Life, like Hair

As women, our hair is supposed to be our glory.  It says so in the Bible, it does.  And if we researched just how much hard-earned cash women spend on their hair every year cutting, trimming just a smidge, washing, conditioning, styling, dyeing, undyeing, ombre-ing (is that a word?), perming, crimping, and a million other things, we probably would be astounded.  Back in the olden days you were lucky enough if you got a good shampoo occasionally (and a bath), and braiding and pinning was about as fancy as it got.

I don't know why I've been going through old photos lately, but every so often I enjoy taking a trip back in time to visit earlier years...the years of my youth...my teen years, my early adulthood, my early years as a new mother.  I mean, isn't that why we take pictures anyway?  I guess it gives me pause, if not great contemplation, to see where I was and how far I've come.  Hopefully most of the time I can say that I've moved forward and not backward.  It's the same with hair.  We look back at the old hairstyles and think to ourselves WHAT WAS I THINKING?  But would you also agree that 10 or 20 years from today you will look back at your hair in pics from 2014 and think once more what an idiot you were for wearing your hair that way?  Allow me to share some hillarious photos of my own hair evolution...

Early eighties with the much coveted curly perm

Mid-nineties with big Texas-like hair

Late nineties maybe, with short, spikey hair, and wind-blown to boot (note the life jacket; we were on the water)

2003-ish, the infamous updo

2005-ish Mmh...don't mind this one so much

2007

Now, this one to the left is one I especially don't mind, and one I am actually very proud of. The short, short crop was not from a haircut but was the grow-out from the chemo baldness in 2006.  This is an image of a woman who was glad to still be walking around on planet Earth.

I might add that I hope you enjoy these pictures of me, because it is rare that I would share them.  But as I flipped through the old images recently, it dawned on me that life is a lot like hair.  We go through different eras.  We try to change things up.  We work on it, try to cover up the grays, even take the scissors sometimes and snip off the part we don't like.  But it is what it is, like the ol' saying goes.  Life -- with all its ugly grays, split ends, and aggravating ability to be out of control sometimes -- is still life.  And there's only one alternative to life, and you know what that is. Besides, hair and life are both what you make them (again, as the ol' saying goes).  In the picture to the left, I was just glad to be alive and well...and to have any hair at all.  So next time you take a trip down memory lane and flip through some antiquated images of your earlier self, don't think about how bad you looked or the lonely, hard, discouraging days those pictures might represent.  Think about how life, like hair, sometimes looks good and sometimes it looks like crap.  But having any kind of hair is better than having no hair at all.  Ditto for life. 

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