Freedom and Healing

In September 2008, on a trip back east I decided to cut my hair. I had been thinking about it for quite sometime and felt and inner something telling me that it was time. I felt change quickly coming upon me and cutting my hair was kinda like the catalyst for the change that was to come. With the exception of a couple of inches here and there over the years, I never really consider cutting a substantial amount of it off.

I decided to start wearing my hair natural and to stop combing it 13 years ago. This was a liberating time for me in which I realized that my beauty was not determined by whether or not I chose to relax it or wear it straight. I decided that I wanted to liberate myself from all of the chemicals and just see what would come of it after a while. It's been quite a journey of learning, loving, accepting and growing.

So while I was in NYC, I visited the shop that initially started me on my hairlocking journey. I went to Khamit Kinks and had the stylist chop off about 12 inches in the back and eight inches in the front. I still got my nappy do. Quite a change for me. Of course now, I look at my hair in picutres from before and think... wow...I really cut my hair. I guess I should put I pic up at some point. I am sporting an A-Line bob. I have to say, I like it. I really like it!

The hair represented a huge weight of all of the issues that I have overcome in the past: my weight, issues with my dad, addiction to food, self-sabatage, people pleasing, and recovering from fibromyalgia and a host of other health ailments.

A few days before, I took my mom out to Pure Food and Wine raw foods restaurant in NYC. I needed her to know just how much of an impact eating this way has had on me, not just physically but spiritually and emotionally as well. I explained that eating this way was birthing things in me that were unfamiliar in a compassionate sort of way. I wanted to share this divine dining experience with her. I told her that I needed to go and see my dad. I always felt that somehow I had to choose between the love of my dad and loyalty to my mother for all that she went thru as a single parent. But I realized recently that choosing to befriend my dad is not a slight to my mom. It is a gift to myself and an act of honesty regarding my feelings. She was super supportive and told me the story of how she only got to make things right with her dad when he was on his death bed. She said that I had a rare opportunity to excercise compassion despite how much hurt I had experienced over the years. She told me that she was proud of me.

So, the day after,cutting my hair, I made the trip 2 hours south near Philadelphia and spent time with my father. He had been absent for most of my life. He lived in Arizona and I lived in NJ. When I graduated college, he moved to a small town in South Jersey. By this time, I had moved out of my mom's house and away from NJ (spent 2 years traveling as a singer on cruise ships) and started experiencing the world on my own terms as an adult. Our (my dad and me) relationship in recent years had been topsy turvy to say the least. However, something beckoned me to choose higher ground and go see my dad.

We spent the weekend together just really getting to know each other in a way that time, proximity and circumstance had not allowed for in years past. I let go and forgave my dad for all of the hurt that I endured. The reality is, he and my mom were young and hotheaded and I am sure both were doing the best that they could based on what they had to work with. But when you have two parents who don't see eye to eye sometimes the only real casualty of war are the kids. To be honest, we all are healing in our own ways. I am grateful for the time that we got to spend together and realized that I am a lot like my dad in many ways.

I am the best of both of my parents and it seems that we all realized that while I was home. It was an emotional time for me but I am glad that I swallowed my pride, dissolved my anger, overcame my fears and tooks the trip that was neccessary for my own self healing.

Interestingly enough, my mom has embraced raw in ways that I never imagined. Since September, she has lost 22 pounds via a series of herbal cleansings, colon hydrotherapy sessions, a 21 day juice fast and is now going on 30 days raw. And my dad? Well... he recently started juicing. WOW!!! how's that for healing and freedom!??!!