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I was born with long, curly, flowing hair, my mother chopped it all off and ruined my life.  That’s not entirely true, but that is the story I told myself for years.  There are pictures of me as a toddler with curly, long hair.  I was so pretty and girly at the age of 2.  The story told to me by my mother says that those cute, girly curls were a bear to get a comb through.  Even going through bottles of “Johnson’s No More Tangles”, I would scream and cry as she pulled on my curly, tangled hair.  (I don’t remember that part.)  So one day, she just couldn’t take it anymore and got out the scissors.  It was finally short – and straight (the curls had only been on the ends of the hair).  And that is how it stayed for the next 20 years.

 I think I was in kindergarten the first time it happened: an older kid at school looked at me and asked “Are you a girl or a boy?” I had never been more embarrassed or more angry.  Because he was right.  No one knew my gender.  Girls were supposed to have long hair and wear dresses; boys wore pants and had short hair.  How else would you know who was who?  Even hours and hours of watching “Free to Be You and Me” couldn’t convince me that girls – pretty girls anyway – should have short hair.  Well, I concluded, maybe I can’t have long hair, but I can dress like a girl.  And I made a vow right then and there to always dress like a girl. 

I spent all of first grade in a dress.  Or a skirt.  Or the one pink polyester pantsuit I had.  Rain or shine, all through the Minnesota winter, walking to school every day in tights.  I was determined that no one would EVER mistake me for a boy.  My mother tried to make me part my hair on the side, rather than in the middle where it had been for a long time.  Part my hair on the side just like my brother’s hair!  I would have none of it.  I was old enough to refuse that at least!

 It was clear from television and movies.  Long hair was the way to go.  All of the pretty women on TV had long hair.  I watched Charlie’s Angels religiously.  The cast consisted of the pretty blonde, the pretty brunette, and the ugly but smart one, who had short hair.  I gazed longingly at Princess Leia with her braided buns, knowing that it took a LOT of long hair to make those braids.  I loved Little House on the Prairie, and was fascinated when Laura became a teacher.  Her outward sign of adulthood was that she took her long hair, which had always hung straight down on her shoulders, and put it up into a very grown-up bun. With little ringlets on the side of her face.  She was so pretty. 

 The ‘80’s happened when I was in Junior High.  All the popular (read: pretty) girls had big, bouncy, curly hair.  Now, ever since “the big cut” at age two, my hair had been straight as an arrow.  This clearly would not work for me when I turned 13.  I started getting permanents.  My mother tried to perm my hair at home at first.  She put a bunch of curlers on my head, willy-nilly, and started to apply the ammonia solution.  I gagged.  My eyes watered. I felt like I couldn’t breathe!  But the thought of curly hair kept me going.  At the end, when she took out the rollers…nothing had changed.  The curls fell out as soon as my hair dried.  I was heart-broken.  I wept and wailed. How could I go back to Oak Land Jr. High with this terrible straight hair?!?  My mother finally relented and took me to a professional stylist for the perm.  Images of Blair from “The Facts of Life” and Morgan Fairchild went through my head as the stylist rinsed out the curlers that had been pulling on my head for a half-hour.  Then we went back to the mirror.  My hair was definitely curly…like a brunette version of Little Orphan Annie.  Tight, kinky curls that I couldn’t brush out were plastered to my head.  Once again, I thought, I looked like a boy.  My dreams of being popular were dashed.

Not much later, no one would ever mistake me for a boy again.  I started developing womanly “assets”, and I learned how to work the perms that I got continually.  I spent hours in front of the mirror with curling iron in hand – 2 different sizes of curling irons – and a big bottle of hairspray.  I finally got my hair to do something resembling what I wanted.  It still wasn’t long, but at least it was big.

In the ‘90’s, styles changed (as styles are wont to do), and I was able to let go of my perms.  Instead, I experimented with color: blonde, red, and that unfortunate period of jet-black hair which certain people will not let me forget.  I also started to grow my hair out for the first time.  I was elated when I could actually put it up in a pony-tail.  Although as it got longer and longer, I started to see that long hair was a lot of work and ended up with it in a pony-tail more often than not.

