release

I wrote this post exactly one month ago. I'm finally ready to share it with you.

::   ::

I have to write it all down. I have to write it all down before it is lost.

I cut my dreads. After three and a half years, with my longest dreads reaching nearly to my waist, I cut them. I cut them just above my shoulders and then combed them out. I have loose hair again. My dreads are utterly gone.

To be frank, I had grown to hate washing them. They were, as I said, nearly waist length, and there were a lot of them, more than average - I have a lot of hair. They weighed a lot at the best of times, but wet? Oh, wet they were insanely heavy. I had neck pain every time I washed them, and they would be wet for 24 full hours after washing them. We've been having cold snaps and I would keep putting off and putting off washing them because the thought of having long, cold, wet dreads for a whole day when it's -30C outside and only about 16C inside was just intolerable. Practically, it made sense to let them go.

And then there's the whole thing with my mother's health. I have been intentionally vague in this space because it is a public space and because it isn't really my story, in the strictest sense, but hers. Suffice it to say that her health crisis has left me in an existentially considerate state, combined with a real inclination to avoid procrastination. Add into it that I found the thought of losing her before I had a chance to return to the loose, curling hair of my youth completely unbearable (I can't quite explain it, but there it is) and I found myself very devoted to the idea that it was time to lose the dreads.

But even so...I questioned it. I questioned whether I was just reacting to an impossible, insane, unfathomable situation. I debated with myself the value of releasing the dreads rather than just waiting, giving myself some time to adjust to our new paradigm. But every time - every time! - I would consider the possibility of releasing my dreads I would find myself thinking the same thoughts:

Who will I be without dreads?

How will anyone know that I am interesting if I don't have them?

What will make me special if I don't have dreads?

How will I be anything but boring if I don't have dreads?

Seriously.

I know that these thoughts are, at best, unfounded and, at worst, completely ludicrous. I know this. And I kept telling myself precisely that. That my dreads don't make me anything, that my dreads are not a sole source of interest or specialness or "cool". I told myself these things over and over and over again.

And I had a remarkably hard time believing any of it.

When I first started my dreads, I knew that they would look pretty horrible for a long time. I knew that there was a process and that I needed to respect or better yet embrace the process in order to get through that initial hard period before they started to really take shape and achieve a level of maturation that would make them finally look like dreads and not like a complete abandonment of personal hygiene. I prepared myself for that. What I was utterly unprepared for was the change that would take place within me. Within days of starting my dreads I felt...free. Liberated. After years - decades! - of trying to make my hair conform, of worrying about fitting in and looking "right" and feeling like a giant failure in those regards pretty much all the time I found that, with dreads, I didn't care. Smooth, shiny, controlled hair? Impossible: I have dreads. Look like everyone else? Can't happen: I have dreads. Conform to the constraints of North American standards of beauty? Nope: dreads! So I was free of it. Free of worrying about it, of caring about it, of trying to achieve the impossible and, frankly, the totally unimportant. And it was glorious, glorious, I tell you.

The challenge, when I first dreaded my hair, was to feel comfortable and like myself with dreads. And it most certainly was challenging. The feelings of liberation began within days of starting my dreads but I only really entirely cast off the shackles of conformity months later. It took a long, long time to reset my own self-perception, my own priorities. It was work. But once I achieved it, I felt more myself, more genuine, more true, and far, far more beautiful than I ever had before. I woke up every morning and looked at my dreads in the mirror and felt just plain glad to look the way that I did. For all I know, it all helped me survive the post-partum depression, because as much as the PPD told me lies about myself - that I was a failure, that I was a terrible mother, that I was worthless - I did at least feel like I actually looked like myself for possibly the first time ever.

At five weeks

At five months

At thirteen months

So for more than three years I felt challenged but comfortable, myself, beautiful, in large thanks to my dreads. I don't like to say that my dreads made it happen, because that's unpleasantly passive and takes away all the agency I had in making that change happen within myself. Instead, I like to say that my dreads created the opportunity, they created the space for that inward change to happen. They did for my outward self what my inner self needed, and the change worked its way inward. And it was awesome. Awe inspiring. And I am forever grateful.

