Fran Gilboy didn’t always want to be a hairstylist, as the thought of making small talk all day with strangers in a busy salon intimidated the self-described introvert.
But when she first tried to quit the profession more than 20 years ago, she ended up in her house with clients. In that intimate setting, she really gained a love of the practice.
“I was getting interested in Buddhism and meditation and mindfulness practice. I discovered that doing hair privately one-on-one really offered me the opportunity to practice skilful listening, skilful speech,” said Gilboy.
Knowing how to bear witness to suffering is a skill Gilboy has spent decades refining. She lost her mother to breast cancer at the age of 12, and then a daughter 10 years later.
“Grief has been my number one teacher in this world through great personal losses since I was very young, and of course, the many smaller ones [losses] we all experience. Ultimately it’s deep work that is done to ultimately ‘be ok with change’, which in words seems a simple thing, but in practice, is difficult.”
Hair stylist Fran Gilboy dons the protective equipment necessary to keep her and her clients safe during a pandemic. She also strives to make her shop a safe emotional space for clients as well. (Nichole Huck CBC )
The pandemic forced a lot of changes — It challenged Gilboy and many others’ ability to earn an income, and to see their friends and loved ones.
Gilboy chose to approach the first lockdown in the same way she’s approached silent meditation retreats in the past.
“It just felt like an opportunity to reflect. What happens in those retreats is you’re in silence, you are acutely aware of the suffering that’s happening in the world and there’s not much you can do but hold it quietly, silently and in contemplation.
“This was an opportunity to hold other people’s suffering in a way that was helpful, acknowledging I had the privilege to be home and have all of those feelings of safety and reflection.”
Back to work
Her own fear came when the provincial government announced salons would be among the first businesses to reopen.
“I think I got seven texts that day, like ‘get me in as soon as possible’ and I just felt the brakes slam,” explained Gilboy.
She felt like a guinea pig, and was watching closely to see what was happening in other jurisdictions that had opened earlier. Her hesitation wasn’t to coming back to working with clients, but a resistance to what she describes as a “lack of clarity” from the government on what was expected of them.
She invested in personal protective equipment (PPE). She started wearing masks and safety glasses and adopted stringent screening and hand-washing protocols. She also started booking fewer clients to make sure there was ample time to sanitize between them.
“If the lockdown had allowed me to hold and contemplate the suffering of the world while in isolation, the reopening allowed me to hold people’s grief with them,” explained Gilboy.
Small talk turned big
Gilboy describes pre-pandemic conversation with clients as a series of events: trips they’ve gone on, things their kids are doing or events they’ve been involved in.
“Those just weren’t the stories anymore. It was more stories about people’s isolation experiences and since then has morphed into a lot of social distress. People are talking about the breaking down and rebuilding of society. The conversations are heavy and when I say heavy, I don’t mean bad. I just mean they’re really weighty conversations.”
It’s not unusual for a client to get emotional in her barber chair. She has worked hard to make her hair studio feel like a warm and inviting space, a safe container for any and all emotions.
“All manifestations of grief are always welcome here,” says Gilboy.
Frank hair shop is now located upstairs at the Junction Creative Studio in Regina. It’s sandwiched between the Woods Arts Studio and a massage therapist studio. Gilboy says the colour of the walls and the soft lighting was designed to be a warm and inviting space. (Nichole Huck CBC )
The close contact required by her job puts her in both a precarious and privileged position.
Gilboy is grateful to be able to spend time with people in a time when people aren’t spending time with others. She’s noticed many of her clients are craving human touch. She’s been intentional about incorporating a simple head massage into every cut.
It’s been able to provide these little acts of care and attention that brings Gilboy joy.
“I noted the heavy things weren’t always bad. The weightiness of joy is also there, and it’s palpable. You know, just being able to be one-on-one and engaging in a really authentic way with someone feeds my spring of joy.”
Fran Gilboy takes time before the cut to check in with client Terri Fidelak. (Nichole Huck CBC )
The pandemic has brought many changes to her work, some she plans to adopt permanently.
The extra time she now builds between clients is something she always wanted but never made happen until circumstances required it.
Once the sanitizing is complete she still has time to drink a glass of water or eat something, something she says makes her able to be more fully present with her clients.
She now only cuts hair and books one cut an hour and charges a flat rate, no matter the gender or length of hair.
And it took the pandemic to give herself permission to make these changes she hopes better serve her clients and her practice. It gives her the ability to just settle in with a client before they begin.
“I don’t feel that panicky rush now like we need to really get to the cut because I’m on the clock here and so are you.”
The three-month forced separation from her haircutting practice and the subsequent changes she made has made Gilboy truly appreciate her work and how much it nourishes her soul.
This act of caring, of being truly present with people, brings Gilboy joy, “I’ve come into work loving it more than I’ve ever loved it in my whole life.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
