Goodbye Sun, Hello Stars

Despite the terrible things that have happened over the past year, my undoing last week was a bad haircut.

This wasn’t my first rodeo with a dodgy trim. I can still vividly remember my dad, David, taking me to Just Cuts when I was seven, a place where haircuts either turn out surprisingly well or completely disastrous, there is no in-between.

When dad took me to Just Cuts, I had long, wavy hair that I would spend hours styling. At only seven years old, I already understood how much hair mattered. 

“Just a trim, please,” I told the hairdresser.

The hairdresser—a young, nervous-looking apprentice—began hacking away at my hair, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in concentration. My dad sat on the salon’s couch, enamoured in a magazine, oblivious to the tears welling up in my eyes as my hair piled up on the floor.

By the time my dad noticed my distress, my hair was above my collarbones, and the apprentice was shaking out the black cape tied around my neck, sending even more of my cherished hair to the ground.

After dad had paid, I burst into tears on the walk back to the car, distraught by how much of my hair had been cut.

“The hairdresser just had a vision!” he said with strained enthusiasm. “He knew how fabulous you would look with short hair!”

He then provided me with emotional first aid in the form of chicken nuggets from Burger King, which I shoved miserably in my mouth, tears still running down my face.

I also remember laughing hysterically when one of my best friends called me in distress after cutting her straight, jet black hair to her shoulders. She was furious she had paid good money to look like “Lord Farquaad”, and the more I tried to reassure her that she didn’t, the harder I laughed. Not only am I a bad friend, but I am also a liar. She did, in fact, look like Lord Farquaad.

Bad haircuts always suck. It’s an indisputable fact of life. But they hit even harder when everything else in your life feels out of control, and taking pride in your appearance may be one of the few ways you can start to rise from the ashes.

My personal unraveling began shortly following my graduation at the end of 2024, when my beloved mum, Jane, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. In August 2025, she passed away after the cancer spread to her brain and spine, despite being told only a few weeks earlier that she was responding well to treatment.

Around the same time, my parents were forced to sell their business at a loss, and financial instability meant that my dad, my younger brother Max and I were forced to renovate and sell my childhood home while my mum was still very ill. We also had to re-home or put down all of our pets, including my mum’s favourite horse.

Unable to find secure work and with my childhood home gone, I lived in a cramped apartment in Sydney with my partner, his sister, her partner, and his mother, who was visiting from Mexico. Grieving deeply and with little space to fall apart, I was constantly confronted with the pain of watching my partner create memories with his mother, knowing I would never see mine again.  

After everything that I have been through recently, a dodgy trim is probably the least of my worries. But after a particularly bad day, I decided to try and cheer myself up by getting a haircut, and when it went haywire, I completely lost my shit.

That day as I watched myself in the mirror of the salon, the hairdresser cutting away at my hair, a strong sense of déjà vu washed over me, and suddenly I was seven years old again, back at Just Cuts. Despite liking to think of myself as an outspoken woman who speaks her mind, I’ve never been able to tell a hairdresser that I am anything other than delighted with their work, even when I’m not. I am both a people-pleaser and a ball buster simultaneously.

As I walked back to the car, just as I had with my dad almost two decades earlier, I could feel tears starting to prick behind my eyelids. When I saw my new layers framing my face about as nicely as freshly laid house bricks in the car’s rearview mirror, I lost it.

I had held myself together over the past few months, bit my lip when it wobbled, reached out to friends, plastered a smile on my face for my mother-in-law, and tried to avoid ordering copious amounts of Uber Eats. I had done everything in my power to not let my mother’s death, and everything surrounding it, derail me.

But a bad haircut was the icing on the fucking cake. If masterful layers and a fresh blow dry couldn’t fix the mess that was my life, what could?

So, I cried. I slammed my fists against the steering wheel and cried for my wonderful mum who I missed terribly, my childhood home, my family, and my pets. I howled about my loss of stability, the precarious job market, my fear for the future, and my stupid, shitty haircut. I kicked the car mat, flailed my arms, and screamed bloody murder (all while stationary, of course). My grief had been given permission to speak under the guise of a bad haircut.

As I broke down in the car, I thought of my mum when she lost her hair from chemo, her thick, blonde tresses falling out in clumps. She had joked about all the terrible wigs she would buy or the tattoo of the world she planned to get on her head. When I suggested I shave my own head in solidarity with her, she was furious.

‘Don’t you dare let this disease define you,’ she said. ‘Don’t let it impact your life any more than it already has’.

My mum was the epitome of grace and humour in the face of a tragic situation.

After my tears had dried and my body went completely limp from the emotional release, I drove to where I’ve been staying temporarily with my family. I went upstairs to the bathroom, splashed my face with cold water, and ran a wet brush through my hair, styling it into something that looked more familiar. Surprisingly, the corners of my mouth began to lift. I exhaled loudly out my mouth.

It looked okay.

I would be okay.

I would just have to get through life, one step and shitty haircut at a time.