inheritance of care🧡

Grandparents (1970) by Suzanne Jackson. Courtesy Ortuzar, New York photo by Charla Jones

There’s an important conversation brewing about artificial intelligence, technology and their impact on our human experience.

Beneath it lies a larger question: what knowledge and values do we need to remain fully human?

It’s not a question about our future, it’s an issue of our survival.

The humans who came before us used extraordinary powers of observation, experimentation and discernment to understand the natural world. They put these findings to use and passed them on to us—our inheritance.

Though largely intangible, these are among our most consequential assets. They shape our beliefs, knowledge and practices. 

From those who cared for us, we learn how to care for ourselves, for one another and the natural world. We can also inherit their absence.

Long before skincare became an industry, caring for skin was part of botanical and cultural knowledge passed from person to person, generation to generation.

Our ancestors lived in close relationship with the physical world. They paid attention to what grew around them—learning which plants soothed, which seeds could be pressed for oil, what protected skin from dryness and what nourished hair.

This was knowledge in practice, where culture became care.

Generations of human observation may well be one of our most remarkable inheritances.

For me, this inheritance came through my stylish, world-traveling Aunt Eugenia, for whom eu2be is named, and my nana, whose Midwestern speakeasy welcomed blues and jazz musicians.

I learned by watching how they embodied beauty and claimed it in their daily lives.

Living in a world that persistently judged their skin, they practiced self-care—agency, dignity, and self-possession in a culture shaped by racial hierarchy and prejudice.

They understood beauty as their birthright, a tenet that remains one of eu2be’s guiding principles today.

But inheritance is vulnerable.

Dominant cultures have long determined whose knowledge is considered valuable and whose is dismissed, appropriated or forgotten.

As skincare became increasingly commercialized, the human body was divided into categories and concerns, assigned monetary value and sold back to us as packaged goods. 

Practices that once connected people to their bodies, communities and the natural world increasingly became products and transactions.

Modern science allows us to understand skin in ways our ancestors couldn’t. But progress doesn’t require forgetting. In fact, it pays to remember how we got here—how we survived. Knowledge, practices and ways of seeing the world are valuable assets entrusted to us. 

As we explore these questions, let’s begin with care—of ourselves, of one another and of the natural world as an enduring source of knowledge and enrichment.

Our ancestors understood how our wellbeing flourishes from this vital relationship.

May we deepen our understanding of skin and its constant relationship with the world around us and within us.

Because the body isn’t an accessory to our lived experience, it is the vessel through which we experience being human.