The Significance of Cutting my Hair

I have always loved having long hair. I feel like I can style it into so many ways (if I actually had the time – but hey, it’s nice having that option right?). So any time I have cut my hair, it is because something is going on in my life. Last time I did an extreme change was a few months before I started university. I was feeling stressed and needed a change in my life. This time around, cutting my hair was a bit more significant than stress due to something new in my life.

“A woman who cuts her hair is a woman that is ready to change her life.” – Coco Chanel

I’ve been away from my blog for a few months now. I have still been active on my Instagram, because photography has become a passion of mine since I started this blog. I love being able to decorate my pages with colors and of photos I have taken and trying to bring out my creative side. It’s also a quick way to keep people updated.
I have been away from my blog because writing for me is a form of sharing and confronting a lot of things in my life. Recently, that has been difficult for me to do. I have even stopped writing a lot in my personal journal, which was a habit of mine. I love writing down my memories and my thoughts, but recently it’s been very difficult to do.

This blog has always been very open to my struggles. My battle with my weight, my anxiety about my future and the unknown, the loneliness that sometimes we feel when living abroad, my difficulties in learning French and cultural differences in France… and so forth. I couldn’t do that these past few months. I have been so overwhelmed with more than just one thing that it felt like I was drowning. Nothing I did seemed to be working. I felt so thinned out with worries, that my anxiety took the best of me. I also had to confront something that I never thought would happen to me.

So it all kept building. More stress. More worries. More overthinking. More wishing I would have and could do things differently. More stress. More worries. More overthinking. More of regretting a few things. More stress. More worries. More overthinking. Why can’t my life be different? More stress. More worries. More overthinking. It became a vicious cycle. I didn’t know how I could get out. I felt like a stranger in my body. Didn’t know who was looking back at me in the mirror. Until I snapped.

I am very lucky to be surrounded by love. I have an amazing family. I have amazing friends. I have surrounded myself with some amazing people since moving abroad. When I needed help, they were there. I will forever be grateful for them.

Cutting my hair was one of the most liberating things I have done in these past few months of this whirlwind and rollercoaster of ups and downs. It felt like a moment where I was trying to regain control of whatever had taken over me.

During this time, I’ve been watching Friends on repeat. Jennifer Aniston is a beautiful human being and while watching Friends, I kept thinking about her life. She has struggled with a lot and in the public eye. So one evening, while watching the episode in which Ross is trying to get everyone ready for an event for his work and Monica goes off about Richard and Chandler and Joey get into a fight over the couch and Rachel can’t get ready on time, I decided to cut my hair the next morning styled after Rachel. I was set on it.

The next morning, I got ready, walked down to a Franck Provost and gone was the hair I had spent so many years growing. My hair was the longest I had ever had it. When the woman kept asking me how much to chop off, I kept asking for more. When it was finished and I walked out the door, it felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I was liberated of something. I am not free from everything though. A lot of the issues that I have been struggling with these past few months I have to continue to confront, and it is going to be difficult. But cutting my hair felt like that moment when the earthquake had finally stopped. Now comes the part where I have to rebuild so that the buildings will be stronger and stand whatever earthquake happens next with more strength and foundation.