The huge Sephora VIB sale might only come around a few times a year but the retailer also low-key reduces prices on some best-selling products that you don’t want to miss out on. Sephora’s sale for summer 2020 includes up to 50 percent off skin care from brands including Olehenriksen and GlamGlow, hair products from Kitsch and T3 and makeup from Natasha Denona and Fenty Beauty. There are even lower prices on all categories from Sephora Collection.

These reduced Sephora goodies aren’t the only things to pay attention to this week. You can also get major bonus points on purchases from now until July 26, 2020. Insider members earn two points per dollar spent on purchases, VIB members earn three points per dollar spent on purchases and Rouge members earn four points per dollar. If you’re an Insider member, you’ll get to VIB or Rouge even faster.

Stock up on your favorite black liquid eyeliner or face mask or treat yourself to something you’ll want to use during the continuing safer-at-home orders. We mean skin care face mask here but you can also pick up a cloth mask while you’re at it because we’ll be wearing them for a long time. Shop a few favorite products, below. There are many more where these came from.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

Image: Sephora.

Fenty Beauty Match Stix Trio

Get two Matte Skinsticks for concealing and contouring, and one Shimmer Skinstick for highlighting.

Image: Sephora.

Olehenriksen 3 Little Wonders Mini

This skin set already has a $39 value and now it’s even more affordable. You get mini versions of Truth Serum, Sheer Transformation Perfecting Moisturizer and Invigorating Night Transformation Gel.

Image: Sephora.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Norvina Mini Pro Pigment Palette Vol. 2

This limited-edition palette features brights and jewel tones that will take you right into fall.

Image: Sephora.

Sephora Collection Color Enhancing Lip Oil

Add a hint of berry to the lips with hydrating jojoba seed oil.

Image: Natasha Denona.

Natasha Denona Sculpt & Glow Face Highlighting & Contour Glow Palette

This luxe 6-pan face palette is half off in shade Medium/Dark.

Image: Sephora.

Kitsch x Justine Marjan Rhinestone Volume Headband

Upgrade your Zoom calls with a rhinestone puffy headband.

Image: Sephora.

Sephora Collection Super Supreme Body Butter

This vegan body lotion is enriched with shea butter.

It’s likely that we all know someone who was diagnosed with Covid-19. In my case, three friends fell ill, and when I called them later on, essentially I wanted to know three things – how they’re doing now, whether their pandemic experience changed their outlook on life, and what the rest of us can learn from them.

Most of all, though, I wanted to let them talk about what had happened to them.

Lynne’s Ordeal

Lynne, who lives in northern Illinois but often travels to NYC, is no stranger to LaGuardia Airport. But on March 9, 2020, when she arrived for her return flight to Chicago, her surroundings felt unfamiliar.

Hand sanitizer was everywhere, the passengers dutifully wiped down their seats with some version of portable Clorox, and news of the coronavirus was everywhere.

There was talk that it all started with Covid-19 “Patient Zero” in suburban New Rochelle, the very area Lynne had been visiting.

That was a Monday. By Friday, Lynne was running a temperature of 101 and had a cough. Yet, despite her New York travel, she was turned down for a test because she could cite no direct interaction with someone from China, and her “New Rochelle” reference set off no alarm bells in the Midwest.

Testing Took Too Long

Still, her doctor was worried and advised Lynne to go to an immediate care clinic. She was administered a flu test, that came up negative, and sent home. Within a couple of days, her fever spiked to nearly 103 degrees, and her husband, Mark, started running a low-grade fever as well.

They returned to the clinic for tests twice the following week, as the medical team had lost the first swabs! The second time around, the onsite doctor instructed them to call his cell phone as soon as they arrived and isolated them to a private area.

“At that point, I was really sick,” Lynne shared. “We asked for a chest x-ray and were told that wasn’t feasible because it would take them days to sterilize the machine afterward.”

Lynne’s memory from the next few days is spotty. She knows she was barely eating, and her friends were expressing concern, though she did show sudden appetite for mandarin oranges.

When the clinic called with the news that Lynne and Mark both tested positive for Covid-19, the nurse expressed concern that Lynne might become dehydrated. They were cautioned that, should the need arise to go to the ER, they should call first.

