After my son died suddenly two years ago, I've been on a healing journey. I don't remember much from that time. But when I look at photos, I literally look 25 years older. Trauma of any kind takes a drastic toll on how we look as well as how we feel, and can immediately age us overnight. You eventually start to look at the older woman in your reflection and want to get you back.

"After any trauma, the quality of your skin, hair, nails, and eyes suffer," says Dr. Constance Chen, Clinical Assistant Professor of Plastic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. "They thin and become dry and brittle, and your eyes become sunken because your body diverts fluid and the energy used regenerating cells to your trauma site," including your brain, emotions and mental wellbeing. "Your body is essentially in triage mode."

Jamie Palmer, BSN, RN, heads up research and development for Osmosis -- a medical and science-based skincare and wellness line founded by Dr. Ben Johnson, who opened one of the first medi-spa chains in the U.S. "Traumatic stress, both physical and emotional, affects your DNA," Palmer explains. "The amount of collagen you produce decreases, you lose some of the adipose tissue in the skin that helps with fullness, and you generally look lackluster."

Both Palmer and Chen underscore the importance of internal wellness to help your body recover. Zinc, vitamins A and C, and eating plenty of iron (found in liver and green leafy vegetables) are essential to replenish blood cells. Chens says "staying hydrated is also critical, because trauma causes capillaries to become leaky, causing swelling and puffiness. So you need to drink plenty of fluids to make up for the loss."

Palmer agrees. "You can use all the products in the world, but they won't help if you don't nourish yourself on the inside."

With that in mind, while my eyes will always be the window to my heartache and sadness, these seven products and a special massage therapy have had Benjamin Button like results, helping me get back to beautiful and closer to my pre-trauma self again.

Image via Getty

Start healing your looks from the inside with supplements specifically designed for a healthy outside. Beyond biotin, beauty and skin-specific supplements provide a boost of the necessary sustenance your outer being needs to feel and look healthy again.

ZEA Skin Solutions' all-natural Radiant Skin once-daily dietary supplement packets are made with anti-aging sea buckthorn oil, phyto-ceramides, gotu kola seed, and zeaxanthin -- a strong skin antioxidant derived from paprika peppers that promotes hydration and clear skin. I took them for a month and saw noticeable improvement in my skin texture, radiance and glow.

Taking A Complete Premium Beauty Concentrate for Skin Care -- another restorative supplement that feeds the skin's deepest layers to reduce collagenase (an enzyme that breaks down collagen in damaged tissues within the skin), decrease wrinkle depth, and protect against oxidative stress. Ingredients include fish hydrolyzed collagen, evening primrose oil, tomato extract lycopene, vitamin E, and marigold and pomegranate extract.

Bonus: they have a pleasant subtle flavor as they go down -- not the bitter backbite of many vitamins and supplements.

There's no concealing trauma. It shows blatantly on your face due the impact of hurt, pain and suffering. But our skin is powerful, says Josh Rosebrook, creator of his eponymous skin and haircare line. "Like our body, it has the extraordinary ability to heal itself. Our job," he says, "is to facilitate that regenerative process and administer the right natural elements."

Rosebrook's Hydrating Accelerator mist, an all-in-one hydrator, toner and light moisturizer, helps set the stage for feeding my face with nutrients. Its organic vitamin-infused aloe water lowers skin surface tension. The aloe and herbal anti-inflammatories help calm and relieve redness, and help your skin reset it's natural healing ability, while also setting it up to fully and effectively nutrients from moisturizer.

After hydrating, I switch between LAFACE Laboratories C-Cell Regeneration Serum, and an oncology-specific skincare product. They're gentle, hydrating and protective, and don't contain stimulants, which makes them ideal for any traumatized skin. Many use stem cells and I opt for Osmosis' Stemfactor Growth Factor serum, which uses human stem cells, not the more commonly used plant stem cells. Osmosis R&D director Jamie Palmar says plant stem cells are so big they can't penetrate the skin and need injecting. But Osmosis uses a human stem cell technology that provides a lot of proteins, elastin and collagen, which give the skin the tools it needs to be healthy.

My skin has not only regained a healthy smooth plumpness and is no longer sallow -- it's more youthful looking than before tragedy struck.

Dehydration and lack of nutrients from the stress of trauma can cause our often-neglected lips to dry, crease, and even crack. If you've ever had anesthesia, you'll also know that feeling of waking up with your mouth and lips as dry as the desert.

My lips craved simple light, silky moisture to heal, not a greasy stick of gunk, and I found my lip-salving savior in an all-purpose beauty balm called Ouli's Ointment. Created by Greek-American makeup artist Stephanie G-M, Ouli's is the product of the organic olive groves of her native Zakynthos (or Zante as it's nicknamed) -- a Greek island in the Ionian Sea.

"I'm a firm believer in the power of simple natural ingredients to heal, and in oils over creams," Stephanie says. "Our skin hydrates and replenishes itself with oils, and we've known for centuries that taking olive oil internally is great for skin health. So why not treat our skin with olive oil from the outside?"

Made with a blend of extra virgin olive oil from Zante, beeswax, and Roman chamomile ("it's more apple-y"), Stephanie says Ouli's works through the simplicity of natural ingredients intended to nourish and calm us. "When it comes to recovery, women often back out of caring for their skin because of other trauma-healing priorities -- and because skincare is made too complicated. My ointment is intentionally simple."

Ouli's brought my lips back to life and closer to luxurious again, and is truly an all-purpose ointment. It keeps my scars soft (a recent horse accident), tames and nourishes my flyaway hairs, and gives my skin a glistening sheen, even under moisturizer and light makeup. It calms bites, burns and scrapes -- and apparently soothes babies' bottoms.

Loss of eyebrows (madarosis), caused by damage to the hair follicles, can be a traumatizing side effect from your body battling trauma, radiation treatments, and a variety of medical conditions, -- including autoimmune diseases, infections, chronic skin disorders, and especially chemotherapy. Affecting one or both eyebrows with partial or complete hair loss, t's both physically and emotional demoralizing.

Breast cancer survivor Elizabeth 'Lisa' Brambilla created a unique new beauty product called SurvivorEyes that helps women struggling from facial hair loss. "Losing our eyebrows creates physical and emotional challenges when our image is compromised," says Brambilla. "It's overwhelming to our self-confidence." That's why she created SurvivorEyes, an innovative kit of high fashion brows with all-day wear that are easy to apply.

Each kit contains 10 brow templates, a dual-sided cosmetic applicator, and through a strategic collaboration includes high-quality Sorme cosmetics available in 3 shade pallets for all skin tones. And while I haven't lost my eyebrows completely, the trauma of losing my son caused my already-pale eyebrows to thin rapidly from lack of proper nutrition and sleep.

I didn't care at the time, but now I do. And being able to easily apply natural-looking eyebrows gives a definite boost of much-needed confidence.