When I hit my 30’s, I began working professionally as an actor.  The main tool I have as an actor is my “headshot”.  It is my calling-card.  It is the first thing I do at an audition: hand the director my headshot.  And the most important rule of auditioning is: Always Look Like Your Headshot.  So I finally developed a personal hair style.  I settled on a bright red color that I had to touch up every 6 weeks, because reds fade fast.  And I had lovely shoulder-length straight hair with long bangs.  I felt pretty, I felt feminine.  And after moving to a new city, everyone thought of me that way: with long red hair.  I was content.

Then, a bomb-shell dropped in June of 2010.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  When I received the diagnosis, I sobbed from the shock of it, and as the nurse practitioner told me about my options for treatment, it became clear that I was going to have to get chemotherapy.  My hand instinctively went to my hair, and the nurse practitioner saw it.  “Yes,” she sighed, “We might be able to save your breast, but I’m sorry,  you will probably lose your hair.” More tears flowed.

I became determined to beat the disease.  I learned all I could about breast cancer.  I spent hours on the internet researching.  I bought dozens of books about how to cope, and I embarked on my year of cancer treatments.  After weeks of tests, it was determined that I could keep my breast and have a lumpectomy: a surgery during which they just take out the tumor, but leave the rest of the breast intact.  I was relieved and went through the surgery without many problems.  I was sent home to heal for a month before I started on the chemo.  I was to have 4 ½ months of chemotherapy and a full year of another I.V. treatment called Herceptin.

I became more and more convinced that I could live and thrive.  I found a website called “Bald is Beautiful” which had dozens of pictures of beautiful bald women.  And not beautiful in that “oh, isn’t she strong, as you feel sorry for her” type of beautiful.  These women were seriously HOT!  I had read in all my research that when the hair falls out, long hair can sometimes be uncomfortable.  And having watched many made-for-TV movies about women with cancer where they stand sobbing in front of the mirror as they brush their hair and clumps fall off in the hairbrush, I decided to take the bull by the horns.  I was going to decide when I lost my hair, not the chemo.  So several days after my first treatment, I went to an acquaintance who was a hair stylist, and had her shave my head.

My first instinct was to put on a brave face despite my fear that I would look like an old man, and Shelley, the stylist, tried to make the afternoon as fun as possible.  I took a deep breath when she got out the clippers and took the first swipe.  There was no turning back now.  My beautiful red hair floated quietly to the ground, and I realized I was free.  I even started to have fun, and a friend took pictures. Eventually I became the punker I had always seen when she shaved me down to a mohawk.  And finally just down to my bangs.  Then it was gone.  The most amazing part was that all of the other stylists in the salon kept coming by and telling me how beautiful I looked.  “Oh, you have a perfectly shaped head!” They cried, and “Your eyes are so blue.”  Or “I can’t believe how gorgeous you are without hair!  You should have done this years ago!”  Shelley washed my head to get the little hairs off of me and I looked in the mirror. 

I had to admit, I looked way better than I ever would have believed before this experience.  I had brought a pretty blue scarf and she showed me how to tie it around my head.  We took a picture, and I was….well….beautiful. Getting rid of all that hair left me with just me.  There was nothing to hide behind.  No distraction of long red hair.  I had believed that my long red hair was what made me beautiful, and for the first time in my life I realized what made me beautiful was that I was my SELF.  There was no one else in this world like me.  I was strong and resilient, I was facing down a terrifying illness and I had faced it head on by shaving my head.  There was going to be no more running away from who I naturally was.

It sounds strange, but as I write this, exactly one year after that day shaving my head, as I sit here with short, straight hair that I absolutely love, I am actually grateful for the cancer.  It is not something I would want for anyone else. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but I have learned so much about myself.  About my capacity for acceptance, my ability to recognize and receive love, and about the peace that lies inside myself.  I know now that everything will be alright, no matter what happens next, and no matter how my hair grows.