The Advocate who had introduced me to Weleda, asked me about my own skincare routine. (This was when she’d come round to my house with Weleda products to introduce it to my family and friends, after I’d fallen in love with it for my baby.) I was adamant that I wouldn’t switch my facial skincare. My skin was awful. I wore full-coverage makeup everyday. When I was on an early shift as a police officer I got up at a ridiculous hour to do my makeup. I’d spent a huge amount of money on products. But I didn’t dare change my routine in case my skin got worse.

I was persuaded to buy a mini kit of the gentle, soothing, almond range to try it out, but it didn’t do anything for me and I wasn’t prepared to try anything else.

The turning point was becoming an Advocate and my kit of products arriving. It felt like Christmas! I got all the products out, studied them, smelled them, started to explore them. I learned more about my skin with the skincare training. In my kit there were two products for problematic skin, for skin that needed a little care and attention – the Aknedoron Cleansing Lotion and the Aknedoron Purifying Lotion. Something in me said, let’s give this a go. If we don’t do it now, there won’t be a better time. I was on maternity leave and felt OK with not wearing full makeup everyday, to let my skin breathe.

So I started using them both. Morning and night. The first things that struck me was that the smell was medicinal, it wasn’t off-putting, it felt like somebody knew my skin needed healing and had prescribed this medicine. Then when I used it there wasn’t the usual stinging, painful feeling that I’d got with any other spot treatment.

And then there was the dramatic shift. After TWO DAYS of using them, I saw a change in my skin. It started to feel softer and I believe this was because I was no longer treating the problem like a battle – I was working WITH my skin not against it. The huge lumps under my skin started to disappear, and unlike previously when they would immediately be replaced by more lumps, now they didn’t come back.

I’d learned through my Weleda skincare training that skin cells regenerate in 28 days, and I was prepared to wait at least that long to see results so when after just two weeks all the lumps had gone, leaving beautifully healed soft skin, I could not believe it. I kept thinking they would surely come back with the next cycle of skin cells, but no. those lumps never came back, my skin healed.

My next step was replacing the skincare I was using to tackle fine lines and wrinkles, so I  again referred to my skincare training and took a closer look at the Weleda pomegranate range that was in my kit. When I talk about dramatic results, I’m not exaggerating! After two weeks of switching from a very expensive eye serum to the pomegranate eye cream, the skin under my eyes felt softer and firmer, and best of all the Weleda eye cream I’d been using smelled lovely, was natural and actually cheaper than the high end skincare brand’s eye serum I’d been using previously. I didn’t need persuading any more, I switched my whole skin routine, and the lovely thing was I needed fewer products that gave me better results, at a lower price. Using products that were better for my skin, my holistic health and had a more positive impact on the planet too. Can you see now why I built my business around the Weleda brand? Ten years on and I’m still here.

Sharing Weleda with as many people as possible, getting the best products into the hands of people from babies to older people, using it as a sustainable strand of my bigger business, Rosaleen Hird Wellbeing, and feeling the reciprocal benefit of being an Advocate. What began as a way to get my baby products cheaper or for free, has become a way of life for me. I know that it’s not just the Weleda medicines that are life-changing, the skincare really is too.

Could it be life-changing for you too?

www.weleda-advocate.co.uk/shop/RosaleenHird