Wait for something better, wait for it Heather

Lyrics by Killers: This is your life....
"Wait for something better
No one behind you
Watching your shadows
You gotta be stronger than the story
Don't let it blind you
Rivers of shadow
This feeling wont go

And the sky is full of dreams
But you don't know how to fly
I don't have a simple answer
But I know that I could answer
Something better

This feeling won't go

Wait for it
Wait for it
Wait for it
Wait for it "

As I look up from my computer I look at my poster of Glide's Terms of Faith and Resistance...
1) Gain control over my life
2) Tell the World my Story
3) Stop lying
4) Be honest with myself
5) Accept who I am
6) Feel my real feelings
7) Feel my pain
8) Forgive myself
9) Practice rebirth: A new life
10) Live my spirituality
11) Support and love my brothers and sisters

How important it is to remember these things. As I was driving home from school, I listened to the Killers, "This is my life". And wow- WOW. "Wait for it [Heather] wait for it....You gotta be stronger than the story-Don't let it blind you." Ten years now passed with my hair loss and I look into these terms of faith and resistance and I realize how much I was tested/ I tested myself even in this past year. Ten Years and cheers to new beginnings, to letting the old go. I don't want to forget a thing about these past ten years and in that I want to remember those 11 things above. I realize that not only do I hold cultural judgments and ideologies of hair loss from society, but I have a negative self talk about my role in society. I realize that I hold a personal responsibility to break the story of stereotypes. I have to be stronger than the story. I have dreams, goals, and big ideas for something better for my community. For a while (off and on) I got/get caught up with "I am a bald woman" and "What's the bald woman to do". But I think my professor wrote it just right "you are learning how to transition from Heather the bald woman to Heather becoming Heather that also has hair loss." So many people have told me that prior to this but I feel like I am just hitting the tip of the ice berg of Heather standing in Heather's shoes not Heather as the bald woman.

On my facebook, I set my status as "10 years, we've come a long way baby" It's funny to think I set my tone of 10 years of hair loss as a milestone, a golden mark, a set sail to new adventures, since for so long it was a death, a long cold winter, slowly showing bits and pieces of the spring. It is a steady relationship pushing me, sculpting me to try to have better confidence, self understanding, and self love. Let's celebrate in all trials and triumphs, today is a day to celebrate and to say Practice Rebirth: A New Life.

Let's bring change, let's take responsibility over life, let's be stronger than the story and look forward dancing. Get ready world here comes Heather.