I used to hate my hair.

I began my natural hair journey in high school. My mom stopped getting relaxers, and I admired her beautiful loose curls. So, I decided to give it a try myself. Boy was I disappointed when my new growth of kinky hair started coming in. I wanted my hair to look like Tia and Tamera on Sister, Sister and it just wasn’t happening.

I was so upset with the way my hair naturally grew out of my head. I remember going to get my hair done in mid-transition. Half of my hair was grown out, and the rest was still straight. The beautician straight up said to me “This is a hot mess, you need a relaxer”. As if that helped my self-esteem. My solution was to straighten my hair. I rode that wave throughout the rest of high school. I could have learned how to do natural hairstyles. However, I honestly didn’t care to because I was embarrassed to wear my hair that way.

Fast forward to freshman year of college. Every Sunday after I washed my hair, I used a flat iron with product build up on the edges and smoked up my dorm room. I don’t know how my roommate put up with me. It smelled awful. The climate was mostly warm, so I ended up flat ironing my hair almost every day. My hair was a stringy hot mess. The summer before my sophomore year I was finally fed up. I found a natural hair stylist and told her to cut off ALL of that dead hair. I had a TWA (teen weeny afro). I felt so free and liberated. Even after that I struggled with doing my hair because I was always so busy. I still felt really insecure about it.

Why I love my nappy hair now (and why you should love yours too)

• God made us in His image. The way your hair grows out of your head is by His perfect design. It’s hard not to see the beauty in that.
• I learned how to give my hair some love, care, and nurturing. It was very frustrating, time consuming (YouTube tutorials), and costly (guilty product junkie), but I started to actually enjoy doing my hair.
• Natural hair is so versatile! We can try so many cute styles, even if sometimes they don’t work out as planned.
• I stopped tying my worth and identity to Eurocentric beauty standards.
• I believe that anyway a woman chooses to wear her hair is awesome. Natural, straight, weave, buzz cut: do you boo! As long you know how beautiful you truly are it doesn’t matter what is on top of your head, but what’s in it.

I am happy to be nappy!

P.S. I want you to know that when I typed “nappy definition” into Google it came up as “a baby’s diaper” and I almost fell out of my chair from laughing.