Reconnecting and healing

I got a lot of compliments on my hair today from strangers, friends, and coworkers alike. What started as a pandemic grow-out has turned into something much more meaningful for me. As I’ve worked to heal my physical self from the ravages of COVID-19 this past year, I’ve also been on a journey to heal my spiritual and mental health. Part of that has come from therapy, and another part has come from reconnecting with my Anishinaabe culture, it’s language, and teachings.

I recently learned the Ojibwe phrase Aanji-bimaadizi, which translates for me to the phrase, “She changes her life.” There’s an Ojibwe teaching of the 4 hills of life - infancy, childhood, adulthood, and old age - where very few make it to the fourth hill before they transition to the spirit world. In order to move from hill to hill, we must overcome obstacles that hurt us or hold us back. We do this by embracing the inevitable changes that come, and letting go of what was so we can find balance and peace in what will be.

In working on all these facets of myself this last year, I realized there was unprocessed trauma tugging at me and keeping me from moving forward. Every time I thought I’d gotten enough momentum to continue on, the ground beneath my feet would give way. Over time I stopped noticing my lack of movement forward, mistaking the churn of distractions as progress. But with this pandemic, the forced stillness has taken away a lot of those distractions and has caused things left unprocessed to rise to the surface. I think maybe that’s true for a lot of people.

I’m still working to process the things that are holding me back so I can continue my journey forward. And my hair is a part of that journey. Teachings about hair in Anishinaabe culture can vary between families, clans, and nations, but a continuous theme throughout is that our hair connects us to our identity. It’s a part of our spiritual well-being, and how we take care of our hair is a reflection on how we take care of ourselves. Andrea Landry, an Anisinaabe teacher, writer, and mother, refers to our hair as “our life force.”

So as I continue to find the solid footing needed to let go and embrace the changes ahead, I will look at my curls and the gray within them knowing this is the wisdom that will carry me forward.

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You might be wondering why I posted on a blog I shuttered a decade ago. This is roughly the time I stopped pursuing writing as an outlet for processing things. I stopped writing poetry because it made me feel too much, and I eventually stopped blogging for the most part. I took a micro-blogging interlude on Tumblr, but reading through it now I realize that blog was more a distraction, an illusion of processing (minus a few posts here and there within it). So I’m starting up Nessa’s Nook again as a creative outlet to reflect, process, and embrace the changes ahead.