I’m losing hair. A lot of it. Every time I brush my hair, a small gerbil-sized tangle appears in my hand. For a normal person, this might cause panic (I probably should worry). But I have enough hair for a dozen people - ask the graveyard of mangled bobbypins and snapped hair elastics.
Hair loss is a routine part of postpartum change. The body is an absolutely remarkable thing. It chooses - by design - to redirect precious, finite resources to the task at hand, namely, creating life. Rather than keep your run-of-the-mill processes growing, everything concentrates on keeping a tiny human going. Hair is one of those background things. So we hang on to all of the hair because nobody’s there to clean house and it becomes beautiful and thick and you glow and people compliment you and you break more hair elastics.
At the end of the whole event, your body has to go back to running things around here. So you shed things: hair, weight, bits of your previous self that you no longer need. You make way for a new person in an unfamiliar skin.
But that’s what happens sometimes. We hang on to things over time because we need them in our back pocket. Or we simply don’t have time to get rid of them because we are focused on other things. And then comes the process of cumulative loss. Everything goes. All at once.
It’s a good thing, as Martha would say. Why keep the things you don’t need? There are enough of the things you do need. There’s enough hair (maybe for a cute little side part, maybe bangs?). It feels like a shock to the system when it first happens. But you step back and reframe. Suddenly you’re a little lighter. It’s a good thing, you say.
It’s still the pensive early days of a new year. So many of us are still taking stock. What are the things you’re ready to let go of? Or, conversely, what do you need to hang on to a while longer?