Let’s Get Honest About Our Relationship With Our Hair, Black Women!

If you’ve been following me and my blog, you know how passionate I am about black women’s natural hair. I always speak about its beauty and how regal and versatile it is. Trying to convince other black women to rock their natural hair is a whole other issue – and it’s a deep one. It’s easy for someone like me to stand on my soapbox and rant off about all the reasons why black women should go natural and about all the horrible things that are in chemical relaxers, jheri curls, and dyes. But unless you make up in your own mind that you’re going to stop doing something and take a different path, you’re not going to make any changes. In order to make a change and walk a different path, it is imperative that you are honest with yourself about your relationship with your hair.

Many of us have hair traumas that go back to early childhood. Some of us have been victims (I say victims because a lot of the things that were done to our hair at early ages were not necessarily good for our hair, especially if the person doing it doesn’t know what they are doing or isn’t good at it!) of mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, or grandmothers who decided they were going to put a kiddie relaxer in our hair so our hair can be “easier to deal with.” Some of us had to deal with getting our hair straightened weekly with a hot comb, enduring ear, forehead and neck burns. And when heat, humidity or any amount of water hit our hair and it draws back up into our natural tight coils, then we had to deal with comments from family members, friends or kids at school who’d say things like “Your hair is so nappy! When are you going to get your hair done? You look like a pick-a-ninny!” The degrading terms go on and on – and sadly, it’s from our own black people.

For generations the slave master mentality about our natural hair was passed down to the next. The false thinking that our natural hair is ugly and unruly because it grows up and out instead of hang straight like the Europeans. Or that our natural kinky hair makes us look ugly if it’s not straight or it’s unkempt and not to be shown in public. So what did black women do? To fit in, we moved heaven and earth to keep our hair straight with harsh chemicals and heat on a daily or weekly basis. We hide our natural hair with wigs and weaves and would rather crawl under the earth than be seen without them. But the chemicals, heat, wigs and weaves cause damage as well. It’s called hair loss. Alopecia. Bald or thinning edges or bald spots throughout our head. Many black women choose to sacrifice their edges to keep wearing their wigs and weaves to the point that they are left with little to no hair over their entire head. Is it just me or is this the definition of insanity?

Please don’t read this and think I’m judging from my high horse of super judgement because I’m not. For many years I was that creamy crack addict. I began getting relaxers regularly at the age of 15. I was 40 years old when I finally found my courage and took the leap of big chopping my hair and going natural. I spent 25 years of my life getting chemical relaxers. My mother was never a fan of chemicals in the hair. She knew how to straighten hair with the straightening comb and she was good at it. She knew how not to burn your hair, and she knew that too much heat will damage your hair. She was a natural hair guru before it became a thing with her natural hair remedies and how she cared for me and my sisters hair. For that I am very thankful that she did not introduce relaxers or heat to our hair at early ages.

Many have been in this cycle for years, probably since childhood, which is why so many black women have a hard time with the mere thought of going natural. For some, the thought of exposing the damage they’ve caused to their scalp and hair and taking the necessary steps to try to repair it is too much for them. For others, letting go of the idea that black hair is only pretty if it’s straightened is hard for them to accept. They can’t see the beauty of their natural hair because they don’t look at their natural beauty long enough to see it for themselves. Nor do they have family or friends to encourage them to embrace their natural hair. When everyone around you get relaxers or wear wigs and weaves, it can be hard to stand out and be different. It takes courage and a strong mind and will to do so.

White or European beauty standards, especially when it comes to hair, has a literal chokehold on black women and it’s sad. Many are still enslaved when it comes to how they view themselves and it needs to stop. I wish there were workshops in every city in every state that helped black women to see their beauty in all facets of life: At work, at school, dating, married, at home by themselves or anywhere in public. There were laws put in place during slavery times prohibiting black women from showing their hair and forcing them to cover it up. Being the natural creative people we are, black women wore elaborate, beautiful headwraps instead. But today, hundreds of years later, we don’t have to cover our hair anymore, yet we do. With wigs and weaves because we’ve been shamed and brainwashed into believing that our natural hair is ugly. What a horrible lie to be told! But why do we still believe it?

We’ve been conditioned to.

As individuals, we must take a hard look at ourselves and unpack our hair trauma. Where did it begin? How did it affect you? Why is it still affecting you? What will it take for you to see and show your beauty and not care about the beauty standards of misinformed family members, friends, or white people that don’t apply to you? Once we are honest and real with ourselves, then we can take the necessary steps to move forward. I run into so many women, some are my own family members, who think there are shortcuts to natural hair or who think they can continue to practice harmful habits with their hair and not suffer consequences in the end. It doesn’t work that way.

