Strange Attachments

For those of you who read the headline and thought I'd be writing about all the weird features of my hair-clippers ..sorry. (But hey, you're right. What the heck are all of these attachments for anyway??!! Our culture is WAAAY too interested in hair management. Alas, that will have to be another blog post.)

It has been nearly a week since I donated my hair to Locks of Love. And I still miss it. Not the hair on my head, mind you. Rather, the hair that had been shaved and then bundled and then tucked away until we raised the first $5k of my $25k project (and HUGE thanks to all of you who made that happen!).

A bag of disembodied hair. I couldn't let go of a bag of disembodied hair...which I had cut off for this very purpose.

I hadn't expected this. I mean...I SHAVED IT OFF. What did I think was going to happen? As it turns out, for me, the shaving it off (and keeping it off for nearly 3 months, and counting) wasn't the trial...it was mailing away a bunch of hair in a Ziplock bag that sat in a drawer of my ancient writing desk for months.

Talk about strange attachments.

Come to think of it, that particular drawer has held several strangely precious things that I didn't know what to do with at the time. Most recently it held the box of my father's ashes (which still await their final resting place) until I decided to have them in plain sight--an attempt to help the process along. Despite their relocation, I still don't know where to put them...and the longer I keep them, the more I find myself wanting to keep them.

Is this the same process as giving up my hair? Is it a slow, ossification of habit? Or, in my holding the long strands hostage...did I somehow invoke whatever the opposite of Stockholm Syndrome is?

Maybe. But it's probably more akin to my ill-timed attempts to hang onto what has already been lost.

How many times have you tried to capture a moment in a photo, only to realize that as the shutter closes, the experience you were trying to seal up and savor was gone before you even thought to pull out your camera? 

This happened to me on an excruciatingly regular basis, until I realized that if I had the urge to capture something on camera, I had best surrender to the moment. Be IN the moment. And I've gotten good at that. With the sublime, the adorable, the funny.

No so much, it turns out, with the smoldering sting after the sucker-punch of loss. Sure, back in the day I overstayed my welcome in unhealthy relationships...relationships that were O-V-E-R but I just couldn't seem to jettison myself away. Thankfully, that phase is over. But I continue to grapple with loss through death...expected/unexpected. I still remake conversations or say gorgeously choreographed goodbyes that were never uttered...but only to redo them later that week or that month.

I think my bag-o-hair represented much more loss to me than I had anticipated. As proficient as I am with navel-gazing, I'm still not sure of the totality of what it came to represent--suffice it to say, I miss it not because it covered my head (but I am missing head-cover people!!).

 Henry Ellis: "All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."

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

Donations Page 2 (May-June)

“As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.” 
― Mary Anne Radmacher

Total as of 6/30/2013                           $13,201  ($11,799 left)

$/Hours                                       Donor                                    Organization

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

15 hours/month ($300)     Bryson L.                                      Big Brothers/Sisters & Hard Times Cafe

$25                                   Amanda R.                                   Scripps

$300                                 Carolyn M.                                   Family Village (Seattle)

$30                                   Rebecca R. H.                               Union Gospel Mission Career Program

5 hours ($100)                  Jason H.                                        Cascade Aids Project

9.5 hours ($190)                Laura L.                                       Eugene Schools and Youth Programs

$120                                  Vallejo E.                                     Komen Foundation

5 hours x 5 people ($500)  Alyssa M. and her crew                Ronald McDonald House Meal Prep

$150 groceries                   Alyssa M. and her crew                Ronald McDonald House Mother's Day
        
25 hours ($500)                  Bryson L.                                     Big Brothers Program

$350                                   Carole M.                                    Paws & Claws

3 hours ($60)                      Amanda R.F.                                Hilhi Campus Cleanup Project

25.5 hours ($510)               Jason H.                                       Cascade Aids Project

$100                                  Me                                                Pro Bono Counseling

25 hours ($500)                 Bryson L.                                       Hard Times Supper (Portland)


May Activity
24 hours ($480)                   Kelly G.                                       Wilson High School

$130                                    Carole M.                                   Nutrition shakes & Dog food to homeless  
                                                                                                 
$125                                    Jean D.                                       PNW Hospice Foundation

$25                                      Rebecca R.H.                              Plumpy Nut Drive (WorldVision)

10 hrs ($200)                       Kelly G.                                      Wilson High School

$600                                    Katrina H                                    Conquer Cancer (Australia)

$200                                    Me                                              Pro Bono Counseling

$12/month                           Shayna C.                                    OPB

16hrs/mo ($320)                 Shayna C.                                    Lines for Life

Amount Forwarded from Donations Page 1= $6,658 (March-April Activity)

Biggest contribution yet!

