For most of my adult life, I looked pretty much like you would expect me to look.
Normal hair.
Normal clothes.
Nothing particularly shocking happening anywhere above my shoulders.
I was a wife, a mom, and a nurse.
I looked responsible.
I was responsible.
Apparently, somewhere along the way I had also decided that responsible women were supposed to look a certain way.
Then I moved to California.
And California apparently did not receive that memo.
Wait… Nurses Can Look Like That?
One of the first things I noticed working in a California hospital was the nurses.
They had tattoos.
Visible ones.
They had nose piercings.
Colorful hair.
Nobody was frantically running down the hallway yelling:
“SHE HAS PURPLE HAIR! SOMEONE TAKE AWAY HER NURSING LICENSE!”
They were just…
nurses.
Good nurses.
Professional nurses.
Nurses who happened to have tattoos, piercings, and hair colors that definitely did not occur naturally in humans.
This was interesting.
Because somewhere in my brain, I had collected a whole bunch of rules about what a professional woman—especially a nurse—was supposed to look like.
I just couldn’t remember anybody actually giving me those rules.
And I started wondering:
What would I look like if I stopped following them?
Apparently, We Start With the Hair
My youngest daughter and I were planning our first trip to Hawaii for her 20th birthday.
And apparently nothing says I’m entering a new chapter of my life quite like deciding your hair should resemble a sunset.
So that’s what I did.
That could have been the end of my experimental hair phase.
It was not.
Over the next few years there was pink.
Blonde.
Purple.
Blue.
Various combinations of all of the above.
Eventually purple and blue pretty much won.
I had spent years worrying about whether something was appropriate, flattering, professional, age appropriate—or what somebody else might think.
Now I was standing in front of a mirror asking a completely different question:
Do I like it?
Turns out, I did.
A lot.
Then Apparently We Started Poking Holes in Things
Once you realize you’re allowed to make decisions about your own appearance, things can escalate quickly.
There was the nose piercing.
Then the septum.
The eyebrow.
Both upper ear cartilage piercings.
At some point I’m pretty sure my face and ears started looking at each other and saying:
Are we done yet?
No.
We were not.
Because then there were tattoos.
Some of Them Became Memories
In 2022, my youngest daughter and I went to Mardi Gras.
We came home with matching wrist tattoos.
Because apparently some mothers and daughters buy matching T-shirts.
We make more permanent decisions.
Then came Hawaii.
Another trip.
Another memory.
Another matching tattoo—this time on our necks.
I also have one behind my right ear.
And then there’s the phoenix on my arm.
That one means something different.
The Phoenix Wasn’t Just Decoration
A phoenix rises from what burned.
That mattered to me.
There had been enough things in my life that I hadn’t chosen.
Enough endings.
Enough loss.
Enough times I’d had to rebuild.
The phoenix wasn’t about pretending none of those things happened.
It was about acknowledging that they did.
And I was still here.
That tattoo is eventually becoming a sleeve.
Apparently, once again, I don’t know when to stop.
But maybe I don’t want to.
Because for once, the story being written on my body is one I get to choose.
Then There Were the Clothes
Losing weight created an entirely different problem.
For years, clothes had served a fairly simple purpose:
Hide things.
Black was particularly helpful.
Then suddenly I was much smaller and needed business-casual clothes for my PMHNP clinicals.
I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
I’d pick something up and wonder:
Is this professional?
Is this too young?
Are these shorts actually shorts or did somebody accidentally put a price tag on underwear?
And then there was the belly pouch.
Because losing weight doesn’t magically give you the body of a 22-year-old who has never had children.
Rude.
But slowly, I started figuring things out.
I discovered that I liked business clothes.
I liked summer dresses.
I really liked yoga pants.
I discovered colors other than black.
I bought shoes.
And purses.
And then some more shoes.
And probably another purse.
Personal growth is expensive.
I Even Bought a Two-Piece Swimsuit
That one deserves its own section.
Because I spent a lot of years believing there were certain things my body wasn’t allowed to wear.
Then one day I put on a two-piece swimsuit.
And went out in public.
Nobody screamed.
Nobody fainted.
The earth continued rotating.
And I realized something.
I had spent an enormous amount of my life worrying about whether other people approved of the way I looked.
Meanwhile, most of them were probably busy worrying about the way they looked.
What a ridiculous amount of energy we all waste.
I’m Still Figuring Out What I Like
That’s probably my favorite part of all of this.
There wasn’t some magical day when I suddenly discovered my style and everything clicked into place.
I experimented.
Some things worked.
Some things absolutely did not.
There were impulse purchases.
There were clothes that looked much better on the hanger.
There were probably moments when my hair had opinions of its own.
And I’m still changing things.
Because I’m not trying to create the final version of myself anymore.
I’m just having fun getting to know her.
The purple hair may change.
The clothes will change.
There will almost certainly be more tattoos.
Possibly another piercing, although I make no legally binding promises at this time.
But the biggest change isn’t any of those things.
It’s that when I look in the mirror now, I’m not asking:
“Is this what I’m supposed to look like?”
I’m asking:
“Does this feel like me?”
And after spending most of my life letting roles, expectations, responsibilities, and other people’s opinions answer that question for me…
It feels pretty damn good to finally get a vote.
Actually—
I think I’ll take the whole vote.
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