Hola gorgeous Goddesses!

It’s that time of the moon again… an Ask Goddess Leonie question answered 🙂 To get your question answered, just add your question here.

This time, a sweetheart asked me:

What do you do to your hair to make all mermaidy?

Aaaaaaahhhh… good question! Let’s get all goddess girly for a moment!

First point: Leonie is not a style guru. And thus makes her style.

I don’t like handbags, shoes, bras, make-up, undies, hairdryers or clothes shopping… and try not to engage with all of the above as often as possible.

I like to call my personal dress style as “hobo-hobo” – as in – bohemian homeless person.

I’m pretty sure my inability to care about all things beauty + style is born out of growing up on a farm in the middle of nowhere-Australia… but seeing as my sisters + mum manage to maintain some kind of style decorum, I don’t know if I can actually use it as an excuse. For me, style + beauty comes out of what happens when you wake up, pull on the closest clothes, rock the bedhead or the ponytail, and run outside to play with puppehs, or do some painting in the sunlight. That’s my definition of high style! 🙂

My bestest goddess advice for cultivating goddess hair… is to let it be what it is.

There is nothing more gorgeous than revelling in the beauty and uniqueness of the mane we were given.

Me thinks pregnancy tends to make manes a whole lot more mermaidy too…

Here’s my uber-difficult mermaid-hair beauty-regime:

1.) I brush it once a week. Maybe.

It’s true. I wash it once a week with whatever is in the shower. I comb it when it is wet {oooooh… beauty no-no that Leonie says yes-yes to!l}.

And then I let it go do whatever it wants the rest of the time. Sometimes it is scooped up in a ponytail with fringe-y bits. Sometimes I pull back my fringe with a bobby pin and rock the bed-hair. On days I feel all maiden-squire-goddess-hottie, I have two messy braids.

And that’s about the whole of my hair repertoire.

2.) I don’t cut it. Unless it’s in the backyard.

I think the last time I had my hair cut by a hairdresser was three years ago. And before then, it had been a couple of years. I started not cutting my hair – and about once a year, when I felt like I needed to let go of old energy, I’d stand in my backyard and cut away intuitively – no mirror – just me, my hands, my hair, and a pair of scissors. And all the ends of my hair would catch in my wind and get carried over my garden, and it felt beautiful and good and right.

Sometimes it would happen in the moonlight, sometimes it would happen under the stars, sometimes it would happen under the sun.

And each time would feel like this wonderful, sacred ritual of release, and of transformation, and of tending to my self.

So that time I went back to a hairdresser?

Suddenly I felt all out of place. It was so loud and stark and inside. And the hairdresser kept wanting to gossip, and talk about new styles and how annoying things were. And my hair got cut away, and all my ends got swept up into other people’s ends, and got put in a big bin together.

It just didn’t feel right anymore.

So it’s back to intuitive haircuts in the backyard for me!

3.) I let it be what it wants to be.

No colour. No straighteners. No blow-drying.

I found a haircut style that worked with the natural flow of my hair – lots of layers – and stayed with it.

Evidence: What happens when you ignore what sings to your hair, and force a too-short fringe on curly hair…

Occasionally I make rather hilarious mistakes like cutting my own crazy-short-fringe and hoping that my hair would miraculously change from curly to being straight and edgy. Funnily enough, just because you try and force a style on your hair, it doesn’t mean it will change. It’s just going to do it’s own thing anyway.

So my whole hair-philosophy {and life-philosophy} is not to try and make something different from what it is.

If I can just have the humour, grace & courage to allow myself to be who I am truly – to allow my hair to be whatever it wants to be – then it will all work out beautifully.

That’s the gift my hair teaches me…

around us, there are a thousand teachers, all giving us the chance to learn again and again about love, and about light.

big love you,