When I moved to London, I was always drawn to parks and green spaces. My first home was close to Regent's Park, which became part of my everyday life during my first two years in the city. In 2016, while completing my studies, I chose the Spring Equinox, which was also my birthday, as a moment for transition and renewal.
I found a place in the park where I could sit, carefully plait my hair, and prepare to cut it. In the Andean world, a woman's long plait is deeply connected to identity, femininity, ancestry, and belonging. Cutting mine was therefore not simply a change of appearance, but an intimate act of transformation: a way of marking the passage between what I had carried with me and the life I was beginning to build in London.
I allowed the cut plait to fall onto the ground, offering a part of myself to the place that had witnessed my first years in the UK. I wore a yellow shirt, echoing the daffodils of early spring and connecting my body to the landscape.
Sitting on a recently cut tree trunk, I experienced it as an extension of my own body. It became my legs, my roots, and the ground from which I could grow. My body was not separate from nature, but emerging from it, becoming part of this new landscape.
The haircut is a ritual of migration, belonging, transformation, and renewal.