Loving and accepting one’s natural hair texture is not always easy task for Black women as a lot might still be carrying emotional baggage that’s preventing them from wearing their hair with pride.
To fully love the coils and kinks in your hair, I recommend going through these four stages in the following sequence.
1. Acceptance
This means accepting the God-given texture you were born with and accepting the joy of having a unique hair texture which is only common to you.
2. Forgive
Forgive yourself for abusing your hair and forcing it into submission all these years. Forgive previous hair stylists who “encouraged” your decision to go natural. Forgive your parents, friends and relatives for the poor advice they gave you about your hair and how to care for it. Forgive the hair company for making you feel like your natural texture isn’t beautiful enough.
3. Learn and Grow
Now that you’ve let go of some emotional baggage, you now have some space to learn how to properly take care of your new-found hair texture. You must now learn all that you can about the science, history and politics behind your hair.
These three areas are very important because sometimes, no matter how great your hair looks, you might face some negative criticism or resistance from people around you. However, being knowledgeable about the history and politics behind afro-textured hair helps you to handle frictions when they arise.
A Naturalista with knowledge on the history and politics of her hair will have compassion towards Black people who criticizes her hair time and will take the time to educate non-Blacks who picks fun at her fro, rather than fighting or arguing.
4. Take Action
This means taking care of your hair by yourself, although you can get help when needed. It also means feeding your hair from the inside out through proper nutrition, exercise and daily maintenance. Lastly, you should try to wear your hair out as often as you can, instead of hiding them away in the name of protective styling.
The length of time it takes to go through these stages will vary with each individual and so you can take your time to ease yourself through these four steps. Also, one stage might be easier to complete than the other.
This is why growing one’s natural texture should be a personal decision that no one should be forced into because you can’t force someone to love something they don’t feel comfortable in.
How was the initial stages of your natural hair journey? Did you have to go through a similar stage?
