And the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.

I lost my mind, came to my senses & embraced my hair as God issued it about 4 years ago.

I am LOVIN IT!

I can remember the first time my mama sat me in a tub to rinse that burning Ultra Sheen lye based perm out of my head. My daddy came in fussin, "What you doin to the child's head?!"

"Her hair is too thick-n-nappy! This will help me be able to manage this mess!" my mama answered.

"She's too young for all that in her head!" he pressed on.

"No....I got my hair relaxed when I was younger than her!" Mama proceeded to tilt my head back under the tub faucet to rinse the caustic gook from my head.

"But-" he protested.

"Well, it's too late now," Mama began shampooing my hair for the third & final lye cleansing/deactivating shampoo, "and I'm the one who has to try to get through this child's long, thick head of hair everyday!"

"Are you gonna do her sister's hair like that too?" Daddy asked.

"No," Mama lathered my hair and her fingers stung into my tenderized, chemically burned scalp. I was quiet though. Many little Black girls learn to be quiet & be still while caustic chemicals burn their scalps or while sitting with a red hot comb going from the fire to their heads. (Always something!) So sitting through this was simply a part of my training.

"Good!" Daddy sounded relieved.

"Well, her sister doesn't need it. She has good hair," Mama said matter of factly.

"Mama," I whispered having just received the revelation regarding my hair. I had not known until that point that my hair was being so naughty, so bad & unruly.

"Yes, Baby?" Mama answered tenderly as she tilted me back into the cool stream of the faucet..

"Am I gonna have good hair now too?" I asked in search of something good out of the strange hair ritual I had just endured.

"Yes, Baby," Mama assured me.

I smiled and squinted my eyes closed to ignore the burning, stinging pain that had been circling the edges of my right ear through the process.

The next day all the little girls in my kindergarten class wanted to touch my long silky braids. I had never been so proud of my hair before. I felt so pretty.  My mother had neglected to put enough gel (really grease) on my right ear before she began relaxing my hair.  The lye sat directly on my ear and had caused a nasty burn.  I did not care though.  It hurt but my long silky braids covered the top of my burned ear.  Everybody was saying how pretty I looked.  I felt great!  My hair was being so "good".  For me that meant I was good too.  I smiled all day long!

About 30 years later, I got up one day and looked at the smiling Black beauties on my box of Dark-n-Lovely. I looked passed their smiles and into their eyes. Then I looked into the mirror. I threw the box of Dark-n-Lovely away. I threw on my Bob Marley Legend CD and grabbed my bees wax.

The next day at work all the little people kept looking at my hair but they did not say much.  I chuckled on the inside at their perplexed side-ways glances. They were white, mostly late middle-aged or older folks.  If they could ever get passed their own presumptions and assumptions perhaps they could have just asked me about it. At any rate, they knew something looked different because I usually wore my hair in tiny silky little twists. This looked basically the same as the twists but subtlety different.

They could not really figure it out...at first.  Things developed though and they did not have to wonder after a couple of months!  I felt grand. I felt FREE!  I felt even better than I had felt that first day at school after my first relaxer...and this time there are no burns.  Imagine that! 

I have never been so happy with my hair, my skin, my nature my AUTHENTICITY before. I feel like a Queen...a God-CROWNED Queen! I have also never experienced such a wide range of reactions to my hair. My hair for me has become my own personal study on culture, on human nature and on sisterhood. When I embraced this particular way of wearing my hair I must confess that I was not as aware of it's implications as I am today. Those who have known me for a number of years know that I have gone from color to color, style to style and in and out and back again with my hair. I have always LOVED trying out different hairstyles and just being creative with it. Dreads, however have been an experience that no other "hair-fancy"of mine has ever been for me before.

On a regular basis I have people of all races stop me and comment on my hair. It's funny. I never anticipated this. Many people sport dreads these days but obviously not so many that it has completely emerged from it's enigmatic status. Just the other night I was walking into the grocery store and a sharp sista, who was walking out stopped and said, "GURRRRLLLLLLLLL! I just LOVE your hair! Now that is truly beautiful!" She was with her man who was also sharp and he smiled in agreement. I said, "Why thank you Sista! I LOVE your hair too!" Her hair was long, ash brown and cascaded over her shoulders in loose free curls. It made me reminiscent of my own hair when I used to wear it that way. (Every now and then I miss just taking a comb through it...and that wonderful tingling feeling that only a good comb through can leave on your scalp). We exchanged holiday blessings and she walked away. It warms the soul when sistas can genuinely appreciate one another without "hateration".

