I heard this song today and I love it! Showing our vulnerabilities is what makes us human but also it is what makes us who we are. A lesson to remember indeed...
Love and light,
S
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
My Natural Transition: Journeying deeper into myself
Last year, around this same time I decided to go natural. For those of you who may not know what this means, I will fill you in. It means that I decided to no longer straighten my hair and instead decided to embrace my natural tresses. This means that I would be embracing the natural texture of my hair and I had no idea what it looked like. This was both a very exciting and very scary process at the same time. I have not seen my natural hair since I first started perming my hair when I was 12, so this was a pretty major decision to say the least.
Why, you may ask, did I decide to do it? I decided to do it because I was so tired of sitting in a hairdressing chair for 5 hours plus to get the same hairstyle that I have been getting for the past 6 years (at least). I really began to feel oppressed by the entire process, being tied to someone else to actually do something that I should have been able to do myself and relying on having to get a perm say every 2 months and feeling somewhat too tied to that entire process. It was like I was always looking for that next fix of straight hair. After awhile, it wasn't sitting well with me for so many different reasons.
When I initially started I was scared. I didn't know what to do, didn't know what my hair would look like. I just had a vision of what I imagined it would be and hoped that I could get it like that. It was also a process where my hair was straight for a pretty long time, as I tried to grow out the permed and for a minute, the process of it didn't seem to hard. I remember continually wondering why in so many blogs, forums and you tube videos, girls complained about how hard the process was because I thought that it wasn't too bad. I also didn't want to go to just any hairdresser to help with the process because I was afraid that they wouldn't know what to do and they would tell me that I would have to cut off all my hair and I just wasn't ready for that.
As time passed I began to realize just how difficult it was. Not only did I have to embrace my hair as it was and learn how to actually take care of and style my hair (thank goodness for you tube!!) but I was constantly pulled between this tension of having straight hair or curly hair. I was also discouraged because my hair didn't look the way that I wanted it to. There were so many girls on Youtube with hair videos with beautiful, big curly hair that seemed so simple and care free and I wasn't there yet.
Throughout this process I realized just how tied I am to my hair: just how much I allow it to identify who I am and just how many layers are tied to a black hair including self-esteem, identity, conforming to societal and cultural standards, etc.
After much wrestling back and forth through so many of these issues, I realized that embracing my hair as it is, meant really embracing who I am fully. Once I began to treat my hair with love and kindness I began to see just how much of this process was a journey to deeper self-acceptance and love. By all means, I cannot say that this process is over: I have my good days and my bad days but what I do know is that I am redefining myself every day and continuing to peel away the layers that are me. It is almost like an onion, the more layers that I peel away, the closer I am to my true core.
For more about this I have included a link to a video that I found really helpful. I feel like it really speaks to me in terms of my hair journey. Although I don't agree with everything she says I think she provides a good overview.
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