Hair today, gone tomorrow

It never ceases to amaze me how much we change our hair and how much it changes us.  Recently I liberated myself from a thousand years worth, ok slight exaggeration, of hair and all the 'identity' that went with this mountain of hair.  I mean people literally do not recognise me anymore. (Which worked in my favour when an old shag of mine served us at the baby store where my husband and I were buying our new twin pram! There’s a ‘please ground just open up and swallow me’ moment for you…) Honestly, I’ve had friends walk right past me.


Now I'm not pointing fingers at the general public for identifying me by a simple attribute, because until I shed this awesome mane of hair I beheld (as you can see, it was a little longer than the average bear's), I didn't realised how much this dragon identified herself by it. I was “that girl with the LONG hair...” and I had sat comfortably in that self perception.

But against the protests of my mother and my previous hairdresser, who had known me since I was knee high to a grasshoper, I went and got the cut I have always thought about but was never game enough to get. And after a brief hour of catching up on the latest celebrity trash magazines and scoffing at the hollywood twin mums bitches who bounced back to their size 6 bodies, it was done! And it was perfect, ok well not 100% perfect – I am a virgo after all, lets just say it was AWESOME!  I could feel the breeze on the back of my head and couldn’t run my fingers through it, it was something I’ve never experienced before and it was liberating.  I looked in the mirror and thought, I wasn’t a boring old housewife and mother of 3, that had saggy bits where my virility and libido were implied, no I was a new me, an excited new me.

I guess, Physically - like the rings of a tree or the layers of sediment in stone, my hair carried a log of easily over 7 years of my ill spent youth (a strange coincidence that this falls in line with the Saturn 7 year cycle, but I digress into astrology)  What I ate, drank, 'took', hell even what my hormones where doing was recorded in my hair.  Bloody CSI would have a field day!  I even remember in science class, a fellow student was so intrigued by my hair that they yanked one strand out and measured it... it was over 1m long!  Fact : maximum growth rate for hair is about 6 inches (15 cm) per year.  I mean, I'm only 5’2” - that stuff was nearly 2/3's of my height.

And Energetically - along with all those chemical markers, were all my thoughts and feelings experienced over that time, imprinted on those long long strands.  Along with the radiant, shinning and glorious feelings was all that angst, awkwardness, insecurity, embarrassment, regret, uncertainty, rage etc that the rollercoaster of life brings you to help define you, well it did for me.  I mean imagine carrying that much crap around with you like a thundercloud? It’s not like your family don’t give enough baggage to carry around HA!

Now some of you would be saying what the hell is she going on about?  But the science aside, I believe in Universal Energy. Yep that hippy tree hugging stuff, although I do like to shower, shave and brush said hair and I’m not a fan Patchouli or Lavender oils.  I do however believe there is energy in everything we say and do, not just in the nature around us.  So much like the Hindi Mundan Ceremony, the cut of my locks helped release my soul to a greater freedom.  I had shed my thundercloud and was now projecting a new rush of fresh energy out to the world.  It was an amazing feeling, like having a summer’s breeze under my wings again.

So proud of this brave little dragon, I posted my new 'do' on facebook and received so so many wonderful comments.  And that my friends made this dragon within purr….