Have you heard of the guy who speaks to water molecules?

Dr. Masaru Emoto works on examining how the substance of water is intricately connected to our human consciousness. He has spent time studying the way language affects water’s chemical make up – its structure changes depending on the words used to title, label, or spiritually connect with the substance. Watch this video.

I find this research fascinating. It makes me question how I am choosing to label myself, what words I use to describe my experience. I wonder how snips of self-loathing are perhaps urging the little cells and molecules that make up me to morph and change.

I’m not sure if the same is true with hair follicles, but hang with me here.

As a hard-on-oneself perfectionist, I have been known to beat myself up a little bit on this bumpy road called life. My husband, mom and friends keep encouraging me to calm down, take it easy, rest. Friends send texts and magnets with euphemisms and articles like this one to remind me that life is a journey, not some point of arrival.

I think instead, maybe death is a point of arrival, but thats another exploration into something else entirely. The point is, I’m not the greatest at being kind to myself in my own little noggin. Pair that with learning to cope with grief, and the picture hasn’t been the prettiest.

I know that life can’t be pretty all the time. But over the past few weeks I kept thinking about that doctor, and those ice crystals, and the cells in my body and how they are reacting to my own self talk. And I got a little bit scared.

Now I do this thing in transitions – it’s an effort to have some semblance of control in this mad, mad world – where I chop off all my hair. It is not uncommon for females to go through spurts of rediscovery with their look, changing up length, color, cut for a renewed sense of self-love every once in awhile. My latest attempt at recreation though, was linked to something else entirely.

My hair has been getting long, really long. Over the past 13 months, I trimmed my hair once, instead appreciating the ease of pony tails, braids, simple buns. But I kept thinking to myself, what is happening in those hair follicles of mine? The ones that have endured a bit of suffering and stress? What do the little guys look like on a microscope? Can I transform their cellular sadness into something fresh?

No.

No, I thought. I cannot. And so I made an appointment with my hair stylist who has known me for years. Who, through God’s mysterious ways, has also lost a parent. On Saturday I sat down in her chair and she asked the standard question, “What are we doing with your hair today?”

I responded, “We are chopping the grief off Rachel,” and she smiled. Maybe, just maybe she knew what I meant.

With strong hands, silver scissors, and a loving heart she restyled my hair leaving a pile of messy, hurting cells on the floor as I wiped a few tears from my eyes. She blessed me with conversation, asking about my heart, and my family, and how it feels to be a year out from loss. She encouraged me knowing that the journey is long, but there are friends and beautiful people to walk through this process with you.

Another woman in the salon came along and swept up my hair from the floor, swiftly moving those nasty dead cells away from me. I could leave them behind and begin to grow fresh cells that morph beautifully in structure because I am going to be better to myself in how I talk, think, and process these challenging times.

She cut it off and that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.