Believe Manifesto

I have been thinking lately about how we love ourselves. It seems like we let little things, things that bother us– from loving ourselves. The things that we most of the time un-subconsiously put at the forefront of our happiness. But oftentimes they bring us the most un-happy times don’t they?

Us women, we kind of have a thing with our hair don’t we? Right now I am having some serious hair drama…post pregnancy I have lost over half my hair so far. And it is still falling out 5-7 handfuls a day. I was REALLY letting this get me down. I was talking with my sister the other day and she had a really bad experience last winter where random chunks of her hair fell out and she is still trying to grow it out. We were laughing and talking about the crazy things we will do for the sake of “beauty”. Why are we letting something so superficial have so much control over us? I realized that it’s a decision. I asked myself if I really loved my hair more than I loved God? No, I do not. So I had to decide to love myself despite my hair falling out. As crazy as that sounds, if it all falls out–SO WHAT! It will grow back and I won’t be any less of a beautiful daughter in HIS EYES. Letting it go, gave me so much peace. It gave me a bit of my confidence back.

My friend told me last week that she couldn’t even tell I had lost any at all…I was thinking, “You are such a liar!!” But really I think when we hyper-focus on things, they seem A LOT worse than they really are. Every person I walk past on the street isn’t thinking, “Oh, that girls hair looks terrible, she hardly has any left, I wonder what happened?” Now that I have realized this, I realize that no one is thinking about my hair but me. No one cares. I am laughing right now as I type that, because it just goes to show how shallow and silly I was acting and responding to this situation.

I have been reading a lot of memoirs this past year, and in Diane Keaton’s Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty she talks about how she was so unhappy with her hair, she once wore 3 hats at the same time. This just kills me even as I write it. 3 hats??!! I can’t help but laugh. I think she may have written a whole chapter in that book about how much she hated her hair. The funny thing is…I have ALWAYS loved her hair! I always thought she had great hair and it was styled so well. She did mention that in the Godfather she didn’t like the curly hot mess that was going on. I agree, but it was part of that era. I’m just thinking, how much grief her hair must have caused her over the years for her to write that much in her memoir about it. About not liking her hair THAT MUCH. I really didn’t find it that funny, how much she dislikes her hair. I found it kind of sad.

The empowering thing is, we get to chose. We get to chose how we react and respond to these things in life. We get to chose happiness and joy over anxiety and sorrow. We can chose to rock our thin hair, our bald head, our scarf clad head or whatever. We each have things that are coming up, coming at us that are holding us back from our best selves and we need to stop! Because we have to love ourselves before we can love others. I hope that being venerable and sharing my own mis-guided thoughts will help someone else conquer their day or week.