Bless the scarves
The kind stylists
The friends clicking on clippers
The towel around your shoulders
Bless the sunhats, and ball caps, and beanies
The headbands
The hair pieces
The buzzcuts
Bless the shiny scalps reflecting the moonlight
Bless the sunscreen rubbed in at the edge of shorelines
Bless the days when you look in the mirror
and see all the iterations of you that used to be.
All the carefree styles that have gone before you.
All the days when your hair was an afterthought.
When you did it just how you liked.
When you didn’t worry about the wind blowing in the wrong direction
or lifting your scarf away like a kite.
When you didn’t squint and wonder how others would see you
because you’re not sure how to see yourself.
Bless the I don’t give a fuck days.
When you feel in your bones your sacred worth.
How your body, like the oak tree, like the creek in your backyard
ebbs and flows in seasons.
Bless the days when your hair loss signals the root of the struggle—
the cancer treatments, the hormonal changes, the alopecia, the PCOS, the chronic stress,
the toll pregnancy takes on a body, the society that tells stories of shame.
Bless the days when you look in the mirror
and see the scope of things—you, on a planet swirling
like a marble in the ocean of the cosmos.
The strands of hair falling from your head, string theory. The confetti of being alive.
Bless the days that are woeful.
Rageful.
Ambivalent.
Kind.
Hilarious.
Playful.
Bless the creams, the foams, the treatments, the vitamins.
Bless the patches, the thinning, the shedding.
Bless the letting it go.
Bless the letting go.
Bless who you were.
Bless who you are.
Bless your becoming.
Rev. Molly Bolton