From an article originally posted July 9, 2013…

Oh, the bliss of busy. Oh, the joy of avoidance. Oh, the utter excellence of ambivalence. What? It’s not? It doesn’t refresh and stop hurt?

Yesterday I had an honest conversation with a friend from North Carolina. I told her how very hard this coming week of remembering feels. I told her that I have filled my calendar to avoid it. She knows me well. She knows my hiding place is busy. My place of avoiding my heart is filling my time with people that share and unburden their hearts. She knows how ragged and worn out I become in that place. She has seen me often at the end of my tired spent self.

Sometimes in a place of hurt, we simply struggle to know where to begin. I don’t know where to meet this place, but I do know how to meet another in their hurting place. I went to my first haircut yesterday. I thought it would be a place of joy. Instead, she handed me a mirror to look at the back of my head. I had never looked there. Jason told me how thin my hair was there, so I didn’t look. What I saw was my almost bald scalp. It seems the very least of all of my journey. But to go from this....

Then to move to this so the kids wouldn’t be afraid when my hair started to leave...

To then decide to do this, just because I never had....

To move to needing my head shaved...

To losing it all, everything...even my eyelashes and eyebrows..

Then to return altogether changed. New hair texture color, feel, thickness. It’s altogether different. Changed. One, I feel terrible not liking my hair. I feel terrible that I care. I should be thankful to have hair. I should be thankful to be done with treatment. I should be so glad to not be bald, but it makes my heart sad on several levels. First, what went through my body to change my body so much that my hair is so changed? Second, I liked my old hair a lot. A lot more than I ever expected. I barely brushed my old hair. I hardly cared for it, but now I miss it. And I miss some of the carefree Kara that carried that hair. This year has utterly changed me. In more ways than I can comprehend. It’s hard to swallow the pill. Hard to look at the pill. Hard to understand. So I may hide in busy. I may hide in ambition and hard work, don’t judge.

I will fight for joy in my moments. I will fight to be thankful for the thin dishwater tinted hair I have. I will look for the grace in today. Please don’t gush that you like my hair, that it’s cute, that I pull it off well. I’m not looking for that. I just needed to be honest and say it has been hard. Harder than I expected. I will fight and do battle with the hard memories of last year that are coming to my head daily. I will rejoice in removed tumors. I will relish the snuggles and fight to be present today. But there are moments that this journey feels very hard.

A song for the journey: take a listen, sent this morning from a friend.