medium: video
duration: 11:23
year: 2016
Transcript:
Six months after a traumatic childbirth, I had talking therapy to make sense of the experience. After the second session, my hair began falling out. My counsellor advised me that it may be a direct result of the therapy, a way for the body to react and respond to remembering the trauma. reliving of the experience.
Over the following months, as a way of making sense of the post traumatic state, my hair became a battle ground. The diagnosed alopecia was a way for my body to shed the past, to make way for new memories. The locks I had adorned for 6 six years fell out, sometimes just one a day, sometimes ten. They looked like they had given up. They were letting go. They helped me to let go. To let go of my idea of what being feminine should be. To let go of the what had happened as my child entered this world. To let go of trying to be in control of every moment.
The choice to cut the hair was a definitive one. My body was doing what it needed to do… it was leading the way and I needed to follow. The body remembers, but the body also knows how to heal.