How my Natural Hair prepared me for my Autism diagnosis
And taught me that online communities are all the same
I spent most of my life not knowing the most basic thing about myself: my actual hair texture. The decision to change that changed my life.
But back then, standing at the kitchen sink with a bottle of V05 conditioner in one hand, I wondered “Will this help or ruin my hair?”
My mom was uncertain that “white people conditioner” would work on my Black hair. She was definitely sure that not getting relaxers anymore was a sure path to broken hair because that’s what she had learned growing up.
I wasn’t sure if she was right or wrong. I really feared my hair would fall out. But I was so dissatisfied with my hair that something needed to change.
Since elementary school, I struggled to grow my hair. It stayed chin length for years before straggling to barely shoulder-length that a hairdresser traumatically chopped off in the name of Trims just in time for the horrible cut to be immortalized in my high school pictures. (I cried that day and I don’t cry easily.) I tried everything to grow my hair. I massaged my scalp regularly, took vitamins, did hair treatments, even prayed nightly.
Nothing worked until I went to the internet to question the very foundation of what I grew up learning about Black hair care: it needs to be straightened. What if it didn’t?
In those early Internet forums and YouTube videos, I found the early Natural Hair community. I learned so much from what those women shared and spent hours soaking it all in when I should’ve been sleeping to be up early for school the next day. (Thank you, hyperfocus) And I soaked in more than knowledge. People had a LOT of opinions:
You should never straighten your hair. Celebrate natural hair’s versatility; it can be straight and long one day then kinky and short the next! You should style your hair everyday. No, not everyday, that’s damaging. Do it every month and never wear it loose if you want it to grow.
Never let your hair shrink; always stretch it out. Shrinkage is healthy and beautiful; don’t fight it. Black hair is always kinky, not curly. If your hair is straight, it’s damaged. Some Black hair is naturally straight. If your hair doesn’t curl, it’s dehydrated. It never curls unless you’re mixed. Ethnically Black hair can be naturally curly.
So
many
opinions.
I became a “Natural Hair Nazi” based on my research. I viewed relaxers and straightening hair to shampoo commercial silky-smooth as bad and damaging. It was all bad. And if you kept doing it, you were bad, too. I judged them. The J in my INTJ was overactive.
Years passed and what worked for me wasn’t necessarily what the Natural Hair articles recommended. So I stopped listening to them and listened to what worked for me. And I realized I had left one hair belief system (straight hair good, kinky curly unacceptable) for another one. Uh-oh. I mentally apologized to the people I had silently judged so much.
And then about 10 years later, I learned another basic fact about myself: I’m autistic. My brain does not work the way I’d been taught my whole life. I dived deep into the internet world of the Autistic community and, after hours and days of reading, started to notice some similarities.
So
many
opinions.
Experts with their views. Parents with their views. #ActuallyAutistic people with their views.
The J in my INTJ was triggered. There was so much to judge people about!
But I didn’t want to go back to that. I had learned that the world really isn’t black and white. There’s so much gray. And out of that gray, I finally grew my hair longer than I could ever imagine. (Not that it’s obvious because I like my hair’s shrinkage.)
So when I felt myself becoming lost in the online community, in all the articles and YouTube videos and Reddit posts and Instagram feeds, I virtually backed away. I unsubscribed and muted and unfavorited and let my mind heal back to positivity. I remembered I had opinions too.
We’re all humans.
We’re at different places in our healing journey.
And thanks to my natural hair journey, I arrived on the other side of obsessive research and dogmatism in one positive piece.
Follow me for more posts about my autistic experience.
