Faith, Hope, and Shear Love

By Dianna Bautista

Changing the world one hair cut at a time.

 

People used to tell me, "You're just a hairstylist."

I really hate that phrase.

People have been underestimating me my entire life. If I'd believed them, I never would have made it to where I am today. The same thing is probably happening to you.

It's time to let go of that.

In this book, I will help you shuck off the belief systems of others and find the reason you're here. Your purpose. The driving force behind being you.

Through finding our purpose, we can transform our own lives and the lives of those around us. My purpose has taken me to the darkest, most remote places of the world as I fight for freedom against sexual exploitation, but it still fills me with light every day.

I want the same for you.

With a step-by-step process, and plenty of stories (both hysterical and heart-wrenching) you and I will get to the heart of your purpose. We'll sculpt a better life for you together.

Because you are made for more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dianna Bautista
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393155867

Book preview

1

The Underestimated

One bright California day, a guy named Mike strolled into my salon. I’m here to sell you haircutting shears, he said.

Any hairstylist will tell you that you don’t want just any scissors when you start cutting because it is the tool to our craft. The good ones are really expensive, but they ensure a quality haircut. But this guy wasn’t just going to sell me great scissors.

Mike was going to change my life.

As part of the deal, he was advertising a program where I could trade in my old shears for a new pair.

Well, what will you do with the old pair? I asked.

We send them to an impoverished area in South America where we teach women how to cut hair.

That immediately started something inside me. I loved that idea! Can you call someone and tell them I want to come help? I asked. I’m into that idea.

Mike blinked. What?

I pointed to his phone. Seriously. Call right now. Tell them I want to help teach them how to cut hair.

He looked shocked. You want me to call to see if you can go to a third-world country to use your old scissors and teach people how to cut hair?

Yep. I nodded. Right now.

So he called. A few days later, I had an interview and was accepted to go work with a team of stylists that were teaching eighteen to twenty women how to cut hair. All of the women in the class came from a world of drugs, domestic violence, prostitution, and poverty. All lived in the favelas, otherwise known as slums.

Society had told me my whole life that I was just a hairstylist. This is when I realized that I could do more.

And it didn’t have to be that hard.

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But You Live in America

While on that trip in Brazil teaching women to do hair, I met a woman named Victoria who had my exact same life story.

Literally, exact same.

She’d witnessed her younger brother being molested multiple times while she was growing up, just as I had experienced. Both of our younger brothers had been sexually abused by a close family friend, and both of us had witnessed it. She had also been in a very abusive marriage (as had I). Her father had left when she was young, under circumstances eerily similar to my father. In fact, Victoria and I were the same age, and our timelines for these events were the same. My jaw was on the ground as I listened to her tell me my story.

The exact same thing happened to me, I said.

Victoria waved a hand dismissively and said through a translator, Oh, come on. You’re from America. That’s where the Kardashians live and where Hollywood is. Everyone famous and rich lives in America. This couldn’t have happened there.

My response came quickly. No, that’s not the way it is! Trust me, the Kardashians have problems too. They just have more money than the rest of us.

At first, I couldn’t tell if she believed me, but the more I spoke, the more astonished she seemed. It was another big lesson—a moment of enlightenment for both of us. Although I came from the wealthiest nation in the world and she came from a slum in a developing country, we experienced the same things.

It’s because we’re all connected.

Despite all the things happening in the world, everybody has the same issues. We are more connected than we could ever comprehend. This is a big deal because it reveals one very important truth: we are not alone.

Victoria isn’t the only person who’s said this to me. You’re from America. You couldn’t possibly understand.

But I do, because the human experience is everywhere. We are all experiencing the same thing in different places. That means the world is ripe for the harvest and waiting for laborers. There are so many places that we can help.

Even if we’re just a hairstylist.

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Anyone Can Do What I Do Within Their Purpose

Throughout my life, I’ve had a lot of experience in the slums of the world. I’ve traveled and worked in Thailand, Kenya, India, Mexico, and many other closed countries throughout Asia. People call me the Humanitarian Hairdresser because I travel around teaching people how to cut hair and pull themselves out of sex trafficking. My project is called Shear Love, and we run schools that teach men and women how to do hair. We have classes in Thailand, Mexico, and Kenya, to name a few.

Our classes run all year long, taught by a mixture of local teachers who have graduated from our program and professionals who want to be part of our work.

Through my organization Shear Love International, ¹ my team and I teach more than just the skills of a hairstylist or barber. We teach budgeting, sex education, personal hygiene, relationship building, and provide clients with counseling. We also teach them English. Basically, our job is to educate them on how to be an adult, which will keep them free themselves from the world of sex trafficking and exploitation.

The need for this is great.

But not everyone can—nor wants to—pack up and fly to a developing country, and live there. Nor is everyone meant to do what I do. We all have a journey, and all our paths go down different roads. That’s a great thing.

But, in general, I think most of us want to create a better world. We want to be good and do good.

Yet . . . we’re constantly discounting ourselves.

So much of it comes from our upbringing and the society we’re in, whether we’re in the US or the jungles of Thailand. People tell us how limited our power is. But the big secret is that we’re only limited by what we allow ourselves to believe.

All of us are able to create a massive impact for good in this world. I call it purpose work, and we’re going to dive into it right now. Purpose and passion and changing your life (and others) is what I want to talk about here. The truth is that most of us don’t know our purpose.

Could you honestly answer these questions?

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1. What are you here on earth to do?

2. What are you called to be?

3. Who are you called to be?

4. How can you change the world: first for yourself, and then for others?

Without purpose, we float. We feel lost. Adrift. Going through the routine. Our joy isn’t as deep, and our sorrows feel far too deep. Maybe there’s a sense in you that you’re made for more—but you’re not sure what. Or how to find it. Maybe you don’t even know if you want to find it, you just know you want out of this funk. You want more.

I can help you.

You don’t have to move to Mexico and start up a culinary school for single moms living in an impoverished village in order to find your life’s purpose. That’s certainly one way to do it, and if you’re called to do that, I say go for it! But it’s not the only way.

If you want depth and joy back in your life, finding your purpose will get you there. It will deepen your heart, enlarge your power, and create ripples that will never stop affecting you or the world. Think of it as planting seeds. They’ll sprout and grow in their own time, and make their own beauty, but not if we don’t plant them.

From my time as the Humanitarian Hairdresser, I’ve learned a few things:

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1. Humanity exists everywhere.

2. Little things add up to big things.

3. Anyone can do what I do . . . within their own purpose.

Filling that empty part of your heart doesn’t require you to go and live in the favelas of Brazil, thousands of miles from your family, and create programs to fight for the freedom of those enslaved by human trafficking and exploitation. That’s my tactic.

But shucking off society’s expectations of who you are and what you can do does require work. Those who are willing to work are the ones who move goodness forward in the world, both for themselves and others.

This book is written for those of us who want purpose.

We crave it. We crave more than what we have now, because we’re convinced that this can’t be all there is. We want to change the world for the better. But maybe we don’t know how. We undercut ourselves, or let other people tell us we can’t do it. This book is for those of us who are stuck and need to get out. We’re not quite happy. We’re not really serving.

We want more, but aren’t sure where to find it.

In this book, I’m going to show you—the underappreciated, the underestimated—how to find your purpose. To help you do that, I’ve included questions within the chapters (with space to write down your answers) to get your thoughts going. Purpose work isn’t easy. It’s constant. Once you get started, however, you may find you don’t want to stop.

Through finding your purpose, you can change the world. Like me, maybe people have been underestimating you your whole life. Maybe you have been underestimating you your whole life.