4 Steps to Loving and Accepting Your Natural Hair

Loving and accepting one’s natural hair texture is not always an easy task for many women as a lot of them are still carrying a heavy emotional baggage which prevents them from wearing their hair with pride. To fully love the coils and kinks in your hair, you will need to go through these 3 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 hairstylists 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 and 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 4 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 which 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 had to go through a similar stage?