if you learn to love yourself, the REAL you, you will ALWAYS be fulfilled. stop trying to be regarded as beautiful from people who do not find who you really are attractive.
i offer a few thoughts, to anyone bored enough to read this.
i understand that it is hard for us to deal with "going natural" especially in the early stages.
it's not hard to be natural in general, but it is hard to be natural in a society where who we naturally are isn't widely accepted, is deemed inappropriate for a professional workplace and can even get our children suspended from school.
it's not hard to deal with natural hair, generally speaking. it is hard to deal with our natural hair after we have been conditioned to believe our hair is only somewhat acceptable when it is as tamed as possible. we were taught to tame our beautiful wild crowns, by any means necessary. the self hate is real. so real that we find it perfectly acceptable to attach a synthetic or human hair to our own heads, all in the interest of "beauty". this is the equivalent of a queen removing a crown of jewels and placing a plastic dollar store tiara on her head.
personally, i feel heat is naturally occurring. i do not mind putting heat to my hair occasionally for a silk out or a deep condition. but i do not wish to abuse my hair by putting heat on it regularly.
it's easy to get frustrated with having to spend at least 20 minutes at night to ensure that my hair will behave the way i want it to in the morning. but after fifteen months, it has become my normal routine. replacing my previous norm of fifteen years, which was to relax my hair chemically.
my first indication that the process of relaxing, or as it is commonly mis-referred to: perming , wasn't for me is that it didn't work as expected. even after a relaxer my hair was still curly and would still begin to form locs after a few days. however, the chemicals did work well at relaxing my roots so my curls would fall down instead of growing upwards into an afro.
based on what i know to be true and what i accept as truth, if there is any of my features that elude to traces of african ancestry or moorish descent it would be my hair. this is also confirmed to me by the amount of times someone has said to me anything along the lines of: "i thought you were (any race) but you have (any variation of "black people") hair. my choice is to embrace it.
although the natural 'movement' is gaining popularity, it is still the norm within our community to put all kinds of chemicals on your hair and sit and wait for it to begin to burn, and perhaps longer. to endure the burning of your scalp and hair due to the chemicals you purchased at a beauty supply store, the kind of store where we pour our money away from our community and into the pockets of those who are exploiting our ignorance and self hate, the same stores where they will eye ball the hell out of you and/or follow you to make sure you don't swipe a pair of $3 earrings that they paid .30 for.
some people claim it's just a preference, to each her own. if you don't overstand that it's deeper than that, i can't help you. know that your preference can be biased (depending on your level of consciousness) due to years of programing and conditioning.
natural or relaxed, self love is necessary. growing up i met many beautiful insecure queens. in our ignorance we were doing anything to be "beautiful". a few of us learned to love ourselves, a lot of us never did. body issues, eating disorders, self esteem issues can all be alleviated by elevation of consciousness. if we can experience the true fulfillment of self love some of the other issues will at least begin to work themselves out.
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