08/25/2026
“Did you cry”
No.
It never even occurred to me that that was an option. Not because I’m some kind of hardass(I am 😅) but because it needed to be done and it was much more important to me to show my girls that we can do hard things, that hair is just hair. It will grow back. These are all superficial, physical things that really don’t matter that much. I was so locked into being strong for them, my feelings were not mine, but theirs.
You see, my oldest, Brooke, had spent the 3 previous days brushing my hair out and sobbing as she pulled clump after clump out of my hair. She braided my hair every night to try and preserve as much as possible. I just needed to make it to our family pictures. June 1st.
The night of May 31st I had the most intense night sweats. I changed my clothes 3 times and my hair was soaked with sweat when I woke up. June 1st was here. Family picture day. I had waited until it had been over 6 years and had a cancer diagnosis before I finally booked my own family pictures. That morning my natural reaction was that I needed to jump in the shower and maybe if I washed my hair, that would help. Yea, don’t do that. It turned into 1 big dreadlock. I looked at the time 9:34am, I woke brooke up, grabbed some clippers and some scissors and headed towards the dining room table. We were shaving it now. I didn’t have time for this, I had a target pick up order for some press on nails that I needed for our shoot. The nails were a must, the hair, not so much.😅
My youngest daughter didn’t take it as well. At 9 years old I tried to prepare her by showing her some women with no hair, with a headscarf or bandana on and to explain to her that that’s what I was going to look like. She was absolutely appalled. And then the day of the shaving came. She was maddd, big mad. She yelled at me from the living room because she refused to even look at me and see what was going on. “YOU ARE GOING TO LOOK SO UGLY” she yelled at me. All I could say was “I’m sorry”. I knew she wasn’t trying to be hurtful, and what hurt me wasn’t the fact that she thought I was going to look ugly, but it gutted me that she was going to have the bald mom. The sick, bald, cancer mom.
As brooke and I started to chip away at the dread lock and I was to a point where I resembled Angelica from Rugrats, Finley appeared in the dining room. She was warming up to it, and even took her turn to take a few swipes with the clippers.
This wasn’t some well thought out get together, or super symbolic party. I’ve seen people do some really cool things with friends and family when that time comes to get the big chop. But it was us. A little unhinged, completely chaotic, and a whole lotta laughs.
In the midst of it all I grabbed my camera, gave it to the girls, and said “we gotta document this”.
And that we did.
