My curls are a metaphor.

When I was little, my straight-haired mom attempted to tame my curls by getting my hair cut very short. I wanted long hair but my curls would create impenetrable bird’s nests that my mom had no idea how to untangle. She wanted me to look presentable, clean, and neat. To her that meant tidy, tamed hair.

I have an early memory of her trying to clip one of my curls into a blue plastic barrette with a duck on it. As soon as she closed that barrette on a curl—zing! The tiny piece of plastic flew across the room. To my mom’s dismay, the pressure of one curl completely neutralized 1970’s barrette technology.

I spent a lot of time in high school trying to have smooth, silky hair like many of my peers. My curls were not down with that. They didn’t like Pantene or any other shampoo that I tried. Hairstylists in my predominantly white neighborhood didn’t know what to do with my lovely tresses. Hair products like gel made my curls crunchy, mousse made them frizzy. A flat iron left my hair brittle and limp.

Flash forward to today: I’ve stopped trying to make my curls into something they aren’t. I have zero interest in changing them. I feel a strong aversion to using harsh chemicals and expensive treatments to make them straight and smooth. And, lo and behold, I have fallen in love with my curls.

It all started with accepting them for exactly what they are—wild, unruly, gravity-defying spirals. Some mornings I wake up looking like Kramer. Other mornings, Medusa greets me in the mirror. I accept that I am unruly. I am wild. I am messy. And slowly, I've come to love those qualities about myself.

But it all started with one teeny, tiny shift.

Acceptance.

With acceptance, I started looking for hair care products and tools outside of straight-haired culture. I discovered that curly hair has an entirely different structure than straight hair and along with its different structure, curly hair has very different needs. Like co-washing. Co-washing is the practice of using conditioner rather than shampoo to clean hair. Maybe you’re thinking, like I was thinking, how does hair get clean only using conditioner? Trust me, it does. Or better yet, try it for yourself. I didn’t know about this until I was in my late twenties, almost twenty years ago. And this single alteration in my hair care routine has changed my hair for the better.

Is there a part of yourself that you can offer one drop of acceptance? Maybe eventually growing that one drop into a flood of acceptance for a wild, unruly, messy part of yourself? I'm holding you with so much love and compassion as you sit with this question.