“She ain’t got no hair on her head.”
There was once a girl who was born without hair. Her mother worried that people would think she was a boy, so she would make the baby wear headbands with delicate pink fabric bows and flowers. At age two, she still didn’t have much hair on her head. The grandmother worried that she would never grow any hair at all. Finally, at around age three or four, she started growing hair like they had wanted. It was a dark brown, almost black– like her mother’s hair. When she played in the sun too long, the sun would turn the ends of her hair golden, and showcase the red hue that lay hidden beneath all the brown– her father was a redhead.
The grandmother would speak to anyone who would listen about how beautiful her granddaughter was– showing them picture after picture that she would carry with her. She loved to talk about the girl’s hair: it was straight as a stick, which was rare for biracial black children.
It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon. The girl was five now, and she was preparing for a very important business meeting. While her father was preparing lunch in the kitchen, she crept into her mother’s room, and swiped her black barber’s scissors. After safely retreating to the bathroom and locking the door, she faced herself in the mirror.
“Your hair is too long, and too messy,” I say to myself in the mirror. I hold up the scissors and snip them a few times in the air for good measure. “We need to look nice for this meeting.”
She took the scissors to her hair, and as she cut, she began to feel lighter, as if she had laid down a burden that she didn’t know that she had been carrying. The hair fell gracefully from her shoulders and floated gently down into the small white trash bin. The white laminated floor soon became carpeted.
Roughly forty minutes later, the girl joined her father and brother for lunch. The father glanced at her with a carefully placid face as they ate. He said nothing. When the three of them were done eating, he dismissed the younger brother, and told the girl to stay seated. He calmly collected the trash can from the bathroom, brought it back with him to the kitchen, and placed it on the floor between them. They stared quietly at the nest of brown, flecked with colors of gold and red.
The White Trash Can
“Claire, what’s all this hair in the trash can?” he asked casually.
“I just cut my barbie’s hair,” I lied. I thought if I told it with enough confidence he’d believe me. He leaned back in the kitchen chair, and crossed his arms with a heavy sigh. Looking back on this years later, I realize that I had cut at least three or four inches of my hair. He had probably noticed that first before looking in the trash.
He was more worried about my mother’s reaction– what she would say when she returned home from work. He sent me to my room to think on my actions, primarily lying so boldly to his face, until she came back.
I sat in the corner of my room for what seemed like hours. I laid on my back and tried to find images in the stucco ceiling– there was a mouse and a frog having tea together. I thought they looked so happy and carefree. The house grumbled as the garage door opened in the basement. I heard my father sigh wearily, as one does when they prepare to give someone unfortunate news, before he walked down the stairs. I followed after a couple of paces, but stayed at the top of the stairs, just out of eyesight.
“Hey, honey. How was–”
“How bad is it?” she blurted. I heard the thump of a purse being dropped on the floor.
“She cut about three or four inches.”
“…how bad does it look? Do we need to take her somewhere?”
“She actually didn’t do that bad of a job, really. It’s a bob.”
She was silent. It stayed silent for a moment too long. At first I thought they might have figured out I was listening, when I heard a muffled shriek. There was a brief sniffle before she asked, “Where is she?”
“Claire!” my father called.
Roles
I waited a moment before making my way down the stairs to make it seem as if I had come from my room. I was slow to walk down the stairs, and stopped at the last step. I stayed on it and dared not approach any closer. As I stood before my mother she grabbed her mouth with both hands, and tears streamed from her face. No one said anything. I fidgeted with my feet, self-conscious of myself and my hair. My father finally gave me the nod, and I scurried to my room, my mother’s bottled wails finally escaping in the distance behind me.
That was the first time in my life when I did something that I felt so sure about, but was met with disappointment from my family. It wasn’t until later that I discovered the importance of hair as a beauty standard metric, especially in black communities. She never said this, and my grandmother never said this, but it was clear: the two of them were living vicariously through me and my hair. It was a source of pride for them to tell others how beautiful I was, and how straight, dark, and long my hair was. In their eyes, I was “blessed” because I didn’t get the same kinky hair that they had– and they wanted the world to see it. It was their symbol of beauty and status. I was expected to keep it. Not because I wanted it, but because they wanted to tell others about it.
As I continued to grow older, I became more aware of what was expected of me as the role of daughter. The only daughter.
