Lovely, lovely women,

My girlfriend just ended a lifelong relationship with a man she loved. It was difficult and the loss was devastating. She sold the house they owned together, started a new job, and moved into the condos across the street from me. She is a wonderful, interesting person and I am in awe of her strength. What I like most about her is the way she takes ownership of her heartache. She doesn’t embrace it or try to push it away; she simply understands that it exists as a part of her experiences. She is sad, but she is not defeated. Recently she began some new activities. She took up golf, started planning a trip to Italy to visit her son, and started working part time for a local winemaker. When I complemented all of her new endeavors, she responded, “I am much more than my lost relationship. My happiness depended on remembering that.”

I understand what she means. Although it is perhaps not a perfect metaphor, I’ve often said that dealing with hair loss is like dealing with the tragic end of a love affair: There is deep emotional pain, it impacts your identity, you are constantly reminded of what you have lost, and the idea that you will ever be happy seems unrealistic. But, to paraphrase my friend, we are much more than our lost hair follicles. We also need to remember that.

After I got my first full wig last year (a move that truly signaled I’d “broken up” with my hair for good), after I saw my oldest child move into a rented house, and after I realized I was standing on the doorstep of menopause, I began the necessary process of self-assessment. I took an inventory: I was not a wife (due to my late husband’s massive heart attack at the local Rite Aid!), and I was becoming marginalized as a mother. I’d lost hair and smooth skin (my tits and ass are in jeopardy as well.) I was a middle-aged, single school teacher soon to be living alone. UGGGGG!!!! A 50 year old schoolmarm??? But, of course, that characterization is absurd and I knew it.

I am bascially an artistic and literary person. I surround myself with art, especially giclees from the New York school of abstract expressionists – Rothko, Motherwell, Gottlieb, Kline – and I line my walls with books (I have at least 1,000 if you don’t count the unpacked boxes in my garage!). As I begin to formally incorporate all of these things into a new construct of who I am, I am returning to something I’d discovered years before...

Shortly before my husband died, I could not find a copy of an out of print book by Jacques Maritain. The text was online, but I could not find the physical book. I was absolutely unwilling to print it off, stick it in a binder clip, and call it good. So, I got a manual on basic bookbinding. I was enthralled! I not only bound that volume of Jacques Maritain, but several others as well. I advanced my skill through practice and reading instructional texts. But, like many things that demand extra time and energy, I eventually stopped binding books.

Now, in my process of self-distillation, I find I have returned to bookbinding. But this time, I am not interested in just creating functional bindings; I want to create art. So I have ventured into “book art.” This is the place at which my art and my books meet, and I am at the center of it. Recently, I have had one of my books featured in an online exhibition. (The book can be seen in my photos section.)In November, I’m going to attend a workshop in Portland, and this summer I’m heading to San Francisco to study for a week at the SF Center for the Book. This seemingly small refocusing of my energies has positively impacted my life more than anything I have deliberately done in the past 10 years (apologies to Bass Man.) I am grateful that I took the time to discover it. This is WAY more than my hair!

Find what is more than your hair and be it. Be beautiful.

Marie