Of course, reactions are not always as positive as that. I like that, however, because it keeps my "study" interesting.  All kinds of assumptions are made about me due to my dreads. Other dreadlock wearers report the same.  I was not aware of the social, political, religious and even sexuality-based assumptions about dreads before I decided to wear them.  I have since researched, read up and spoken to other dread-heads.  "Mine eyes have been opened!"  People see this hair and truly think they know "something"--anything about ME?  It is so funny. If I could show people a flip book of me and all my many different hairstyles, they would shut-up but I do not want them to right now. Bring it on, I say. Some women make subtle little remarks. Some just out and out ask me when I plan to "cut them all off"?  It is particularly interesting when white women advise me on how I should change this or that about my nappy head of hair.  Of course anyone with dreads or even braids can tell you about the comments from bourgeois brothas and sistas regarding how dreads may potentially hold one back professionally in all mighty-ighty "corporate America".  I suppose it is widely considered safe to feel that since we can adjust our hair and not our skin, we can use our hair to fool us into believing that we can actually attain some type of corporate uniformity wherein we look enough like "them" to be taken seriously.

What would happen if we actually ever had the ability to change our skin color as readily as we can straighten our hair?  Would "corporate America" not prefer this lightening?  Would lightened skin and straightened hair make it easier for us to shuffle on up the ole ladder?  Would there be any Black folk left or would we all look like increasingly more macabre versions of Michael Jackson?  It is frightening to even imagine the implications.  I contend that there are plenty of highly successful African American people with ethnic hairstyles within the corporate sector.  What is in their heads as opposed to what is on their heads seems to have determined their positions.  Any business or corporation that would deny a woman or man a position because he or she decided to wear their hair in it's natural state, does not deserve that individual.  Straight hair, curly hair, kinky hair, no hair–we just need to get up and get THERE!  As more of us refuse to conform, more of us will explode the ranks and do all that God sent us here to do in all of our Authentic glory!  Amen?

When initially I shared that little story about my first relaxing with a group of sista-friends, they really appreciated it.  Many identified with it. Note that I say, "many" because not all sistas have the same type of hair, hair style or even the same type of experiences with their hair.  My point here is to embrace uniqueness and authenticity.  We each live our own individual lives.  We must own our own experiences.  We are as different as each snowflake that falls from the sky.  Before I locked it up, some sitas used to criticize me for wearing my hair long and straight.  They said, (as Black as I am, have always been and will always be) that I was just trying to wear my hair "like them white girls".  Now what?  This is why I always do to suit my God and myself.

Some children of the Afro-dashiki-Black-Pride generation of the 70's, were taught to love their hair in its natural God-given condition.  Some were not.  I still silently cringe when I have to sit and listen to an otherwise beautiful Black woman explain to me that she has "good-hair" or that there is "some Indian" or even better "white" in her giving her a "better-grade" of hair.  Well, the grade she gets for Wisdom is F for foolish!  It just screams IGNORANCE for a woman, educated or not, to need to be anything or anyone but who God created her to be.  Whatever her hair looks like or feels like, she needs to wash it, style it, do whatever she wants to do with it and get on with fulfilling her mission by God here on earth.

As women of color from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, we must celebrate the dimensions of our rich heritage.  We can heal from a past that failed to honor our essential beauty by embracing our Collective Identity without putting off any part(s) of ourselves. Until we do this we will never be whole.  Until we do this we will never as a people be really well.  Until we do this we will remain at the mercy of other people's standards of beauty, worth and acceptability. 

We ALL have good hair.  I will not give you an in-depth run down of the race and ethnicity of the men who have "dipped their toes in our collective grandmothers’ streams, BUT most of us have some "Indian," some white, some Hispanic, Asian, African, etc., in us.  Get over it.  We are The Mother of Humanity.  It's ALL in there.  Every nuance makes us even more beautiful whether our complexions are deep purple, honey brown, creamy white or any shade in between.  Our hair from silk to wool is exquisite and as God created it to be.  It is a gift that we should wear, style, toss and delight in as an expression of our uniqueness, our feminine POWER and creativity.  Our hair is a crown for we are Queens.

