c-PTSD Journals

I shaved my head for the second time today. 

The first time I shaved it about a month ago, I felt angry, overcome with emotions from some past trauma with my childhood that I was revisiting. I shaved it in tears, not fully understanding the sensations of feelings that were flooding me.

Today, I did it for myself. I did it because I like the way it feels and looks on me. I thought about it for the past few weeks. I feel more beautiful and more like myself than I ever have before. 

Having long hair once was a source of shame, a constant place of punishment and praise, and the weight of eternal judgment was carried by it.

You see, I grew up in a religious and twisted cult. On the outside, it was a Christian-based Pentecostal organization (United Pentecostal Church turned “Apostolic” church). But behind the walls away from the eyes of the public and anyone that might be able to protect or help me, it was a place of dark and demented psychological, emotional, mental, and physical abuse. The teachings were carried out and incorporated by my father as well into my everyday life as a child, a teenager, and into my early adult life. I even went on to start carrying them into the raising of my own children until I gratefully had an awakening. 

One of the teachings was that a female’s hair was her source of godliness, loyalty, honor, and obedience to God, church, and to her father or husband. The longer her hair was (and untouched by scissors, of course) the more she was praised and upheld for her “holiness”. It was a sign of female submission to the male and a symbol of her devotion to God. If a female trimmed, burned, tore, or even bit off any of her hair – much less shave or cut – she was considered to be in rebellion and disobedience and stood the risk of being held accountable for her sin by hellfire – and more painfully, shamed for her “sin” and loss of good-standing by the leader, the other members of the cult, and her family if they were members as well.

So you can imagine the fear and even shame that I had when I carried out the urge to trim off some of the dead ends of my long, dark wavy hair. It was beautiful, but it held fear; fear of death, the humiliation if I were to be found out, fear of being burned alive for eternity. But more importantly and more painful to me was the fear of the loss of being loved and accepted.

I would hide my subtly trimmed hair but one day somehow my father must have noticed the straight ends. He asked if I had cut it and I denied it, fearful of his reprimand, rage, and him knowing that I wasn’t good enough for him to accept and love me anymore. He then took a tape measure and said he was going to start measuring it periodically and without warning so he would make sure that I wasn’t cutting it. 

I remember the feeling of powerlessness, anger burning in my gut, feeling that my very personhood and autonomy I was starting to have as a teenager was being taken away, and me being helplessly locked into a metal cage for examination. 

Many years have passed since that and other similar episodes took place. It took me until my mid-thirties to leave that organization (another story for another time). I still remember the freedom and the weightlessness I felt when I realized that eternal damnation was not part of the equation of me going to the hair salon. I have since had many different haircuts and experiments with color and styles. I’ve had tremendous and liberating fun with my hair and even tattooing the side of my head. But I find myself triggered whenever someone mentions – especially a male – that I should do this or that with my hair. I bristle in an overreactive way but I understand where it comes from and try to explain to them what is behind my hair story. 

I started to try to grow it since the first time I shaved it off a few weeks ago and it started to feel heavy even though it wasn’t even an inch long. I felt like I wasn’t sure of who I was and how would I once again find part of my identity in what hairstyle I grew it out into, what color should I color it, and would it make me look older or younger or…

It felt overwhelming and I imagined how I’d feel without the burden of hair. Without having a hairdresser touching me and having to spend energy and money on deciding and having a different color. 

So I decided to be hairless. Shameless. Burden-less. I am calling it “bald and free” and it is part of the next phase of the evolution of my being. I feel powerful. I feel light. I feel beautiful. I feel sexy and strong. I feel like a rebel with a cause. 

I feel like ME.