Historically, March has never been a good month for me. One March I had to move to a new apartment right after a week-long work trip and before I was ready to move again; my heart broke badly another March; crazy things always happen to me sometime during the third month of the year. And I blame it on the death of Caesar.

Indeed March is also the hope for Spring. Mardi Gras, first day of Spring, St.  Patrick’s Day festivities… and the following month, Easter, which has always been the most deeply spiritual and meaningful religious holiday to me as it seems to always come — as described above — at the right time in my life. Accepting pain and death, suffering and absence or loss, and then awakening a Sunday morning with new beginnings, a hope for the rest of time, and a pastel colored basket with fake green plastic grass, cream eggs and jelly beans. God I love cream eggs!

March 1, 2014 arrives. I’ve been in the usual winter blues rut, this one seems impossible to dig out of as every time I start melting away the icy negativity we get another snowstorm to re-freeze over everything. (That was both metaphorical and literal, in case you hadn’t been paying attention to the winter weather up here.) I can’t decide on a life dream or ultimate career goal. I’ve been in a yoga rut and haven’t been able to get myself to practice. I’ve been eating too many pints of Ben & Jerry’s. I try to be conscious of spending to start paying off debt and I get a ticket for putting my trash out incorrectly. I am homesick for my family and living where winter doesn’t even really exist…

So I got a haircut. This, as many women know, is more than just getting split ends cut off and bangs trimmed; the haircut can be a rebirth, an enlightenment, a reformation! Sometimes you have a come-to-Jesus-meeting with your insecurities and inner issues via the stylists’ scissors and oddly colored hair dye mixture and not knowing 100% what’s going to happen when you get spun around to face yourself in the mirror for the “ta da!” moment. My girl Kim at Studio Teknik always takes good care of me and never disappoints — she has become one of those friends you don’t see all the time but can’t wait to get caught up on each others’ life drama. It’s the quintessential salon experience I’ve always wanted! Oh yeah and they give me a glass of wine there.

I said goodbye to blondie and went back to my roots. Well, close enough, anyway. I sat at my neighborhood bar the other night and could just feel the renewed energy I had drawing people in — in ways I hadn’t felt before, or perhaps in a long while. Maybe the Jameson is still cycling through me, but the next morning I woke up with a headache with a positive, sunny outlook, ready and hopeful for Spring and my annual Easter spiritual reconnection. I actually wanted to go to yoga. I think I’m going to commit to a vegan diet that I’ve felt convicted towards. This March go-round, I’m going to beat the ides and get over the seasonal depression and become newly inspired for Philly, and life, and myself. Plus I have my own real life Easter bunny this year, and that sure beats the new underwear my mom put in our baskets one Easter… ~CkB