Beauty Bravery

As I've introduced the super-short hair to various groups of people (coworkers, clients, etc.), it has inevitably led to lots of conversations about bravery.  People have been telling me how brave I am for chopping off all my hair.  (Secretly I think that's their way of saying they don't really like it, i.e. 'It must've taken a lot of guts for you to get a haircut like THAT.')

What I keep telling them is just a simple response – 'I have a tattoo.  I permanently inked my skin.  I am in no way scared of a haircut.'  But in reality, there's so much more to it than that.

Have you ever had one of those times in your life where you find yourself squirming around in your skin, uncomfortable in your day-to-day existence but unable to quickly change it?  There's just this sense, somewhere down in your heart or at the back of your mind that you just don't quite fit in your current circumstances but you feel at a loss as to what to change or how?

That's where I am right now.  And it's oddball for me because there are certainly aspects of my life right now that I LOVE and couldn't imagine any different (being a mom for example, feels so incredibly natural and fulfilling it's almost impossible to describe) but there is just something… something nagging…

Thus the hair.  The joke in college was that you could always tell if I had recently been through a breakup just by seeing me – because my hair would be different.  I'd end some relationship and immediately call my stylist.  For the first few years of our marriage Colin still looked at me askance whenever I told him I had a hair appointment.

I've been planning this pixie cut for over a year so the decision itself wasn't made on the fly but the timing was definitely driven by an inner need to just DO SOMETHING.  To break out of the rut, to change my perspective, to see the world differently.  I began to feel this antsy-ness coming over me and I knew – it's time.  Time to chop it.

I realize at first blush it seems silly to talk about a haircut changing my perspective or allowing me to see the world differently but the truth is, in our beauty-centered culture, it's probably not so hard to see how such a drastic appearance change can change a person's outlook.  I often encourage my female friends to ditch their makeup or cut their hair to change their point of view.  If you change the way you look at yourself, how could you not change the way you see everything else?

The pixie falls into it this way – I need to see myself and my place in this phase of my life differently.  I need to be able to turn a more critical eye towards every detail so that I can find the one that's giving me grief.  How better to do that than to change the way that I see myself (both literally and metaphorically)?  And what easier way to do that than to strip away what can easily be such a large part of any woman's identity? 

A lot of this has to do, I think, with my needing to figure out where I am now in all this mom-ness.  Just as when Colin and I got married and I lost my 'me' into our 'we' for a while, I'm naturally having that same experience with baby Grady.  My life right now focuses on him, revolves around him, is all about him and that is, of course, how it should be.  But in order to be the kind of mom that I want to be for him, I have to also start taking the time to reestablish myself as a separate entity and figure out how to honor that person as well.  If I can't do it myself, I can't expect him to do it either.

But in order to do that I have to take stock of the changes that have occurred within me over the past six months (and longer) and figure out where they leave me as an individual.  There is more to me than motherhood – but what is it, exactly?  What does she look like and – more importantly – what does she want?

It's a harder question to answer than you might think – but I believe at least some of the barriers to the answer were left on the salon floor among the clippings.  I look in the mirror and I see a different me.  Now I just have to get to know her.