22 Beauty Products We Reach For When We Just Need A Minute

So, things are pretty fucked up right now. We don't need to rehash why that is — you already know. You already wake up in the morning and go straight to Twitter, check in with worried friends and family multiple times a day, and keep one eye on the news and one eye on... well, whatever it is you're actually supposed to be doing.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review identified the universal discomfort hanging in the air, the collective sense of anxiety and fear, as grief. Self-isolating at home — while so many people, including nurses and other health-care workers, are on the front lines — is a privilege, but that's not to say it can't be incredibly stressful to feel these feelings without our usual support systems, hobbies, and routines to see us through.

As time goes on, however, we find new ways to cope. As grief expert David Kessler recounted in HBR, finding your place in the present and focusing on what you can control is essential to healing — and part of that is taking care of yourself. Right now, that might mean busying ourselves with puzzles, at-home workouts, Zoom parties, or Animal Crossing. We'll make the case that beauty and self-care are never frivolous, but they're especially important right now, when so many of the things that make us "us" — the people we spend time with, the restaurants we go to, the clothes we wear to work — feel like a weird, distant memory.

Ahead, Refinery29 editors share the beauty products and little luxuries they reach for when they need to feel grounded in times of chaos. Fancy face masks can't fix everything, and that's okay — but if they can make us feel a little less unmoored for 10 minutes, then they've done their job just fine.