i am not my hair??

Hair. To cut or not to cut is the question. At least it is for me these days. I’ve been rocking butterfly locs for the last couple of months and LOVE them. But with the daily and nightly heat waves I have started asking myself if it’s time for a big chop.

There are a ton of cute options but it feels unfair to make the choice based on my changing body versus a sheer desire to have a different look.

Potentially cutting my hair makes me feel more frustrated than excited. To me, it feels like giving into a change I wasn’t fully prepared to make. With chemo, I understood that losing my hair was a part of the healing process. Strangely it was like badge of honor (well after crying when I proactively had my head shaved). I was a young cancer warrior and have the pictures to prove it. I wore hats and scarves when I felt like it, had four different wigs for when I was feeling fancy, and had days when I let my bare scalp fully reveal what I was going through.

When I was done with chemo, I tracked my regrowth process and started playing around with different hair styles again. My daughter doesn’t remember when I didn’t have any hair at all but every now and then she comments on how amazing it is that all my hair grew back. It’s as though every additional inch of growth indicates how far I’ve come from my initial diagnosis. My hair provides me with a sense of pride and signal of triumph—grays and all.

I talk to my kids all the time about being flexible when our plans change or the day doesn’t go as expected but heeding my own advice is something I’m currently resisting. I would probably be a lot more comfortable with a stylish undercut. Frantically reaching for a hair clip or ripping the now ever present scrunchie off my wrist to get even the smallest amount of hair off my neck is getting old, but this is my hard fought mane and I’m not ready to lose it, again.

I may be singing a different tune by the end of the summer but for now I am very much my hair.