Hi, everyone. Thank you for reading and learning. I have always had trouble with my hair growing up. My mom is Hispanic but had a half-Black kid and didn’t know what to do hair wise so it was always shaved.

When I was in 5th grade, I decided to grow it out for the first time. I had just come to terms with the fact that the father I knew wasn’t my biological father. Having an afro was a semblance of me holding onto my blackness. After some bullying, my mother no longer being able to find discounted hair products (we were so broke we used mayonnaise as a hair mask twice), and a baby sister on the way, the circular halo on my head was chopped off.

In eighth grade, I engrained myself one more time with my hair. This was a part of my blackness that I desperately wanted to hold on to. I did not know how to take care of it. I understood the idea of a ‘Hair routine’ and using products, but I did it badly. There were heavy micro and macro-aggressions towards my hair, which left it deader and drier but I carried it throughout high school.

During the 2020 pandemic, in a delusional and manic state, I chopped it off. I started watching YouTube in full force trying to learn how to revitalize my hair. I opted for really defined curls, so defined they turned into faux locs. I thought it’d help ‘whiten’ me up and make me fit in. (Many of the friends I first made in college loosely remember this era). As the faux locs grew tiresome, I opted back into my fro. It fits me, it has always fit me.

I still struggle at times with having my hair be ‘perfect.’ I struggle with my friends, family, and strangers not understanding the distinct complexities of being mixed/having an afro. I have been denied jobs, I have been fetishized, and I have been told to switch seats in the theatre. I know when I’m old, bald, and on-the-verge of death I won’t regret the several hours I took into making my hair the way it is.

What do I wish people knew better about black hair?

How people take care of it. It’s a lot of trial and error. A lot of money spent. A lot of time that is spent. White people sometimes have the luxury of showing up to work with their hair wet, we do not. I think Reynaldo White said it best, we oftentimes feel alienated from our hair. I wish people knew how to humanize it like an everyday ordinary thing.