When I was 21, I cut all my hair off in a hotel room because god told me to.

part one

Weeping so hard I could not see through the tears, I handed the scissors over to my eldest cousin to help. When it was finished, my hair only an inch long, all I could say was “I look like my brother”. I remember the feeling of devastation, like something had been ripped out of me, quickly but painfully.

In the book of Judges is the myth of Samson- a man whose extraordinary strength and power comes from his hair. He is instructed never to cut it, because when he does his power will be stripped from him. He falls in love with a woman who also happens to be of the tribe of his enemies. She betrays him, cutting his hair in his sleep.

A sad story. But I resonate with Samson. My hair has always felt special to me too, a source of pride and confidence. When it’s long I feel beautiful, and when it’s short I feel naked-like a sheep that’s been shorn. Ritual hair cutting can be an act of dominance. Prisoners of war endure head shaving and cancer patients take their own before the disease can take it from them. But it is also an act of shedding. Shedding outdated beliefs, shedding narratives, shedding that which has decayed to provide fertile ground for new life. 

At 21 I believed that the reason the divine told me to cut my hair was because I needed to humble myself, but now that I no longer adhere to the same faith I did back then, the experience takes on a different meaning. I still believe the divine spoke to me that day (as They have throughout my life) but I don’t think it was just about humbling myself.

I was shedding a belief that my beauty was contingent on my haircut, shedding the narrative that I was weak and could not do hard things, shedding the fear of sacrifice, and walking into something I still can’t name but have felt the effects of ever since. I cut my hair short again 3 years ago when I first started photography and that was also a shedding. I had entered a phase of self-reclamation, although I was hardly aware of it at the time.

Under this year’s Pisces new moon, I cut my hair again, this time in ceremony. I recalled that hotel room at 21, except this time it wasn’t half so difficult; nothing was ripped out of me and it didn’t hurt. Instead, it fell off of me, simply and effortlessly, like an old skin I’d outgrown.

I’m shedding all that I’ve taken on over the past 3 years that wasn’t for me; cutting off old narratives, old beliefs, and old ways of being that no longer align with who I am. I’m letting go of people, situations, and opportunities that were never meant to stay, honoring them in love and gratitude for the reflections they showed me. Witnessed only by the creative muses and the god of the wild, and I gave thanks for the past 3 years; all I learned, all I witnessed, and all I accomplished. I released that phase of my life in gratitude, and I welcomed in the new, and as I closed those scissors I felt power flow into me, not out of me.

Maybe I’m Samson in reverse. 

At least, that’s what I wanted this experience to be. That’s what I wanted to believe. That’s what I believed until 3 days after I cut my hair off for this blog post.

part two – the real shedding

I am shedding something, but the above narrative no longer holds true and I’m not sure it ever did. I’ve always believed the divine spoke to me in my 20s when I cut off all my hair, but I think the truth is much deeper, uglier, and depressing.

I’ve been tracking my emotional waves (I’m an emotional authority in human design) and I started before I made the decision to cut my hair. I wanted to ensure I made an aligned decision. I waited almost a full month, paying attention to how the idea felt in my body, but as the time to cut my hair drew closer, I began to question myself. I feel more like myself with long hair, why would I cut it? The thought of actually having shorter hair didn’t feel good, but I wanted a physical act to signify the shedding and I wanted it to be bold and dramatic. What I didn’t know at the time was this was the not-self talk of my undefined centers chiming in, and like a child, I fell for it.

So I self-abandoned. Like Samson, I feel in love with something that was not in alignment for me: a belief system that told me that I was prideful if I was confident or felt empowered. That’s what my hair does for me; it empowers me. When my hair is long, I have a sense of self-possession. As soon as it’s gone I feel child-like, immature, and naked. The truth is I wanted to cut my hair and take self-portraits doing it. I wanted a tangible way to document this shedding. But what I didn’t realize was that I was going against what my body was telling me – that there are so many other ways to ritually shed than to sever myself from something that makes me feel more like myself.

I didn’t realize how deeply embedded the narrative that I need to humble myself is. How truly afraid of being prideful I am. You see, integrity is incredibly important to me. It matters to me to be transparent, gentle, and filled to the brim with gratitude and I see now that my desire to be humble has been twisted by my conditioning to mean that when I feel good about myself, I am in danger of becoming haughty. I constantly clip my own wings to ensure I don’t fly too close to the sun and that is not empowerment. It’s not self-love, not self-honoring, and not self-respect. It’s self-mutilation and self-sabotage.

Now here I am, 39 years old, circling back to my early 20s and wondering how the hell I got here; how these themes can still be so prevalent almost 20 years later. I feel naked and unsure, yet also so very aware, awake, and encouraged. Cathy Caruth says that trauma is not linear, but cyclical and I think healing is the same. It takes time and effort to fully align with oneself, and that means reliving our patterns until we gain enough clarity and self-trust to heal.

I did cut off old narratives and old ways of being that no longer align with who I am, but I did this in my spirit and my hair didn’t have to pay the price. I’m not a Samson in reverse, but a regular Samson, the Samson who fell out of alignment, lost his power, and suffered defeat. But that wasn’t the end of Samson’s story. His hair grew back, and with it, his power.

Mine will too.