Still Got It

Inspirational song: North Country Girl (Pete Townshend)

For more than two years, I've been watching my hair come back in, wondering whether I would get and then keep the post-chemo curls. At first, it just seemed a bit wild, not necessarily curly. It was also mousey gray, which I thought I could handle, but turns out I couldn't. I didn't know how to take care of curly hair, so who knows what that first year might have looked like had I been a bit more purposeful in my styling. (Honestly, lack of styling. I just brushed it and let it go. All wrong.) It wasn't until I turned to YouTube for guidance that I figured out there was a method and set of products needed here. For a while it was amazing, with my hair doing everything the girls in the videos said it could. 

Then it started getting really long, and harder to work with. I had a permanent bird's nest on the back of my head, unable to get a brush through it. The ends were super dry and crunchy. But I was afraid if I cut the tightest coils off the bottom, the rest would just give up and be only vaguely frizzy straight. I needed a cut, but I spent months emotionally unready to say goodbye to those tight curls that were so desperately wanted in early winter of 2019.

I finally gave in and let my talented daughter loose on my hair today. She promised she wouldn't cut more than two inches, but when she showed me a lock she had cut, it was easily three inches. Too late to back out at that point, so I waited to see what would happen. She finished the back, and gave me some layers around my face for a softened look. I turned my head upside down, and scrunched my slightly-damp hair. Darned if it didn't seem to hold a strong wave/loose curl. I went home and put a styling foam in it and finished drying with the diffuser. My worst hair fears may not be realized, at least not yet. No frizzy straight hair. I still have my cancer curls. And what's better, I have a bouncy shape that makes me feel like myself, as it should be. Doesn't hurt that I dyed my roots before the cut. I even did makeup, so I could get a cute selfie to send my mom.