Journey

By Charlene

I would like to preface this with two things. 1.) I love all people and have no race issues with anyone. 2.) I have no issues with black women having relaxed hair.

ok...moving on.

I just wanted to share a little bit about my decision to cut off all my hair.

For a few months now I've been struggling with my hair trying to go natural. It really was a struggle. I had to think "should I wear braids the whole time", you know to keep the length. "Should I wear a wig", you know to keep the straight look in between braids. And as each month passed I got more and more irritated with paying for braids, taking braids out, buying wigs, trying to go to the gym in my wig and sweating in it, and ultimately having to look at my nappy roots with straight hair hanging from them. It was time to make a decision.

DARE I CUT IT OFF? I had a million concerns about doing it: Will I look like a boy? Will people think I'm gay? Will I hate it and be bound to wigs for several more months? Will my real nappy locks look awful? Will I be able to maintain it? blah blah blah.

Well. I was sitting on the train one day and I saw two women standing next to each other. One black and one white. They looked almost identical except that their suits were different colors. The white lady had golden blonde waves cascading to her shoulders. The black lady had dark brown waves cascading onto hers. Then I thought. Why do we as black women feel the need to look like them. I mean I know that it's an American thing...you know the corporate look and all but I recently learned of women in Africa to spend tons of money buying skin bleaching and lightening creams so that they can look white. And on that train it dawned on me that our relaxers were a remnant of the mentality that white is prettier and better.

Now I'm not a pro-black kinda sista. As a matter of fact I think that being proud of or hating anyone's race is stupid since none of us had anything to do with being the color that we are anyway. We just came out that way. How can you be proud? It's not like you accomplished being black or white or hispanic etc. But anyway. back to my point.

The fears and concerns I had were steeped in the idea that straight hair was pretty and accepted. As I said before, I was afraid that my nappy locks would be ugly? It was then that I realized that God made my hair the way it is. It's got to be beautiful and I don't care if people think it looks good or not. So I made an appointment to cut it all off.

Now granted, the moment of truth was still scary. Thank God I had a great beautician who knew what I was going through and talked me through it.

Now that it's gone I feel free-er. One thing the beautician said to me is that if I wanted to cut my hair all off then I must be on a journey. And she was right. I am being transformed and this is just an outward sign of what's going on inside.

yea me :-)

thanx for reading.