back to the root

on shedding

I’ve cut my hair.

I’ve obviously trimmed it in the past few years but only if one bit looked a little scraggly or that wavy bit at the back of my head got a bit longer than the rest. I haven’t been into a physical salon since I was about 10 years old, around the same time me and mum decided maybe it was best I just learnt how to do my curls on my own because neither of us had the energy to scream anymore. What followed was years of wonky pony tails that were never tight enough and off-center buns from where, for some reason, my left hand reached further round my head.

Luckily I grew up in the low-side pony era, (please can we not go back there).

My hair has been the centre of my world since the minute I was born, full head of jet black hair plastered to my face with oil that had been lovingly rubbed into my scalp post bath. It’s lightened with time - brown now with hints of blonde and ginger - still thick, even longer and curlier, reaching towards the base of my spine with 2 and a half different curl patterns throughout.

Although I had my hair in a shoulder length bob for about 5 years of my life from 3-7, Nit combs were unfortunately essential in our house. I think we had three at one point, and mum would never use those Nit chemicals so it was just heaps of conditioner and shivering in a towel on the toilet seat until she was done. Then scraping it into cornrows to ensure those little bugs couldn’t bury in and make a home.

My sister has lovely curls too, they touch the top of her shoulders and she’s always styled them in sweet buns or plaited them back and put little clips in them to hold on to the flyaways. We have drastically different curl patterns and lengths, we always have done. I think we went through the learning process together, especially as we got older. Sat on the floor of mums living room as she parted perfect little boxes into my head, or in her mirror at the house she moved out into, where I said i’d help her braid but just ended up watching.

At one point my hair began to get patchy, thin and fall out - a sign of a body that wasn’t absorbing what it needed, a protein deficiency that showed itself first in my hair. I remember how quickly it thinned and how obviously patches revealed themselves, how fast something I’d always thought of as abundant became fragile and something I had to strategically place to avoid anyone noticing.

I remember sitting with my sister and talking about what would happen if it didn’t stop. About shaving it. Ellie didn’t panic. Instead, she told me it would look amazing shaved — maybe even like a change my body was craving in some way. I understood how easily even this, the thing I’d built so much of myself around, could be taken from me.

So then when it grew back in, the way i’d felt about it shifted with it, my curls grew back differently and it felt like something didn’t quite return to how it was before. My hair became evidence.

I was born in the year of the Snake, 2001.

We used to learn about the Chinese New Year at school and I didn’t think much about what that actually meant when I was growing up. It was never something that felt like it held much weight to me, the concept was entirely abstract, something for six-year-old me to cut and glue into red paper money pouches, nothing more. My year has come back around now, 18 years later and it’s a change that didn’t announce itself loudly. I noticed it in the way you notice a season changing, silently but with drastic shifts through hot and cold. A restlessness. A sense of tightness. This year felt like my life became something I had outgrown without realising when.

Theres something about timing that settles into your body before you can describe it in words, like meeting a new friend, or getting a new job, it always happens right when it was least expected. I had zero expectations of 2025, I chose to let go of them last Winter Solstice. And when I turned 24 in June it felt like it’d be a year that just passed me by, nothing particularly special about 24 and not a milestone you look out for.

Until one day I cut my hair back into a bob, just like when I was 5. It reached a length where it was just not manageable anymore, every time it was out and about it needed to be cleaned and detangled, I couldn’t just take it out the next day and be good to go.

For years my hair became something familiar to arrange myself inside of, a small focus that took away from the rest of me. An identifiable feature that took up conversation time and drew eyes towards it. But afterwards, there was a lightness. Not just in how it felt on my head, but in how I moved through the day. My neck feels exposed, small wavy bits had to be chopped shorter at the back of my head, I find myself reaching for them now, trying to remember what it felt like before, expecting weight that isn’t there anymore.

None of it is, the weight of all the times i’d scraped it back, straightened it, braided it. The weight of all the people that touched it without asking, and the people that asked but touched it even when I said no. The weight of men that had ran their fingers through it.

The hair on my head is mine now, straight from the root. And even if a few strands once existed back then, the memories of them aren’t loud enough anymore to carry that same kind of weight.

Snakes shed because they have to. Not out of dissatisfaction, not out of wanting to be new, but because growth demands space. The skin that once fit becomes tight, then restrictive, then impossible to live inside. Shedding isn’t just symbolic to them. It’s practical. It’s survival.

This year - the year of the snake has come to an end quietly and as we enter the year of the Horse I feel my shed completing.

And the Horse - the Horse is a body built for movement rather than coiling, for going forward instead of tucking in on itself. Horses don’t seem to carry their hair as something to hide behind. Their manes move with them — caught by wind, by speed, by wherever they’re headed.

I’m ready to move towards it. To face it head on. Wether my hair stays short or regrows back to long.