Vulnerability is violet, procrastination is blue, you use up all your color, and then what do you do?

The Faux-hawk phase lasted much longer than anticipated :-) Like, months longer.  But once I started messing with colors, a very magical thing happened.

If you look closely at that purple, you'll see it's rather, um, bright. I happen to have a shirt the exact same unearthly hue, and believe it or not, the day after we dyed it I threw on my purple shirt. Without remembering my hair was purple.

 More than half-way through the busy Saturday, standing in front of my reflection at a paint store window, I looked up. My shirt matched my hair. Exactly matched my hair.

As embarrassing as that is, I want to point out the most important part of this story.
I FORGOT MY HAIR WAS PURPLE.
I went about my day, doing my things, not thinking about what I looked like. 

The next week I gave a Love and Logic presentation to fifty women in a MOPS group downtown. Not once while I was speaking did I think about how I looked while I was speaking. I felt my own spirit in that place, my own soul coming out unfettered by any insecurities. That's magic.

The same thing happened with the blue, and though I got a lot of fun attention, and I loved the cool and funky ways the colors faded out, most of the time, all I felt was authentic. I was me. Really, really me. Does that sound like magic to you??
MAGIC AND FREEDOM!

Two full months of freedom.

Then I had to face the goal. The end goal has always been a buzz cut. I've been saying it all along. People have been reminding me of it all along. And when it came time, things came up. So I used up all my old color, and kept the faux for "just another couple weeks," and more things came up. Some were legitimately good reasons to hold off buzzing. Some weren't. Some made me think I wasn't being true to the people who were waiting to see pictures. Some reasons made me think I wasn't being true to myself.

I loved the purple faux-hawk. Really loved it. I could have stayed with it for years, but the point wasn't to find the hairstyle I liked the most. The point was to challenge my looks. The point was to try something that scared me. The point was to do something to my hair that I knew would take years to grow out. And learn to love and accept myself in it, no matter how it looked.

So, one sunny morning on vacation in South Carolina, my bedhead and I braced ourselves.  I handed my loved ones the clippers. My daughters, my nephew, and my sister in law went to town.

And I came out renewed. No one has to agree with that statement. You don't have to like it. You certainly don't have to tell me I still look cute. I don't care if I look cute. I did something I've wanted to do my whole life. It scared the crap out of me, and I did it. There will be consequences. I'm already enjoying some of them. But I embraced the deed and all its consequences.

PEOPLE, I FEEL VERY PROUD.