But lately, oh, lately it's been another matter and it quite took me by surprise. I thought of releasing them because of neck pain - and, perhaps, because of a general sense of boredom - and then was met with a faceful of low self-esteem and lack of self-worth and self-identity thoughts. I was astonished, truly. And I told myself over and over how ridiculous such thoughts were but they persevered. I couldn't shake them. 

I realized that the freedom my dreads had originally afforded me had slowly transformed into a sort of dependence. Whereas when I first considered starting dreads, the nasty high school girl in my head said "But you're not cool enough to have dreads. Poseur!" when I began to consider releasing them I heard my own scared, high school-y voice whimper "But how will I be cool if I don't have dreads? I'm not cool enough to not have dreads!" My dreads had become both a crutch and a stumbling block. They were standing in my way.

Many people describe their dreads as a journey, and when I first began my journey I thought it was simply because they are a long process to get to mature, formed locks. Now, having walked that journey for three and a half years, I can honestly say that that is not the case. They are a journey because I began in one place and I have ended up in a very different, very wonderful place. I can look back and see my path and appreciate just how far I have come. My dreads helped me walk that path. But in recent weeks I felt that I had arrived at my destination, that I was standing in the dusty road outside the door but could not enter so long as my hair remained the same. My dreads were for the journey, not for the destination. I had to let them go.

Because I am special. I am interesting. My dreads didn't add anything to me, they simply created the opportunity for me to realize these things about myself and the minute I began to question my own authenticity was the minute I was finished with them. But because I needed to be finished with them, not because I wanted to be.

****

A photographer, fellow babywearer and fellow dreadie friend said she wanted to photograph them before I cut them. Friday afternoon she came over and we took photos in our living room and out in the fresh Ottawa snow. After she left I felt a sense of closure, that I had done what last needed doing before I could take my big step. We ate dinner. We put the girls to bed. I had a big glass of wine, my sewing shears, a giant bottle of coconut oil conditioner and some combs (including the comb I had originally used to backcomb my dreads three and a half years ago) lined up on the dining room table. I took a photo of them. Then I stood, staring at the table, playing with my dreads. I gathered them in my two hands and piled on my head and let them fall over my shoulders. I twisted them up into a big knot, one of my favourite ways to wear them. I held them and stroked them and marvelled at the twisted, chaotic mass of them, the softness of the loose, curling ends, the stiffness of them. And I loved them. I loved them. 

I started to cry. 

Jon stood across the table from me and I felt embarrassed because it's just hair, it shouldn't matter, my God, after the last few weeks we've all had why do I even care. He hugged me and I tried to explain - and I think I maybe succeeded - why I knew I needed to let them go but all the fear I had about what would happen to me after. That I would return to feeling unremarkable, feeling easily overlooked, feeling ordinary in the most pedestrian way possible. I cried and talked for a good twenty minutes. Maybe longer. Jon asked me if I needed help to cut them, and I said no; it was something I needed to do myself.

Then I picked up the scissors, walked down the hall to the mirror and started cutting.

I instantly regretted it. But I was committed. And yet...there was a teeny glimmer of something in that moment when I felt the shears sink into that first dread, a tiny spark of something strong and astonishing. It was powerful. I felt powerful. I stood there, hating what I was doing but with a complete sense of conviction that it was what needed to happen and a true feeling of pride that, despite desperately not wanting to do so, I was doing what I knew in my heart to be the right thing.

Still, I wept. And I mean it, I wept audibly. As the pile of dreads at my feet grew I expected to feel more calm, as the sense of inevitability grew from getting further and further into the process. But I wept harder, realizing just how impossible it was to undo what I had done. I got no sense of relief from the knowledge that there was no going back. 

But then, another glimmer. As I dropped the last dread at my feet I looked at my short, choppy dreads objectively. "Actually," I commented to Jon as I stared at myself in the mirror, "it's kind of cute." 

A big part of me still wishes I had stopped there, just left them short. I wish I could say differently, but honestly, I do.

But I didn't stop there. I slathered my short dreads up, one by one, with coconut conditioner and started combing. I sat on the couch with my glass of wine and combed. I combed for three hours Friday night.

