Ransom Note

Soon:
I'm holding my hair hostage. Until demands are met, all 29'' of my long locks will be held and kept from returning home (AKA growing back).

Recent Past:

You've gone through phases. Maybe recently you noticed that all of your friends are getting married--or divorced--or aren't legally allowed to get married so have beautiful ceremonies or gnarly breakups equivalent to marriage/divorce, or: they're all having children...or difficulty conceiving...they're adopting, or are getting crap/unwelcome sympathies for being of a certain age and NOT having children and collecting a menagerie of pets or worldly travels instead. Buying (or losing) a home...The things we share with those we love on this gorgeously complicated sojourn of life. They seem to come in waves.

Myself: I've really loved those kinds of phases. Ridden the waves with joy. I have a closet full of bridesmaid dresses to prove it. And an appropriate degree of residual LDS guilt for not having started my own family...yet...in my tiny rescue house that I recently purchased in the Pacific Northwest.

However, in the last 5 years, I've been going through a new kind of phase: people I love are being terrorized by either the Tyrant Mental Illness or the Terrorist Cancer. Sometimes both. And I am being traumatized both vicariously and directly.

Those of you who know me, know that my father died by suicide after 60 years of rotting away in a metaphysical prison, sucking on a bottle of spirits. This February will be the 4th anniversary of his death. The Tyrant (mental illness/addiction) robbed me of a father long before 2009.

On April, 29, 2012, one of the most figural men in my life thus far, died, after being stalked by cancer--he (like my father) died by inflicting a gunshot wound to his head. The terrorism of cancer left a person I loved and respected, profoundly defeated by hopelessness. And another that I love in shambles, trying to manage the grotesque confusion and pain of loving him, finding him, trying but failing to resuscitate him, and losing him in his last moments lit by dusk, on a now-forever-ruined-grassy knoll in the West Hills of Portland.

(Johan Rosqvist in 2009 on the set of TLC: Hoarders)

Now, onto the Terrorist (cancer). My friends, clients, and students are fighting for their lives back from the ravages of the disease and its effective but destructive treatment. The Terrorist is also silently eating away at the (albeit illusion of) safety and security of more people than I can even count.

Right Now:

So, this seems to be my "everybody's getting married, or pregnant,...or cancer...or killing themselves" phase. I'm down with the prior...not the latter. Instead of being paralyzed by the pain of this incessant message (yeah, repetition is a great teacher, I'm just trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be learning here...) I have decided to do something someone close to me called "so drastic." 

In February, I am going to shave my head. Hold my long locks hostage. Until a specified number of US Dollars are donated to 2 national charities (one funding cancer research, the other benefiting mental illness prevention and treatment).

This blog will be the place to get more information about the fundraiser, my journey as a bald girl, and maybe  a place to get inspired, get sad, get pissed off, alloftheabove or something else. 

Right now: I'm sipping a 2006 Barolo. The Italian regional wine that Johan and another dear person I miss, and  I used to imbibe over some pretty amazing conversations. The year (I didn't realize, until I got it home from John's Market (http://www.johnsmarketplace.com/) was a particularly good year for me. When it was only weddings, and IVF, and babies...not chemo, and shotguns, and little boxes of ashes.

And all of us were alive.
And had hope.
And had hair.

I still have hope. That's why I'm doing this. 

Thanks for reading. More to come. 

bevyn k. rowland

(Please email your hours/donation amounts to: DrBevyn (at) Gmail (dot) com