Confidently Beautiful with Ciera

From Hyaluronic Acid To Gua Sha: A Clear Guide To Confident, Simple Skincare

• Ciera • Episode 91

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Skincare shouldn’t feel like a second job. We’re cutting through the buzzwords and bringing you a calm, clear roadmap to a routine that actually fits mom life. If you’ve ever stared at a label and wondered what hyaluronic acid really does or whether retinol is worth the hype, this guide-backed conversation maps the essentials with warmth, science, and zero fluff.

We start by translating the must-know terms that show up on every shelf, then organize everything into four simple pillars: hydration, repair, prevention, and tools for circulation and tension release. You’ll learn why hyaluronic acid supports plump, dewy skin, how to introduce retinol without irritation, and the non-negotiable role of daily SPF in guarding your glow. We also talk peptides like advanced BTX for softening expression lines and how to keep your progress from being erased by sun damage and stress.

From there, we build a realistic routine you can keep: a quick morning cleanse, hyaluronic serum, moisturizer, and SPF; an easy night flow with cleansing balm, gentle cleanse, retinol a few times weekly, and a nourishing moisturizer. We fold in approachable tools—like gua sha—to boost circulation, reduce puffiness, and release jaw and brow tension in minutes. Beyond products, we reframe skincare as an act of self-respect that lifts mood, presence, and patience through small daily wins. You’ll leave with a starter kit plan—one hydrator, one treatment, one SPF, one tool—and the confidence to keep it simple and consistent.

Ready to turn confusion into calm and feel good in your skin again? Hit follow, share this with a friend who needs a clear routine, and tell us which beauty term you want decoded next. Your glow can be simple, steady, and sustainable—let’s build it together.

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Ciera:

