-
- This girl. Her hair was just fuzz. And no one judged her for that. She was just being a baby. Which is the only thing people needed her to do.
-
- And as her hair grew in, it was blonde. As blonde can be. And her personality, she is told, it grew, too. And she was full of spice. As spicy as could be.
-
- Her hair had volume and personality. She did, too.
-
- Flaxen locks. Maybe because of her Swedish roots. Maybe because she was a little piece of walking sunshine, she is told.
-
- She had a perm or two. And big bangs. She was always a big presence. A loud entrance. A joyful existence. But sometimes, being naturally all over the place was a hard thing to work with as a kid.
-
- Straightening irons were not yet a thing. So she had to own what she had. What she was.
-
- She didn’t get to color her hair. Per her mother’s rules. And the norms of the decade. So she had to attempt to be content with what she was. Who she was. Sometimes she was successful. Other times… well… she wasn’t.
-
- At times, that was easy. To be full of volume. To have big, noticeable locks. To have a big, loud personality.
-
- She often got compliments. But she felt different than so many others. And that was sometimes beautiful. And sometimes, a challenge for her loud, voluminous self.
-
- She struggled at times with its texture. With its waffling ways. It was unpredictable. It was everywhere. So was she.
-
- Eventually, she and her hair found their groove. They had worked with each other for a couple of decades, after all.
-
- She let her comfort zone settle in. She felt like she was starting to have a bit of refined style… maybe… finally. Like all the other girls seemed to have had for awhile.
-
- And sometimes no one knew that she still doubted herself. That she still felt alone. Because her hair…
-
- It told the story of a woman who had figured it out.
-
- No one would have known she wore it long because she wanted to hide at that point.
-
- Over time, she once again, came to a point came where she decided to go back to her roots. To her original, first known self. To the girl she’d started as. The girl who was comfortable with being loud. And a presence. She wanted to get back to the basics. To the woman deep inside of her. The one who had never had the post-partum blues. The one who had just coped through miscarriage. She wanted to shine again. For herself though. Not for the compliments. Or the confidence.
-
- She started to feel familiar.
-
- And that positioning made it all so much easier. To have hair she knew. When this tiny human started in a different way than they expected. She could put her hair in a top knot and get shit done.
-
- She was a mother. A woman in charge of other people. She was a wife. A woman in charge of a home. In charge of her world. She was a top knot master. A woman in charge of throwing her hair back and getting to the task at hand.
-
- And then she even got her groove back. In life. And in her hair.
-
- But then. FEAR. True. Horrible. Paralyzing. Fear. Cancer. She was sick.
-
- She knew she would have to let it go. The fear. The hair. She knew that her hair was just hair.
-
- She knew for once, that she had to just pretend she was in control of this mess of hair. This sort of mess of life. At the moment. It wasn’t going away. It had to happen. She had to go through.
-
- So she turned it into adventure. She took the reigns. She called the shots. She sheared her locks.
-
- And with tequila and prayer, she was that little blonde girl again on the inside. The girl with a presence.
-
- Without the hair to tell her story. She told it.
-
- She wore hats. She wore herself.
-
- She was completely stripped down. To her shell. And she still had a presence. She liked herself. She was becoming a better human. Perhaps more than she ever could have otherwise.
-
- She had fun with it. She became, “Loretta” and “Elvira”
-
- She became fearless.
-
- She became a different kind of beautiful. And she recognized the value of that.
-
- A kind that she got to celebrate. A kind that she got to EMBRACE. Free of judgment.
-
- She FOUGHT.
-
- Her hair was no longer a necessity to her. It wasn’t her security. It wasn’t her beauty.
-
- It wasn’t her personality.
-
- It was going to have to follow her rules. For a bit.
-
- Roll with her true colors.
-
- Become Eminem.
-
- And Ellen.
-
- Become part of her story.
-
- It became unpredictable again. Life. Her hair.
-
- She realized she had never been in charge. Even when she thought she had been. So she played that up.
-
- She became Blanche.
-
- She accessorized it as needed.
-
- And decided she had to go with its flow. She needed to let go of what she thought everyone thought she was. And figure out who this new woman would become.
-
- She embraced the root of the current day. And knew that she did not need it to be bright for her to shine a light.
-
- She let it become in its own time this time.
-
- She had Keith Urban.
-
- And she learned that sometimes it would be with her. Sometimes it wouldn’t. But the only thing always there would be her heart and soul. And everything else is just an accessory. An accompanying detail in the overall story.
And then she heard the words from her friend and stylist… “it’s back…”
It’s back to where it was before. But she knows she will never be. It took 18 months to get “it” back. But she will NEVER go back to where she was before.
She will never be the same texture. The same color. The same person. She won’t.
And she is so happy about that.
Because where she is now… it’s better. It was hard to get here. It wasn’t something she ever wants to do again… like that 80s perm… it was necessary, it seems, for what it was… where it was. But she wants to continue forward as this new girl+the girl who started with the fuzz the first time. A jumbled puzzle of her years and her experiences. Her roots and her ends. Her start and her present. And strand by strand, she will embrace the good hair days… the bad days… the kinks… the curls… and the beautiful mess. The evolution of her hair and her life.
Becoming together.
Unbecoming together.
And sometimes, falling out, starting over, and realizing that there is little way she will ever actually be in control. Of her hair. Or her life.
And how much better it all feels when she remembers that each day.
