Missy Diggs

Shampoo is probably not the first thing you think of when you hear the word “revolution,” but there is a small —but growing!— movement of people who are giving up shampoo and other hair products for good.

This trend is called “going no ‘poo,” and if you do an Internet search on that phrase you will probably be surprised by how many hits you get, and how many of them are from the last six months or so. I’m telling you, this wave is rising!

I first heard of the concept after my daughter was born, when I was spending a lot of time lurking on the Mothering.com forums. Lots of natural living mamas over there, for sure. I was tempted to try it out myself but in the fog of caring for an infant I think I just forgot about it.

Then, last year, I heard there was a lot of talk about it on the message board for one of the crunchier local parenting groups. Since then, whenever I run into someone I know from that group, I always wonder whether they are using shampoo or not. Usually the kids are pulling us in all directions and I don’t get a chance to ask. But I have my theories.

Right now, after 8 months of chemotherapy, with my new hair about half an inch long and growing, seems like the perfect time to give it a try. Not only because this is the closest I will ever come to starting over with all-new hair (I hope!) but also because now that I have cancer I am even more uncomfortable with some of the ingredients in the “self-care” products we use every day. I know there are usually more natural versions of the products available, for a price, but many of those contain suspicious ingredients too (for example, a “food-grade paraben” listed in a “natural” product is still a paraben; I don’t care if the FDA says it’s okay to eat it). And paying a higher price for a product I actually don’t need doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me anyway.

And the people who promote going no ‘poo claim that their hair looks better now than it did when they used products to clean and condition it. Supposedly, the shampoo strips your hair and scalp of natural oils and even bacteria that would otherwise be helping your hair look shiny and full. When those oils are stripped away, your skin produces extra oil to compensate. Then your hair looks greasy and feels dirty and you need to wash it with shampoo again. Conditioner weighs your hair down and keeps it from looking as full and shiny as it would if you had left it alone in the first place.

So they say.

Also, many of the things I’ve read say that there is a transitional period during which your hair will not look awesome, as your body adjusts to the job of taking care of itself naturally. Well, sure, with any new job, there’s a learning curve, I guess. During this period, and possibly beyond, some people like to “wash” their hair with a mixture of baking soda and water, rinse, and then “condition” their hair with apple cider vinegar. Otherwise, people just wash by running warm water through their hair, letting it dry, and brushing it to distribute the natural oils from the roots throughout their hair.

And so I think I will try it. If I’m going to go through a period where my hair does not look awesome, it might as well be now, when my hair’s too short for anyone to be able to tell. When I think of the money I could save by forgoing hair products for the rest of my life, I get pretty excited about what else I could be spending that money on…. like new lipsticks! Or, well, I’ll guess I’ll figure that one out later.

In an effort to stop “overdoing it” so I can hopefully get my surgical drains pulled soon, I have been spending a lot of time lying in bed, reading.

Luckily, I stocked up on novels from the $1 clearance shelf at Half Price Books.

What is so amazing to me whenever I go on reading marathons like this is how each book seems to link into the next. For example, the first book I was reading had a word (I don’t remember it now) that I’d never seen before. That same word appeared again in the second book, which was a totally different style of book, by a different author, set in a different time, everything different. Except that word.

Then I read a book where the main character noticed the chirping of the little pond frogs in the spring, called “peepers.” In the next book, by a different author, set in a different part of the country, guess what? Peepers again.

It goes on and on, this complicated coincidental web of connections. Of course I am the thing in common, the connections are all in my brain, but it’s strange and kind of eerie nonetheless.

For years I have wanted to keep track of the books I read, partly so I can go back and refer to books I particularly liked, partly because I forget everything almost as soon as I read it, and partly just for the sake of keeping track. Last fall someone invited me to join GoodReads, and I was totally hooked. I spent at least an hour every night logging books I’ve read, seeing what my friends had read, checking up on the most popular books, and adding books to my “To Read” list. For finding what to read next, GoodReads beats What Should I Read Next? hands down, even though I love that site too.

Then I got cancer. (Or the cancer I already had made itself known, or whatever.) And suddenly I didn’t want to record the books I was reading anymore. I didn’t want to be like (imagine whiny “Poindexter” type voice) Well, this cancer book is better than that cancer book, blah blah blah. Even though, you know, some cancer books ARE better than others. And while I certainly haven’t read them all (do you know how many cancer books are out there? A LOT!) I have read a slew of them.

But right now I am not reading too much about cancer, unless it happens to get one of the characters in one of books (and it does, of course, sometimes). And I would sort of like to start keeping track of my reading again. I’ve forgotten my GoodReads password, so it will take me some time to figure out how to get back into that.

And there’s just no way I have the energy to do my other favorite book-related activity, BookCrossing, which is awesome but just too many steps for me right now. You sign in, print a label, log your book, and leave it in a public place with a note saying “FREE BOOK!” Then, hopefully, the person who finds the book and takes it home will report it to the web site and–when they’re finished with it–leave it for someone else to find. They call it a “catch and release” program. I found a book at Central Market cafe once and was pretty excited to log it in and see where it ended up. (Lucky for me, it was a book I had been wanting to read!) I also had fun leaving books in odd places (among the cereal boxes at the grocery store, for example) and then checking to see if anybody had found them.

For now, I will probably just take all my finished novels to the hospital and leave them there for other patients. Hopefully they will find their way into the hands of someone else who is not too interested in the mysteries and romance novels that are usually available in the waiting rooms. And hopefully people who read the kind of books I like will keep leaving them in the waiting rooms for me, too.

*Extra credit if you knew that the title of this post was the first line of an Emily Dickinson poem.

**Extra extra credit if you also knew the second line of the poem: “to take you worlds away.”

*** You win the grand prize if you also knew that every Emily Dickinson poem (except maybe one or two) can be sung to the tune of the “Yellow Rose of Texas”. And if you didn’t know that, and knowing it has ruined Emily Dickinson for you forever, then I guess I win the grand prize. Although, actually, I have started to like her more as I get older. As far as the “Yellow Rose of Texas” goes, if you ever want to hear what the bass clarinet part sounds like, let me know. I’ll sing it for ya.

Sometimes it seems like Real Life slows way down, but this old blogosphere just keeps on spinning.  A couple of weeks have zipped by while I’ve been recovering from surgery, and I just haven’t  had much to say that would be of general interest. The things that are holding my attention right now are very specific, of overwhelming interest mainly just to me.

So I will post just to say that I am fine, I am healing quite well, and I am anxious to have my horrible surgical drains removed so I can really start getting used to my changed body. My family is hanging in there. Every stage of the treatment journey seems to have its hardest parts, and we are bumping over one and getting ready for another.

In the real world, amazing things keep happening as life moves on. Some of our favorite people have new babies, are taking awesome vacations, are getting married, are hoping to buy a house, are interviewing for really cool jobs, are coming home to stay. In the blogosphere, I am sad to see that some of the people I have come to know through my IBC message board have died from this invasive disease. It seems like life just keeps marching on, with its celebrations and its grief, even when I am curled up in bed for two weeks waiting to heal.

When I walked out of the hospital with my wonderful old friend the Reiki Master, the day after my surgery, I blinked in the sunlight and said, “wow.” As if reading my thoughts, she sort of chuckled and said, “Yep. It’s still here.”

Amazing.