You're listening to Confidently Beautiful with Sierra, a podcast to help you stay confidently beautiful because we all have confidence inside us. We just need to bring it out, and I'm here to show you how. Body image, dreams, parenting style, personality, and more. Here we cover it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful. Hello and welcome back to another episode. I am trying something different today, and I'm actually recording while my baby is asleep. Well, he's not really a baby anymore, he's almost two, but while he's sleeping, and my four-year-old is entertaining himself in the other room. So hopefully this is quiet and we can keep this quick. Fortunately, I like to keep my episodes around 15 or 20 minutes anyway, so it should be okay. But just a heads up that that is what is going on today. Over the past few weeks on my Instagram, I have been breaking down beauty terms that we see everywhere. Things like guasha, retinol, like all of these terms were like, if you're if you're anything like me, I am just, I am not necessarily, even though I'm in the beauty industry, I'm not necessarily like up on all the beauty trends and terms. And I'm it's something that I'm constantly trying to learn and teach myself. And so I wanted to just break things down that are just really simple so that you can understand what these terms are. If maybe you were like me and you're like, I don't even know what that means. Most moms don't have time to decode labels or watch 20-minute routines. Like we're we are busy, we need something quick. So I had a series over on Instagram. If you want to check it out, it's just wrapping up where I just broke down terms. Today I'm going to pull all those things that I've talked about on my Instagram together so that moms that you are listening can feel empowered, confident, and in control of your own beauty skin routine. So, how can understanding ingredients or terms of different kinds of practices that you can use for your skin, how can that help with your confidence? Well, your skin is your biggest organ. So understanding like how to take care of it is not like vain. It's not like you are just all over thinking about yourself and like wanting to look young all the time. You're just wanting to preserve and maintain and take care of your biggest organ, right? Like that's not a bad thing. And so knowledge reduces the overwhelm and it can get rid of the confusion. And when women know why a product works, they're going to be more likely to consistently use it so that they can see better results. Because if you're not consistently using a product, you're not going to see the results. So confidence increases when you're not guessing or comparing yourself to others because you know without the products that you are putting on yourself are actually doing something and you can see the benefits, and you don't have to waste your time buying products that aren't going to be doing anything for you. So there are four categories that every mom needs to know as far when it comes to your skin: hydration, repair, prevention, and tools for circulation and tension release. So let's start with hydration. Hydration is like hyaluronic acid, which gives you plump, healthy, glowy skin. If you want to go and look at that, but basically hyaluronic is a hydration superstar. It already exists in our bodies. And so when we're using hyaluronic acid in our skincare products, it is going to help our body to pull water into our skin, keep our skin looking smooth, plump, reduce fine lines and wrinkles, give us better elasticity, and give us that natural, healthy, dewy glow. Another way to get hydration is actually to drink water. Like when you are actually drinking enough water, your skin will thank you. Your skin will look better, it will feel better, it is going to feel so much better. Number two is repair. There are so many different repair types serums out there. One that I talked about in my series is retinol. You can find a serum or a moisturizer with retinol in it, which is basically vitamin A, then you are going to help your skin to be renewed and smooth, and it just does so much to help repair the damage that is done to your skin. And number three, probably one of the most important, is prevention. If you're taking time to hydrate your skin, repair your skin, and maintain the natural dewy glow that it already has, then you are going to want to make sure you are preventing. You don't want the sun to damage it. You don't want future damage to your skin. You don't want all those products that you're putting on your skin to go to waste. So making sure that you are using SPF, you can use something called Advanced BTX, which I also talked about in the series on my Instagram page. But it basically is an ingredient that uses peptides and amino acids that will help soften expression lines, like your laughing lines, your smiling lines, your squinting lines, all the lines that we get because we are moms and we are just spending our life living with our kids. And it can help to minimize future damage as well. And then the fourth one that you want to know, the fourth core core category is tools for circulation and tension release. So this is where the gua shaw method comes in. That gua shaw stone. I went to a girls like uh favorite things party once, and I did not know what gua shaw was. Like I had seen stuff on Instagram and like reels and things like that where people are like rubbing the stone on their face, and I'm like, I don't know what they're doing. And I did not even know how to pronounce it, and I was so embarrassed because I got a gua sha stone and I'm like opening it up as I'm saying like what everything that I got. I didn't even know how to pronounce it. It was embarrassing. And so if you're like me and you don't know like what that word is, it's the G-U-A-S-H-A, gua sha. So this is just a technique, it's a Chinese technique that helps relax your skin and release any tension, puffiness, and it can help to sculpt your skin. So people like to do it on their face, there's different ways. And I have this reel on my Instagram that you can go and look. Um, if it hasn't posted yet, by the time that this episode has aired, it will be coming soon. It's my final, what is this series? Um, final, my final video in that series, and it is just a really good way to treat your skin and to you're putting all these products on your face, but you want to create circulation, you want blood flow, and you want that tension release. And so this is a good tool. So, what does a confidently beautiful skincare routine look like? An example would be in the morning you can have a cleanse. I like to just do my cleanse in the shower. I shower every morning anyways, so I just keep a cleanser in the shower and I can cleanse my face while I'm in the shower. Then you could do some hyaluronic acid, some moisturizer, and then follow it up with an SPF. At nighttime, you could do another cleanse, but before you do the cleanse, you want to remove your makeup. So I like to use what's called a cleansing balm, and this is just like a really, really um, it has like natural oils in it, but it's not like oily, oily on your face. But it's it's just a really great way to just melt off that mascara and all of that makeup. So I use that first to remove my makeup, and then I follow it with a cleanse because I want to remove the makeup and then I want to cleanse my face to get all the dirt and the germs and everything off my face, open up my pores. Then you can follow it up with retinol, which you can use a few times a week, and you can use any other repair serums that you may like, and then you can use a moisturizer. That could be your night routine. Add-ons could be advanced BTX for expression lines. You could try some gouacia with for that tension and glow. If you use a nice serum that helps to have that stone glide nicely on your face, that can be really great. So this is about your confidence, not perfection. Everyone's skincare routine can look a little bit different. Those, as long as you're addressing those four core categories hydration, repair, prevention, and then using some tools, then you can have a really great skincare routine. I have a skincare line that I love. It's from Beauty Society, and I will link it in the show notes. But I love this one because it takes the complexity of like which product should I put on my face in what order? And it takes that out because it has simple step one, step two, step three, and step four. So each product has a step number on it. So you're just gonna go in order. We all know how to count to four. So we can just start with all of the step one products, all of the step two products, all the step three products, and all the step four products. And even if you only have one product from each of those steps, that is a beauty skincare routine. That is perfect. You don't have to have more than one. But if you want to add in some extra add-ons that have benefits, then you can add more and you just still go in the order one, two, three, and four. Skincare can be so much more than just the products that we're putting on our face, it can be a mindset shift. Beauty as an act of self-respect. So caring for our skin is caring for the woman behind the skin, the woman underneath. Who is who is that skin covering? Who is like who is that person? It's it's you. Like we want to care for you. It's okay to want to look refreshed, healthy, and radiant. It's not that you're shallow, it's not that you're just like not wanting to age. You just want to look and feel your best. Small daily habits can build self-trust, which is going to build your confidence. And when moms feel good in their skin, everything changes. Our energy can change, our patience can change, our presence can change. There is so much that can be added from feeling good in our skin. I know even when I just wash my face, like it just does something to me. Like it is that water, feeling that water on my skin and just rubbing all the dirt off and washing the day away, or starting off my morning, just waking myself up with a little water on my face. That does so much to me. And it's it really is so much more than just the outside of what it does to my skin. It's a mindset shift, it's an energy shift with inside me. So here is your action step to build your starter routine. So choose a hydrator, choose a treatment, choose an SPF, and then maybe pick a tool that you want to try, like just even once or twice a week. If you want to try wash-off retention and confidence, if you want to try an exfoliating scrubber, I know they have so many different little scrubber facial scrubbers that you can you can use like an exfoliating mask on your face, and then you can use the scrubber to just get into all the pores and to get all of the gunk out of your face. Just pick a tool that you want to use. You don't need to do the tool every night, but just pick a tool that you wanted to use like a couple times a week. But as long as you have like those steps, then you are going to have a powerful, empowering, confident skin routine. Thank you so much for listening. I encourage you to embrace your natural, confident beauty. If you feel beautiful in your natural skin, then there is so much more that you can do. It's just a confidence boost that you just feel good and it can do so much for you and your self-worth. If you loved this, tell me what beauty term I should break down next. Send me a DM on Instagram, email me. I want to hear what beauty terms have you heard that you're wanting to know a little bit more about, like whether it's a tool that you can use, uh some type of routine that you can do, or an ingredient in something. I want to hear what you want me to break down next. Thank you so much for tuning in. Next week we are going to do a year in review. I'm gonna have some of the best moments we've had on the podcast. Funny moments, most inspiring moments, most listened to moments. It's going to be a fun episode just right before Christmas that you're going to want to listen to. So make sure you come back here next Tuesday for the next episode and I will talk to you then. If you're looking for a meaningful gift for the girls, teens, or moms in your life, the daily confidence journals are perfect. Each page begins with Today I Felt Confident When, a simple practice that helps build self-love and confidence one day at a time. And with seven gorgeous colors in my rainbow collection, there is a journal for every personality. Grab yours at confidentexpression.com and use promo code podcast for 10% off. Thanks for listening. Connect with me on Instagram at Confidently Beautiful Podcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are. Stay confidently beautiful.