Noticing a smattering of new hair after months of chemo is bringing a little joy…

Like many of us, I got through the pandemic without troubling a hairdresser and enjoyed for a while, long, girlish locks. As an older woman, it was great to sport, with some defiance, a style considered ‘too young’, too ingenue. But as soon as I had a cancer diagnosis in June, I booked a lovely peripatetic hairdresser for a head shave. I learned later that I was one of her first customers. Her styling skills were wasted on me. I wasn’t looking for anything decorative for a special occasion. Instead, what I needed was unusual compassion, someone who could be alongside me as I took a symbolic step towards preparing for the inevitable hair loss of chemo. As my dark blond strands littered the floor of my front room, we both shed a tear and ended this encounter with a hug. I had to press payment upon her – she wanted nothing for her trouble. And yet, she had performed a routine procedure with the most loving kindness (I am happy to recommend her too if anyone is looking for a hairdresser).

Naked 

Many of us, especially women, derive Samson-like strength, or at least identity, from our hair, so losing it can be a cause of much distress. I have a more prosaic relationship with my barnet, but as I blinked to discern my naked skull in the mirror, I had the most powerful sense of my vulnerability. Though a 65-year-old woman stared back at me, she seemed childlike and unworldly. I guess that’s what cancer does, strips us of all that is extraneous for our journey into the treatment limbo of chemo. Now the most brutal of that treatment is over, I’ve noticed I’m getting a light re-growth. I’m ridiculously pleased it is blonde (the signature colour of my family) and not grey as befits my seniority. And, as you might tell from this photograph, there’s a fair smattering.

With this new growth, I don’t feel my strength returning exactly, because, in truth, it never went. But I sense a vainer, sillier, more worldly me returning. And I rejoice in that.