Acceptance

What is acceptance? 

By the book, acceptance is the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered. For some, acceptance can be the admittance into the program or company of your dreams. For other acceptance can be admitting defeat. For me, acceptance is the acknowledgement of circumstances, and an understanding that all I can do is make the most of a situation. 

I started losing my hair when I was a sophomore in high school. 

Not super quickly, but it felt like it was thinning by the minute. People started noticing it and in turn started making fun of it.. It quickly became a massive insecurity and a source of my feelings of inadequacy. Safe to say, it was a pretty hard situation to accept for me. My solution was to wear a hat… for years! 

When I took it off, it felt like I was standing naked in the middle of the crowded street. I couldn’t stop thinking about and touching my hair. It was the only thing I could see. I thought about getting hair transplants, and bought Rogaine before I graduated high school. 

My self image was a mess. I had friends and family who loved me, but all I could see was my hair —or the lack thereof. 

I thought I would leave all that behind me in college. Everyone would be nicer and more considerate of people’s insecurities. Nope! The comments persisted and so did my self-consciousness. For more than half a decade I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin without a hat. I would check photos of myself to see if I looked too bald. I feared a windy day on the way to an event where hats weren’t allowed. It was exhausting. I was exhausted. 

That all changed this one winter night a few weeks ago. With the help of a few supportive friends, I finally committed to shaving my head. 

It ended up being one of the most emotional, freeing, and memorable moments of my entire life. All of my fears were coming to fruition. I was completely bald at the age of 23. I cried. I regretted it. I wanted hair more than ever. Then I saw what I looked like… 

I just looked like me. 

I wasn’t some hideous being that deserved to live out the rest of its days under a bridge. I was still me, just with less hair. The relief I saw staring back at back at me in the mirror was indescribable. My mom was right all these years, hair is just hair. The amount I have doesn’t change who I am. I never imagined that something so simple as shaving my head would change the way I looked at the world, but it has. For the first time in a long time, I finally feel that I have accepted who I am. 

Only took me seven years. 

What I am trying to say is not that acceptance is easy. It certainly wasn’t for me, but the feeling of relief when you stop trying to manage things that are out of your control is incredible. Acceptance in a year when nothing seems to be controllable is harder than ever, but more rewarding than ever. We can’t control a worldwide pandemic or a job market crash, but we can control how we talk to ourselves in these situations. We can accept our reality and learn how to make the best of a less than ideal situation, or we can fight battles we cannot win until our hair falls out. Literally. That doesn’t mean we should stop working hard to stop trying to improve everyday. It just means that we need to work on things we can control. 

Work smarter, not harder. 

Take that extra class. Learn another language. Grow a beard so your head doesn’t look like an egg. Do whatever you need to do to feel comfortable in your own skin and in your own reality. Try to be the best version of yourself, but accept who you are today. Acceptance is the first step, but the journey is a process. Let’s grow! 

You are you. I am me. That’s enough.