Beverley Mitchell shared a makeup-free selfie with fans and followers, showing her bare skin even as she noted that "perfect skin probably isn't in my future."
"Thank you for giving me a space to share my struggle," she wrote in the caption, paired with a carousel of images showing different angles of the "7th Heaven" star's fresh face. "I choose to share because I think it’s time we give ourselves a break. This is real. This is me! I don’t need sympathy, I appreciate the recommendations but honestly, I am in full acceptance of everything that I am and everything I am not."
"I don’t post this for your love," she continued. "I post this out of pride for the woman I have become! I used to be crippled by what people thought of me and now I honestly don’t care."
Even so, there was an outpouring of support for her honesty and vulnerability in the comments. "Love this! Be you, be authentic, be comfortable rocking the skin you’re in," one fan wrote. Another added: "Your beautiful and brave!💜thanks for sharing."
But brave is not how Mitchell wants to be labeled.
"I'm obviously touched by people using such beautiful words to say it, but I am not saving lives, I'm not risking my life for others, I'm not fighting fires," the 38-year-old actress told TODAY Style. "But I feel like part of me is sad that it is so rare and so unheard of to just throw the real moment out there."
The mother of two explained that her kids, Hutton Michael, 4, and Kenzie, 7, are a big motivation to keep it real.
"I want my children to grow up being completely confident in who they are," she explained. "I don't want them to go hide in a room because maybe their skin doesn't look great or something else that society might see as wrong. I want them to always have confidence to move forward and just be who they are."
Many times when Mitchell posts about her skin, she gets a barrage of recommendations from her fans and followers to fix the problem of her skin, something she says she appreciates but isn't seeking.
"My skin's always been an issue, so this is nothing new to me," she shared. "I've tried everything under the sun. I will continue to try different methods to see what works for me. But it's not about achieving anything other than just feeling clean."
And that includes recommendations about makeup. "I equate makeup with work because when I'm working I typically have to wear a great deal of makeup," she said.
This isn't the first time Mitchell has taken to social media to candidly reveal her realness.
Back in July, she shared another makeup-free selfie, this time with a caption discussing a change in her hormones after she experienced a miscarriage in 2018.
"And is having a full blown hormonal nightmare on my jawline which hurts like hell," she shared. "Never knew how messed up my hormones would be after the miscarriage, almost a year later and my hormones are still completely out of whack!"
Mitchell hopes that her honest posts will inspire others to find more confidence and self-acceptance, perceived flaws and all.
"I want my daughter to know that she's beautiful — whether she wears makeup, whether she doesn't wear makeup, it doesn't ever matter — and just to own who she is and the magic that is her because she has something that nobody else has. She's Kenzie. And that's the way I go, 'I'm Bev, and this is my body. This is my life.' The only one I've got. So I'm going to make the best of it and I'm going to give the world my best and my best is just positivity and love and self-love."