S e g u l l a h
On Being Bald
Introducing Segullah, Part III
The sound of the telephone awakened me from a sound sleep. My husband leaned over the nightstand to answer. Suddenly on edge, I mentally sorted the possible reasons for a phone call so early in the morning. Had there been an injury or an illness in the family? An emergency at Don's job? Did someone need a blessing?
I held my breath as Don silently passed the phone to me. Then I heard a cheery voice say, “Good morning, Sister Schultz. I need to get your visiting teaching report.”
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” I stumbled in embarrassment. “I completely forgot to call you,” and I quickly listed the sisters I had visited.
My husband looked at me with bewilderment as I passed the phone back to him. “She wanted a visiting teaching report? But it's only the first day of the month!”
“I forgot to call her about last month,” I patiently explained.
“What do you mean? Last month hasn't even been over for eight hours yet! How could she possibly expect you to have reported already?”
I smiled at his naiveté. Relief Society sisters are often diligent to a fault. There was a mixture of fatigue and admiration in my voice as I explained, “Honey, she'll probably have the final report finished before noon. This is Relief Society.”
We Relief Society sisters can be intimidating creatures—intimidating to nonmember associates, to priesthood holders, and perhaps especially to each other. I love the energy and enthusiasm of my sisters in Relief Society. Women of great strength and commitment are needed in these last days. I admit that I also feel overwhelmed from time to time by my desire to measure up to that same goodness, and I suspect that I am not alone. Isn't it ironic how the very thing that can bring us community and strength—our collective virtue as sisters—can also spark feelings of weakness and isolation? Even when we are living in accordance with gospel principles, we may question whether we are living up to the expectations of those around us. We wonder if our personalities are too reserved or too bubbly, if our brand of gospel living is too conservative or too liberal, if our families are too large or too small. In our desire to get a handle on the intangible process of spiritual refinement, we can easily get caught up in external comparisons and the cultural trappings of Mormonism.
I remember when I was assigned to visit teach Suzie (1), a beautiful young woman who readily shared both her testimony and her fears. She told me that despite her faith, after years away from the church she felt she could never fit in with the women of Relief Society. I had only been active in the church myself for a few years, and I identified with her immediately. One day I commented to her about how much alike I thought we were. She didn't say anything, but I felt her gaze move through the front window to the driveway, where my minivan, equipped with three car seats, was parked. For a moment I couldn't speak. I was overcome with the realization: I've started to look like one of them.
I never expected anyone to think I was too conventional to understand the challenges of returning to church activity. My first steps back to church were in Birkenstocks. While the other women in our ward dressed in lace-trimmed sweaters and color-coordinated pumps, I showed up with waist length hair and a broomstick skirt. Then I offered to teach belly dancing for enrichment night. It is easy to make assumptions about each other too quickly. We are all complex and beautiful women, and the depth of our personalities and experiences encompasses far more than what is visible on the surface. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give each other is openness. In sharing some of those less obvious aspects of ourselves, we give those around us permission to be fully themselves, and we allow God to more fully use each of us for His purposes. I have found that our combined goodness, despite the occasional insecurities that may prompt, also makes the women of this church wise, kind, and tolerant. I believe that we have a tremendous capacity to accept and love the uniqueness in each other.
Here's one example. A few summers ago my young daughters and I all got head lice. I put the rest of our life on hold and spent the better part of a week picking every last chemical-resistant critter off my girls' heads. My own hair was a more perplexing problem. I had a long, thick mane that I couldn't possibly see well enough to treat by myself, and we lived six hundred miles away from the closest extended family member. At that time my husband was a full-time graduate student who was temporarily working two full-time jobs. He only came home to sleep, and then not for long. He did his best to help me, but one day at about 3 a.m., when we were both exhausted from several sleepless nights of nit picking and no significant progress, I decided that my hair was taking too great a toll on our family, and I shaved my head.
For most of the week I was comfortable with my baldness, but the closer it came to Sunday, the more I worried. I couldn't stop visualizing the perfectly dressed, perfectly coifed women in Relief Society. I suddenly felt out of place with our prevailing ward culture, and I was sure that they would never understand my decision. But they surprised me. Sisters hugged me and told me how nicely my head was shaped. Several women told me that I looked like G.I. Jane (now that was a stretch, but I appreciated the thought). Others shared their own lice horror stories, offered advice and volunteered to help if the situation repeated itself. One sister even came to me in tears and recounted a story of a friend who had died of cancer. She had promised her friend that if her hair fell out, she would shave her own head in support, but in the end her courage failed and she didn't do it. She thanked me for my example of strength and humility.
I have never felt more loved or accepted in the circle of Relief Society, and the feeling didn't come from perfecting my image as wife, mother or daughter of God. Nor did it come from hiding my vulnerabilities or from trying to look and act in the manner that I thought others expected. It came from sharing the truth of my experience and allowing others to lift me up. And I seemed to lift them up in the process.
That same openness is one of the hallmarks of Segullah. In fact, the level of openness in these pages may surprise some readers. We are offering you a behind-the-scenes view of the making of our lives—the triumphs and the disappointments, the extraordinary and the mundane. Some stories are more personal than others; each is in its own way an offering of openness. We hope that as our readership expands so will the range of women featured here. We know that the experiences that make up this sisterhood take many different shapes and forms, and we believe that in giving voice to a range of faithful perspectives, we can deepen our understanding of the gospel and our appreciation of what it means to be a Mormon woman.
The kind of personal writing that we feature is always a risk. For the writer it is a process of self revelation; for the reader it is a process of stretching to understand the feelings and experiences of another. Whether we're writing about joys or sorrows, life crises or ordinary events, we become vulnerable when we describe what's happening in our minds and hearts, and when we allow ourselves to feel and care about the experiences of others. One purpose of Segullah is to illustrate and encourage such risk taking. In fact, publishing this first issue involves elements of risk for us as a group. In sharing our stories, we recognize that the external circumstances of our group represent only a small piece of Mormon womanhood, and we are trusting our readers to look beyond those limitations to find meaning and common purpose. We are also relying on our readers to share more stories and perspectives with us, representing a wide spectrum of ages and backgrounds. In our combined diversity we believe that we will find great wisdom, unity, and strength.
It is our hope that through these offerings of openness, given prayerfully and with love, we can remind each other that we are not alone, and that even in the hardest of times we each have the capacity to overcome. We hope that as we laugh, cry, question, and rejoice together, our testimonies of the gospel and our faith in ourselves will be renewed. Most of all, we hope that our joint efforts will bring increased faith in our Savior Jesus Christ, who teaches us how to love, and who promises that through the power of his atonement, weak things can become strong in him. After all, that's the purpose of sisterhood . . . and the beauty of a few bald heads.
(1) Name has been changed
ANGELA W. SCHULTZ lives in southern Idaho with her husband and four daughters. She loves nature, animals, and being a home school mom. She holds a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in social work from the University of Utah.
» We're discussing "On Being Bald" at Blog Segullah starting October 22, 2006.
