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Growing Strength
May 2005
 It began as a public way to mourn privately.
Something only I would understand, one year ago I had begun to grow my hair as an unspoken public statement that rent the silence I'd vowed. In the Lakota tradition of the Great Plains, the hair is cut to publicly mourn loss, usually the death of a loved one. Had I had long hair, I would've cut it. My hair was short, though. So, I began to let it grow.
I’d had long hair throughout college and my early 20's, but had loved keeping it short in recent years—a style that made me feel sassy, feisty, and chic. In those dark bottomless days of that sad Spring though, I felt anything by sassy or feisty. I felt afloat, with nothing grounding me, the earth beneath my feet having been ripped away again and again.
I chose not to give voice to my sadness. I became silent as the darkness that entombed me.
Instead of giving voice to these things, I quit cutting my hair.
Later that summer on the prairies of South Dakota my hair had grown just enough to put in a tiny little ponytail at the base of my neck. An assortment of bobby-pins with plastic jeweled heads held the multitudes of lengths back and out of my face. When I walked on the prairie, I left my hair down and for the first time in years I felt the wind lift and blow tendrils of hair around my face. The shadow I cast on the course brown prairie grasses silhouetted shaggy hair swirling up around my head. I thought my profile must surely resemble what Harry Potter's hair looks like as he soars on his Nimbus 2000.
Hair symbolizes how we perceive ourselves whether we mean it to, or not. One of the first ordeals young Native children went through after being ripped from their families and placed in boarding schools was the shearing of their hair. I think of these children watching their long locks falling to the floor, locks of heritage, of memories, of love, of life, I wonder if the children saw all of this, along with images of loved ones faces entangled within the strands piled and then swept brusquely and thrown into the trash.
Several years ago I came to realize something somewhat embarrassing about myself. There is a strong correlation between the amount of time spent obsessing about my hair and my emotional well-being. For those of you who are more highly evolved and don't do this, I will share that there really are endless hair-related issues to obsess about. Too long? Too short? Why ever did I cut it? The agony of growing it out. But, what if I grow it out and then it looks terrible, shouldn't I just cut it right now? And, on and on and ridiculously on. Now, if I find myself obsessing about my hair, I know that I am ungrounded and not living from a point of strength. It has become my canary in the coal mine of emotional health. I hardly ever give my hair a second thought these days and I know this is a very good thing.
As a young girl my two long blonde braids trailed down my back as I rode horses throughout the year and spent summers picking up rocks from the pasture and bucking small square bales up onto the flatbed trailer. In college I wore my hair long, woven into a sturdy French braid that started at my crown and ended in the middle of my back. Of course, there was that disastrous experience with the henna….I lived in Germany for one year as a 21-year-old college student. The sun doesn’t shine much in the winter in Germany and this does terrible things to this sun-loving desert-girl's emotional state. In February a dear friend went to Tunisia and brought me back some red henna dye dug directly from the desert. After months of the sun setting at 3:30 pm, it seemed the best idea in the world to dye my hair red. Only, it didn’t turn out red. Bozo-the-Clown orange would be a more apt description. Combined with the 30 pounds I’d gained on European pastries, located primarily in my cheeks (facial, that is)….well, I don't get those pictures out much.
Now my hair falls just below my shoulders. This summer I wore it clasped in a ponytail at the nape of my neck. It peeked out under the broad brim of my cowboy hat. I look forward to the long plait hanging down my back that I plan to grow. On walks across the prairie, I left my hair unbound. The shadow I cast showed long strands of hair blowing and swirling aloft and I felt untamed and extravagant. Now, it has come to represent an expression of freedom and wildness within me, a soft femininity combined with the fierce independence of the prairies.
I have recently decided that the decision to grow my hair does not preclude my putting voice and action to the sadness that started this journey. My voice began with halting words, but grows steadier with the passing of each full moon. As my hair grows, so do I. "Just grow," my wise friend, Tina, told me a few months ago. "Don’t worry about being strong. Just grow."
I am. I have decided to turn what started as symbol of mute mourning into one of strength, femininity, and grace.
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