Things I learn from my hair...

I get the title of this is like, "what the junk is she talking about"? But, bare with me. It has a point!

I grew up with fairly straight hair. It got super long at some point then I chopped it all off at another point. I also started randomly dying it reds and dark browns and such in high school (also highlighted it blonde in middle school but I try not to think about that...).

This summer I got a perm for the first time. Now my hair is curly! It's so different.

Truth is, I love having different hair. The curls are fun and have their positives. But, I also am no longer able to just run my fingers through my hair all the time and I have tangles constantly.

When I had straight hair I didn't have those problems. My hair hardly ever had tangles and it was usually soft and I ran my fingers through it all the time. But, with straight hair I also had to wash it basically every day because it would be so oily and nasty looking by the end of every day. With curly hair I can just throw some water on it and move on with my life.

Okay, so what's the point?

The point is not "the grass is always greener on the other side" or "it's only green because that's where they dump all of the poop."

The point is that every season, every person has good things in their life as well as bad. I hear people all the time talk about how they shouldn't feel bad about their pain because someone always has it worse off. I absolutely hate that logic because that dismisses your pain, however small or large. PAIN IS PAIN PEOPLE! It hurts no matter how "bad" it is.

So, maybe instead of using the logic that you shouldn't feel bad because someone has it worse than you, embrace your pain. Choose to fully feel it. Let it hurt so you can actually deal with it, learn from it and can recognize that other people have pain as well.

If you dismiss your pain, it doesn't actually go away. It is the same as sweeping the dirt under the rug. The dirt doesn't actually go away, you just can't always see it. After a while that pile of dirt is going to get so large that the rug can't even hide it and then all you have is a huge mess (by the way, there is still hope among that mess as well).

Learn who you are and what it means to be you. Learn your pain and learn your joys. They are both part of you.

I have a theory that once you learn who you are and what that means, you can learn to live with yourself. Then you will begin to be okay with yourself. Eventually you can learn to love yourself. If you can love yourself despite your pain and failures, you can learn to love others with a deep understanding of what pain, joy and love feels like.

Just some thoughts.
Here are some pics that don't even begin to express how much my hair changes all the time:

Summer 2009

Summer 2010

Summer 2011

Summer 2012