It’s Just hair

August 2018 I began my journey with chemotherapy.

Five days after my first treatment, my hair began to hurt and feel strange. YES MY HAIR HURT. It was such a strange concept to me. No one explained to the actually process of loosing my hair other then… Chemotherapy = hair loss = sadness in women. On day 13 my hair was falling out in huge clumps, my head stung as if every hair strand was a needle blowing in the wind. Over and over I was told, "it's just hair… you're so strong".

I know they all meant well... But little did they know their words were making me feel as if I were being shamed for caring that my hair was going to fall out. I felt shallow. Everyone else saw it as "just hair" why couldn't I. I felt defeated, everyone saw me as one thing and I felt the exact opposite.

After diagnosis, I sat with all of my emotions often! I was as ready as I could be for the vomiting, the appetite and weight issues, the surgeries, deformations, and pain that was all associated with my diagnosis treatment plan. I had not yet came to terms with losing my hair.

Seriously, all of the things CANCER throws your ways you're going to take my hair too , WTF HELLZ NO! NO NO NO!

I don't think I'll ever forget my friends baby boy grabbing my hair and it all coming out in his hand. The scalp bare, exposed, tender and cold. I knew then that I needed to sit with this anxiety of cutting my hair because it was time. I needed to embrace it and figure it out because this shit was happening whether I liked it or not. My attachment to my hair began at an early age and had been engrained in me by family, hair stylists society, men and women who admired my long flowing locks. I could see that same attachment to my hair forming in my daughter. I could see her anxiety about me loosing my hair.

After sitting with the idea of cutting my hair off and recognizing the attachment to my hair that my daugher and I both had I thought it would be important to make this an experience that she, Connor and I could enjoy not a tragedy. I found a salon in Mission Bay that would allow Avery to cut my hair and give us the whole experience! IT WAS PROFOUND! Once the experience was over Avery was smitten with being a hairstylist. By allowing Avery to partake in the experience, the narrative changed from something really scary that could kill her mommy to something less scary and more fun.

If I learned one thing about myself during this is that it truly is JUST hair… it is me with the attachment to it, by recognizing that attachment, meditating on it, truly sitting with it. I was able to manifest a way to detach from it in a healthy loving manor.

#chemowarrior #chemohair #hairlosssolution #selfconfidence #acceptance #survivor