Mending Neurons

As part of my volunteer model call I put out during the summer of 2025 after finishing my makeup diploma, I included a prompt for models who were interested in exploring makeup themes of mental health, religious trauma recovery, and trauma based disorder recovery.

For this look, my model - @kaitlyn.dawn - wanted to include those themes for her look, so I decided to go with a concept I've had in mind for awhile, based on my own experience with PTSD. For the base, I tend to specialize in contoured foundation that is very colorful, so I asked the model what type of color they would like to go with, and she said green. For the next layer, there is a fairly classic broken porcelain doll look you can see going around on makeup algorithms that I decided I would like to be the pattern to speak to how the experience of trauma can feel as though your brain is cracking and breaking, but with an adaption that the cracks are designed after neurons instead of general cracking. The last element is that of the Japanese mending technique of "kintsugi", in which something broken is mended with gold where I blended in gold paint to signify the process of healing as we work to repair our nervous system following a traumatic experience and how that grief and loss does not negate our value or our agency moving forward.

Thank you very much to my volunteer model for coming in to help me develop the concept for this makeup and you can contact me through email to talk about commissioning your own variation of this theme if this resonates with you and you would like to book your own session.