The View From Here – It’s Never Just Hair

Arlene Dickinson –  Dragons’ Den judge and Canadian businesswoman – spent much of her life doing what a LOT of us have done.  She kept her hairstyle based on what she believed would please the men around her.  But not anymore.  Arlene took to social media recently to share that she finally decided to cut her hair short after keeping it long for many years.

She wrote – “Kept my hair long for years for ALL the wrong reasons,” “Was told by the men in my life that men (them) liked long hair on women and so I thought I’d be somehow OFFENDING them by cutting it. Sorry guys. This hair is for me! (And I love it!) #TheSingleLife.”

In her picture she is smiling and looks incredibly happy.

How often do we do that?  We change how we look or who we are because we think that’s how we are supposed to look or how to be.

When my mom died when I was 18, I remember trying hard to fill her shoes.  And as I left the house and started a family of my own, I still tried to be like her.  Pot roast on Sunday.  Different things she did, I would try to do.  The more I tried to be like her, the less I was like me.  It was my way of hanging onto her, I guess.  I didn’t see that I was losing who I was.

Why do we do that?

Why do we sometimes lessen ourselves to make someone else happy or more comfortable?  Why do we hold back our true selves sometimes?   To be accepted?  To be loved?  To be valued?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few days about who I am.  Who I want to be.  Am I being true to myself? That’s a side effect of working from home in a pandemic.  WAY too much time to yourself. (smile)

Arlene Dickenson has inspired me. At the start of the pandemic, I was letting the grey take over and I was successful.  I stopped colouring it. Embraced the new found freedom. By October I was so tired of this pandemic and not doing anything or going anywhere, I was looking back on old pictures and decided to just go for it.  Bring back some colour. Bring back who I was in younger days.  So I did.

This weekend I did it again.  I coloured my hair.  Red.  To remind myself to keep being myself.  To remind myself to keep doing things that make us feel like ourselves.  Even if there’s nowhere to go and nobody to see it.

This pandemic feels never ending.  We’ve lost the ability to do all those fun things we used to love to do.   Things that make us who we are.  That add so much value to our lives.  Whether it’s coffee with a friend or group of friends,  dinners out, going to the theatre, or seeing a movie that makes us laugh or cry.  I miss so much of that.

One of the things I love to do is garden and for some reason I haven’t checked my gardens yet for signs of spring.  Today I did and it brought a smile to my face to see green shoots coming up through the soil.  Signs of life.  Renewal.  Regrowth.  Newness.  Don’t we all need to feel that right now?

Just when I was loosing hope of anything to look forward to – I found it in my garden with my new hair colour.  Box # 640 I believe.  (smile)

Next on my list of POST pandemic life – a haircut.  Like Arlene’s.  SHORT and sassy.  (smile)

Categorised in: Afternoons

This post was written by Carrie Buchanan