Since the 11th March 2024 (I know it’s very specific, but it was an important time for me which is why I remembered it) – I started a new hair care routine, prompted by several people messaging me on social media over several months asking me “why are you neglecting your beautiful curly hair”?
My response was “I don’t have curly hair”, some people insisted I did, but perhaps I didn’t know?
Other people commented too eventually, some were hair care specialists in the field too, helping me either straightening my hair or giving me tips on how to de-frizz my curly hair back to life again!
I found it all very curious!
I knew on both sides of my family that 75% of my family members were naturally curly haired, my mother always led me to believe they deliberately permed or styled their hair to be that way – but over the years I’ve learned a lot about my lineage and I have learned a lot from various relatives about their hair and their hair care routine.
The most helpful people for me have been the distant black cousins who I’ve found via GenesReunited, they were the ones who first spoke about my severely damaged and neglected curly hair!
They helped advise me how to care for my hair properly!
I admit I wasn’t convinced I had curly hair, but I knew if I did nothing to my wet hair in the summer I was ultra-wavy!
They told me to do myself a favour right now – go and wash my hair and see how many waves I have per strand of hair!
First of all I didn’t even know what a proper strand of hair looked like! I thought a strand of hair was a single hair, but it’s not!
It’s a clump group of hair that would form proper curls when cared for.
This explained a lot to me.
My hair wasn’t like a blanket when I washed it, it would always form about thirty clumps and those clumps were very bumpy!
When I finished washing my hair, I realised that these clumps and bumps and waves vanished when I dried and brushed my hair, the way my mother taught me!
I remembered my grandma who had very tight coils for hair – she hated me using the brushes my mum gave me! She always used to tell me that I need an afro comb, get rid of those monstrosities!
My grandma was second generation mixed race, a very guarded secret in the family I found out!
So I bought myself an afro comb and used that when I washed my hair and used the hairdryer… my hair showed some signs of improvement, but not much!
Being very curious about my hair I decided to research online what I needed to do for my hair and I stumbled across the “curly girl method”, for the first three weeks my scalp suffered hugely as I had an allergy to the soybean products I started to use.
I have intolerance to soy in my diet, but now it seems in cosmetic products as well!
Using hair food treatment, leave in conditioner, hair gel, having no sulphate shampoo and what have you – I learned that having curly hair was more method than products.
I had to completely shift out of the mind set of using towels to dry my hair, I had to shift out of the concept of brushing my hair as I dry it, I had to learn how to diffuse my hair and basically, not touch my hair at all whilst it is drying to get my hair looking curly.
The result?
This…
I still haven’t got the foggiest what I am doing wrong, but I can clearly see that I was never meant to have had straight hair at all!
Thing is, I never knew my whole life and I am forty two in October!
My mum used to hate my hair, always moaning about how kinky it is and how it frizzes and gets all these electrical charges very easily, how unmanageable it was, and taught me to brush tight and put on the hottest temperature on the hairdryer to straighten my hair. She bought me straightening irons too and said I needed to iron my hair because I would look ridiculous if I didn’t!
She also said to me her own hair was like that too and she had to iron it as well and it’s been the bane of her life too! I never knew until recently she was hiding her ancestry, an ancestry I knew she was ashamed of, because she was a racist when I was growing up with her. I remember her talking about things a lot, talking about how proud she was to be involved in the race riots in the 60s!
During the same time my grandmother was protecting two black foster children under her care and was trying to fight the authorities to adopt them fully as her own children when she learned their mother had gone back to Barbados and wasn’t coming back for them!
My mum caused so many problems racially at the time; my grandma was forced to give those children up by the authorities, something my grandma never forgave my mum for!
I remember questioning my grandmothers skin tone and hair all the time growing up, but was always given derogatory answers by my mum and I was oddly forbidden to NEVER speak about my family history to anyone!
So naturally, when I left home, I threw myself into genealogy and a lot of things from my childhood were explained!
Here’s a picture of my grandma just weeks before she died.
These are not the only secrets I’ve recently uncovered about my past either, there are other things I have learned, but I am currently having them investigated professionally as I can hardly believe to what extent I’ve been deceived my whole life with!
Obviously for the past year or two I’ve been questioning rather deeply who I really am? Because it appears my whole life has been a lie!
Even down to my own hair type!
I knew my mother was a narcissistic, Munchausen, feeder abuser – but the things I am uncovering about my past and the past of my family is beyond shocking!
Recent news is the icing on the cake and I cannot share that unless I have absolute proof about it first!
So, for now… I am trying to learn the culture of curly hair, as it appears that’s my hair type!
Defining myself is becoming more important as I grow older, especially the more I am learning about myself and my family as a whole!
Thanks for reading!
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