Hello All!

Yes, it has been a minute… yet again. *lol* While part of my absence has been due to dealing with personal issues and the birth of my first grandson, a big part of it was due to my growing disenchantment with all things black hair related.  Well, not black hair itself but all of the superficial BS “politics” that are imposed on it.  The never ending “good vs. bad” debate that never dips deeper than the surface of antiquates social concepts; the collective “groupthink” perpetuation of stereotypes which keeps us locked in damaging thought patterns; having more important aspects of our heritage diminished to trivial prejudices attached to our coils.  And let’s not even get into the disunion which exists within the black hair community itself!  It’s just all really too much to deal with when much larger issues deserve much more of our attention, and so I considered scraping the Blog and the book project altogether.

But then I got to thinking… Whose journey is this, exactly?  Did I begin pursuing the napptural life to gain approval from the natural community?  No.  Was I going through the legwork of research for the book because it would make me popular?  Of course not.  Did this start off as an exercise in conformity to what others thought “going natural” should be about?  Hell no!  This journey is about me and me alone, and I am doing all of this because I wanted to, apart from all of the above chaos and protocol.  So with that realization I made the decision that I would not quit on myself, and having mastered the chemical free part of the process I figured it was time start over again… on my terms.

Because the hair part of the journey is largely symbolic of inner restructuring and I’d already done that “hard” part of rendering myself chemical free, I figured the next step was to conquer learning myself through my hair as it grew.  So after returning from a particularly stress-filled visit home, I got acquainted with my scissors and took my hair down as short as I could possibly dare to go.  As you can see from the above picture, I went from ~ 8 to 10 inches down to ~ 1 to 3, a drastic switch if I do say so myself.  Now while I have had my hair this short several times before it has always been relaxed, and even though I have close to three years natural to my credit, I am learning there is a totally different dynamic between napptural with length and napptural without it.  I’m starting from square one again, not just in dealing with the texture of my hair (which is way curlier than I’d ever anticipated) but in dealing with the  negative psychology surrounding women of colour with short natural hair as well.  Since cutting my hair I have fought back tears of regret and frustration every time I look in the mirror.  I’ve received compliments from friends, which is very inspiring… but fighting through the learned perception that long hair equates to beauty and femininity is harder than I’d thought it would be.  So again, it’s not just about the hair.  This leg of the journey is about breaking down personal prejudices, misconceptions and working through self image fears I didn’t know I had.  It’s also about accepting myself outside of what others believe defined beauty via hair, whether natural, relaxed, long or short.

So here I am, looking like a Monchhichi in my opinion, with teenie weenie corkscrews adorning my head that I can’t keep my fingers far from.  Of course, because I’m not a skilled stylist and had to do most of the cutting by feel, I will have to take the next step and visit a barber for shaping and tapering.  From there begins the process of learning my distinct curl patterns, what products help to keep them manageable and healthy, as well as educating myself on what practices promote growth.  This will be an extreme exercise in patience on my part, because while it’s easy to “ignore” growth when you already have length to work with, I know each quarter inch I gain each month will be like watching paint dry, and there will be no quick fixes to bide my time with.  Maybe, after a couple of inches, I’ll go on ahead and loc it all up, but for now I’ll make do with the hard work of growing comfortable with my TWA.

Healthy Hair Wishes,