“I was not alarmed at that point,” Lynne says. “But the next day is hazy.” Her husband describes it as watching his wife disappear – seeing Lynne’s light slowly dimming, as if someone were just emptying her out. Lynne remembers Mark frequently asking, “Are you short of breath?” Her answer was always “no.”

Off to the Hospital

The next morning, Lynne needed Mark’s help just to get the covers off so she could get out of bed. She had to hold the walls to walk to the bathroom. “That’s when I had an epiphany,” she says. “I told Mark that I needed to go to the hospital. I made sure that I changed from pajamas to sweats – I think we women do insane things sometimes!”

A medical team was waiting for them outside the Emergency Room entrance. The nurse sternly instructed Mark, “Do not get out of the car. Just go home.”

Lynne recalls, “Inside, a doctor asked whether I’d noticed changes in my ability to taste. I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘We’re hearing that.’” Whatever happened next, Lynne cannot remember.

The nurses called Mark regularly to update him on Lynne’s progress. The first night, she was administered oxygen. The next day, exactly two weeks after she caught that flight from New York, Lynne was sedated, intubated, and transferred to a nearby hospital that had a designated Covid center.

Two days later, Lynne has the memory of feeling the ventilator being pulled out. “Just like in a movie, I gagged and then I was conscious,” she says. “No one explained things to me. I don’t fault them. No one wanted to be near me. The doctors and nurses were terrified because this thing was exploding.

“The ICU nurses were wearing helmets with hoses maybe they were carrying their own air filtration systems with them. They were dealing with something completely unknown to them, and they were very busy. But the doctor checked on me often and texted Mark about my condition, which was improving.”

Lynne was discharged on her 70th birthday, March 31. Her temperature and vitals were normal, and her appetite was starting to return. Already thin with a small frame, Lynne had lost 10 pounds and a lot of strength. “The experience was surreal,” Lynne says. “That’s the only word I can use to describe it.”

Val and Carrie

It was still February when my friend Val, 68 and living in the early epicenter of Seattle, began battling a cough and severe fatigue. Before long, more symptoms piled on: bad headaches, gastro-intestinal distress, night sweats. Val felt as if she had a brick sitting on her chest. Soon she was sleeping 16 hours a day.

“I thought it was a bad cold,” Val recalls. “Covid didn’t even have a name yet. Seattle was the first city to have a death, but initially when I got sick, nobody was talking about this virus.”

Everyone certainly was talking about it in Chicago in mid-April when my friend Carrie, 50, came down with suspicious symptoms. But like the other two women, Carrie didn’t have shortness of breath, the symptom we were told at the time signaled the need for urgent attention. Carrie wasn’t even running a fever.

What Carrie did have was a debilitating headache. Her husband was also struggling with seemingly atypical symptoms – severe nausea and vomiting. Since at first he was refused a test, Carrie knew she wouldn’t qualify for a test either, but she thought she should try to get tested anyway.

On the phone call to the clinic, the person she spoke with was sympathetic. “I was guided to say I did have a fever,” Carrie confesses. “That’s how I got a test.” It turned out positive.

Throughout March, Val didn’t even try. “Tests were practically unavailable in Seattle, plus there was a high error rate,” Val remembers.

“They were telling us to go to the hospital only if we couldn’t breathe. My symptoms were broad, and they’d disappear and then reappear three or four days later. I kept telling friends that I’d become a hypochondriac, but by April it was clearer to me that I’d caught the virus. I still wasn’t able to get tested at that point.”

While Carrie’s symptoms remained largely mild, she had a scare with the Covid “brain fog” she experienced over two days about three weeks into the illness.

“I was working and had to stop because I couldn’t use a computer or phone, add two-digit numbers, answer simple questions or even form proper sentences,” Carrie remembers. “I knew that the virus could cause a stroke, so I went for medical help. They ruled out a stroke, which lessened my stress and helped to lift the fog.”

How Are They Doing Now?

I’m grateful that all three friends survived the virus. Still, only two have fully recovered. Lynne stopped needing naps six weeks after she returned home and is back to gardening and walking. Carrie, too, is feeling like her old self.

Although she was the first of the three to get sick, Val is still waiting to get well. Taking a short walk or climbing a flight of stairs wears her out. In June, she went for an in-person exam, and the doctor prescribed medication that seemed to help at first.

