I fell in love with my hair. I’ve been on a journey to love my hair which means embracing every part of it. I had to love the brush raking and tugging through my curls in order to untangle them. I had to accept the moments of frustration where the hot steamy tears flooded my eyes as I stared in the mirror mad at the failed hairstyle. The feeling of failure hits me over and over again and I partake in this hair love journey. Yet in the midst of failure, I still had to love the long receipts of listed beauty products that cost as much as my monthly paycheck from my minimum wage job, the hundreds of YouTube videos in order to perfect my cornrow technique, and sprinting out to the car from the beauty salon with a plastic Walmart bag over my head to protect my hair. Not only do I have to protect my hair, I have to protect the craft, the culture, and the time and energy I spent on myself. And in order to love, I had to learn. I learned that my hair defies gravity. Every inch it grows floats towards the sky. I had to learn that my curls bounce like a spring each step I take. I don't need a rubber band to hold my hair up into place because it’s just the way my hair is. Natural curls and all. It is sacred and it’s mine. When I was a kid, unfortunately I didn’t know what a gift I’d had. I had a lot to learn and I was far from love.  

I was adopted when I was a baby. My parents were white and my mom had silky pin straight hair. All I could think about was the fact that mine looked different. And instead of loving my differences I looked down on myself. I saw my curls as a chore. It was exhausting and painful to rake through the knots and kinks in my hair. I wasn't patient or kind to myself during this time. The girls at school didn't have hair like mine either. They could put their hair into buns and pigtails and my hair couldn’t be put in the same updos. My buns puffed up and never stayed in the elastic band and my hair in pigtails never fell next to my ears. When we would look at classroom photos from school I could immediately point out where I was in the sea of fellow students who look the same as each other. I felt lost and confused and as a child who didn’t know much about herself I assumed that there must be something wrong with me. 

In order to assimilate to my surroundings, I added relaxers to my hair once per month for eight straight years. It’s a process where they put chemicals in the hair to remove the curls semi permanently. The final look comes out with pin straight hair. By the end of it my hair was so damaged I had to cut it all off. It was the most humiliating feeling. For a black woman, hair is the most sacred feature. It is unique and should be cared for. Every curl, coil, and kink should be handled with grace. I am a young black female who had a duty to take care of one of the things that makes me special and I destroyed it. 

Looking back at my younger self, I see a girl who was lost and trying to find her way. A girl who was navigating a world that told her that she would never be enough. A girl who didn’t have patience to love her hair and, most importantly, didn’t know how to love herself. But the younger me had to fight. I had to fight for myself in order to claim my identity. I surrounded myself with other beautiful black women that lifted me up. Who always supported me during my journey. I surrounded myself with the girls who would tuck a loose braid back into place, the friends who would hide the lace from my lace front wig, the girls that would braid my hair at lunch, and the sistas who always remind me that I’m beautiful. I never believed them at first when they would tell me this, but soon I realized that I am in fact beautiful. It is frustrating how long it took me to see beauty within myself. 

I’m not mad at younger me. If anything I would like to tell her thank you. Because all of her pain and struggle meant something. Everything that younger me had to go through led up to all the moments where I embraced my hair which allowed me to learn how to love myself. And I had to learn to let that be enough. Soon that became more than enough. Now I am secure in knowing that it will always be enough.