We Should All Do This Once!

Someone once told me that we should all shave our heads at least once in our lives. When I heard that I was like “yeah right!” and now I could not agree more!

This journey of this self expression and the thought of saving my head, had been rattling around my head for a long time and I mean a very long time. Time and time again, I would go get my hair cut and time and time again I would walk out with the feeling of disappointment. Not that the haircut was bad, no it was the disappointment that I wasn’t being true to who was on the inside and who I wanted to be on the outside. I was letting the fear of the unknown when. The fear of “Will I like it?” and the “What if I hate it?” win.

So I kept my hair and pined away at the thought of what I wanted to look like. I searched Pinterest daily for images of women with this bold statement. I would stop any woman I saw with a buzzcut and compliment them. I even caught myself staring at the beautiful woman at the gym with her buzzcut and think to myself “Wow she’s such a badass!” Side note: I’m sure she thinks I’m crazy. I kept looking and I kept dreaming that one day that would be me.

I knew I was creeping towards the courage to do this but I wasn’t quite brave enough to make that jump. I mean this is a big move. There was absolutely a possibility that I did this and would hate the way it looked. It was this fear and inner dialogue that slowed my down from actually doing it. But – I was getting close to taking that plunge. I could feel it!

I knew I was getting close when my inner dialogue switched from “What if you don’t like it” to “Well, it’s just hair and it will grow back.” Yes I was soooo close but not quite there. I just had one more thing I wanted to do before I made this major stop. I wanted to show my sons what I was going to do. Not for their permission, nope not at all. I consider my sons to be the two people who’s opinions I value most. I wanted their honest thoughts on this and I knew they would tell me the truth. So, I talked to them. I showed them both a picture of the most beautiful buzzcut and told them “I’m thinking about doing this to my hair, what do you think?” and truthfully the answer that I got was not what I expected.

What I got was a resounding “Yeah you should do that”.

I am so incredibly thankful for a family that encourages self expression with no limits. I was so proud that they knew this is what I wanted and both of them wanted to support me in my self express. It helped that they really did like the haircut also. I had the final step taken care but deep down inside I was like “Shit, now the only person stopping me…is me!”

So I had to stop and figure out what was stopping me? I had to take a hard stop and ask myself this question. “Lonni, what is stopping you from doing this ” The answer to that question was this…

Nothing – nothing was stopping me.

It was that one simple word that I needed to hear and needed to tell myself. Nothing was stopping me – not a thing. That was all that I needed to get the wheels in motion and once the wheels started turning there was no stopping me!

Nothing other than the fact that it takes a plane trip to get to my barber.

I knew I was going to do this buzz, but I also wasn’t going back to San Fransisco until next year. So there I sat, all this confidence and yet it still wasn’t happening. So I told myself, “It’s okay Lonni, you will just do it next year. You have waited this long, a little longer isn’t going to matter. Well that’s at least what I was telling myself.

And I fully expected to wait – well that’s at least what I told myself. I’m not exactly sure at what moment I couldn’t wait any longer. Maybe is when I looked at some of my recent posts and didn’t like at what I saw. The person I saw wasn’t who I was on the inside.

Maybe it was when I was braiding my hair and adding the bobby-pins that I realized I had the same hairstyle as my Mom and Grandmother. Maybe it was none of the above and just me finally deciding to let the inside me out and shine bright.

Whatever the reason was it was the best thing I ever did was buzz my head.

I thought I was a confident women, who wore what she wanted and didn’t let anything stop her before I buzzed my hair but WOW was I wrong. Talk about a boost of confidence. I’m not sure what it is about this new hair that just makes me feel unstoppable but it’s doing it. Who would have thought, less hair equals more confidence??

My moral of this story is not me telling you to buzz your hair.

The moral of this story is this…

No matter who you are, if you look in the mirror and you do not see the inside you looking back at you, you need to change things. It can be a haircut, new fashion style or tattoo. Whatever version of you that you see when you close your eyes is the exact same version you should see when you look in the mirror. Only you know what that is.

Remember – Be Bright, Be Bold and Be You.

Until Next Time……