Take Back Your Life!

Here’s the long and short of it; There is no why. You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’ve holding.”
~ Cheryl Strayed

I love this quote by Cheryl.

It’s easy to throw a pity party for yourself and bemoan the cards you’ve been given, instead of embracing those cards and using them to your advantage.

Cheryl’s mother died young. She took her often unbearable loss and turned it into essays and best selling books and the book became a film.

Reminds me of that other quote to take lemons and turn them into lemonade.

When I was a girl, I used to wish I looked like Marcia Brady, especially her long, straight blond hair. I spent hours smearing my hair down taut with goopy gelatinous products, trying to erase the waves. If if it didn’t look right, I’d wet it and start all over again.

If it had as much as a minor bump in it, I spun into a funk and often couldn’t even leave the house that day.

Hours lost in front of the mirror, upset with unruly hair that kept betraying me.

Then one August day in my late 20’s, I got caught in a rainstorm during my work lunch break, followed by a burst of humidity and my wavy hair re-asserted itself.

I saw a mess of curls, completely out of control. All I wanted to do was hide in the bathroom until 5 pm, but I couldn’t. I had no choice but to go public with this insidious spaghetti on my head.

The guys I worked with began stopping by my desk and saying, “I love your hair like that.”

“Really?” I thought they must be mad.

Then others. Too many for it to be a fluke. Their comments woke me up to the beauty of my own hair, something I spent decades suppressing because  it wasn’t the hair I thought I should have.

At least 3 times a week, people stop me and confide that they love my hair.

A few ask to speak to my privately before spilling the beans. Others shout it out. Then there are those who ask how long it takes to create the waves and when I say, it’s natural. They almost get angry and say, “Don’t tell me that.”

I often feel like I’m traveling with a rock star on my head and I’m her handler.

And to think, a summer rainstorm saved me from disliking a part of myself I’d been taught to dislike by others.

Nature, I love you!

This takes me back to the wisdom of Cheryl’s quote:

Sometimes what you thought you deserved wasn’t even as good as what you already had.

We can get conditioned at young ages to lose all objectivity about ourselves and be forced into a perpetual state of envy, usually by folks who were conditioned themselves and it keeps getting passed down through the generations.

I recall a teacher in fifth grade telling me my hair was too stringy and I should cut it. But looking back at the pictures it wasn’t stringy at all. Her comments definitely sent me down the path of hair hatred.

If you ever succumb to the envy of others, perhaps building on Cheryl’s quote, make a list of all the wonderful things about you, large, medium and small and frame it.

Here’s to playing up the cards you were  dealt, G.

ps, If you live in the greater Framingham/Worcester area, please check out my mini creative writing retreat on Saturday, May 5, 2018. Click HERE