We shaved our heads

for our 25th wedding anniversary

Betcha never got an email quite like this before from an author!

My husband, Clark, and I went away to Vermont for our 25th wedding anniversary. We were talking about doing something special for our silver anniversary, and I announced that perhaps we should shave our heads.

Awkward silence ensued.

Now, you have to understand that Clark has, repeatedly, shaved his head in the time that I have known him. He has a full head of hair, and isn’t balding at all, so his main reason for doing it the first time was:

“I’ve never done it and I want to try it.”

Which is why I wanted to try it, too!

So we did.

His awkward silence was more of a stunned quiet, and then he was enthusiastically all in!

Here is me with hair:

No make-up, I don’t dye my hair, and yes, that’s my tuba behind me.

I asked my Facebook group whether we should do this, and while the overwhelming response was YES, some of the reactions are fascinating to me.

• WHY would you want to?

• I could never do that.

• Find something else to do, like a cruise…

• Get a tattoo!

And so on.

I like trying new experiences. For a while, I’ve wanted to have short hair again. The last time I had my hair professionally cut was November 2019, when I traveled for work. It grew VERY long, until December of 2022 when I cut about 6 inches off because I tore my rotator cuff and couldn’t wash or comb my own hair or put it in a ponytail. I still kept it shoulder length, though (see pic above).

I look a LOT like my mother when my hair is longer. Always have. I had a… contentious is an understatement… relationship with my mother, and as I approach the age at which she died (56 - I’m still younger than that, but not much), I find myself struggling with how much I resemble her.

If you’ve had any sort of trauma in a parental relationship, you might know what I mean. I’m often asked if any of the mothers in my books are like mine, because every year, I write a very different kind of Mother’s Day message on Facebook.

No. No mother I write about is like mine. At all.

But I do write about many mothers who are NOTHING like mine. Marie from my Shopping series, Meribeth from my Her Billionaires series, Deanna from Love You, Maine, Pam from my Shopping series - these are idealized mothers (I know you’re snorting at THAT one, as you imagine Marie, but at her core she fiercely loves her children and will do anything for them, which is a trait not all mothers possess). They’re real people with issues, but each has qualities I wished I’d had in a mother.

But did not.

(I did not intend for this newsletter to get deep, but here we are…).

SO!

Shaving my head was inspired by a few impulses, but mostly motivated by “I’ve never done this before, so let’s try it!” and a little bit “Hey, I won’t look so much like Mom”.

All of the other added bonuses were icing on the cake.

When I began writing, some themes emerged in my books:

• Desire for community

• Need for autonomy

• Shaking off roles assigned to us

• Being your own worst enemy

• Taking chances in love

• Learning to trust

• Letting go of perfection

My characters are me, right? Like them, I go through variations on these themes on a regular basis, through that internal emotional rollercoaster called a heart.

Have you ever just wanted to do something for the sake of doing it? Because you’d never done it before? Or because you were tired of bottling up your feelings and needed a release?

• Maybe you’ve always been “the good one.”

• Maybe you’ve always been the (unfairly designated) scapegoat.

• Maybe you just want some excitement.

• Maybe you need an identity shake-up.

• Maybe you just… can.

• Maybe you just… want to.

And that’s enough. More than enough.

So, here’s the progression:

This is me, today, with bedhead. Haven’t showered yet LOL. You can see it’s growing in.

I love it. Showering takes 2-3 minutes. People either LOVE the hairstyle (someone other than Clark recently said it looks “sexy,” which is the first time anyone other than Clark has called me that in 27 years!) or they… say nothing. And that’s fine. No one has to like everything.

Which is why the world is so fascinating. So much variability. Something for everyone. <3

As for Clark, I don’t have progression photos (mostly because he wasn’t clothed at all when he shaved his head and y’all don’t get to see my husband like that - only me!), but here’s a sweaty, wild, no-holds-barred picture of the two of us at “The Slash,”, a 5500-mile border between the US and Canada (we were in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont).

This is the day after we shaved our heads, we’d been hiking in thick ferns and rough terrain for an hour, and we were a very fun mess!

I hope you find a way to do something you’ve always wanted to try. To step outside your comfort zone. To do the thing just because.

To challenge yourself in a way that makes you smile.

Be a fun mess!

If not now, when?

<3

Love, Julia

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Pre-order Aloha now, coming Sept. 12!

I have an all-new Shannon and Declan story, Shopping for a Billionaire’s Coffee, coming in the charity anthology Aloha. All the money earned from sales will be donated to local causes in Maui to help after the wildfires:

Declan and I are popping our cherry together.

Coffee cherry.

We’re about to go to Hawaii, signing the papers to buy our first Kona coffee farm.

Pinch me. Is this really my life? Marrying a billionaire, having his baby, buying a regional coffee chain we’ve turned global, getting pregnant with our second child, and now – now this? It’s been one heck of a decade.

The best decade.

But there’s one little catch: Declan has no idea we’re buying the coffee farm. Keeping this secret takes the espionage skills of an MI6 operative. I suck at keeping secrets, but this one will be worth it.

Because turnabout is fair play.

For our ninth date-iversary, he bought me a house. Except instead of a normal house, my overachieving billionaire husband bought us a conference center, with multiple homes, to turn into a world-class resort.

How do I top that?

By convincing another billionaire to sell his exceptional Hawaiian property to me.

The property Declan’s been chasing for years.

I’m six months pregnant. Mom and Dad are ready to watch our four-year-old when I close the deal of the century.

Hawaii is paradise, right?

So is one-upping my husband.