stripping
i love my hair. And not when a stylist blows it out. i love it when it's wild.
i also love the increasing grays. these strands empower me to give less f@cks about what others think while still caring deeply about what we practice together.
my hair’s state reveals the state of my being. when it’s lush, it tracks with my body’s vibrancy. when pulled back tight, it often indicates hurry, propelled by a sense of scarcity or a need for control.
Thankfully, at 54, i let my hair down more often than not.
Then in April, an incessantly itchy scalp landed me in a dermatology clinic for the first time in decades. During my adolescence, eczema flares covered the crooks of my arms and the length of my legs. My dermatologist diagnosed this as severe dry skin and prescribed topical steroids. Looking back, i know my flare ups had more to do with chronic anxiety, repressed selfhood and latent grief than my skin’s moisture level.
i now soothe and hydrate my wounds with self love practices and guided work with healers. However, on this day i needed more to address the irritation and eerie movement around my scalp.
When diagnosed with head lice, i felt more crestfallen than i’d like to admit. in a world where the Israeli government continues its genocidal war on Palestinians, where Hurricane Beryl devastates Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Jamaica, and where the u.s. supreme court ruled to allow cities to ban sleeping in public spaces, head lice are a minor annoyance. Nonetheless, the labor intensive treatment made me hyper focus.
Treatment involves a special shampoo and conditioner and combing your hair in four different directions using a tightly pronged metal comb repeatedly dipped in baking soda to intensify the comb’s stripping action. In addition to 2 hours of daily hair treatments, I speed wheeled overflowing baskets of bedding, towels, and clothing between washers and dryers at the laundromat, squeezing these sprints between little league games, coaching calls, end of year school events, and retreat design.
i was aggressive at the start. While combing my son’s and my hair each night, i called to durga to vanquish the menacing invaders. I howled while putting away piles of folded sheets and clothing. Cast death curses on all parasitic insects while vacuuming mattresses and furniture.
And then, out of exhaustion and/or acceptance, during the 2nd round of treatment, i performed each step with care but no attachment. In the absence of only one outcome, i experienced many. There was connection with laundry mat workers, all immigrant women of color from Haiti and Trinidad. There was physical labor that balanced sitting in front of my computer with moving my whole body. There was release of long to do lists and a prioritizing of 2-3 tasks/practices each day. There was admission to colleagues that my nervous system was dysregulated and I needed to leave our meeting. There was cancellation of travel squeezed into a packed week, allowing space to recharge before a work retreat. There was the felt sense that attentive care of my family’s ailments prevents its spread to others.
i’m grateful to have stripped not only lice and nits from our hair but also embedded norms - norms that create separation between me and those i encounter; norms that value mental work over physical work and values the people doing each in the same way; norms that glorify a grueling to-do list and promote perpetual FOMO; norms that demand that we override our bodies to be responsible and effective; and norms that view health as individually determined.
Beloved, i want all of us stripping. Stripping all that makes us itch for more and keeps us from being present with what is. Stripping what has spread to us imperceptibly and proliferated quietly, creating endless cycles of patterned behavior. i want us to clear our body/soul/minds of all that is not ours through daily release practices and regular purifying rituals done on our own and together. And more than anything, i want us to let our hair down and move in this world untamed and free.
i’d love for you to join me at Awaken the Divine Feminine, a half day retreat I’m co-facilitating with Ana Polanco in Brooklyn later this summer. In this gathering, we’ll explore and strip unhealthy patterns absorbed through our maternal lines while also reclaiming and celebrating the lush and nurturing gifts of our matrilineal lineages. Stay tuned for the rescheduled date and time in my next newsletter which you can subscribe to below.