More than just eyebrows.

Love in small gestures

Let’s be honest - there is something about a face that just looks bloody weird without eyebrows. Women lead the charge for ‘eyebrow appreciation’ as they basically act as a photo frame for the rest of our face.  There is so much attention on shaping, tinting, feathering, and waxing, that we have no doubt failed to remember the pure functionality of eyebrows. As someone getting back into an exercise regime (without eyebrows), I now have an abundance of appreciation for why I actually need them: to stop sweat from running straight down my face!  

But it has become more than that when trying to reconcile the weirdness in the mirror – thankfully I’m a fair-haired creature, so an absence of eyebrows and eyelashes hasn’t been as much of a shock compared to what my brunette cousins must experience. And for men as well. Nonetheless, there is something missing in more ways than the obvious. So in an attempt to look (and feel) more ‘normal’, I ordered fake eyebrows (called ‘eyebrow wigs’ … who knew !?). They are made of human hair and are stuck to some adhesive thingy already in the loose shape of an arch that are supposed to just get glued to your face. Sounds so simple! Weird. But simple.  It was therefore a surprise to me when the moment came to inch my foot through the door of ‘normal’ and apply said fake eyebrows, that I instead started crying in front of the bathroom mirror. With one half-stuck half-cocked eyebrow. Had it really come to this? That in some desperate attempt to look and feel more like me, I was sticking someone else’s hair to my face? And that those, plus a fake fringe, would fool everyone else (well, more like fool me) into thinking that I was regaining some semblance of self-confidence.

I was wrong. This was about so much more than eyebrows. This was about finding acceptance and recognition in a face that looked anything but familiar. And it was joining a long line of reasons about why cancer brings about so many reasons to ask questions without easy answers.

It also became about recognising love in small gestures. When my beloved walked into the bathroom to find me in this teary state, he looked perplexed. And not just because I had a half-applied eyebrow hovering somewhere on my forehead! I couldn’t get the first one to line up properly and didn’t even want to try the second. But he just took the glue stick from my hand, peeled off the eyebrow, and said “Let me”.

And there it is. The myriad of ways that people need people is beyond definition. It comes in any small gesture that just says: “I’m thinking of you in among all the chaos of whatever else is going on in my life right now”.  When someone passes away, or something devastating happens in a friend’s life (like hearing “Jodie’s got cancer”), people confess to not having made contact because “I just don’t know what to say”.  That is ultimately about them.  The opportunity for connection, for humanness, has been lost. Because it’s actually about the other person and what they need. And for the record, we don’t all need grandiose statements and offerings, because those start to look and feel as if they are about some publicly recognised act of giving for the ‘giver’, as opposed to the gift of simply caring. Of acknowledging that you can’t offer an answer to fix whatever the problem is, or to provide some profound life meaning that will make all the bad news wash away. It’s just about being present. Listening. Connecting. Saying “You matter”. And sometimes it’s just about helping to stick fake eyebrows onto a teary face that otherwise says, “I love you”.

A serve of self-love (with a side of coffee).

Support can come from the most surprising places

Self-love lessons can appear at any time, assuming we’re open to it. For me, a stand out was the day that my beloved local barista, Michael, invited me around to the other side of the coffee counter to do a baldie selfie (me, newly follicly-challenged; Mike, a result of the natural course of men aging gracefully!). I had not ventured outside once with my new chemo-do. And other than the occasional hot flush/fever at home, I rarely walked around with my noggin doing a nudie run. But this day, I was embraced by compassion and comfort as I stood for an iphone selfie pic that was surely in need of its built in ‘best portrait’ option!  

I didn’t know if I was going to laugh or cry when I saw my reflection in the camera lens. But the beaming smile to my right told me that crying was NOT my story today. All I felt instead was proud. Proud that I could stand in public and be accepted. Proud that perhaps one person who may see Mike’s social media post might just be one little bit less self-conscious about their own reflection. That they may borrow some of my self-love in that moment and help celebrate that I conquered that moment on that day; that I chose that moment to be happy. And that a good guy (a bloody awesome guy!) helped me believe that I was going to be ok.

Here's Michael and Me @ Walt's Espresso Bar, Hamilton, Brisbane.  

Under the shower.

Losing my hair from chemo

I sat in the shower as the water washed over my head and ran my hands over, knowing that I was about to bear witness to loss. At first it was wonderment. And relief that this moment was finally here - the one thing everyone fears the most with chemo. I'm always one for planning and preparation, but I just couldn't reconcile that there were literally hundreds of hairs on my palms each and every time I touched my sore head. It was as if I was seeing it for the first time, every time. Like those tv infomercial ads that never stop..."But wait!! There's more!!"

Then I cried. I'm not sure why. It's not like I didn't know it was coming. Maybe because this was about more than just hair, because it felt like a moment to be reborn. Under the shower. Peeling off hundreds of layers. Of memories. Of lost wishes. Of new hopes. Is this really what it means to have so much of ourselves wrapped up in our hair? Men are now becoming more able to save/regrow/regain otherwise lost youth or confidence. But for women it's so much a part of our path into becoming a woman and owning who we are. It's every compliment. Every touch of a lost love. Of a heated embrace. Running fingers through fringes - that was my thing. Every hairdresser that would comment on the colour, the wave, the texture. Red. Ranga. Strawb.

My self-confidence, like almost every other woman, was so intricately tied up in my hair (pardon the pun). I applaud anyone who, like me, has sat in a hairdresser's chair, waiting for the big reveal to match the expectations and future hopes that come from the new look - sometimes it's for a new job, or to cut/hack off the pain of a breakup. But there are also those times we silently cried at the realisation we just didn't look like the photo. Or that the pain was still there despite the dead memories on the salon floor. And yet we still paid our hundreds of dollars only to walk out, go home, and find ourselves in this exact moment... crying under the shower.