That’s Why Her Hair’s So Unkempt, It’s Full of Griefy Secrets
Why I avoided getting a haircut for 6 months (spoiler alert, it's the grief)
By Kera Sanchez, Editor-in-Chief of Get Griefy Magazine
I am the Gretchen Wieners of Grief, I suppose.
I haven’t gotten a haircut since back-to-school time — back when I was still living in Illinois with my safe-space hairstylist who had also lost her mom.
A hairstylist isn’t necessarily a friend, but she’s someone you have to sit with for approximately an hour and fill that hour with conversation, or sit in uncomfortable silence. (And I would honestly rather take a shear to the eye than let that happen.) My previous stylist was so easy to talk to, and it felt genuinely good to know that she saw my grief for what it was — something living, something evolving.
But as many of you know, I recently moved to a new city, about 800 miles from home. The idea of finding a new person to divulge life’s messiest chapters to sounded exhausting. So I just let my hair be unkempt. Dead ends. Stringy. It had gotten out of control, so on an impulse I booked a modestly priced cut — just to feel the place out.
There were literally three opportunities to mention that my mom was dead, and I politely sidestepped every single one.
“So have your parents come to visit yet?” — “My dad has!”
“How do your parents feel about you moving away?” — “My dad’s always traveling, so it’s just a new place for him to visit.”
“Did you have a ton of help at home?” — “Totally had a village.”
Three times. I bobbed, I weaved, I smiled. And afterward I sat with the question that always follows: Why? Why, as the editor-in-chief of a grief magazine — someone whose entire purpose is to normalize this experience — do I still shrink from it in small talk? Why does the word mom catch in my throat when a stranger asks a casual question? Maybe it’s self-protection. Maybe it’s not wanting to watch someone’s face shift into that particular look of pity. Maybe grief, even when it’s your life’s work, still doesn’t always feel like yours to hand to a stranger.
It wasn’t until I mentioned needing a haircut for an upcoming TV appearance that the levy finally broke.
“I run a Grief Magazine — which I know sounds psychotic, maybe dark or weird, to anyone who hasn’t come across it. But it’s totally the opposite. It’s vibrant and full of bold, raw humor and community. Its whole goal is to make sure no one feels alone in how crappy grief can feel.”
From there, the conversation opened up completely. She learned about my grief journey — my traumatic birth, topped with losing my mom while she was on vacation. We talked about anticipatory grief, identity grief, the particular exhaustion of starting over somewhere new. It all came out, easy as that.
My dead ends were chopped off. A new connection was made. All while wearing a cape. Turns out grief and split ends have something in common: you can only ignore them for so long before someone has to help you cut through them.
By Kera Sanchez
Kera is the Editor-in-Chief of Get Griefy Magazine and a passionate advocate for normalizing conversations around grief and loss. A certified Grief and Resilience Expert and secondary educator with more than 14 years of experience, she is dedicated to making discussions about grief grounded, accessible, and human. Kera believes that when grief is approached with honesty and compassion, it opens the door to deeper understanding, meaningful connection, and stronger communities during life’s most difficult seasons.
