When you’re depressed, get a bad haircut. Don’t try and get a haircut to cure your depression. Don’t bring in photos of when you loved your hair and lived in your favorite city ever and try to recreate that magic. It won’t work and you’ll end up with exactly what you were trying not to look like. So take my advice and go straight for the intentionally bad haircut. Let a stranger cut 9 inches off your head and forget to take a before picture. 

A good haircut won’t cure depression, but a bad haircut will at least distract you. It’ll give you something else to focus on. It’ll give you a reason to shower (so you can try yet another way to style your hair because maybe this time…), and it will give you a chance to laugh at your own vanity. Depression won’t stand a chance. I’d especially recommend a bad haircut when you’re 7 months pregnant and living in hot flashes and swamp ass. And when you’re fresh off an unwanted cross country move with no friends who will tell you the truth about the southern mom helmet you just paid way too much for. And your old friends will feel so bad for you they’ll text you nice stories about their own orange experiences, and you’ll be so far away anyway that you won’t be able to hear them laughing at your triangle head. There is no deeper revelation here. Just a bad southern-mom-bob. 

These are the photos I gave the young stylist. 


This is what she gave me. 


Jk. That’s not me. And before I give you a photo I want you to promise not to say anything nice or upbeat. I won’t believe you.

The hair demon photobombing me should have been a clue. 

I should have known I was in trouble when the stylist started talking about how proud she was to be celebrating her third year at this, her first salon chair since she graduated from beauty school. Poor dear. I can’t blame her though. All she’s probably ever been asked for are southern mom bobs. I wanted something defiant, something edgy and blunt. A hair cut that said, “I’m not like you other Texan moms who blow out your hair and are vain.” And in my pride, I was humbled. And I realized how, despite how rarely I style my hair or wear makeup (or anything but athleisure, the way my hair looks matters to me. 
Thankfully, Jesus gave us the internet and Oprah. And thankfully, at least, I don’t have a bob and a mullet at the same time, like the poor 25 year old on Oprah’s website who is the first survivor pictured of a bad haircut. 


And at least I am pregnant and my hair is growing so fast, and at least I love my Yankees baseball hat. And at least I got to experience this hair wreck with my sister Kelli.