Chapter 13 - The Hardest Part Wasn’t the Law—It Was the Healing
The business side could be frozen, redirected, restructured.
A three-year-old’s trust could not.
For weeks, Maisie refused to let anyone touch her head.
She did not want a new wig.
She did not want bows.
She did not want flowers.
If Audrey walked into the room carrying even the softest fabric cap, Maisie buried her face against my shoulder and whispered, “No more buzzing.”
That nearly broke me every time.
So we stopped pushing.
Audrey found beautiful cotton head wraps instead. Some days Maisie wore those. Some days she wore nothing at all and just stayed close to the people she trusted.
One afternoon she stood in front of the mirror, touched her smooth scalp, and asked me in a tiny voice:
“Am I still pretty?”
I knelt down in front of her.
“You were pretty before the wig. You were pretty in the wig. You are pretty without it. None of that belongs to someone else.”
She studied me like she was deciding whether to believe it.
Then Audrey stepped beside me and said gently, “And you never have to wear anything on your head unless you want to.”
Maisie leaned against her.
That was the first day I saw some of the fear leave her eyes.
Not because the pain was gone.
May you like
Because choice had come back.
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