Learning to Love You Naturally: The True Gift of Black History Month

Shortly after I cut my hair....

As I stood in the mirror looking at myself, tears streaming down my face, I thought for a half of a second with intense panic, what did I just do? It is the day I cut the last of the relaxer from my hair and was left with just me. A tiny little afro was all that remained of the girl I once knew. Changing your hair can be dramatic no matter what the method, from a cut to color it can alter how you see yourself through your own eyes and the eyes of others. So cutting my hair and being left with this hair I had been running from since I was eight was in fact one of the most significant moments of my life. In that moment I decided to do what was best for me. To celebrate what was already mine and to announce that love to the world in my everyday journey.

Black History feels to me much like that hair cut. It's a time of reflection. You sit there, often with tears thinking how did we get here, how did we survive and how will we survive. As you begin to look harder, read more, listen more you learn that survival was and is natural. It was already there and it already lives inside of you. You learn how to love yourself more by simply embracing what was given to you as a birth right. When you no longer need to hide or cover up who you are at your basic form, you walk with an amazing light around you. I can imagine for many of our great black leaders  there was a moment for them when they decided holding back was no longer an option and that being who they were naturally...INTELLIGENT...TALENTED and BLACK...was the only way they could truly be free. Freedom can't be given to you. You have to claim it for yourself.

So this month as I celebrate a great people, I also celebrate the freeing of my coils. This hair taught me in seconds what life couldn't truly get across to me in years. What I was given when I landed on this Earth is beautiful...the hair, the skin the history. It is mine to celebrate and mine to define. 

Peace and Love Candegirl











 

 Musical Inspiration
Artist: Deniece Williams
Song: Black Butterfly