Authenticity Over Everything or Hair: My Musical

For those of you that pay attention to LinkedIn photos, you may have noticed that mine has changed. Drastically. This was not the result of some wild hair (ha!). I did not wake up on Monday and by Tuesday chop off all my hair AND let it go back to its natural color. This was the result of a 3.5-year internal debate that generally ended with “how in the world am I going to accomplish this change?”.

Backstory: In 2017 my stylist (for 19 years) closed his shop and moved into a beauty cube farm. My salon experience went from top notch to being trapped in a small space with too many people and prices kept going up.

Strike 1.

As I celebrated birthdays, trips to the salon became more frequent to, ahem, keep up appearances. Now my brain, that craves efficiency, kept bringing up “is this really a good use of your time and money?”.

Hmm, strike 2.

Then in 2019 I accepted a work transfer to Florida; the land of sand, surf and humidity. Suddenly my hair is always in a ponytail and generally tucked up into a baseball cap. Over a 12-month period I visited 3 salons but none of them could quite get my hair color right.

Strike 3.

In comes 2020, I am suddenly house bound, and all salons are shut down. My hair color grew out, and Zoom kept others from seeing this otherwise visible change. When the salons re-opened, I came up with an idea, ready to leverage all this chaos and make a change. I took the opportunity to cut the length of my hair short, but I left the top long. I kept growing the top out until it hit the perfect length to whack it all off. The experience was fun, and it was liberating to end the internal debate.

It is easy to get stuck when making a difficult decision. The myriad of options and potential outcomes would perplex Escher. Mix in childhood baggage and the never-ending stream of social media commentary and it can be downright paralyzing. I unveiled my new look at work in a 40+ teammate meeting and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. BTW, having a supportive team inside and outside of work makes a big difference!

It’s hard to make decisions sometimes, frustrated by social norms and perceived opinions stepping on my values, it’s clear now, that listening to my heart and body as well as my brain can guide me forward faster and make greater impact on me and maybe others too. I am happy with my new look and have a genuine curiosity about how it will evolve over time. I know the end result, and intend to enjoy the journey on the way to my destination!