Lately, though, chills, joint aches, and fatigue have returned. Val doesn’t know what to make of it. She never did get a test, but the doctor told her she can assume it was the virus. That makes Val one of the longest “long-haulers” – the name given to people who have suffered from Covid-19 symptoms for more than two months.

“I probably should get a chest x-ray,” Val says, adding that she won’t be surprised if she learns that she has permanent lung damage.

How Did Covid Change Their Outlook on Life?

I thought these women would feel either like victims – who wouldn’t? – or like superheroes, able to walk freely among us with little fear of catching or spreading the virus. But they don’t identify with either description, although Carrie says she does feel as if she has a superpower because she is now donating her plasma every 2–3 weeks to help other Covid-19 patients.

“I’m donating for people who are already sick, maybe on ventilators,” Carrie explains. “They give them convalescent plasma, and within a few days that often helps to turn them around.” And rather than a victim, Carrie feels lucky that her case wasn’t worse.

Lynne feels lucky, too, because Covid-19 is the second major illness she has defeated. In 2015 she had colon cancer, which was discovered while it was still stage 1. “After getting through both illnesses, I feel like the luckiest person in the world,” Lynne says.

That doesn’t mean she feels bulletproof. Lynne points out that there’s not enough research yet to know how long antibodies protect survivors from contracting Covid-19 a second time and becoming contagious all over again. Meanwhile, she is not tempting fate.

“I’m self-quarantining as much as anyone,” Lynne says. “I was terrified in the hospital. I didn’t listen to the news, and at first I asked Mark not to give me details about what I’d gone through. Now the thought of travel or going into a restaurant is so frightening to me that I don’t know whether I’ll ever do it again. Maybe if there’s a vaccine.”

Past reassurances mean less to Lynne now. “We live in a bubble,” she says of herself and her friends. “We take care of ourselves and have the best medical care, and I still wasn’t fine. All these years of working out – I was fit. I thought my body would fight it off.”

Val, too, was living in a bubble of invincibility, and this experience has dramatically shifted her sense of well-being.

“I always thought that bad things just didn’t happen to me,” Val says. “I was willing to take risks because I didn’t feel vulnerable. I feel very vulnerable now! The world doesn’t feel safe. I had to take a bus one day, and that felt really dangerous to me. I don’t know whether I’ll ever recapture that innocence of striking up a conversation with strangers.”

What They Want the Rest of Us to Know

The biggest takeaway I learned from my friends is to monitor your body’s blood oxygen level. They all advised me to buy an oximeter, which measures that quickly and easily.

It’s not as much about your temperature, you may never feel short of breath, and symptoms can fail to show up at all or until days after you’ve infected other people.

Even if you know you’re sick, if you’re able to function you may not believe that you need medical attention. But if your oxygen level drops even a bit, into the low 90s, it could be an early sign that you’re headed for trouble.

“If you feel sick, take this seriously,” Carrie adds. “Covid-19 patients seem to have poor judgment when assessing their own condition and tend to think they can just push through.”

When death comes close, sometimes you respond by seeking out new life. Lynne just added a four-legged member to her family. “Our new puppy,” she muses, “is our harbinger of a healthy, active future.”

Do you know someone who has battled Covid-19 and survived? Was that you? What story can you share? What do you want the world to know about this disease? Let’s have a conversation and support one another in this difficult time.

Fans of The Bold Type love the show for the way it shows real-life issues of three women who work at a magazine in New York City. It’s known as a “woke” show which makes star Aisha Dee’s account of the lack of diversity behind-the-scenes all the more problematic. While aspects of the magazine world are less-than-accurate for sure, the honest takes on everything from breast cancer to yeast infections have made the show especially popular. It takes on race, too.

“Over the course of four seasons, we’ve had conversations about workplace politics, white privilege, women’s health, gun ownership,” wrote Dee on Instagram. “And while not every story is perfect, life rarely is. And I’m proud to be part of something that has inspired, pushed boundaries, subverted expectations and started conversations.”  But Dee isn’t able to keep quiet anymore. She channeled her badass character Kat to speak out on what she sees as issues on her show. “What would Kat do? She would take a stand and advocate for herself and all other marginalized voices to influence change,” she writes.

