A Blue Moon on the Eve of a New Decade
It had to be special, after all there was to be a blue moon and that happens, well once in a blue moon!!! The next one will not occur for 18 years, so it is definitely a rare occurrence. Coupled with the eve of a new decade being ushered in and goodbyes to a decade gone by. And it seems it was a year (2009) that proved to be very difficult for many, it, New Year’s Eve, had all the promise of being a day to remember.
For me, it had an added dimension. New Years Eve 2001 was the day I left the corporate world. I walked out that day and vowed never to go back in that capacity. 8 years later, on my anniversary and a blue moon, I decided to make another change.
This change was not thought over for long. In fact it just happened. We were cleansing through Christmas and New Year and I had a opening of clarity where I asked myself what I wanted out of the cleanse and the new year. My response (yes, to myself, I talk to myself often, don’t you?), was that I wanted to be healthy. I have the feeling of being called to arms, to walk my talk, to be healthier than I have ever been before and to pursue health in all matters of my life.
The pursuit of health in my life does not sound too new of an idea, after all, I have spent the last eight years learning about health and implementing drastic changes into my diet and lifestyle. This time, however, it was hair that was called into question. I have had my dreadlocks for 7 years and they have been pink for 6.5 years, a long time. As much as I love them and wanted to keep them, I no longer felt comfortable continuing to bleach the roots, it just is not the way I live my life.
This was NOT a comfortable thought to have (as can often happen during cleanses, we confront the questions and issues we would suppress otherwise). I called my friend and hairdresser from 9 years ago to ask if we could take my hair back to something near the natural color (mid to dark brown) so I wouldn’t have to continue coloring it. The answer was “No”, the only way to get healthier hair was to chop it off and begin again.
At 6.30pm January 30, 2009, I found myself calling Berlin to ask him when he would be able to cut and color my hair…”I can meet you in the salon tomorrow at 10am,” he said. “Ok, see you then,” I replied, really uncertain of the decision I had apparently made! With the only comb we have in the house (two heads of dreadlocks do not use brushes and combs!), Cemaaj started “combing out” my dreadlocks. We knew the ones at the front had a chance of combing out and leaving a little length but those at the back were locked pretty close to the scalp-Berlin had predicted that my hair would be a cross between “funky” and “jacked up” with long and short pieces (my thought was that it was going to look awkward and weird but that I would get over it, or not, and it would eventually grow).
I was nervous. I cried several times that evening-sometimes out of sheer pain at my head being pulled for 8+ hours. Other times out of sheer nervousness of how my hair was going to look until it had time to grow…going from pink dreadlocks to “jacked up” was a scary leap to make…
And then there was the issue of it being a scary leap to make-after all we are only talking hair here, yet we all know hair is loaded with messages and interpreted by many as the representation of who the person is in the world. Yes, we have India Arie who tells us she is not (nor are we) her hair, but it takes conviction to do away with the “pretty” or “radical” or whatever message your hair conveys, to not only do away with it but to do so with the risk of the end result looking very very bad. It was, it seems, a risk I had to take.
On the other side of the leap, I sit here with more hair than I could have imagined surviving (thanks to Cemaaj’s patience for the eight hours he had spent painstakingly brushing it out). And it is brown. Short, brown hair-not much of a message there, though it has been interpreted by many as my return to “normalcy” and a look of “professionalism”…well, I never thought of myself as normal so I can’t return to something I never was and “professionalism” just leaves me shuddering when I think about all that that word implies….no I am not my hair but I am learning a lot about how other think and perceive both me and the world they live in by their reactions to my change…perhaps I will write more about this later, right now I want to join Cemaaj for a movie, I have been at rehearsals for the Vagina Monologues all day and am looking forward to hanging out and will share more another day…but think about it, what is in hair?
Wherever you are, make it a RAWsome day
Shivie
