My Skin Bruised From a Child Holding My Hand. This is NOT just ageing. It is neglect.
I spent years hiding my arms. Pulling my sleeves down. Folding my hands in my lap. Until I finally understood what was actually happening — and what nobody had ever told me.
Jane Barker, 63, Melbourne. "I couldn't understand why my skin kept doing this."
I want to start by saying something that took me a long time to accept.
What happened to my skin was not inevitable. It was not just age. And it was not something I had to live with.
But I believed all of that for years. Because nobody told me otherwise. Because every doctor I saw shrugged and said the same thing. "You're getting older, Jane. The skin thins. There's not much to be done."
So I accepted it. The way you accept a lot of things when you're in your sixties and the people who are supposed to help you keep telling you it's normal.
It started with my hands.
That thin, papery feeling when I rubbed them together. Like the skin had lost its substance somewhere along the way and I hadn't noticed until one day I did and couldn't stop noticing.
Then the bruises started.
Small ones at first. From nothing I could remember. I'd reach into a cupboard. Brush past a door frame. Cross my arms while watching the telly. And the next morning there it was. A bruise I had no memory of earning.
Dark purple. Spreading across the back of my hand like a stain.
I told myself what everyone tells themselves.
I bruise easily now. I'm getting older. This is just how it is.
My GP confirmed it. My friends said the same thing had happened to them. So I stopped asking questions and started wearing longer sleeves.
That went on for four years.
Then one night everything changed.
We were at my daughter's house for Sunday dinner. The whole family. It was loud and warm the way it always is, kids running around, everyone talking over each other.
My granddaughter — she's four — came around the table and grabbed my hand. The way little kids do. Both hands around mine, squeezing, wanting my attention.
I smiled at her. We talked about something, I can't even remember what. She ran off.
And then I looked down at my hand.
There was already a mark forming. Right where her little fingers had been.
"A bruise. From a four year old holding my hand."
I sat there and looked at it for a long time.
And I felt something I wasn't expecting to feel.
Not embarrassment. Not frustration.
Grief.
Because these hands had done so much. They'd raised children. They'd worked. They'd held people I loved. And now they were so fragile that a child's grip — a joyful, innocent grip — left a bruise.
"I sat at that table and made a decision. I was done accepting this."
Not because I was vain. Because something that fragile is not an inevitability. It is a sign. And I had been ignoring that sign for four years.
After that night I started looking into it properly. Not just accepting what my GP told me.
And what I found made me genuinely angry.
Not at anyone in particular. Just angry that nobody had ever said this out loud to me.
Bruising from nothing is not a normal part of getting older.
It is a sign.
Your skin is telling you something. And it has been trying to tell you for a long time.
The part that really got to me was this. We were told to use hand cream. We were told to be more careful. We were told to take it easy on ourselves.
Nobody told us our skin needed to be rebuilt. From the inside.
Nobody told us that putting something on the surface was never going to fix what was happening underneath.
"You cannot moisturise your way out of this. I tried for years. My hands kept getting thinner."
Every lotion. Every cream. Everything that promised to help with ageing skin.
And the bruises kept coming.
"I tried everything. Nothing touched what was actually happening."
What I needed — what none of us were ever told we needed — was something that actually got in. Something that went below the surface and gave my skin what it had been missing.
Not a cream that made my hands feel soft for an hour.
Something that stayed. Something that worked while I went about my day.
I just didn't know that yet. I was still covering up and hoping something would change.
I want to tell you about the hiding. Because I think if you are reading this you probably know exactly what I mean.
It starts small. You pick a cardigan instead of the top you actually wanted to wear. You fold your hands under the table at dinner. You tuck them into your lap when someone sits down next to you.
And then one day you realise you have been doing it for so long it is automatic. You don't even think about it anymore. You just hide.
"Some days I couldn't look at them either."
I used to hide my hands at the shops. At church. At my granddaughter's school concerts. Anywhere there were people who might look.
Because I did not want to have to explain them.
I did not want to see people look at them and then look away quickly. Like they had seen something they weren't supposed to see.