I come from a line of strong, independent black women. And what that means is an abundant inheritance of strength, power, and versatility in navigating the world as a being of God. But what I also inherited was a deep-seated terror of vulnerability, failure, and a paranoia of not ever being worthy. I grew up with two brothers, and while I will never know the challenges that they faced, and continue to face, I also know that the women in my family will never look upon them as heavily as they look on me. If I did not fulfill the expectations in this role of daughter that were created for me in my family, I would know the face of failure instead of merely sensing her presence. This conditional love became a motivator for my success in everything– I had to earn it by doing and being what was expected of me.
In anyone’s journey in becoming a more realized individual, they start seeing adult role models in their life as people. You see their flaws, doubts, and wounds in a way that you hadn’t before. You come to understand that the person that they see you as isn’t really who you are, but who they need you to be in order to keep themselves in the cocoon of the person that they were while raising you. It’s a harsh and bitter reality once you realize this. Ultimately, you are the one who decides who you need to be. This is the first step towards self-actualization and fulfillment, and dare I say happiness.
I cut my hair for the second time after that when I was in my freshman year of college. It was just as liberating as it was the first time, but I couldn’t put my finger on why yet. My mother fought, and failed, to hide the tears that she shed at the growing pile of my hair on the floor of the salon. She knew I wanted to cut it, and she had came with to try and talk me out of it.
She didn’t.
Cycles of Growth and Stagnancy
We had moved a state away from my grandmother years ago. It grew back before I visited her again. A cycle of growing and cutting my hair began to form, as I navigated my identity and who I wanted to be. It was perhaps the physical manifestation of the internal strife happening within. How dare I be selfish enough to throw aside who and what my family needs me to be? After all they’ve done for me?
In my more rebellious phases of reclaiming myself, my hair would be shorter. These were the phases were I focused more on discovering who I was outside of being a daughter, a grandaughter, and a sister. This is where I found my solace, rekindled an awareness of my trauma, and began healing with spirituality. Cultivating myself as a supernatural being, capable of breaking any and all curses, and healing all wounds within myself and within my family. I discovered that the true key to happiness was to embrace these aspects of myself that I had been too afraid to acknowledge within myself out of fear of rejection and isolation.
However, the thing about growing pains, and any journey in any story, is that there will be obstacles. In the seasons where my hair grows long, I find myself falling into patterns and behaviors that I thought I had purged and healed. The overwhelming darkness of failure creeps upon me, and I find myself yelling and screaming at myself for being such a disappointment. If not to my family anymore, to myself.
I have to remind myself that happiness is not the end destination for this journey of spiritual growth and self development. It is an illusion that we are taught in movies and books. It is what entices everyone to walk with the masses of what everyone else is doing– this fear that they will miss out on this destination. Another key is the acknowledgement of the Hollywood lie of happiness: it is not permanent, and if you don’t have it at all times does not mean you are leading an unfulfilling life. Happiness is not a fixed state because all things are impermanent: the eyes that you use to read this will one day grow old, and become unusable as you transition to your next life. The only thing real, the only thing that is permanent, is your Higher Self– your inner knowing of who you are as divine being of light.
On your path of cultivating that connection, there will be times where you will feel that you have failed. But this is also an illusion. Failure is the word those who were too afraid to try again use to describe experience and growing. For if you learned something, even if it’s what not to do, it is never failure.
I’m not happy all the time. In fact, I still work to silence the discouraging yells of my inner shadows on a daily basis. But in this journey of defining the role for myself in this realm, I have found that I am happier more often, and embody the sensation more completely. It’s a strong and silent buzz that floats in my fingers and in between my toes. It makes my chest feel light, fills it with the same feeling you get when smelling freshly mowed grass after a spring rain. And it doesn’t ever leave entirely, but it gives me the clarity to laugh in the face of the more challenging chapters of my story. It’s easier to laugh at things now, but it’s also easier to cry, too, and I find that beautiful.
Although it may seem like forever in this moment, the pain that you feel for not fitting in, or not doing something right– you begin to understand that this too shall pass. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong, in fact it means that you are doing something right. Those who are never challenged never grow.
Once you find your role of who everyone one else wants you to be, you get to decide if that’s who you want to be.
I cut my hair, and continue to do so.
Cut your ties, immortal soul. Release yourself of the burdens that you were never meant to carry.
The Wayward Minds Collective 
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