Anne Sullivan, 52, is a divorced mother of two and web designer from Brighton, West Sussex.
Anne says;
“Three years ago my marriage ended suddenly and painfully after 15 years together. I’m not saying our marriage was always a bed of roses but we had generally been very happy together and I thought we’d be together forever.
We had several wonderful fun-packed years together before we decided to have children as I believed it was important to enjoy each other before dedicating ourselves to children. But I was delighted when we decided it was time to start a family and I got pregnant easily. In the space of a few years we had two beautiful children. We exchanged our trendy London apartment for a lovely family home near the sea. I returned to work after a few years, he was climbing up his career path and our lives seemed complete.
Then out of the blue just after what seemed to be a happy family Christmas, he announced he was leaving me. Still to this day I don’t entirely know why. He said it was because he no longer loved me but I still don’t believe that was the reason. You know when someone doesn’t love you and I never felt that in all the time we were together.
To make matters worse he quickly met someone else much younger and moved in with her. While I was in pieces about our separation, he seemed to have moved swiftly on with his life. It was as if the 15 years married to me had never happened. I tried desperately to talk to him, to find out why he had left, I was even willing to forgive him, but he simply didn’t want to hear. He even found talking to me one the phone difficult so we had to communicate via email. When he picked up the kids he waited at the garden gate, refusing to even come to the front door.
Most days I just wanted to crawl into a cave and die but my survival instinct and my desire to protect my children from what was a very traumatic and precarious stage of all our lives gave me the will to haul myself out of bed each morning and gradually try and piece back together the wreckage of our shattered lives. I felt very alone and completely daunted about being in charge of two young children who now I had to fulfil the role of both Mummy and Daddy for.
Like so many women in my position, I painted on my armour and smiled for the world but at night with the children safe, I simultaneously cried my heart out.
I don’t know how I survived it all but I did. The divorce was a long and painful process as we split everything up and in the middle of it all he announced that his new girlfriend was pregnant. He would not communicate for months when my lawyer need him to and then just as we’d make progress he’d shift the goal posts and we’d have to start all over again. The lawyer’s bills, the arguing and the anguish took its toll.
I put on weight and resorted to wearing fleeces and jeans as I didn’t have the motivation to go shopping for clothes or dress up like I used to. I even stopped bothering to put makeup on as I work from home so figured what was the point. I had withdrawn from any kind of social life anyway and barely left the house except to run the kids to their activities or go to the supermarket. I made my way steadily through just about every box set TV series I could order off Amazon and I’d comfort eat while sitting on the sofa watching them to try and ease the pain I still felt inside.
The day our divorce was finalised was a sunny bright Spring day. Feeling relieved and free for the first time in almost two years I sniffed the fresh warm air and went into the first nice restaurant I saw and ordered myself a glass of wine and a fancy lunch to celebrate. I hadn’t been out for a grown up meal in almost a year and I felt like treating myself. As I sat eating the delicious food that was put in front of me I caught sight of myself in a mirror and the woman starring back at me looked like a stranger. I looked at the people around me, well groomed glamorous ladies and their equally well kept companions and then I looked at myself. My lank un-dyed hair, my practical boring clothes, and then I starred at my face. I had aged 20 years. I looked like an old woman, my face had literally collapsed.
When I got home I took a long hard look at myself in the mirror and decided it was time for me to start loving myself again. Before my divorce I’d always been a very confident person about my looks. I’m quite tall and had never had problems attracting men. I was often asked if I was a model.
Now I felt simply invisible to men. I had started to think about the idea of dating again but things were very different now. Before I was married I seemed to always meet men so easily, either out socially or through work, they would simply approach me and things would go from there. Now I didn’t know where to begin. Friends had suggested on-line dating sites but the idea frightened me.
Well-meaning friends had also tried to drop hints that I might need some kind of make-over, small token gifts of cosmetics and fashion and slimming magazines left accidentally on my coffee table but I stubbornly refused to take any hints, claiming that men had to like me as I was or not at all.
But as I looked at my drawn tired face, the anxiety lines etched deep in my skin, the dull eyes from lack of quality sleep, the down turned mouth from two years of never smiling, my lack lustre skin – I realised how truly awful I looked. Not just awful, but deflated and defeated, as if the very life had been sucked from me.
It wasn’t a desire to start dating that first made me consider a cosmetic make over, it was for myself. I wanted to show the world and myself that I was not beaten by divorce like so many of the women I’d seen. You could spot them on the streets, down trodden and defeated. I had let everything go to rack and ruin, like a run-down old building. If I didn’t show myself some love and care how could I expect anyone else to?
I didn’t even want to look different, I just wanted to look like the old me!
But I’d never had any cosmetic procedures other than the odd facial and I didn’t want anything permanent and surgery was a definite no way. I wanted a lot of subtle changes to happen but I wanted to look natural and for nothing to be irreversible.
The solution offered to me at well-heeled Harley Street clinic I went to for a consultation seemed complicated and eye wateringly expensive. I’d need several different procedures at different times and the whole thing racked up to something in excess of £5,000 and would require numerous trips to London.
I got home with my hands shaking wondering to myself what on earth I had been thinking. My divorce would mean the last few years of financial anxiety wouldn’t be quite so acute but I didn’t have several spare thousands to throw around.
However I did feel I owed myself a treat after the hell I’d been through. Part of me kept nagging myself that I should be squirrelling the money away for my kid’s education or for a deposit for their first house but another part of me felt I needed some sort of confidence boost before it was all too late for me.
So I decided to go on a cheap holiday just to get some sun and relaxation. Some friends were going to one of their holiday apartments in Marbella for six days and asked me to join them. I had initially said no but my mum encouraged me to go saying she would look after the kids. She said I looked like I needed a break, which was my mother’s way of telling me I looked dreadful. Before I had time to back out she’d bought me the ticket and I found myself in M&S trying to pick out some kind of swimsuit that hid as many of my wobbly bits as any swimsuit could and a large hat and shades to cover my face.
On the flight out I was leafing through the in-flight magazine and read an article about a woman who had had what they’d dubbed as ‘The Marbella Facelift’ at the Graal Clinic in Marbella. It was a new type of face lift that could be done in two hours with no recovery time and cost about £900, which was less than a fifth of what I was told I’d have to pay in London for several different procedures that amounted to less effects than the new facelift was claiming to offer . The before and afters of the lady who’d had the new facelift were incredible. As I read about all the things that the new face lift did, it was like someone was ticking off a wish list of what I’d dreamed of having done to my face. Lifting, plumping, smoothing, filling in of wrinkles and hollows, skin regenerating and eye bag removal, all in one two-hour procedure and not a single cut of the knife.
By the time I landed all I could think about was calling the clinic. I’d put the number in my phone and as soon as I had a spare moment I called them. I told my friends what I was planning and they were all very supportive, in fact frankly they looked relieved. The clinic was a ten minute taxi ride from where we were staying. One of my friends came with me as she was also interested in find out more about the new facelift, which was officially called the Mesoplasty Lift. We both had a consultation to check our skin was suitable for the facelift and the doctor told us that although she was fully booked (every woman in Marbella was having it done) she’d see if she could move some appointments around to try and fit us in.
The following day the clinic called to say there was one appointment free which my friend gallantly offered to me and the next day I found myself laid out in a chair with needles being stuck in my face. I was terrified and almost backed out the morning of the procedure but my friends gave me support and said it would fine. A few of them had had cosmetic procedures themselves so they knew what they were talking about. They were right. The experience was far less traumatic than I thought it would be. It took less than two hours and yes there was pain and pricking and my face was numb and felt weird and rubbery afterwards but I was basically fine.
I relaxed by the pool at the apartment complex for two days making sure I kept my face shaded from the sun. There was some swelling which I thought looked really obvious but my friends kept telling me was barely noticeable. Some small bruises also developed after a few days as the doctor had warned me they might but it was easy to cover them with make-up. The day after the procedure I booked myself a hair appointment to have a new ‘do’, and went from dowdy gingerish bangs to a glamorous strawberry blonde layered bob. I was also treated to a day in a spa having various massages and anti-cellulite treatments by my wonderfully supportive friends.
By the time I returned home after six days away my face was pretty much back to normal in terms of swelling and bruising, except I looked about five years younger already and the effects of the plasma vitamin and collagen injections and eye bag removal procedure hadn’t even kicked in yet.
After about three weeks I saw the full effects of the Marbella Facelift and it was incredible. It looked even better than a surgical face lift as along with a new youthful tightness to my skin there was a plumping out of my cheeks, removal of hollows and jowls and the luminosity of my skin was amazing.
My new face along with my new hair, holiday tan and a much needed wardrobe make over from a brief shopping spree in Marbella I looked like a completely different woman. When people saw me who knew me they’d do a double take. A few people asked me if I’d found love again as I looked so glowing and young. I just smiled and told them it was down to nothing more than a relaxing and regenerating holiday.
Now I feel so much better about everything and my confidence has soared. I’ve been motivated to lose weight and am almost back to my old svelte self.
On returning from holiday I also made a few big decisions in my life regarding work which I’d been putting off, meaning I’m off in a new direction with my career. Feeling better about myself has given me the kind of energy boost I haven’t felt in years.
I’ve already noticed that I’m starting to get some positive attention from men, probably because I’m smiling more and my confidence has returned more than anything else, but also perhaps because I don’t look defeated and worn down by life. Nobody wants to take on a burden.
I’m in my early 50’s but now I’m often mistaken for being in my 40’s, which is something that would give any woman something to smile about. I think when you feel good about yourself then other people feel good being around you, it’s all a knock on effect.
But my Marbella Facelift was the best £900 I think I’ve ever spent other than buying a moped when I was 16. I’m told the results last two years so I think I’ll be booking myself another little regenerating holiday in the sun in a few years time.”
The Mesoplasty Lift is available exclusively at the Graal Clinic, visit; www.graalclinicpuertobanus.com