Huge thanks to ALL of you who have donated $2,609 worth of money and volunteer hours to help me grow my locks back!

But an ENORMOUS thanks to Laura L. who contributed 52.5 hours to a Eugene Oregon Youth Program. @ $20/hour, that makes the largest donation yet to my project: $1,050.00
Large or small...I appreciate what you each are doing for the world.
Mad love.

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

Being the change VS Collecting change

The great thing about bumper stickers: they get your attention with a pithy statement that fits on a small piece of vinyl on the back of a car (or a Trapperkeeper strapped to the back of a cruiser bicycle...my hipsters).

The bad thing about bumper stickers: The Same. When we try to squish something profound into a small space, when it is actually bigger, it might get our attention...but we lose the full gravity of the thought.

                              Example: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." 

Honestly, I love this quote attributed to Ghandi. And I think it's something he would've said...in fact he did say it, only better, in 1913:

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

"Be the change" is certainly in there...and perhaps many people wouldn't have noticed we need to start with ourselves without the appropriation and sloganizing of a great person's words. BUT: the deeper meaning (which might actually get us to practice this idea) is absent in the bite-sized-bumper-sticker version.

                                                       

This is what has happened to me since I last blogged. I realized I was trying to squish a huge thing into a tiny space. Which is funny to me, because I have always been suspicious of grand gestures (you know, trying to convey more than what a single action can hold).

Here's the gist:

Days 1-9 Bald: "This is so weird! I'm very aware of my head! People are staring and I'm cold...but it's worth it. This is going to wake people up!!!"

Day 10 Bald: "This is so weird." Frantically checking Facebook and email. "Why aren't people waking up!!!?"

Day 11-17 Bald: In quiet moments, rapid cycling between "I need to be the change." And. "Damn it! People are never going to change."

Day 18-28: Doing really easy math (this is never good): "Wow. I haven't even hit the $1000 mark. This is going to take forever."

I realized I was trying to collect change (yes...read that with double entendre) instead of being the change. 

My unconscious wish is that in one fell swoop, I could change it all. 

I think I look like the change (hello...bald lady here!) but I haven't been living it. 

I have been waiting to see what the rest of you are doing. Did I inspire you? Please inspire me! Wow. Then I got humbled. 

And with that insight, I finally broke my $1000 mark (thanks to all! And to Laura Lawver who just sent in $98 worth of donations and volunteer hours). 

It may be a really long road to getting my hair back...but if shaving my head is going to transform anyone, it's going to transform me first.

Thanks for your love, support, donations, and for reading...mad love. -bkr
(Please email your hours/donation amounts to: DrBevyn (at) Gmail (dot) com

Donations Page 1

So it has begun! Donation inquiring and actual donations...yahoo! When you officially donate or sign up to volunteer somewhere, please let me know and I'll post it (either anonymously or with your name, just let me know which).

Unfortunately,  Blogger has some serious limitations, including allowing people to post lately. So for now, please either FB or email me (drbevyn (at) gmail (dot) com)

$/Hours                               Donor                                            Organization

April 2013 Activity  ($6658 as of 4/27/2013)

$200                              Me                                             Dress for FREEdom (Compassion Connect)


$100                              Me                                             Pro Bono Counseling

$300                              Nichole D.P.                               Maplewood Elementary Foundation

12 hours ($240)              Kelly G.                                     Wilson High School

$96                                 Cherolyn R.                                BSA (Utah)

$106                               Melinda B.                                 AFSB.org

$22/month                       Alyssa M.                                  Children International

25 hours ($500)             Alyssa M.'s Crew (5 people)       Doernbecher Ronald McDonald House (food prep)

$150                             Alyssa M.'s Crew (5 people)       Groceries Doernbecher RMD House

$50                                 Ted P.                                        environmentnorthcarolina.org

18 hours ($360)              Kelly G.                                     Wilson High School

$180 (Australian...should I convert?) Slyns Family             Cancer Research Fundraiser (Perth)

$150                               Me                                             Pro Bono counseling services for cancer survivor

$250                               Richardson-Blaine Family           Seattle Union Gospel Mission

$250                               Richardson -Blaine Family          Seattle Children's Hospital

$40                                 Chelsi R.                                     St. Baldricks

5 hours ($100)                Dragoo-Petrovich Family            Camp Nemanu

16 hours ($320)              Kelly G.                                      Wilson High School

10 hours ($200)              Tanya L.                                      Invested.Org

2 hours/week ($160/mo.) Jessi M.                                       Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program (Indiana)

12 hours                           Sandy R.                                     Donating meals to a couple with Alzheimer's (Utah)

52.5 hours ($1,050)         Laura L.                                      Eugene Youth Program

$50                                   Iana A.                                       Oregon Humane Society

$365                                 Cath K.                                      OPB

$100                                 Carole & Wes M.                      Humane Society of America

MARCH 2013 ACTIVITY

$98                                   Laura L.                              Volunteer hours; donations for a therapy dog for a little on with Down Syndrome; meal service for a man with cancer in Eugene, OR.

