The journey to fully accepting my 4c hair has been long. I was about five years old the first time my mother decided to relax my hair. She made this decision because she had no clue how to take care of my hair. We just freshly immigrated to the United States from Nigeria and my mom was balancing being a single mother with two kids and being in an entirely new country, so she did the only thing she could to make it better, she began to relax my hair.
This continued for the next ten years. About once every three months I would sit in between my mother’s legs as she slathered my roots with the creamy, white chemical. The burn became a consistent part of life and I quickly had to become accustomed to this tradition. The relaxer combined with the consistent heat that would be put in my hair from straightening and curling made my hair extremely damaged, dry, and brittle.
As I got older my mother spent less time managing me and I had more control over what I did with my own hair. I finally went natural towards the end of my freshman year. This was a major turning point in my hair journey. At this point, I stopped getting relaxers simply due to the fact that no one in my house had the time to do it.
The moment I decided to make the big change will forever be ingrained in my brain. It was a typical wash day and when I stepped out of the shower and examined my hair in the mirror, I was immediately taken back by what I saw. Half of my hair was curly due to the fact I had not received a relaxer in about nine months and the ends were still straight from the years of constant treatment. I hated the way it looked. The next thing I knew I had a pair of scissors in my hand and I had cut off all the straight ends on the bottom. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Initially, I was full of confusion and regret about how to take care of my hair. No one else in my family was natural and I knew that I would be on my own. It took so much trial and error to fully become comfortable with my hair and it was not until recently that I began to experiment more with my hair. In the last year, I have experimented with my styles more than I did for the first three years of my natural hair journey. This is only the beginning.
The journey to accepting fully accepting my hair has been long and even though there are struggles and moments in which I have thought about just shaving it all off, it has been so worth it. I love my 4c hair and even if the media tries to demonize it. It may take extra care and work compared to other hair textures, both curly and straight, but it is a huge part of who I am.
