now, I’m trying to build my own routine in the same way: not by planning every hour, but by creating habits that support me, even when I’m not at my best.