Being natural means different things to different people. I know all too well that not everyone is going to do things the same way when it comes to their natural hair. I’m just an advocate for healthy natural hair practices and education. I’m simply happy if you go natural and leave the creamy crack alone! Building a healthy relationship with our natural kinky, coily hair takes time, work, and honesty. Once we unpack our hair traumas and get to the bottom of what has us afraid to rock our natural hair and let go of unhealthy hair practices, only then can we move forward.

I’m Finally At Peace With My Hair

For the first time in my life I’m actually at peace with my hair. I never thought I’d ever say that, let alone feel it. I’m not saying that my hair will never bother me. I’m still going to have those days here and there. But what I mean is, I finally love my hair and how it looks every single day. I love having locs and I love this journey.

I’ve been natural for nine years. I big chopped in 2013 and loc’d my hair in 2018. I love my natural hair. I wish I had gone natural years sooner. But figuring out what to do with my natural hair on a daily basis became a serious headache for me. Why? Well for one, I’m not someone who is good at experimenting with styles. I’m not blessed with the ability to execute styles that I come up with in my mind or see online. I would need someone else to do them for me. It’s one of the main reasons I relied heavily on protective styling, which turned out to be costly financially and physically. I eventually banned protective styling for myself because of the damage it caused to my scalp and hair. I began to rock my afro everyday instead. I was tired and fed up and felt that something had to give. That’s when I seriously began to consider locs.

Getting locs was one of the best hair decisions I’ve ever made besides going natural. I thought my natural hair taught me some things, but locs was the real teacher of patience. Having locs is a process, and there’s no skipping the process (unless you get loc extensions). Allowing yourself to go through all of the loc steps will make you appreciate having locs all the more. My locs took a good two years before they all fully locked, and the locking process varies from one head of hair to the next. To watch my hair transform over weeks, months and years is nothing short of amazing. There was a time when I felt my hair would never grow. There was a time when I thought my locs would never thicken up. This is where documenting your journey through photos come into play. Taking pictures of my hair every month really told my hair story. When I thought my hair wasn’t growing, the pictures showed my growth. When I thought my locs weren’t thickening, the pictures showed that they were. When I thought my locs weren’t locking, the pictures showed they were locking.

Now I’ll admit – in the beginning I did obsess over my loose hairs that didn’t grow inside my locs. I did obsess about thinning locs. But as time went on and life threw its curve balls at me (the pandemic and many deaths in my family) those things began to matter less and less. I stopped talking about them as much, I stopped blogging or vlogging about them. Here I am in year four of having locs and I finally feel a sense of peace and calm about my hair. I finally feel the fullness of the freedom I have with my hair to be able to get up and go and do absolutely nothing to my locs other than moisturize them and oil my scalp when needed. I can’t exactly pinpoint when I stopped obsessing over my hair, but it was definitely sometime in year three.

Finding a reliable loctician helped me to stop obsessing. Not having a reliable and good loctician was one of my main stressors. I’m not the type who likes to do my own hair. I would much rather be pampered by someone else. Yes, we should all know how to care for our own hair to some extent. But I will gladly pay a professional who went to school for caring for other people’s hair to care for my hair. I’ve been seeing my loctician for seven, almost eight months now and outside of one mishap on her part, I’ve had no other problems. Her excellent work on me and my daughter’s hair speaks for itself.

Life also helped me to stop obsessing. There were a lot of sickness and death that happened in the last 2 1/2 – 3 years. I lost a lot of close friends, family members, my mom in particular. 2020 is still a blur to me. Death will always put life into perspective for me. I realized who and what are important, who and what is worthy of my attention and worry and who and what isn’t. I make sure I make the best use of the life and time I have on this earth with the people I love. Hair is just hair. Yes it means a lot to women, yes it is our crown and glory. But at the end of the day, life means more than my hair. If I were to cut my locs off today and have a bald head, I’d make the most of my bald head. Would I miss my locs? Of course. But is it the end of the world? Not at all.

It feels good to be in this place in my life with my hair. My relationship with my hair will always be a little complicated, and that’s okay. But my hair no longer rules me, it no longer consumes my thoughts. My plan is to keep my locs for as long as possible. However long that will be, we’ll see. Life will go on because I am at peace with my hair.