Beautiful Lengths

margaretkooym
Dec 9, 2014
3 min read

I turned 45 recently and one of the ways I celebrated is by donating my hair to charity.

I love the idea of contributing to someone in need. Actually it’s not just an idea, I think it’s necessary in life. I believe that we were all made and put on this completely and abundantly resourced earth to live in peace and harmony with each other, sharing all resources together in love and generosity. In other words, play nice. Unfortunately as we all know, it is not the case. There is such an imbalance in the world in terms of power and riches, and sharing of care and resources resulting in oppression, desperation and brokenness. In most cases, those who have the power and riches are so far gone that it’s hard to be hopeful that they will use their power and influence for good to make the world a better place. Hence I think we just need to do our best and in our small or big ways help in any way we can.

So I had been wanting to give to those in need, but because I'm no longer employed, I've found it a little hard to give on a regular basis. I used to have an adopted girl with World Vision but have had to stop when I quit my job. So I had been thinking of doing The Greatest Shave, but had chickened out for 3 years. Then I found out about donating hair from a friend who had done it. There's this American organisation that collects pony tails and make them into wigs for children with cancer. What a lovely thing to do, and what an easy way to give. So I looked for a similar way to give in Australia and found Beautiful Lengths, which is an AUS/NZ organisation that does the same. The only difference is that they collect pony tails and make wigs for women with cancer. That's fine too. And I thought that could be a much easier thing to do than to shave my head. So I did that. Took me two years to grow my hair out to the minimum length of an 8 inch pony tail.

I had not grown my hair out for about 16 years! The last time I had long hair was for my wedding and I chopped it up to my ears the very next day. It was actually rather easy and a lovely reason to grow my hair out, having in mind that I needed to take care of it real well for someone else. And along the way I enjoyed it as it I was in dance performances and having long hair came in handy for the general long hairdo most dance performances call for. But I think the best feeling is knowing that literally given a piece of yourself to someone, to hopefully help make them feel better in their time of struggle.

I'm also quite surprised to know that many people do not know about this way of giving yet so I want to share this and hope that you will spread the word around as well so that more people will spare a part of themselves to someone in need. Now that I've chopped my hair, I'm starting the 2nd cycle. If some of you would like to join me in doing this, perhaps in two years time we can have a hair cutting party and my hairdresser would love to contribute her time and services for this. Or you can give now too.