Hair is considered a sacred part of the body in my tribe, and why Mom left me her hair, but I couldn’t give her anything
July marks one year since we buried my mother. She departed this world far too soon in February 2021 – she wasn’t even 62.
Several months after her passing, I found a plastic bag with her hair in it, along with a note she’d written in 2013, explaining that she left this lock – so soft and matted flat – for when she moved on to the other side. “I wanted to leave something still alive,” she wrote, “so I left my hair.”
