It explains everything I have wished I could say about the experience of shaving one's head so poignantly (and the photographs are spectacular). If you haven't read Tara's blog, you are seriously missing out, by the way.
In light of this particular post, I wanted to take this opportunity to say that yes, hair is important for a woman. I don't know how men feel about their hair. I don't know if it speaks volumes to them and about them. I don't know if emotions are all wrapped up in it... but for women, they are.
I didn't really "get" this until my head-shaving experience and all that followed and all of the things I learned from going to that place.
People are sort of baffled by me waffling between keeping it short and letting it grow back after these 2.5 years of "baldness".
For some, it seems like a no-brainer: throw away all that stupid judgement. Just come on back to society where you belong.
For me...it's not that simple.
For one thing, I have no desire to go anywhere near the society I left when I took a razor to my head for the first time. I have no desire to revisit, to go back, to re-live, to re-instate, or any other "re's". I want to leave it where I left it the first time - in strands of gratefulness on the kitchen floor.
But the growing back... for me, while it would be hard - (I tried already twice, and got so fed up with having hair touching my neck that I shaved it off after a couple of months to right where it was before) is about moving forward. Not re-tracing steps, but taking back power. Moving ON. Starting OVER.
It is as though shaving my head the first time removed all that past crap, and then all of the other shavings were precautionary... to keep the crap from coming back. To keep new crap from creeping in.
I have never felt fulfilled in the place we recently departed. I always felt a little off. A little like I didn't really fit. There were boundaries I had to put up to keep myself safe, to keep myself sane, to keep people out. II kept on shaving because I had to keep on getting it away from me. This fog that seemed to hang over the whole area. Sometimes I thought it would consume me.
It's not to say there aren't amazing things about the place we left - or amazing people in it, or who have come out of it... but for me...there were simply things that were toxic, and I needed to feel clean.
Now that we're on the road...maybe it's time to accumulate instead of rejecting.
Maybe it's time to grab onto, instead of letting go.
Embrace. Be filled.
Hair is a symbol. Just ask Samson.
What does your hair mean to you? What would it mean for you to remove it or lose it?
1 comment:
Hair has always been a big thing for me. Every time I would have a huge change (break up, whatever) in high school I would chop a bit off my hair. Other times I would let it grow for as long as I could (I think 3 years was my tops). Then I decide to clean up and clear out and get rid of and my hair is always part of that process.
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