Samuel has been asking us for a blue mohawk for about six months.
We used spray, but he was adamant about using a less temporary color on his hair.
Brian and I were on the fence about it, so I decided to pose the question to our Facebook page and received an overwhelming number of helpful and thoughtful responses.
In the end, I sat down with Samuel and had a talk with him about why he wanted blue hair. All of his answers expressed his imagination and excitement over the possibility of having control over something he found very lovely.
Feeling in control is very important for all humans, and especially people who have experienced trauma, like adoptees.
Samuel had great reasoning behind wanting to get creative with his hair, but the other issue we were facing was chemicals.
It is hard to get around that. Nevertheless, we were able to find ammonia-free hair lift online, and non-toxic blue dye. Still not totally chemical-free, but as safe as we were going to get.
We started by lifting Samuel’s hair. We were told the hair lift may not work well on coarse black hair. It turns out it worked fine. I only let it lift a few shades and then we had him wash it out.
Next we added the dye, which I also made him wash out after only a few minutes of application.
It still came out blue. Perhaps it won’t last as long, and isn’t as vibrant as it would be if I bleached it and left the color on longer, but it didn’t matter. Samuel was beaming. To him, it was perfect.
We shaved his hair into a mohawk and he said he looked just like a sea horse (a great sea creature to favor).
To make it a little more vibrant, we added purple sparkles around his hairline, and blue sparkles in his hair. Samuel almost passed out he was so excited.
In the end, it is only hair, but the time spent working on it and watching Samuel’s creative mind at play with something so personal to him, made me realize we made the right decision for our family. Plus, I have to admit, it is pretty cool.
