“There is no ‘almost nearly’ in surrender.
It either is or it ain’t.”
I have been blonde my entire life. The minute it started going light brown when I was about fourteen-years-old, I dyed it. Throughout the years, being blonde meant more to me than I was consciously aware. I didn’t even think about another option until I moved into my first home and it turned GREEN.
I quickly called the Grover Beach Water Department...
“Hello, this may seem weird, but my hair has turned green since I moved into my brand new home. Do you think there could be too much chlorine in the water?”
A man with a deep voice began to chuckle, “No, it is not the water, must be the brand-new pipes.”
“Really?” I said (still puzzled). “I have heard that hair turns orange from new copper pipes-NOT green.”
Without laughing, he said,“Well, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you put some light bulbs in your hair!”
My mind questioned, What!?! Did he really just say that? Just when I “thought” that he couldn’t have been more rude, he said...
”You can then be a Christmas tree!”
To my horror, I hung up the phone. I felt desperate. For the following year, I dyed my hair dark brown. I never truly felt like me, so I dyed it back and washed my hair everyday at my parents’ house (just a few miles away). Here I had a beautiful brand new home, and I dreamed of selling it. All because of my hair color. The lengths some of us will go for vanity is mind blowing. One year later, I found out that I was originally right. There was too much chlorine in the water, and I needed a filter.
Besides dying my hair a different color, cutting it was also something I didn’t dare to do often. When my friend cut bangs on me, my father made himself furious, calling it “a travesty.” I could clearly see that the Uma Thurman look in the movie, Pulp Fiction, wasn’t for me, but “travesty?” Come on. This was one of the many ways that I bought into my father’s addiction to me. I never cut bangs again nor dared to make any changes in ten years.
By the time I met Cinn, I was a full fledged hair addict. Isn’t everyone? It never occurred to me that I was so vain about my hair. Especially because I was of the opinion that it was too thin, and I would often put it up in a pony tail and forget about it. When my hair was meeting most of my models, I didn’t recognize the addiction.
When I began to attend Living Love classes, the topic of hair would periodically be mentioned when a student of Cinn’s would explain how they shaved their heads as means to address their vanity. My mind raced, BALD? Am I in some “cult?” After experiencing that Cinnamon never took anything from anyone and that I had nothing to fear but the word itself, I diffused it by saying, “Yes, I am in a cult, a cult for love.”
With much persistence, Cinnamon finally accepted me as one of her students for teacher training. It would be quite a commitment on her part and a life of surrender on mine. Even to hair. During my three (or four) years that I was in training, I was given two different sadhanas to cut my hair shorter (but never bald, thank God). I cut it one time to my shoulders and about a year later, to my ears. It was NOT easy, and I was willing. There was many times that I would worry that she would give me a sadhana to shave it. I wondered if I would quit training if she did. That’s the deal. You refuse sadhana, you are no longer in teacher training. I knew plenty of people who had rejected sadhana, and Cinnamon loves them just the same. Willing or unwilling, she cares and does not mind. It’s up to us on how badly we want to be free from addictions in this crazy world. The thought of going back to my natural hair color (whatever that may be) never occurred to me. God took pity on me which proves that God is a merciful God, (but seriously folks...)
Shortly after my liver cancer surgery, I went to get my hair dyed. In all the years of having cancer, it never occurred to me that hair dye could cause cancer (still not sure on that one). And why risk it? After all, it is my liver. Since the skin is porous, putting chemicals on my scalp was no longer supporting my desire to be very cautious. The question begged, WHAT NOW?!? I could use a natural hair dye like Henna and become a red head. Or, I could do the very thing that I had never even considered. To go gray!
By my surprise, I had quite the entourage at the salon, encouraging me to follow my heart and be me. Little did I know that the salon was located just UNDER my first apartment where I was FIRST diagnosed with cancer at the age of twenty-four. The serendipity of it all reassured me that divine timing is everything, I was starting over. I brought an internet picture of a pixie I liked on the actress, Charlize Theron. The hair stylist did a great job.
Over the next few months, bit by bit, I watched the blonde fade away. At times, I felt like I was in a horror movie. I’m not going to lie, I was in and out of addiction with the gray, “thinking” that I might go back to blonde one day. At first, it didn’t matter how many people (especially, Cinnamon) liked the gray or length on me. I would allow just one person’s silence to bring me down. Fortunately, I am beginning to see that I don’t always have to like something to be at peace. I don’t like when my son tells me that he wants me to go back blonde, AND I am learning that the biggest gift we can give ourselves is to care but not mind. Whether it is my hair, or my lazy eye, or my cystic acne on my chin, addiction is addiction. I don’t like my lazy eye, and I don’t mind. I definitely don’t like menopausal acne or hot flashes. This is surrender, a freedom that I have never experienced. A maturity that I would have never understood unless I put myself through the fire. I get it God, I get it! I don’t even need to meet my own models to be happy. I ain’t what I used to be, I’m better.
Because of my intense ego taming/ training with Cinnamon, I have come to experience that I am NOT my looks, my profession, or my social status. I am love. Period. End of story. Man, my friends, it took me until the last chapter of this book to come down to that simple truth. So what!
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
-Maya Angelou
What I know for sure is that I have done my best. With God’s help, I hope that my example of allowing myself to age gracefully can inspire others to love themselves just the way they are (like it or not). We may then direct our attention on what really matters and be apart of something so much bigger...contributing to change in the world.
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