We all BE BEAUTIFUL!

What matters now is that we embrace and love every aspect of who we are as women. Our bodies, our minds and our spirits...along with our hair, nails, complexion, weight, bra-size, etc., contribute to our ultimate exquisite nature. From the tips of our toes to the tops of our heads we need to appreciate the Authentic Woman in all her glory. Again, we are as God created us to be. Frying, lye-ing and dying our hair in order to fit into anyone else's vision of who we should be, is not a loving thing to do to ourselves. Styling, relaxing, coloring, locking or doing whatever else we want to do with our hair simply because that is what we want to do...is POWERFUL and authentic. As the classic R & B song says, "It’s your thang...YEAH...Do what you wanna do!"

Who initially told us that naturally tight little curls of thick woolen hair was an undesirable condition for our hair anyway? Who told us that long flowing silky hair was most desirable? Did we accept this lie because we really believed it to be true? Did we accept it because the man with the whip, the money,the land and all the power also had straighter hair and wives and daughters with flowing silken locks of blonde, brunette and red? Did we somehow equate European textured hair, white skin, white features and body types with superiority and even freedom? Do we not realize that this lie was perpetrated for a reason? What has it cost us? How has it dictated our actions and our attitudes about ourselves and about one another?

In early American history, classic afro-centric features had to be propagandized out of favor. How else could they deny their irresistible urges to creep into our beds behind their wives? I imagine that whenever a slave owner’s wife would begin to get suspicious or insecure, ole dirty mastah would say, "Oh stop being foolish woman. Why would I want any nasty black-skinned, big lipped, woolly headed, big butt, milking cow in my bed? It’s your porcelain skin, rosy cheeks and long silky tresses I love dear." She felt better. He felt clever and no one was the wiser. Even the Black woman and the Black man began to accept the lie. This lie has been perpetuated ever since.

I do not know about you but I ain’t buying it. Popular culture today is the culminating product of generation upon generation of negative stereotyping, racism, sexism and assimilation. By casting women of color as less than desirable we were made easier to victimize, exploit and control. We were brain washed into believing the lies. Many of us still believe them. Just look around you. Women on a whole no matter what race they belong to are effected. Many Black women are on a constant quest to get their hair straighter and straighter. Many white women are getting perms to make their hair curly, risking skin cancer to get darker skin and having fat from their behinds injected into their lips! Asian women are reportedly running to get plastic surgery to "open-up" their eyes in order to make them look more European. It is so ridiculous and so sad. God’s creations hate themselves. It is like having the colors of the rainbow cry. Blue is crying because it wants to be Red. Yellow weeps for she longs to be Brown. Purple is suicidal because she just wants to be Orange. Sistas! Sistas of all colors, nationalities and races, we need to stop this! It is time to draw from our Hiyaah POWER & embrace a Hiyaah Perspective!

It's a new day. We know better now. It's a brand new day!

In this new day we must reveal the Truth to one another and our daughters about all aspects of the Authentic Woman. The authentic woman can possess varied features, come in all different shapes and sizes. In the Authentic Woman’s lineage there may be diverse ethnic backgrounds but only one Truth. She is as God created her.

The Authentic Woman is BEAUTIFUL. She can have long hair pouring in waves over her shoulders. She can have a soft crop of natural hair rising in a "fro" just inches from her scalp. She can have a bone strait mane falling from her head alllllll down her back. She can have a natural crown of rope-like dreads cascading from her head. She can be white, light, black, brown or yellow. She is as God created her. She can have what she wants. Let her be. Let yourself be. Let us teach our daughters this so that they may step off into the world and do God’s work as Authentic Women free from any identity crisis and confusion.

Now let us concentrate on what is IN our heads rather than what is on our heads. We have important work to do. Desmond Tutu told Oprah earlier this year that women need to start a revolution to change this world. Oprah agreed. So do I. Let us begin by praying for direction from God. Let us start thinking differently and from a higher perspective about this world and our place in it. Let us pray for and bless every sista we see no matter what she chooses to do with her hair. Let us bring our intention and our thoughts to healing from lies and embracing our beauty and GREATNESS.


 I invite you to share your own stories about your hair or embracing any aspect of your Authentic Self through God.  We will consider it for publication on Hiyaah Power Pages. 

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