To have hair or not to have hair

If there is one thing everyone woman should do just once in their life its shave off your hair. Day 3 and I'm already thinking that it is getting just that little bit too long! I find I have much darker hair stubble than I remember (all those years of hair dye). I am also told that I look like a Buddhist nun. Did I say it feels just so good? I can't stop touching my head.

Aside from the very funky experience of heightened sensation, I am noticing that people treat me differently. Once people know I’ve shaved off my hair in support of my friend going through Chemotherapy they open up in new ways. I don’t think I have ever had so many people share either their own battles with cancer or those of families and friends. My hair loss is also confronting for some people. Some people turn away quickly least I think they are staring. One woman went into total shock when she saw me and can hardly look at me. It turns out that a dear friend of hers had just lost her hair. Seeing me in the flesh (her friend lives overseas) has bought home what her friend is going through with out her.

Older men (once they learn that I haven’t left my husband and embraced lesbianism) seem caught between wanting to come up and touch my head all the time and to avoid looking me in the eye. After a challenge by the Bishop (a cancer survivor himself) we who have shaved our heads, have begun gathering sponsorship and donations for the cancer society for our de-hairing, which is kind of cool. The Bishop now seems interested in giving people markers to draw on my head. Hmm a new kind of evangelism perhaps.
“I became a Christian ask me how!”

Yesterday I had coffee with my friend who has lost her hair, it was the first time we have seen each other bald. She has such a lovely head! I avoid wearing a hat unless it’s cold, so yesterday after sitting in discomfort in a very hot wig my friend looked at me and took it off. We sat there hairless together drinking coffee. She is a remarkably courageous woman.

Church this Sunday will be interesting (the downside of being in a small congregation where everyone knows everyone), it would be easier to sneak off and lose myself in some large congregation somewhere…but we shall see.

The journey continues… I have begun wondering about tattoos or better still scarification now that would be interesting.

And yes I have to confess the photos are not me sigh....