Tender Love and Hair
Friday, 14 February 2020
TIME GOES BY DONATION WEEK REMINDER
This is day five of the 2020 TGB donation drive to help support the costs of maintaining Time Goes By. You can read the details on Monday's post.
It's lovely this week to see so many names that don't turn up in the comments as the donations arrive at Paypal – and the familiar names too.
But, whether you donate or not, nothing will change. TGB will always remain advertising-free with never a membership fee or paid firewall. If you would like to help support the work that goes on here, click the button below. If not, which is perfectly fine, scroll down for today's Valentine's Day post.
Remember when I was bald last year? I had lost my hair to chemo therapy and after I got over the shock, I rather liked having no hair. It saved a lot of time and effort and when it started growing back in, I shaved it a couple of times.
But eventually, I let it grow in and it had become a crazy mess so last Monday I had my first haircut in many months. I feel a whole lot better which is what a haircut should do for us. Keep that in mind.
I was early arriving at the salon so I settled down to peruse a hair industry trade magazine, Beauty Launchpad, where I found this lovely story suitable for Valentine's Day.
Joey Lane had become a certified nursing assistant during high school but moved on to become a hair dresser at a salon in the small town of Brunswick, Georgia where, he says, that high school nursing assistant training stuck with him.
After five years working in the salon, Joey
”...made the decision to combine my two passions...There are so many people who are underrepresented and forgotten about during what can be the scariest time in their lives, so I decided to do something about it.
“I felt the need to reach out to my local hospice facility, the Hospice of the Golden Isles, and that’s how Tender Love & Hair was born.”
Volunteering at local long-term care homes and hospice, Joey has found ways to adapt his hair dressing skills to a different clientele:
”One of the most genius kit items for me at hospice is no-rinse shampoo caps. I warm them up in the microwave, put them on the patient’s head, massage the cap and they’re good to go!
“Another go-to is my mini flat iron. It enables me to create that signature 'bump' on shorter hairstyles while minimizing the risk of burns for patients who may suddenly move during styling.”
But for Joey it's more than helping to keep patients' hair looking good.
”By far, the best part about what I do is interacting with the patients,” he says. “I hear their stories, and we become friends. Being able to bring them any bit of happiness, no matter how small, is a privilege and an honor.”
With his organization, Tender Love and Hair, Joey urges other hair dressers to volunteer their time too. He says it's easy to
”...reach out to your local hospice facility to inquire about volunteering, or donate to existing programs that help serve this population. You may go into a hospice facility expecting to change lives, but you’ll probably realize that you’ll be the one whose life is changed for the better.”
Joey's life has certainly changed as he is delving even deeper into his first passion, studying now for an RN degree. I don't have any doubt he'll be a terrific nurse.
Isn't that an excellent Valentine's Day story? There is more at the Beauty Launchpad website.
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, EVERYONE
Yes, that is a good story. I only wish I understand what he is saying about the "shampoo cap" and "flat iron". I don't have a clue what he's saying. Happy Valentine's Day, Ronni.
Posted by: Cop Car | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 06:05 AM
What a wonderful story! It's so inspiring to read about people like Joey and to be reminded that such good people still exist in this modern world.
There are videos online that demonstrate how a "shampoo cap" works -- I plan to check that out. When I was hospitalized for two weeks several years ago, and started to feel well enough to care about how horrible my dirty hair looked, a kind aide shampooed it for me. In a chair, basically pouring water over me and a bunch of towels. The results were not great. If there's a way to get hair clean without water (and I admit I'm skeptical) I want to know about it!
Posted by: Betsi | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 06:25 AM
As Betsi said already, more info about this cap can be found by googling, and the very short video is helpful. This probably works best with very short hair, but most people who could benefit from its use may already have had their hair cut short.
I wish there had been such a thing when my now adult son was a toddler. He hated nothing more than having his hair washed, regardless of how we tried to make it less threatening. Makes me wonder if he had been waterboarded in a previous life, it was such an ordeal. I think this might have changed all that and relieved the trauma we all experienced when he needed a shampoo.
Posted by: Cathy J. | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 06:41 AM
Another term for the shampoo cap would be "dry shampoo," a product that has been around since I was in my 20s, and that was a long time ago. The products have greatly improved over time, and as Cathy mentioned, works best with shorter hair. The main idea for the product is to make your hair look presentable for an extra day or so until you can get a real shampoo, which I do in my shower.
I loved this story so much that I shared it to my Facebook feed. Thanks for the love, Ronni.
Posted by: dkzody | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 08:02 AM
Ahhhhh, another reason why boot camp trainees are bald: no maintenance, the morning toilet is quicker. I have a "rat tail" to satisfy my wife. When I HAD hair in the sixties, I was a Hippie type. Having long hair again now (especially white hair) seems redundant and time consuming. However, E likes it. For many, hair is the only retainer from youth. Joey Lane is providing a heart service. Thank you for the warming story.
Posted by: Bernie JMW Fleming | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 08:10 AM
A valentine to me was discovering this poem today:
THE THING IS by Ellen Bass
The thing is
To love life
To love it even when you have no
Stomach for it, when everything you’ve held
dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands
And your throat is filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you so heavily
It is like heat, tropical, moist
Thickening the air so it’s heavy like water
More fit for gills than lungs.
When grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief.
How long can a body withstand this, you think.
And yet you hold life like a face between your palms,
a plain face, with no charming smile
or twinkle in her eye,
And you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Posted by: Carol in Denver | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 08:56 AM
What a wonderful story. He will be a great RN. As a nurse I have used dry shampoo on patients and it does help but it doesn’t have that wonderful warm water feeling. There is a little blow up plastic device like a mini baby pool with an indention for the neck that is wonderful for hospice folks who are bedridden . They can feel the nice warm water and have a shampoo without soaking the bed.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all the great folks who are connected through this terrific blog and of course to you Ronni for bringing it to us.
Posted by: Andrea | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 11:51 AM
Lovely, lovely love. A story of one of the many, many angels among us. We're all angels for one another, sometimes is someone else's turn, sometimes it's yours, sometimes it's mine. Sometimes we or they don't even know we're being an angel for someone. Joey though, has made a conscious choice to use his skills and talents in an angelic way every day. Making that choice with his heart, he will be richer by far than all those we see every day on TV using Machiavellian schemes to become rich.
Posted by: Salinda Dahl | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 12:12 PM
For Salinda Dahl,
Thank you for voicing many of my own thoughts in such an elegant and thoughtful way, dear lady.
It is what we can do now with all we have learned in our life. Spread the best of life among us all. Some teachers/scientists now maintain that in the human brain cells, what we focus on expands. Is it true? I do not know; yet I do know how it changes my days.
Am I just an aging "Pollyanna" ? Maybe, yet more rewarding it seems to me.
Posted by: Charlene D. | Friday, 14 February 2020 at 03:23 PM
Charlene,
I have lately been working on consciously changing my outlook and doing a meditative practice with an eye to affecting my brain for the better. Others have been successful with this to improve various chronic health conditions.
And Ronni, re: your hair, I showed my daughter your still picture from the Alex and Ronni Show, telling her I need to do something like this with my hair — no lie! I was surprised to hear you call it overgrown and unruly. I thought it was just a slightly longer version of your most recent tousled-look masthead picture. Now I want to see a picture of your new cut!
Posted by: Carolyn | Saturday, 15 February 2020 at 06:58 PM
I’m late with this, but just wanted to say “what a lovely story”! To you good choices, Ronni. Chin!
Posted by: Janet Lewis | Sunday, 16 February 2020 at 08:31 AM