On shaving my head and embracing change

This past weekend I shaved my head, completely. For anybody who knows how much I love my hair, this would probably come as a shock. I did it to keep a promise I made to someone I love very much. And as I told my good friend Airdrie Miller, I so often thought of, and wanted to shave my head in solidarity to her husband, the late Derek K. Miller, but never got around doing it.

Coincidentally the day I shaved my head, my good friend Mat Wilcox (who is a cancer survivor) decided to cut her hair too. Such an amazing and beautiful coincidence. Mat and I had a wonderful chat about embracing change a few months ago, and we came full circle on our conversation recently when we met up for a glass of wine at Goldfish with a few other friends. I do feel different after having shaved my head. Not only in the silly, irrelevant elements (I cannot flick my hair and let it flow with the wind) but also in the most profound elements, as Minna indicated: I am letting go of one of the elements of my physique that I cherish the most.

By being ok with shaving my head, I have also tacitly and implicitly decided to be ok with giving up some things I love. I also equate shaving my head with shedding and shaving some of the irrelevant things in my life. I am, again, making my circle of friends smaller, tighter and closer. And I am quite ok with it. Embracing change, one little element at a time.