i have not my hair!
For Nicole, who DIDN’T have a choice

my mother now vacillates between cutting her locks and continuing to let them grow. my children just stare and smile. my hair is an unintentional hit.

Blogger, for some reason, isn't letting me upload to the body of this post so you'll have to click the profile picture to see the new me, sans my usual fro.

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the saturday before last, Nicole called me. a few sentences into the conversation, i realized she was sobbing. she explained that she had been on a new, more powerful chemo medication; one they’d hoped would kill the disease in her kidney this time. her new kidney is failing and the chances of getting (yet) another one are bleak for the very near future. so right now, as i understand it, chemo is the only option.

i immediately regretted not returning a message i hadn’t even realized she’d left the night before.

she has handled A LOT over the years of dealing with her condition but THIS, she espouses, is more than she can take. the shedding of her full, natural head of hair had fiercely progressed to falling fist-fulls until her sides were nearly bald. the last few years of growing out her hair while on the lower dosages seemed for naught.

what do you do for someone when there is nothing you can really do for them?

the only thing i could think to offer, in support, was that i would shave my own head; (at the very least) hoping that she wouldn’t feel like she was alone in this universe, though her world of chemo and kidney disease might imply otherwise.

i told myself that since she didn’t have a choice, neither did i. it was that simple. and with the universe’s infinite wisdom and divine timing, i sent her India.Arie’s latest cut, “i am not my hair” with the promise that i’d drive to Houston soon so that we could discover our newly shorn heads/newly freed selves together. It all seemed so simple in the first moments of encouragement and planning. but mercury and money and… i never made it to Houston.

so, since I couldn’t make it there, i am here… dedicating this time and this space to Nicole who, in the process of fighting this disease, happened upon this new journey of self-discovery. And to the journey that I, myself, discovered in the mix of feelings that happened as a result. my hair, like many, if not most, if not all Black women, has been significant in the conveyance and interpretation of who I am at different stages in my life. What comes through most prominently for me in all of this is that this haircut, for me, is a luxury. it still happened in the realm of a healthy body and the privilege that comes with it.

i keep trying not to parade the point of my buzz to passers-by because the frustratingly beautiful part of it all is that the cut is actually gorgeous. (thank you “gifted queen,” for the pre-cut prayer, and the amazing transformation of my coif.) with a nod and a “thank you,” i try to blindly accept the compliments because it feels cheapening to tell of Nicole’s call and my response with every “why’d you do it?” But for those who are STILL in mourning, longing for the mane they remember me wrestling into bun after bun, or the mass of coils that swelled into soft cotton at every sign of sweat and heat, i assure you… it’s just hair. it will grow back. maybe into a flowering long enough to save and donate as material for wigging. maybe for me to enjoy and appreciate in the push and pull of stylings. who knows? and if it doesn’t... well, i realize now that I am not, and never was, my hair; that i am now, and always have been, my hair.

when i walked into work today, there were plenty of double takes but most people said nothing. so the struggle with my vanity continues as does my commitment to equally understanding the discomfort and joy i feel every time i get a glimpse my reflection. Nicole had no choice so, in my mind, neither did i. it wasn’t brave. it’s just what friends do, right? It doesn’t change who i am. or maybe, in fact, it does.

always love,
shia