Making Waves

It’s just hair.

And yet it is said that when a woman changes her hair, she is about to change her life.

Looking back at some of the many, many hairstyles I’ve had since I was a child, I see eerie parallels between my hair and my mental health journey.

I was born with messy but almost completely straight hair which started to turn really wavy in high school. Because I tried very hard to keep it sleek and neat like the rest of my classmates, I’d most often sweep it into a ponytail or bun and would run into the bathroom several times a day to splash some water on my head in an effort to flatten down what everyone else said was “dead hair”. It wasn’t curly enough to look special, and it wasn’t straight enough to look “normal”.

I silently struggled with depression and anxiety, and with my difficult personality and bursts of rage, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. My hair was just another reminder whenever I looked in the mirror: I would never fit in.

I ended up chopping it all off.

‘Screw everything and everyone’, I thought. If I was going to be different, I was going to steer completely into the skid. ‘Screw them all.’

When I grew it out again, (for some reason) boys started to pay attention to me. Attractive ones! I enjoyed the attention and my newfound “confidence”, but it was all a thin veneer. I did everything I could to fake a sleek hair texture. I had it chemically straightened for some time. I would blow-dry nearly every day (on high heat with a steel round brush!) and sometimes flat-iron after blow-drying too. All this time I was also chemical dyeing it about 3 or 4 times a year, shampooing almost every day and using silicone conditioners.

I was going out to parties, I was in great shape, I had lots of friends, and I looked like I had a great life. But inside, I was unhealthy, dry, brittle, and crying out desperately for help. It was during this time that God turned my life around. I was now facing the right direction, but I had a long way to go in changing the way I acted, spoke, thought, and lived.

Eventually, the strain of trying to mask my hair texture became so mentally taxing that I decided to stop messing with it and let my waves go for a few years. I even let natural dreadlocks form as a self-care project. It was then that I learned about residue-free conditioners and natural hair cleansers. I also learned to wash my hair less (down to once every 3 or 4 days). Little did I know that this was actually the best I had ever taken care of my hair at that point, even though to anyone else it looked like a knotty mess.

I slowly started letting go of unhealthy habits. I started to trust God more and hold onto control less. I stopped letting my anxiety about what other people thought dictate my actions.

A year after, I combed out the dreads and realized that I still had soft, slight curls which I managed to maintain for a while (though my hair was still pretty dry) but still heat-styled once in a while. Then I moved to Dubai in 2013 – and the combination of desalinated, chemically treated water in the shower and the dry, extreme summer heat completely wrecked my locks. I started blow-drying and flat-ironing regularly again and the result was the worst condition my hair had ever been in.

I was far away from my family and everything I had ever known. I was constantly crying and asking God why He brought me here. Many of those old issues and habits started to resurface. And yet I still held on to so much of my past baggage, afraid to confront the ghosts of my past.

Frustrated, I chopped it all off again in 2016 and kept it short throughout the next year and a half. I loved it! It was a clean slate. I felt free.

Enough. I couldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over again. I started seeing a psychiatrist and taking medication, which helped to at least stabilize my mental state and got me functioning enough to start putting a long-term plan in action.

My sister, Ria, started doing the Curly Girl method in early 2018 and I was fascinated by the transformation her curls had undergone. I didn’t think that it would be beneficial for myself, though. She had always had curly hair since birth. Wavy hair didn’t count as “curly” did it? My hair was still very short, but I was starting to see signs of damage again because I was heat-styling the longer sections.

After her articles came out in HerStyle Asia and The Female Network, I started doing my own research and found something surprising – I wasn’t alone! I found countless photos and stories of girls and women just like me who simply thought they had “bad hair”, but discovered beautiful waves and curls when they got to the root of the problem: lack of proper care. I read about products, ingredients, techniques and tools that would help to nourish my hair to the very core. I learned that in addition to heat styling and chemical dyeing, even seemingly harmless things like using a terrycloth towel, combing, and washing with hot water were destroying my hair. I was basically relearning everything I knew!

I started going to a counsellor who, with Biblical wisdom and professional knowledge, lovingly showed me the lies – big and small – I had believed about myself, and the truth of God’s love. She helped me to see my unhealthy way of thinking and helped to reframe my worldview in alignment to this truth. I needed to really believe what I already knew about my Creator and I needed to live according to what I believed.

I was skeptical at first but decided to give it a try in August 2018. I got rid of my non-CG products, threw away my heat styling tools, and started stocking up on sulfate- and silicone-free cleansers and conditioners. I started washing and styling with love and care, according to the CG method, and deep conditioning once a week. Within a few weeks, there were amazing results. I was shocked to see beautiful, shiny ringlets and waves in the mirror. Who knew it was possible? I started getting compliments on my actual hair texture.

I started truly caring for myself by going to the source of all peace. I started confronting the real issues in my life and realized they no longer have any control over me because of what God has done. I had been using mental Band-Aids all my life, but I was finally living out my faith by trusting God to carry even the deepest and most shameful parts of my past. And I could see the fruit of that change carry over into my relationships with other people.

I started out very excited about this change and was going crazy buying gels and conditioners, but now I’ve got a solid routine nailed down and a trusted set of products. I deep condition once a week, use a protein treatment when I need a boost, and moisturize religiously. I still have bad hair days, but somehow this whole thing has stopped being about looking a certain way, and instead about accepting who I really am.

I still fail, every day. Some days I mess up more than others. But I can rest knowing that His identity never changes with my imperfections, that my identity and worth is solely dependent on how He loves me, and that is something that will never, ever tarnish or fade away.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

– 1 Peter 2:9-10

Do you want to know more about the Curly Girl Method? Here are some resources for you: