A Post About Hair, But Not Really About Hair

August. Sweet August.

It feels like a time of new beginnings.

I’m not going to lie – I’m kind of unable to really – July was fucking ROUGH. Intense and hard and lots of boundary setting and consequent endings.

And then there were moments of clarity and joy and promise too.

It was like watching both the destruction of something old and the birth of something new all at once.

And it’s a story I can tell with my hair.

It’s about other places in my life too.

But the hair is the story I am called to telling.

 

I’d made mistakes with my hair.

 

I don’t know why I did it.

I thought I needed to be different.

Different somehow from what I already was.

As though I wasn’t enough

just as I was, right now.

I’d permed it (even though it was already curly).

I’d made it blonde (even though it was already blonde).

And it no longer lived like my hair.

It wasn’t alive anymore.

It didn’t spring and float and glee all about the place.

It no longer felt the wind brush past it.

It didn’t thrive on neglect like the overgrown roses in our very first house.

It just… sat. And coiled, gnarling into fierce knots. My beloved friend was now my foe.

And no amount of love or nourishment or oils or headwraps or expensive conditioners would ever fix the damage at its core.

And so one night, I took a deep breath.

I decided I needed to feel like ALL of me was alive again…

that I wasn’t holding on for reasons that no longer made sense.

Identity, security, the idea of what something is supposed to be…

None of these were good enough reasons anymore.

Not good enough for me to not feel like all of me.

So I walked outside.

And I cut my mermaid hair off under the moonlight, scissors in hand, barefoot in a winter garden.

*

Sometimes it looks like this…

And sometimes it looks like this…

*

Either way, it’s gone now.

Back to the garden, back to the earth.

It was old and it was broken and it was damaged and it had done what it was needed to do.

That’s the story of my month.

The story of my hair.

The story of other pieces too.

*

If you’ve made a mistake, you can reverse it.

If something isn’t working, you can let it go.

You can decide, and you can decide again.

*

I’m lighter now.

My hair behaves just as it is wont to do:

It is Medusa and it is Lilith and it is wild and it is free.

And most of all,

importantly,

it is all of me.

*

All my love,

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