My Journey Back To My ‘Nappy’ Roots Wasn’t Easy But The Best Decision
When I first went natural back in 2009, it was on a whim. My relaxed hair was thin, fragile and hadn’t grown past my shoulders since I was 9 years old.
An achievement I wouldn’t even have remembered were it not for the proof laying in the pages of a dusty family album, between pictures of me missing my two front teeth and a group shot of my family on one of the two trips we ever took to Six Flags.
There I was, a veritable beauty queen in a jean skirt, matching jean vest, and knee-high lace socks standing proudly beside a pool with BSL freshly pressed hair, immortalized. I gasped when I saw the photo, scratching the plastic as if the hair I saw was a smudge of eyeliner.
By 2009 I was a long way away from that youthful head of hair. After years of relaxers, flat-irons, and curling irons* to fit in with all the other girls, by the time I was in college my mop was feeling the effects of all that heat-addiction.
So I “Big-chopped”, before BCing was a thing, with the help of a friend who made me sign a hand-written liability waiver and insisted on a witness for her protection.
After she nervously put down her boyfriend’s shaver, and showed me the results, I was actually pleasantly surprised. My face glowed,.. actually, it radiated!–and I was suddenly filled with delusions of grandeur as images of the great African models Iman, Alek Wek and Grace Jones swirled around my mind.
I left, dancing blindly along a path that three months later would end on a bluff. As I stared at the canyon below, with a plastic comb wedged between my coarse, malnourished curls, pouring olive oil* on what felt like steel wool and crying, I was certain I would die.
Surely, I had already fallen, and here I was standing in the middle of my personal hell, slathered in oil. The frustration of not knowing how to care for my own hair was exacerbated by the feeling that everything that had previously worked on my relaxed hair, failed miserably when tested on my kinks.
Now, this was right before the natural hair movement really took off and vloggers, bloggers and YouTube naturalistas were unbeknownst to me, so I suffered through what I thought was my curse until one day, I just gave up.
Walking out of a Chicago salon a year and a half later with flowing, bouncing, chin-length relaxed hair, I could hear the bells of victory ringing. The sound faded–on cue–exactly one month later as my little kinks returned to remind me that though the battle was won, the war was not over.
This time around I vowed not to relapse on my favorite fixes, no matter how ratchet I was looking, limiting myself to curling once a month and flat-ironing once a week.
For the first time in years I began to see health return to my hair as well as volume, that elusive goddess!
It’s happening! It’s really happening! I thought as the hair on my nape began to graze my shoulders. The delusions returned, this time in the form of images of myself as a future Gabrielle Union or even– dare I say–B.
When I moved to Miami, I pushed back the anxiety of losing the only hairstylist who had successfully cared for my relaxed hair, telling myself I would find another, comparable professional.
I was moving to Miami, after all…So, when I rushed to a salon after a four month relaxer stretch, my first paycheck freshly deposited, I imagined myself emerging as Venus with APL hair, having reached a new level of goddess-hood as a certified dame.
I paid no attention to the hurried strokes of the Babyliss Nano Titanium flat iron* that the stylist dragged across my hair as she finished her work, and tipped her a handsome 25%. For one whole week, I was called “a model”, “sexy”, “gorgeous”–everything I had ever dreamed of as my hair swished and swayed and whored itself out to the public, shamelessly.
On my first post-relaxer wash day it was to my horror that I discovered why she hurriedly flat-ironed my hair to perfection. When water touched my hair, I transformed from Cinderella into Sam, the Chinese Crested dog: Clumps of my hair were half-wavy with limp ends, some sections dead straight, other sections like my “kitchen” were still nappy as ever.
Three years of healthy growth, ended in one afternoon. After an hour of tears, I emerged from my bathroom resolute to never let another pair of human hands touch my hair ever again. I closed the door on my fantasies of becoming “B” and began a journey of self-discovery that has tried and tested every part of me, from my self-confidence to my dating life.
It has been two years since my last relaxer, two years since my last pass with a flat-iron*, two years since I said goodbye to my chemical and mechanical heat-fixes forever.
My curls now graze my shoulders, and when stretched, I am a mere 2 inches from BSL. During this journey I almost became a product-junkie, almost resigned myself to spinsterhood, and almost gave up on all my dreams of attaining goddess-hood. #thestrugglecouldnotbemorereal.
But during this journey I have discovered a deeper love of myself, more than skin deep, or hair deep, and redefined my vision of a goddess from B and Iman, to every sister who has walked down this road, without a glance back: Head held high, spirit free, and self-worth emblazoned on every kink and coil.
