Still Quietly Negotiating

Therapist as Human | Hair Untamed Series | Part 1

I came across a reel recently of a natural hairstylist prepping a new client with big, beautiful, tightly coiled hair, long and full. When ask what she wanted, the teenaged client kept patting her hair down and saying she wanted it to lay flat. She pulled a coil down to show it's length and stated that she wanted it to stay that way for length and didn't want it to keep going up and out. The stylist asked her if she had friends with hair like hers, and the girl said no. She had friends with curly hair, but the curls were bigger, looser and not like hers. She shared that she didn't like the tight curls, and she didn't like the volume, and she just wanted it flat and down.

The stylist listened attentively and gently explained that the girl's hair didn't grow that way, that it was sitting exactly the way her hair sits. And she talked to her about the process of learning to love what her hair actually does instead of trying to make it into something it was not. She used the word process deliberately, I think, because she already knew the girl wasn't going to walk out of that chair converted. The girl just wanted her hair flat, and the stylist knew that. But she planted the seed of self-love and acceptance anyway.

I recognized myself in both the girl and the stylist.

After I cut my locs back in 2013 and again in 2021, I watched my hair grow back up and out the way natural black hair does, and both times I felt that same pull to tame it, especially when it became too long. I felt nervous about perception in the workplace, and so I restarted my locs to make the hair sit down to solve the problem. The same quiet anxiety about how my natural hair would be received led me to compromise each time, but in a way that suited me. Having locs made me feel culturally grounded, and so I told myself, both times, that relocking was an act of pride. And part of that was true. But if I'm honest, part of it was also containment, with pride and manageability wrapped up together and presented as a seamless thing. There is a version of self-acceptance that looks like the real thing from the outside but is still quietly negotiating on the inside. We find the version of ourselves that feels authentic enough while still staying within the lines of what we think other people can receive, even if marginally.

"Very vanilla" is the word that kept coming to me.

After combing out my locs again last month, I experimented with my newly loosed hair a couple of weeks ago when my oldest son gifted me with a self care day at the salon for Mother's Day. I had my hair was washed, deep conditioned, blown out, silk pressed for the first time. I hadn't had my hair straightened like that in over two decades, and I'll be honest, the novelty of it was appealing. But by the end of that week, I was less enthused because the thin, flat hair didn't feel like me or who I wanted to be.

Volume makes me feel bold and beautiful.

I washed it out, blew it dry to lengthen but keep some of the volume, and immediately felt more like myself. The next week, I washed my hair again to get my natural curls back. When my hair dried out, it thickened up and got big and bushy, and I felt that old familiar pull to make it sit down. But I worked with it and allowed it to just exist.

I said before that I wanted to experience my hair untamed, and I meant it. But I am coming to recognize that there is a part of me that is still uncomfortable with what untamed actually looks like in practice. Part of the discomfort might be my own colonization. I'm not entirely sure, and I think sitting in that the discomfort is part of the work of radical acceptance. Real radical acceptance has to include not just the parts of myself I've already made peace with, but also the parts I'm still quietly negotiating.

 I want to get to a place of true natural hair acceptance and don't feel that pull to make my hair be something it's not. And I hope, one day, the teenager in that reel gets there too.

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