Dying inevitably follows living. What makes for a good death in a just and sustainable world? I think about this a lot these days. Four years ago, at age fifty, I was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer. Active and fit, it took a collapsed lung and two broken ribs before I realized I had a big problem, the ultimate challenge of life: facing my own death. Read more!
On July 4, 2003, at 4:44 p.m., I shaved my head. In the United States, July 4th is Independence Day.
My fabulous “fantasy hairdresser,” Lucy, whose salon resembles Oz, created a ceremony to assist me in lopping off the locks that have been such a symbol of my feminine beauty and power. I’ve wanted to do this for years, have questioned other women I’ve seen with shaved heads, and still been afraid. Am I my hair? Would I be beautiful bald?
Spirit was encouraging me, in its usual humorous fashion, to take the leap.
Hair-raising issues
Starting in 1998, my wavy, shoulder-length auburn hair had been systematically ruined every few years, by washing it in either rusty well water or chemically “softened” water. The last incident occurred just one day after the plumbing had backed up at a house where I was a guest.
I knew this clear-out process well. Though I’ve never owned a home, this was the fifth time I’ve been either a houseguest or a tenant when a stalled plumbing system necessitated a service call. Each time, the cause has been tree roots clogging the line, demanding that we root out what’s rotting in our cellar/cellular memory.
It was a strongly synchronous wake-up call. And I was ready.
So I said YES to myself, to the next adventure, and called Lucy, who’s shaved many a female head.
I recalled an earlier phase of my journey, when sourcing my power meant not shaving the hair on my legs. Deep into a “spiritual emergency” that took the form of illness and injury, I felt protected by the Earthy, rooting power of hairy legs during my dark night of the soul.
When I emerged from the womb, reborn in the alchemical fire, I kept my leg hair for a while. One day I bought an electric razor. Shaving for the first time in four years, I was clear that it was a conscious choice. I no longer “needed” leg hair as part of my healing.
I wore red, white and blue to my head shaving, though my allegiance was symbolic: not to any outer country, but to the womb-an rooted inside me.
Crowning Glory
Releasing the covering to my crown chakra has been tremendously freeing. I look magnificent — reborn — the Goddess incarnate: bald head, smooth legs, power emanating from my armpit hair. A living version of the azure Goddess figurine with upraised arms who sits on my altar.
I’m also intrigued. I’ve never seen my head before. It’s fun to run my hand lightly over my scalp and feel which way the nap is smooth or “against the grain.” I sense new beginnings stirring. I had wanted to do a baptism for a friend who is emerging from his own “womb phase.” Since we’re all one, I did it for us both.
The feedback has been so supportive. The first few men I saw said more light is pouring through me. A lovely young woman at the health food store surprised me by saying, “I’m jealous that you had the courage to shave your head!”
Only one person asked if my new hairstyle was “medically related.” It is, according to the indigenous definition of medicine: that which heals us into our wholeness.
Corporate to Complete
In the 1980s, when I was still working in corporate America and wearing the categorical identity of an obedient business drone, I often saw a woman named Jane at the deli where we both ate lunch. A brightly hued scarf always covered her scalp. After perhaps a year, I mustered the courage to ask about it, and learned she had a condition known as alopecia, or total hair loss. She didn’t even have eyelashes.
While I wasn’t remotely willing to relinquish my mahogany mane at that time, I was nonetheless envious on one level. I had been secretly struggling with the exact opposite experience for years: an endocrine imbalance that manifested as excess body hair.
On a quest to rebalance my hormones and embrace my true feminine nature, I entered my dark night. I got in touch with my roots — Mother Earth — in a way that called to me on a cellular level. It was a profound remembering of the truth of who and what I am, why I’m here.
I realize, too, as others keep affirming my beauty, that my name, Amara, means “of eternal beauty.” Beauty emanates from within. In a sense, shaving off my hair is a homecoming, completion, rebirth.
May my process inspire you to take the plunge, to plumb the depths of your own being. Clear out the patterns, paradigms and possessions that no longer fit with who you’re becoming, and offer them to the alchemical fire, to be forged into the new. Blessings.
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Amara Rose is a guide for quantum evolution. Her services include transformational life crafting, e-courses, and customized rites of passage. She is widely published in health, business and new thought magazines. Reach Amara at 800-862-0157 or via LiveYourLight.com, where you can subscribe to her e-zine, “What Shines.”