A Quiet Confidence.

I have new growth. No, not my hair, although I'm sure that it is growing unseen within my braids.
It's a different kind of new growth, called confidence.

This new found confidence has come quite recently from talking to my sisters Tricia and Sharon and my friends Nicky and Melanie about their hair. It has also come from reading magazines, blogs and  browsing black hair care websites. But mostly I think it has come from observing other black women and how confidently they wear their hair. No one more so than my friend Tricia.


"I have a confidence in life that comes from standing tall on my own two feet." Jane Fonda.


Tall? No she's not tall. Tricia is petite. Tiny even. In a crowd most people easily stand a good head and shoulders above her.
But in confidence, Tricia towers.


I first met Tricia about 4 years ago. There are many things that stand out when you first meet her.
Her mole; cute, her smile; dazzling, her nails; immaculate; her clothes; the latest. But the thing that I first noticed about Tricia was her hair. A short relaxed hairstyle with wispy bangs. I loved it.

 It didn't stay that way for long. Tricia wears her hair to reflect her ever changing styles and mood.  She's confident but in a quiet understated way. I call it a quiet confidence.

Tricia can go from this...

 

to this...

 

 

to this...

 

to this...

 

to this..

 

to this...

 

 

Tricia today. Natural hair, shaved on one side.

to this.

 

And all of these different looks were within the last year.

(Cue "I'm Every Woman by Chaka Khan)

Tricia has learned to work with the hair she has and makes it work for her.

In a variety of different ways.

Now that's confidence.

As for me, I'll continue to watch my friends and learn and grow as I make peace with my hair. I'm keeping the braids for while, they're very easy and pretty much maintenance free which is what I need right now.

All this confidence must be starting to rub off. Look how I walked around all Sunday afternoon

 I most certainly did.

 

 

 

 

 

 Even answered the door like this. I guess that's confidence for you!

All photos of Tricia Wright - "The Captain" (aka Robert Wright) with thanks.

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The Underground Journey to Freedom

Her name is Joyce. She works underground. And last night she helped me to escape. Me, and two other women before me.

I heard about her from another Sista, who much like me probably needed to escape too. Joyce helps  black women to escape.

Joyce is a hairdresser. And when I say she works underground, I mean that she works from the basement in her home, up to 18 hours a day, helping her clients escape from their hair captivity.


Most women, at least on some level, are slaves to their hair. Take a walk through the pharmacies or department stores and you see aisle after aisle of hair care products and appliances. We women have to get up early and work hard to get our hair to "work" for us. And black women are bound even deeper into this slavery. It's not a race thing nor is it a culture thing, it's a texture thing. Simply stated, our hair is just that little bit more unmanageable than the hair of people from other races. Period.

So it was while I was trying to break free from my current hair drama that I went to see Joyce.


Joyce is originally from Ghana, West Africa. She has been doing hair most of her life and it's a skill that she is now passing down to her daughter Lydia and niece Barbara. And while I may have been held in totally captivity by my inability to take care of my hair, she wasn't the least bit intimidated by it. Quite the contrary. Her confidence put me at ease.

Lydia and Barbara immediately began to undo the cornrows that had been the foundations of my weave and then Joyce got to work.

Joyce beginning my transformation.

If I had been a slave to my hair, then Joyce was most certainly the slave master. My hair submitted willingly in her hands. For the next few hours, there I sat while Joyce tugged, teased, tightened and tamed my tired nappy tresses, using nothing but a comb and her fingers.

 

 

Hand to head, head to heart, heart to soul. And slowly I began the journey of from hair captivity to hair freedom.

 

 

 

 

Finished.

I left Joyce's home just after 11pm arriving home shortly before midnight. It was too late to go anywhere or show anyone my braids, but I wanted to tell everyone all about my hair. About Joyce.


But Joyce doesn't need me to say anything. She has no website or business card. No, her work is displayed on the heads of her clients, where,  just like yesterday in the frozen food section of my grocery store, a black Sista tapped me on the shoulder and said "Girl who does your braids?" And I replied "Her name is Joyce..."

 

Braids!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever hair freedom looks like for you, have a Happy Nappy Hair Day.

And if you like to read about hair drama, then you could read this post

 or this post or this post.

I want to break free...

With every experiment there will be successes and failures. I just didn't think I would experience failure so soon. My hairdresser Annette did a great job putting the weave on for me and I thought having a weave would solve all my hair problems, be the answer to my prayers and make me happy. That's what I thought. Obviously I thought wrong.

Everything was fine, at first. Great actually, that is until the fork incident.

After that I decided the weave had to go and began to cut it off.



Going...






 

going...

 

How ironic that today just happens to be Emancipation Day in Ontario. A day to celebrate liberation from slavery. This was a slavery of sorts for me. I'd become bonded and shackled to the weave that was so tightly sewn onto my scalp and I needed to break free, so I began to cut it off. However, as always, I hadn't really thought this through. How was I going to cope with my new found freedom? With no available hairdressers, how could I cope with my own hair? My hair was partially relaxed and partially natural, with no particular shape or style. Well, too late to think about that now, I'd already started.

It took forever to get through the stitching without cutting my own hair too. Then there was also the section at the back that I couldn't reach. I asked my kids to help, but they refused. Great, so now I had 3/4 nappy hair and 1/4 weave. Now what?



With no one to help me take it off properly, I did what I always do in a hair emergency. I calmly tucked my hair inside a bandana and went out. To buy a wig.

The 911 emergency wig!




 

I guess liberation is a process.