Like most girls, I love a visit to the salon. The promise of pampering, all the new trashy magazines you can devour, endless hot coffee, easy chit-chat and then you leave feeling like Beyonce with a wind machine. What could be better?

Turns out, my hair salon has a very strict no-kids policy that I discovered quite by accident back when I was pregnant. No, they aren’t assholes, they are genius women. They have a tongue-in-cheek ‘List of Rules’ for the salon, which I mindlessly read all the other times I visited, but never really digested as it didn’t apply to me since I wasn’t always pregnant, nor am I a homophobe or a whiner. But as I sat in my chair waiting for my pre-delivery balayage to process, I realized, "Oh my god, I can’t bring my baby here next time I come?!  Surely they don’t mean that?" However, yes, in fact they do. Very much.  

I put off my next appointment as long as I could (also because I was shedding like a husky in the summer thanks to my post-partum hormones) frequently bemoaning the rule, but eventually I had to bite the bullet, leave my baby with a grandma, and go be alone for 3 hours. During the 4-minute drive, I was in tears. But then, a pile of magazines in my lap, a still-hot coffee in my hand, and some real talk about the state of my thinning hair, I was oddly at peace, even if my boobs were rapidly approaching geyser status.

Not only was I having some much-needed me time, but also it also forced me into taking gigantic leap (actually in hindsight this was a tiny baby step) in my motherhood journey, learning to leave your baby. As hard as it was to swallow the no-kids rule, I was thankful I had, and even more thankful there were no other kids or babies at the salon to disrupt the indulgent silence. Leaving Fin had required lots of preparation in pumping, educating grandma in all the very special and very specific ways Fin likes to be cared for (as if she hadn’t raised her own two children), but she survived and best of all, I thrived!

Who would have thought, a little trip to the salon would have been a pivotal moment for my motherhood identity?  

P.S. These genius wizard women I speak of are at Strut Salon. You won’t be disappointed!