This is Alissa, and I love her. Alissa started cutting my hair more than 20 years ago. That says a lot, considering the fact that except for my father and me, no one (and I mean NO ONE) cut my hair until I was 27 years old. Seriously. Hence the bowl cut throughout the 1960s.
At some point after that, I just let my hair grow, cutting the bangs myself as in this picture from 1973:
Or this beaut from my 8th Grade graduation in 1975:
In my late 20s, I had my hair cut here and there by a few professionals. No one got it right. Truth be told, my father never got it right, either. But I wasn’t exactly given the chance to express my opinion with him. While I don’t strictly believe in the adage, ‘if you want something done right, do it yourself’, I do, believe quite firmly that if you want something done the way you want it done, do it yourself (though as you can see by the pictures, that didn’t exactly work for me either, did it?) Enter Alissa. I was randomly assigned to her at a popular salon somewhere around 1993, after my sort-of-regular girl quit. Major hesitation. I barely got the words out of my mouth telling her what I wanted her to do, when she stated, “I know exactly what you mean”. Sure. I’ve heard those words before. But then, Oh. My. Gosh. For the first time in my vast experience (a whole five years by now) of having someone else cut my hair, she actually listened and did EXACTLY what I wanted. Thus the beginning of a beautiful relationship. You know what I’m talking about. As women, we will readily trust many things (our hearts, our homes, our innermost thoughts and feelings) to anyone. But our hair??? No way! Since that time, no one has ever cut my hair–not even me; not even a bang trim!
One of the things I love about Alissa is that she’s such a go-getter. She reminds me a lot of me, only better and younger. She goes after what she wants, and she doesn’t let anyone keep her from her dreams. Alissa has 4 (amazing and beautiful) kids, now cuts exclusively out of her home, plus runs a very successful side business as an Executive Consultant for Rodan+Fields (you can connect with her here if you are interested). We each frequently get asked how we are able to do it all–family, career, etc., and our answer is pretty similar. While my answer often is “ineffectively”, hers usually is “who said we’re doing it all 100%?” You can relate. As a wife/mother/daughter/sister/friend/career professional/fill in the blank, you do what you can. Nobody’s perfect. And, oh. You’re tired. All the time. But somehow, you get the job done.
But all of that is neither here nor there. Here’s the point: I’m doing too much already, and as TCSS rightly pointed out, adding a marathon to that list was probably not a great idea. Especially for someone who has never run before. And here’s the other point: People really DO confess their sins in the chair (ask your own stylist!) So although at this point I STILL haven’t told TCSS that I am signed up for the Chicago Marathon, Alissa knows. And she also knows that I am way too busy, way too over-committed, and way too inexperienced to run a marathon. So what did she say when I told her? “You go girl!” Because that’s Alissa, and that’s why I love her.
Have you ever embarked on a new hobby or goal without telling anyone about it? Are you able to keep secret your plans to embark on a new endeavor? If you had only ONE person to tell a secret to, who would it be? What’s the hardest secret you’ve had to keep?