My Hair
How cutting it off also got me free
I have unique head of hair. It’s red. It’s curly. It’s unruly. Proper products for curls like mine just weren’t a thing in the 80s, so a lot of my childhood pictures will show a fuzzy, floofy, wild mane. But as I got older, the products got better, and I learned how to tame the wild curls.
During my deconstruction phase, when I was figuring out who I was without the title of Mormon Wife, I had a few phases of trying on my new sovereignty.
I got a (giant) tattoo. This was an exercise in painful meditation. It was such a commitment to permanently mark my body, and I had to be so present, and so aware of my choice to get this piece of art all over the real estate of my body that it ended being way more cathartic that I anticipated.
Good Mormon women don’t get permanent tattoos. But, sovereign, independent thinking, Kara wanted one. So that was that.
Then I had my hair phase.
When you are a good girl, you follow the rules. There is a handbook in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that tells you how to style your hair.
Choose a neat, conservative hairstyle that is easy to maintain and does not draw attention. Hair color should look natural. If you decide to color your hair, consider the time, cost, and impact on your missionary activities.
So for years and years, of course, I adhered to this code. But my personal expression was silently screaming for a change. I never listened to that creative voice of self-expression, because I wanted to show everyone God, I was Team Obedience.
But in 2016, when my shelf cracked and dipped a little more, I finally went through with a hairstyle I had my eye on for months.
I shaved the side of my head.
I picked one side and asked the stylist to do it a certain way so when I was around my still-believing, conservative, Mormon friends and family, I could just flip it over, and no one would ever know.
Because in 2016, I was still bringing my kids to church. My husband at the time still believed. I wasn’t completely out of my broken-faith closet. So I felt more comfortable with this incognito version of self-expression.
But as the months went by, I loved the freedom to do what I wanted with my hair so much, I decided to do the other side. Now there was no hiding or flipping.
Two sides shaved. This is me.
More time passes. I keep hitting up the barber to keep that look.
One day I realize how challenging and awkward its going to be to regrow this shaved look. Because although I loved it, I knew it wasn’t going to be my forever look. So I made another self-expression decision.
I cut my super long locks. Short. Super short.
I’m talking my hair was in the middle of my back, and now it grazed my cheek.
Anyone with long hair who completely chopped it off can relate to one of two feelings.
You either want to shed tears or sorrow or joy.
Dear reader, I was estatic.
The freedom, the feeling, the weight. I went from having to majorly plan ahead a logistics shedule when it came to caring for my long, curly, shaved on both sides hair, to bopping out of the shower, scrunch in a little product, and I was on my way!
And that was just the maintenance relief!
I didn’t exactly recognize it at the time, but I was also doing some intense inner work with every new hair shave, chop, cut, and length change.
My hair held so much meaning within my religion and my marriage.
The religion piece was obvious. I no longer had a “neat, conservative hairstyle” that “did not draw attention.”
But I didn’t realize how much meaning my hair was carrying in my marriage until I went with the ultimate shortest hair style you can imagine. In my mind this style was going to be the best way to grow it out. (Because I really did want to grow it out again.)
But in order to get to that easiest way, I needed to really lean in to the short short shortiness of it all.
I essentially had all my hair short, save for one kind of longish strip in the middle.
Wild? Yes. Eccentric looking? Sure. Was it going to be my forever hair? No. Did I love it? Yes.
Did it unlock decades of conditioning my personal style choices to fit someone elses’s idea of who I should be and what I should look like?
ALSO YES.
I can’t stress how much this unclipped some really damaging ideas of conformity and compliance. I didn’t see the bigger picture at the time, but cutting my hair off helped me step into my authentic self faster than if I had never cut it or shaved it at all.
And in my bones, I felt this. I had this shift in my very essence. I came home from the stylist that day glowing from this feeling I had yet to articulate like I can today.
When I was getting ready for bed that night I tried to relay this emotion to my husband. My eyes were sparkling, I was flitting around words like attachment and freedom, and other obscure notions I was trying to attribute to chopping all my hair off.
When I was done with my less-than-elegant attempt at telling him how free I felt from this final boss haircut, he just stared at me silently.
I blinked. “I know it doesn’t really make sense what I’m trying to say, but do you kind of understand how this haircut is making me feel right now?”
He didn’t. In fact, he said something to me that I will never forget.
After a few more beats of him saying nothing, I said, “It feels like you probably don’t like my new hairstyle, but I am growing it back.”
Then he got up, angrily began to leave the room, and said, “It’s like you don’t even need me anymore.”
I was stunned.
What? How did he come to that conclusion?
This was years before I would serve him with divorce papers.
The Kara that heard “It’s like you don’t even need me anymore” after my hair confessional of freedom and joy backtracked faster than you can say patriarchy.
“No no, of course I still need you! You’re my partner! I’m sorry my haircut made you feel like I don’t need you.”
I was hurt, but did not let him know. I fawned and assured him this was a necessary step to getting my hair back to the length I (he) wanted.
I quickly buried my thoughts and feelings at how this moment helped me get a little more free as I deconstructed a lifetime of fitting into a box someone else told me to get in. I followed him out of the room reassuring he was still my number one.
I want to hug that Kara. I want to tell her how badass her hair is. I want to tell her that she doesn’t need to follow anyone out of a room about a haircut.
I want to tell her that her sovereignty is as sacred as her self-expression. I want to tell that her hair is her own and belongs to no man. I want to tell her that her hair will never be a symbol of her loyalty.
Her heart and actions do that for her.
Because the Kara that is penning these words now is comfortable being herself. She is wise to projections and styles of attachment and she knows who the fuck she is.
She belongs to herself first. And because of that belonging, she is a better mother, friend, daughter, and human.
She cuts her hair. She gets bangs. She straightens it. She puts it in hats, braids, and bandanas, and maybe she will shave it again. Who knows?
Even though it took more than one structure in her life crumbling to the ground to truly realize it, she loves herself, and she is enough exactly the way she is.
The statement ‘I am enough’ comes to mind. No approval needed.