I combed for seventeen hours Saturday. I took breaks to eat and refill my cup of coffee. Seventeen hours. And then I combed for another ten hours Sunday.

Twenty-nine hours. By midway through Sunday afternoon I was rather wishing I had just hacked them off at the roots and been done with it, though realistically I know that I would still be crying today if I had actually gone that route. Ultimately, I am very glad that I have the length that I have.

Today is the fourth day post-cut. I still feel raw. In a way I feel rather exposed, naked, vulnerable, which to my mind is just further evidence that I was hiding behind my dreads, or wearing them as some sort of armour, or using them as a sort of crutch. I was depending on them in a way that wasn't contributing to my being free and liberated anymore. I think a large part of my aching for my dreads boils down to a sense of failure: had I only been able to cast off those feelings of inadequacy without dreads, that sense of my dreads being what really made me interesting or special, I could have kept them. I could have had more time with them.

I suspect that a lot of the tears were not just fear or sorrow over letting go of my dreads, but catharsis from the past month's madness. I hadn't really let myself release everything, I hadn't allowed myself to experience my feelings. Even in cutting them, in ending my dreadlock journey, my dreads served to create a healing space, an opportunity for me to let those feelings out. Amazing.

I haven't yet adjusted to how I look now. I still feel a certain sense of shock that I actually did this. But my hair - hair that has only ever been washed with baking soda and vinegar and water and natural conditioner - is in remarkable condition. It is incredibly soft, not at all frizzy as it used to be. It turns out that all those years of struggle with frizziness could have been avoided by simply foregoing commercial shampoos and what I am left with post-dreads is soft and lovely. My daughters are already enjoying playing with my hair, and perhaps most helpful is that they aren't reacting to the change in my appearance all that much. It's reassuring: I am still me.

Releasing my dreads has thrown into stark relief some of the matters about myself that I have avoided examining. I find myself left with a feeling not of conclusion but of a whole new work to do. It's good work, valuable and worthy, but work nonetheless. Before I released my dreads I found that I kept visualizing standing in the path outside of a town gate. I felt that I had to release my dreads in order for that door to be opened to me. But now, I find that beyond that door is not a destination as I had imagined but simply another stretch of path.

The journey is the destination.

|| All watermarked photos care of  Amy Jay Photo

onward

Three months with no blogging.

It's interesting, really, how sometimes when I'm processing things I reach out, get verbose and hyperlexic and want to share share share. But sometimes not. Sometimes I process quietly, internally, intimately, personally. I share nothing. I work through whatever it is in my own head, often very slowly.

Three months of slow, internal processing.

The craziest part is I can't even tell you precisely what it was I was processing. I just...was.

Lots has happened, yet everything feels very much the same. All the girls of the house are a year older: Bubby had her second birthday May 3rd, Peanut had her fifth on May 19th, and I rang in my thirty-third (yes, I'm airing my age on the internet: does that make me brave?) on June 22nd (and conflagration-free, too!). Even Wembley reached the ripe old age of eight in mid-May.

Last year I struggled with Bubby's birthday. This year I journeyed toward it with a greater sense of calm, of acceptance. Time will go on, my children will continue to grow and age whether I would will it so or no. And they are glorious, these children of mine. They shine like stars and glow like beacons and every new ability and milestone is a mark of the wonder of them. If I spend too long looking backward at what we are leaving behind, I may miss seeing all that they are doing now and will do in the days to come, and what they do is so amazing, so hilarious, so fabulously silly and astonishing and brilliant that I would never want to miss a moment of it. So we move onward. Onward and upward, into the new.

Just before my birthday, I had a personal realization as well. It occurred to me that after almost six years of retirement from dancing, I had gotten soft. My body had gotten soft. I had lost muscle mass and strength and I didn't like it. I also know that with my history of pregnancy induced hypertension, pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome, I am at a heightened risk of having hypertensive issues later in life, not to mention the family history of hypertension. And I vowed to myself, "No more." 

