How beauty in society can be very damaging to the soul

This is one of my longest post ever, but it'll be worth it, if you stick around.

This has been a post I haven’t wanted to make, while at the same time wanting to bring it to the light. So the person on the top is Me (obviously) so is the bottom lol, but they are both completely different versions of me. I remember I first went on my Curly Hair Journey in March of 2015. It was one of the most challenging situations in my life actually because I had so many mentally ill thoughts inside my brain about what beauty was and how I “should” appear in the world.

I absolutely loved my hair straight, until I started really damaging it and it started breaking off and having split ends, you can see that in the top third picture a little bit, it was way worse in person. Not only did I damage my hair, but I damaged my mind. I remember the first time I got my hair straightened was maybe when I was like 7. My first thought was “wow, it actually stays to my head and its super silky and there is no fly away hair strands, I look beautiful” I never really had any friends who had curly hair, and I always wondered why I was born with it, I wished I had the straight hair all my friends had, even my mom has straight hair. I defined straight hair as “beauty.”

It wasn’t until I got to middle school around age 12-13 where I literally straightened it every single day. That is when the come up years are obviously, you think you “have” to fit in so you can be “popular”. I didn’t feel like I would fit in if I didn’t have straight hair. So I applied constant heat to it every day whether I fried my hair or not.

I remember I got in a relationship and I not once let him see me with my hair curly, and we dated for 2 years. Talk about hiding yourself big time in plain sight. I don’t know if he even noticed it was as big of a deal as it was to me. I didn’t think that a man could love me if my hair was curly. I felt very ugly with it. It is honestly so wild what our thoughts can do to us once you start believing one negative thought about yourself. You just go down a rabbit hole and it spirals forever. So once that relationship ended I told myself, I wouldn’t get in a relationship with anyone, until I really allowed myself to be seen very transparently. I still straightened my hair for like 3 years after that and then a huge “aha” moment came to me.. "If I am not willing to be seen in relationships as my natural self, how will these people ever show up as themselves while they are with me?”

I felt like so much was being hidden from me and I was the one doing all of the hiding. I honestly thought I was a lot more sexy with straight hair as well and I didn’t know how to embrace my sexy side with curly hair. I didn’t feel as open sexually at all because I didn’t even know who that girl was. Sexuality is everything that I am about, and I felt like my curly hair hindered the process of my sexiness. Everything that I normally embraced had been taken from me. Although it really hadn’t, I just didn’t know how to show up in it at that point.

I remember seeing pictures on Instagram of women who had curly hair and wishing I could have that, when in reality I could if I just decided to show up as me naturally. I remember creating vision boards and seeing certain words in magazines say “Luscious Beautiful Curls That Glow!” And I cut it out so I could put it on the board, and then I didn’t put it on the board, because I knew for fact I wasn’t going to stop straightening my hair yet and I didn’t want to look at it on the board and sad thoughts would come up about me and why I won’t quit. I wanted all of those thoughts to be so buried and shoved under the rug it wasn’t even funny.

It wasn’t until I moved to Ohio in 2014 that I met a small group of people, where we would have consciousness meet ups and talk about life, our troubles and releasing and revealing ourselves. The 1st meet up we had, we all were in tears because of all the dark secrets we had that we hadn’t exposed to anyone except that group. One of mine was this situation. They made me come to the next meet up with curly hair and I did and I was so nervous and embarrassed. But they loved it. I was kinda shocked. I guess because I never allowed anyone else to see it except for me. I still continued to straighten it though. I remember one time while I was there some of my friends asked me to come hangout and learn a new Healing Modality we all were getting attuned to, and I had just got out of the shower and I didn’t want to straighten my hair so I said No. I said No because they had never seen me with curly hair, and I was too embarrassed to show them.

That’s when everything really kicked me in my ass and was like “Wow, you really don’t want to be seen at all!” This is when my world kinda came crumbling down, I started getting depressed, sad, I even felt like Instagram played a huge part in this as well because I created videos to over 15 thousand people with my hair straight and I didn’t want them to see it curly either lmfao. I laugh now because of how funny and ridiculous this is but it was my reality not too long ago.

Okay so March- August of 2015 I went about 5 months, no straightening my hair, until I went on a date with someone. How funny that when you should be the most transparent, I decide to cover myself again and I thew it all away. I actually loved how long my hair had gotten since I hadn’t straightened it in so long, but it didn’t feel like me. And what do you know, that date sucked and I left early because I knew it wasn’t going anywhere in the direction or conversation that I desired.

That is when I moved to California again and I felt a lot more free to be me. I met someone who was really cool, we had great conversation and he became like my best friend. Told me to stop straightening my hair and it looked better curly. So I stopped. Completely & haven’t looked back. (Yeah, I look for approval in men sometimes, what can I say I have Daddy Issues. We will save that for another post though, this one is already super long)

My whole point of this post is I feel so much more alive and beautiful than I have ever felt in my life being able to embrace myself and the natural born person that God gifted me to be. I don’t have to show up as anyone but myself and it feels so good inside my head. I have clarity within my being, I share my sexuality now more than I did with my straight hair. And I feel wayyyyy more Real & Authentic. I take a shower and throw on some clothes and leave the house immediately because my hair air drys and I feel like it adds more personality to me than ever before. People always used to tell me, One day I would go back to my natural roots and stop.. I never believed them, and now I am so happy that I see that lesson full circle.

Im proud of where I have come mentally and owned it in myself physically. It all transforms when you make it an embodied quality in your life. But this took me years to learn and understand! It wasn’t just overnight. We may say we understand something, but until you actually take action on it, you don’t really understand it.

Now this post isn’t just about hair, this is about our thoughts and our mental programming. If you see in this post I had so many thoughts that held me back from being Me and it all stemmed from One thought when I was 7. It has taken me 16 years to get to the root of the thought & let go of all the other thoughts I piled on top of it. I’m 23 guys so thats more than half of my life.

Imagine how many of these we have in our lives that we are living with that are just based on one situation but it spiraled out to so much more. All I can say is I’m happy I had a huge breakthrough in this area. You’re beautiful just as you are, you don’t need to change anything about yourself. But as I know a lot of us are mentally undoing so many patterns in our lives, I am sending you all love on this intense freaking journey we all call life where we learn and unlearn and it keeps on going forever!