The Journey of My Hair: Dusty and Uneven to Thick and Flourishing
Tags: Hair, Belonging, Collaboration, Learning, Year One

I remember my childhood as if it were yesterday. The fun times and the juvenile games were a highlight, but what I remember most was sitting in between my mom’s legs every morning as she did my hair before the school day. I grew up with the hot comb, hair rollers, silk scarves and the cold feeling of Bronner Bros hair grease on my scalp, which were the simple necessities that my mom used to maintain my afro. My hair was long and thick and looking back now I wish I appreciated my texture more. As I got older, my hair went through a lot, so much that at times it looked jacked up and beyond repair! Today though, I can thankfully say that my hair has bounced back like nothing ever happened.

Throughout elementary school my mom styled my hair by flat ironing it, doing pigtails or four big braids with little clip-on bows. The styles I wore were age-appropriate and cute, but at the time I didn’t appreciate them. I grew tired of the same styles and thought they made me look ugly. I wanted my hair to be flowy and long like the other girls my age. Toward the end of my fifth-grade year, I had decided I wanted to go into middle school with a new style; something more mature. That’s when my mom introduced me to the idea of getting a perm. From then on my hair took a downward spiral….

I remember the day I walked into the salon. I went in with the expectation of leaving and looking cuter than ever before. I was sadly mistaken… As I sat in the chair the stylist applied to my scalp what looked like a jar of mayonnaise. What’s crazy was no one told me the substance would feel like it was burning my scalp, so I just sat there wincing and thinking to myself, “beauty is pain.” After she washed and rinsed the perm out of my hair, I was surprised that she still had to flat iron and hot comb my hair. To this day, I still don’t handle the hot comb well, so even then I was jumping and hiding tears in the salon chair. After all of that, I was still pretty disappointed with the finished product. My hair looked like it was in the shape of a helmet.

This went on throughout middle school and early high school. My mom kept taking me to get perms and my hair progressively got worse to the point where I was developing scabs on my scalp. The perms also started to break off my hair to the point where one side was longer than the other. People would say I looked like a burn victim and call me ugly. I grew to believe those things myself. Once again, I felt like I didn’t belong and thought all the other girls were prettier and had healthier and more beautiful hair than I did.

Thankfully, I grew out of that thinking and my hair grew out of that phase. By the middle of my ninth-grade year, I cut all of the damaged pieces of my hair and started my natural hair journey with a mini-fro! I started wearing box braids and other natural hairstyles, watched hair tutorials on YouTube and started taking care of my hair. To make a long story short, my hair has grown back beautifully, and my afro is now restored to its original health. Not only do I feel like I belong now, but more importantly I feel like I stand out! My hair journey has taught me a valuable lesson to not change the natural things about myself. This is a lesson everyone should learn. We don’t need to change anything about ourselves, but rather take care of the things we are born with so we can flourish without unnecessary add-ons.