If you follow me on Pinterest, you likely noticed that I've started pinning a lot of exercise and strength training links. The fact is, I know that it will be a lot easier to establish a pattern of healthy, vigorous activity at the age of 33 than at 43 or 53 or or or... And all the better to try and stave off hypertension than to attempt to undo years of damage. In the past weeks I've discovered - to my great surprise - that I love high intensity interval training (HIIT) and I now try to fit in at least 12 minutes of it every day. Less than two months in, I can honestly say that I am stronger and fitter than I have likely ever been before, and without ever lacing up a running shoe - because try as I might, I cannot find the running love. I'm lifting, as well, and feeling good about the fact that I can carry a basket full of wet laundry more easily than before. 

At first I struggled with allowing our girls to see me working out, out of fear that I would encourage body image issues. Quickly, though, I realized that all I am doing - because I never, ever comment on my body or anyone else's - is modelling healthy activity levels for them. "Mommy is exercising! Mommy is getting strong!" is what I hear from Peanut many times a week. Hopefully, they are learning not that their body should look any particular way, but instead that strength and exercise are worthwhile and healthy, that movement and activity are enjoyable at any age and will help them to be fit and happy, lifelong.

The past three months have seen me take my first real henna clients, have seen me connect with other local women who are focussed on community-building, and have seen two short articles of mine published. It's been a time of transition in many other ways: our church community is seeking a new minister after almost fifteen years with one wonderful minister, a man I have been privileged to call friend, leader and mentor, who has encouraged me and spurred me in my writing and in my spiritual investigation. We miss him desperately, but as with my children, I know we need to look forward in hope rather than look back in sadness if we are to grow. Time marches on: we must march with it.

Our family has seen some transition, as well. Faced with professional challenges, both Jon and I have branched into new opportunities, new possibilities to help our family prosper and thrive. Moments of - frankly - terror, have given way to hopefulness and vision and renewed purpose. After all, we've been through some pretty challenging times and came through it stronger and better than ever. It's perhaps a little Pollyanna-esque, but we're choosing to view unexpected challenges as good opportunities and motivation to try new things. It's easy to be comfortable and stagnate when things are more-or-less simple: when things are not, what is there to lose?

With that in mind, I have some very important and special news to share with you. My in-real-life friends have been goading me - thank you! - to do this for literally years, and I am proud to have finally done it. I hope you'll enjoy reading about it.

how my children teach me to forgive

Child of God. We hear these words often enough. "You are a child of God" we say to one another; "I am a child of God" we describe ourselves. But as I've meditated on how we live, on how we relate to God and to each other, on how we enter into our relations with God and the Church, I've come to the realization that we may be only paying lip-service to these words. Child of God.

Or perhaps we do believe. Perhaps we truly do see ourselves as a child of God. But not a "child" child. An adult child, a child who has grown up. After all, don't nearly all parents say of their grown children, "Oh, you'll always be my baby" despite the practical evidence to the contrary? But while I know my mother looks at me and can see me as the infant, the toddler, the dimply-kneed ringlet-headed girl I once was, our relationship has most definitely changed. Now myself a mother twice over, she and I are more peers than we ever were before. We understand each other in more fundamental and complex ways than was ever before possible.

Is this true of our relationship with God? Jesus calls us "brother"; Jesus calls us "friend". But it's extremely dodgy theology to in any way suggest that we are now in a peer relationship with God. Jesus removes the barriers of sin that divided us from God, the salvation of Christ lifts us up to the beatific radiance of God's glory, but it does not make us peers with God. 

We need to start taking these words at face-value. I am a child of God. I am a child. Not a post-child, not a former child, but a child here and now. I do not understand what is before me. I do not see what God sees. I do not act with Christ's maturity, understanding or grace.

But look at children! Look at the kindness of children. Our four year old has a habit of antagonizing our one year old. She's been known to use her considerable advantage in size, pushing, body-blocking, grabbing, and pulling her younger sister around. And what does our one year old do in response? Rather than returning in kind, more often than not she cries out in alarm, in distress, only to reach out to her sister once again. She's more guarded, quicker to protect herself, but bears no grudge. She reaches out, again and again and again to her debtor. And how does her older sister respond? With further torment? No, instead she learns from her small sister's kindness, takes her by the hand, embraces her, laughs with her, plays with her.