Source: Instagram

Dee points out that the diversity we all see on the show is not reflected in the creative team behind the camera. According to her post, it took two seasons to get a single BIPOC in the writer’s room. In four seasons, they’ve had one Black director for an episode. She tells a story of growing up in Australia in the 1990s and feeling like an outcast for her hair and the color of her skin. Then she lands a show like The Bold Type, and it takes them three seasons to get someone in the hair department who knows how to work with textured hair.

“I want to make sure no one else ever has to walk onto a set and feel as though their hair is a burden,” she writes.

Dee goes on to explain how she sees the white heterosexual characters on the show portrayed with nuance and complexity, while the queer and POC stories are not and this comes from not having the writers in the room who can tell these stories. “This is not a judgment,” she says. “It’s a call to action.” Dee cares about the show and the fans and is “having conversations” with Freeform and Universal TV. She sees hope in the fact that the presidents of both of these companies are now Black women.

Not surprisingly, Dee’s message has come with a ton of love and support, especially from her castmates Katie Stevens and Meghann Fahy, who both reposted her Instagram. “I stand by her through thick and thin and am so proud of the woman she is,” wrote Stevens. Because the more people who speak up, the more changes that can be made for future generations.

Some time ago I wrote about the slippery slide to being overwhelmed when dealing with the world wide web. This time I would like to talk about the benefits as I see them, of using the web to promote your business.

Many of us start a part-time business, sometimes becoming entrepreneurs for the first time, when we reach our 60s. If you come from the corporate world, even if you worked in marketing, suddenly being faced with marketing yourself can be daunting.

There are so many people out there trying to market themselves, and the competition is fierce. Then add to the confusion the fact that every second person is trying to market their suggestion as to how you should do it!

Remember, Rome Was Not Built in a Day

Three years after opening my doors as a retirement coach, I am finally gaining some traction. I tried all the suggestions. Things like writing a book, giving webinars, and offering free coaching sessions.

I tried developing an online course and worked at having a great LinkedIn profile. I built a following on Pinterest as well as Facebook. Now, in my third year, the tide is slowly starting to turn.

Yes, it has taken me many hours to climb this exponential learning curve. When I started out, people told me it would take time, and I didn’t want to listen. I was already 61 and in a hurry. I didn’t want to finally achieve a steady stream of clients at 75!

Golden Nuggets I Have Accumulated

The most salient learning points that I have taken out of all this are:

• You need to put yourself out there as the expert in your field.
• You must build a following and talk to them regularly.
• By giving your following a constant flow of valuable information they will come to trust you.
• It helps to have an ‘accountability buddy’ who is walking the journey with you.

These days, everything happens over the Internet, and we all know how that can be twisted and manipulated by social media. This is why it takes more time to build the trust online than it does face to face over a cup of coffee.

Have Confidence in Yourself and Your Expertise

Part of my problem was that I was afraid of starting a newsletter. I lacked the confidence that people might enjoy receiving information via email from me on a regular basis!

I had written a book right at the beginning, but because I was green behind the ears, I made mistakes and sales have not gone as I hoped.

Thus, I developed this limiting belief that people wouldn’t want to hear from me. It was watching Margaret’s regular vlogs arrive in my inbox and then offering to blog on her site, that helped me see that it was possible!

At the start of 2018, I finally made the resolution to send out a fortnightly blog. I sent the first one to a short list of people, mainly friends, but it gradually developed into a wonderful space for dialogue.

The lesson I take from this is: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Each week, I get a couple more subscribers and my list is growing.

Have Someone Walk Alongside You

Having an accountability buddy is a wonderful way of moving yourself forward, as well as having someone alongside you who understands what you are going through.

Most of my friends think I am talking a foreign language when I talk about opt-ins, landing pages, funnels, and the like. However, my accountability buddy and I speak the same jargon, and she is on a parallel path with me, so we keep each other motivated.

Learn from Your Mistakes

These days, you simply cannot market yourself or your business without the assistance of the web. There are plenty services out there who can do it for you for a price, but they do not have that same inner passion for your ‘baby’.

You simply have to have confidence in yourself and be prepared to learn from your mistakes! And remember, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Have you tried to launch a new business in your 60s? What is holding you back from being an entrepreneur? Please share your fears and how you overcome them. We can all learn from each other!