The past several months of my life have been rather emotionally challenging. I have struggled to navigate my way through trying matters of the heart while maintaining my poise, sense of self-worth and some humility. My most recent journey toward recovery from heartbreak has been an enlightening one, but I am ready for it to be over.

Lately I see all facets of life as a sort of continuous cycle of creation and growth followed by death and grief with periods of recovery and stabilization in-between. Generally I find myself resting too comfortably in the in-between. Even after my inner self mends from whatever injury it sustained, I tend to avoid evolving my spirit for fear of the loss that will inevitably follow any period of progress.

But I fear no more, and it’s all thanks to a box of bright red hair dye that someone lazily left near the cucumbers in the produce section of my grocery store.

Immediately after spotting this misplaced box I knew that a dye job was exactly what it would take to move me out of my comfortable and convalescing state. I knew that a drastic change of hair would encourage a drastic change of heart. What better way to support the need for transformation than to create a visual representation of it?

And so a red-headed Banshee I became. Instantly I felt an overwhelming sense of revitalization. We cannot expect to get through this life without disappointing ourselves, without wishing we had said or done things differently, without sustaining a great deal of moral injury. But we can learn the skill of self-compassion to move ourselves gently through these struggles. We can practice mindful forgiveness of our perceived faults and mistakes.

Or we can just grab a box of hair dye and give ourselves a fresh start, an opportunity to try again and do it a little better than last time. Who would have thought that it only costs $8.99 to completely reinvent yourself? Or in my case $26.97 since it took three boxes of dye to cover my entire mop.