Their relationship is a true, human microcosm of real forgiveness. It isn't blind or self-dismissing: there is room for self-care and protection. But it is never ending, it is repetitious, it is kind and it is healing. And my children understand it. They do. And while their father and I have tried to manifest that forgiveness for them, it seems far more innate than learned. So if my children can naturally fall into Christ-like patterns of forgiveness, being a true child of God isn't such a bad thing, is it? As Psalm 8:2 reads,

Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;

toddlers shout the songs

That drown out enemy talk,

and silence atheist babble.

Approach God as a child, free of pretence or self-importance, of self-aggrandisement or pride. Approach Her in wonder, in awe, in complete lack of understanding, in utter confusion. Lift up your voice in joy, in laughter, in glee, in spontaneity, in total disregard for propriety. Fall on your knees in dependence, in reliance, in need.  She doesn't call us to be strong but to embrace our weakness, to accept and acknowledge our brokenness.

Like the child that you are, let her "cover you with her wings; you will be safe in her care; her faithfulness will protect and defend you."

a better goal

This morning I read this lovely post from Alicia on Milagro Girl. When I first read it I thought it was a valuable sentiment and gave myself a little mental pat on the back because, lately - finally! - I've been making a real effort to establish and voice my own boundaries. Later the girls and I went to the park and met up with friends of ours from church. The two big girls played, our two babies nursed and slept, and the mommies got a good long visit. It was grand.


I always feel like my parenting is really put to the test when other children are around. Sure, taking Peanut out on an errand to the store can be a challenge and certainly puts my parenting on display - particularly if it should happen that she should become a screeching, noodle-legged version of her normally-delightful self while we walk down Bank St. - but when other children are around, and when Peanut is playing with them, I really feel tested. It's a good kind of tested, though: I find myself thinking a little more 'big picture' in such a circumstance, considering not only what is happening in the moment but also about what lesson or example I'm setting for the other children around. 



I want to be Nice Mommy, not Mean Mommy and, some day, it wouldn't be so bad to be Cool Mommy (I've already got Hippie, Dreadlocked Mommy locked up*). But, that said, I don't want to accidentally turn into Doormat Mommy. So today, as Peanut was playing with and near other children, I was thinking about how I was interacting with her and what message it was sending the other children there. Was I showing my daughter respect and in turn demonstrating to those other children that children deserve respect? Was I showing my daughter kindness and consideration and in turn allowing the other children there that adults ought to be kind and considerate? 


Was I demonstrating healthy, respectful boundaries for my daughter and in turn demonstrating those boundaries for the other children there?



As I was watching her play, occasionally calling out to her when necessary to remind her of what the boundaries of kind, respectful and safe behaviour are, it struck me that Alicia's words relate to parenting:

And in it I learned what a boundary was. I’d always thought that it meant a rule, and in my mind rules are meant to be broken. But it’s not a rule, it’s a circle around yourself that brings peace to your heart and world. It’s the knowing what your spirit is capable of.

Traditionally, parenting has been presented as a series of rules. Lots of focus on what children can not do, what they must do. The goal, when it is rarely mentioned, is generally expressed as a desire for children to obey, to follow the rules. 



I think that's a lousy goal.


My goal isn't for my children to obey me, but to do what is right. My goal isn't to raise rule-followers, it is to raise kind and gracious souls. 


My goal isn't to teach them right and wrong but to teach them to discern that themselves.



So I help Peanut learn boundaries. Because it isn't that throwing sand is an inherently evil pastime, it's that the consequence - sand in an eye or mouth - is unkind and disrespectful to her playmate. And so: "Peanut, we don't throw sand...and here's why:..." 


And hopefully, as she learns how to respect her playmates, as she learns the intricacies of friendship, she will also grow to understand where her own boundaries are. Hopefully she will demand respect, now and when she is grown. Hopefully she will grow to understand and know with surety that being a grace-filled and forgiving person does not mean she must simply suffer at the hands of those are not, whether it's from nasty words on the playground when she's 10 years old or nasty words from a partner when she's 30. 



Hopefully she will learn to keep her heart and soul healthy at an earlier age than her mother, willing and able to say, "Here is the space that I need."




*totally unintentional pun, but once I realized what a pun it was I had to keep it. Parent humour, you know.