Lockdown Hair Talk

Hair

Hands up anyone who has NOT had a conversation about hair these past 12 months.

Not too many I reckon.

Not only has just about everyone (including children) had a conversation about hair, they've probably had weekly or even daily discussions about it.

The State of Our Hair

The length of it, the colour of it; the trauma of having a loved one cut it (who fantasises about homicide with the slip of the razor). The oohs and aahs when you haven't seen someone on Zoom (or even in person) for a while as you each check out what state the other person's hair is in.

Here at Impact Factory, we have a weekly catch up session and we definitely spend a chunk of time talking about hair: who's mastered the art of cutting their own hair; who's not going to bother getting their roots coloured post-lockdown; who may have had a bootleg cut but we're not telling.

Why It's Important

So why am I spending so much time in this blog talking about hair? And why is it important?

As well as hair often being a mirror of how we feel about ourselves and an overt and visible expression of ourselves, issues about hair can make us feel quite vulnerable. And in our vulnerability during the past year, we have talked about it...a lot. In turn, that has led us to speak about other issues that have also made us feel vulnerable.

Mental Health

Mental health concerns and areas around well-being are being talked about as never before. By sharing our feelings about our hair, we have also been sharing all sorts of other emotions around grief, anxiety, homeschooling, blurred work/life boundaries, being ill or the fear of getting ill.

We've shared our frustrations and we've also shared little, seemingly, inconsequential things like recipes and movies we've watched or box sets we've binged on, projects we haven't done and green thumbs we discovered we had (or not).

Coping with Lockdown

More people are letting others know that their emotional, as well as physical life, is hard, and coping is stretching their resilience. More people are admitting that issues that were bubbling under the surface pre-pandemic, have now spilled over and need to be addressed.

Interestingly, without our usual channels of interaction, the day-to-day chats in the office, the friends dropping in, the trips to see family many miles away (or right around the corner), many of us are sharing more of ourselves to more people, just in a completely different medium.

Connecting

Unexpected people have become more open and want to tell you about what they are going through. Many of us are connecting with more people and on a more profound level.

This is one consequence of the pandemic I hope remains with us, that we are willing to talk about the deeper stuff to each other, to admit our fears and worries, to ask for support and be open to accepting it.

And in turn, I hope we will also judge less, be more willing to hear what others are going through and to offer a caring hand.

And of course, to keep talking about hair!