"That feeling of hiding a part of yourself is exhausting. It sits on you all day. You are always aware of it. Always adjusting. Always covering."
"This is what I was covering up every single day."
And underneath all of it is this quiet grief.
For the hands you used to have. The skin that used to feel like yours. The version of yourself that didn't have to think about any of this.
I want you to know I understand that feeling completely.
And I want you to know it does not have to stay.
About eight months ago a friend sent me a message.
Nothing dramatic. Just — have you tried this? With a link.
I almost didn't click it. I had tried so many things. I was tired of trying things. I was tired of spending money on things that sat on the shelf after two weeks because they didn't do anything.
But I clicked it.
And something about it was different. Not the way it was described. Not because of any claims it made. Just something about it felt like it understood what the actual problem was.
So I ordered it. Told myself if it didn't work I'd stop thinking about this and just accept it.
I applied it every day after my shower. That was the whole routine. Nothing complicated. Just this one thing, consistently.
"Three weeks in my daughter held my hand at the shops and looked down and said — something looks different."
She noticed before I said a word.
I looked down at my own hands. And I kept looking. Not hiding them. Actually looking at them.
"The first time in years I didn't want to hide them."
The bruises were coming less. The ones that did show up faded in days instead of sitting there for weeks going through every shade of purple and yellow.
My skin felt different. Thicker somehow. Less like paper.
More like mine.
That was the moment I knew it wasn't a placebo. Not just feeling better about myself. Actually different skin. Skin that was coming back.
I am not the only one.
After I posted about my experience in a private Facebook group for women over sixty, I was flooded with messages. Hundreds of them. Women who had been hiding their arms for years. Women whose doctors had told them the same thing mine had told me.
Just ageing. Nothing to be done.
Many of them had tried the same thing I tried. And many of them had the same results.
These are some of their photos. Shared with permission.
Margaret, 67. "Week 1 vs Week 4. I genuinely could not believe it."
Lorraine, 71. "Three weeks. That's all it took to see a real difference."
Carol, 64. "Day 1 to Day 28. My legs hadn't looked like this in years."
Susan, 69. "Before and after. Same hand. Same woman. Different skin."
These are not extraordinary cases. These are ordinary women who were told nothing could be done — and who stopped believing that.
Skin that has been starved for years does not recover overnight. But it does recover. When you give it what it has been missing.
"It was never supposed to be this thin. It was never supposed to bruise this easily. Starved things heal when you feed them."
A lot of people ask me what it was.
I held off saying for a long time. Because I didn't want it to sound like I was selling something. I'm not. I just know what it felt like to try everything and have nothing work, and I know what it felt like when something finally did.
It's called Oela — a Plum Blossom Restoration Oil made specifically for us. And before you move past that — I need you to understand why it is different from every other oil or cream or lotion you have already tried.
It is not a moisturiser. It does not sit on the surface. It absorbs completely — and when it absorbs, it takes what your skin needs below the surface, to the place where the actual rebuilding happens.
You apply it after your shower on damp skin. Every day. That is the whole thing. No complicated routine. No ten steps. Just this one thing, done consistently.
"This is the one thing I actually kept using."
Within a few weeks you start to notice.
The bruises come less. The skin feels less paper thin. You stop pulling your sleeves down. You stop hiding your hands.
You start looking at them again instead of away from them.
"Your skin got here because it was starved. And starved things heal when you feed them."
They have a sale on at the moment. I stocked up the second I saw it. After everything I spent on things that didn't work, it felt like the easiest decision I ever made.
For anyone who refuses to accept that bruising easily is just part of getting older.
Because it's not. And now I know that.
A personal message from Jane.
If you have read this far you already know this is not just about bruising. It is about feeling like yourself again. About not hiding. About looking down at your hands and feeling something other than grief.
Oela is available now with a limited batch offer running. I stocked up the second I saw it and I would not hesitate for a second to do it again.
LIMITED STOCK — CHECK AVAILABILITY →
"I can finally show my hands again."