$25                                   Rebecca Sue                                   Union Gospel Ministry

$100                                  Tiffany M.                                       March of Dimes

$100                                Carole & Wes M.            Michael J. Newton Esophageal Cancer Research Fund

$200                                 Carole & Wes M.                      OHSU Center for Health & Healing

$35/ month                        Rebecca Sue                                  World Vision sponsored child

$1                                     Rebecca Sue                                  Muscular Dystrophy Association

$35                                   Rebecca Sue                                  Oregon Public Broadcasting

$25/month                       Amanda R.                                        Vibe Portland

$200                            Bryan & Cherolyn R.                              Paws for Ability

$200                            Sandy & Robert R.                                 March of Dimes

Thanks!

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

My final thoughts as a fully-folicled chic: Musings on God, eyebrows, and other important things.

                                       (Me with an attached hair scarf the day before...)

On Friday, I was driving up Highway 18; the sun was setting and I was overwhelmed by a memory of the time I asked my mom “Who is God?” I was a tiny blonde 5 year old, sitting in the backseat of Tom York’s beautiful, white Cadillac—back when they still had real chrome detailing. The scent of the new wine-colored leather interior filled the air around me, and the seat was simultaneously engulfing me with its relative enormity and sticking to the back of my legs.

My mom turned around fully to face me, but all I could see was her head and neck above the massive leather bench seat that separated us. She struggled to explain God for a few minutes and would later present her black leather-bound King James with red-edged pages, when we got home to our Tualatin apartment. For the record, she really was doing her LDS duty to give me a KJ biblical explanation.

Still, not what I was looking for…

I remember being frustrated that my until-then-omniscient-mommie didn't know the answer to something. At 5, I didn't have the words to clarify that I really wanted to know: “Who is God to you? Where did she come from? What do you think she’s like?” Which I would ask my very religious grandmother Beverly a few years later and quickly be corrected that:

god is definitely a “He” who just is, and always has been, and don’t ask that again because there are just somethings we can’t explain but believe in anyways and your mother should have already told you this.

I bet LittleMom caught all heck for that.

That stretch of HWY 18 (the VanDuzer Corridor) I called “God’s Hallway” for most of my youth. A vivid child’s imagination of enormous bare feet attached to legs, which disappeared into the horizon of the tree line and sky above me.

So, I’m driving down God’s Hallway at 37 years old—which, like most things, seems smaller in the constriction of 32 years later—a magnificent changing sky of clouds and light ahead of me, obscured by the intermittent lenses of tears that had plagued my eyes for most of the drive. My best friend from high school Amanda Ryan Fear and I planned to escape to the coast for the weekend, so she could finish her dissertation and I could resume studying for the licensing exam. I brought Dexter and would arrive a day before her.

                                                          (Dexter at a viewpoint on Hwy 101 later this weekend.)

Having borrowed Wes Mackewich’s Wahl hair clippers, I had plans of my own for Friday. EPPP study avoidance? Possibly. But I was also aware I needed to get this project started.

Thee knot of my stomach and intestines cinched unbearably for probably the 20th time, this time as I swallowed whole the awareness that my tears were my ego’s vanity, being assaulted by the prospect of self-inflicted baldness. And I had a sobering thought:

“People fighting cancer probably cry for vain reasons too, but more intensely they cry about not being able to survive to see a sunset like the one spread before me, that, with the sunroof open, is a feast for the all my human senses. They cry for their mortality.”

I stopped crying once I realized tonight was the night. I think I teared up a bit when talking to the camera and brushing my hair for the last time and haven’t cried since. Let’s see how long that lasts…

                                                                         (The first cut...horribly blurry, sorry.)
I’ll try to post the videos of my shearing on Friday night…but until then, check out my growing list of things I have learned/relearned since shaving of the locks:

What I've learned so far:

• People stare at bald ladies and not bald gentlemen.
• Even bald men stare at bald ladies.
• My eyebrows are very important. 
• Stubble makes hats incredibly uncomfortable (save for Iana Amauba’s gift…satin inside. Genius!)

What I've relearned:

• Anxiety is relieved once we do what scares us…but the GI problems may stick around until the neurotransmitter soup of the tummy re-calibrates.
• My friends, family, and therapist colleagues are awesome supporters of me (and my guano crazy           ideas).
• At minimum: God is in the deeply aware gratitude we have for life, beauty, and the sanctuary of each        moment we fully inhabit. 

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

So, this happened today