I HAVE SEEN KATI BRAID HAIR at more than a few parties and gatherings. I’ve seen her work with all sorts of people – of all ages and stripes – and I can say that after she braids, every person she works on walks away a little happier, a little younger, a little lighter. Call it the work of fairies, that dust on butterflies’ wings.
Tell us about the fairy business.
I am the product of a Catholic priest and an environmental activist, and cultivating and propagating and disseminating light are my antidote to the impending doom with which I was raised. That is the short answer.
Do you still feel there’s impending doom?
I have fear. I have distrust. But the answer is to stay with it – not above it – and walk with it. I have one foot in reality. It’s more like just my big toe, and the rest of me digs into that which is magical, that which can heal, that which can create comfort and acknowledge pain and then move through it. The things that plague us are the unresolved things because we think we can avoid them, but we can’t. We’ve gotta go through them, and if I can hold people’s hands while they go through the shit, that’s what I wanna do.
What about the fairy hair?
I’m Fairy Kati. As Fairy Kati, I can acknowledge the magic inherent in people. Fairy hair is sparkly hair that goes on people’s heads. It’s cosmetic, on the face of it. But I’m an occupational therapist as well. I specialized in working with people with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).
So I met the most glorious people in the whole wide world; they had the worst disease and died in terrible ways, and it was awful. When you work so intimately with people to help their families care for them while they’re dying, there’s a lot of intimacy created. I had one close patient die, and I was really in a sad state.
I was at the farmers’ market and there was this woman…I’ll never forget it. A shaft of light shone on her. She was wearing a fairy costume, and she had wings. And everyone who walked by her was shining and smiling, and I thought to myself, I don’t know what that is, but I need it right now. So I got fairy hair.
Fast forward six years, and I’ve been seeing the same woman, Leslie, religiously – every six to eight weeks – to get more because the effect on me was that I felt indomitable. I felt like, What could possibly touch me if my head is sparkling? It felt like an outward expression of what I know is true of myself, which is resilience and bravery.
Then I met my now husband and he gets his dream job and I move home to New Mexico. I called Leslie. She is phenomenal.
I said, Leslie, I’m moving home to New Mexico, and she said, Katie, you’ve gotta be a fairy, and I said, Leslie, you’re nuts. I have a master’s degree. I work in hospitals. I can’t be a fairy. She said, No, let me rephrase. You are a fairy. Now you need to go be one. And I said, You win. So New Mexico Fairy Hair was born.
WANT TO READ MORE? SUBSCRIBE TO SANTA FE MAGAZINE HERE!
Photo SFM
