How I Learned to Embrace My Curls

When I was in third grade, my mother had her hairstylist cut off my long hair into what I can only describe as a miniature afro. I was mortified. I wept -- big, fat tears soaking my face -- while I was still in the salon chair. No one understood why my mom had done it. I thought I was getting a trim. Mami always replied with the same lame excuse: "Ay, her thick hair was getting hard to braid every day."

Thanks to that one awful haircut, I had to endure about seven years of bad hair. Yes, that haircut was the bad-luck equivalent of shattering a mirror. As a young teenage girl, you can only imagine how I felt about having thick, un-tamable curly hair. If only Hermione Granger had existed when I was growing up, perhaps I could have had a bushy-haired fictional role model to commiserate with, but no, all I had were a bunch of white-girl friends with their lustrous, straight hair. Good times.

By full-on puberty, my hair settled into ringlets, and I discovered that hair products were my friends. So throughout high school, I made sure to wet-and-gel my curls every day. It was exhausting, and I still harbored ill will about my hair. I even made my mother -- by tearfully reminding her of THE BAD HAIRCUT -- let me straighten my hair.

The relaxer burned, but I got so many compliments it only made me cry out to God in despair: "Why God? Why did I get cursed with curly hair?" Mami had beautiful, shiny wavy hair you could actually brush, and my sister had feathery layer with a light curl. OK, my brothers had curly hair, but they could cut their hair so short you couldn't even tell.

It doesn't help matters that most hairstylists outright LIE when they say they can cut curly hair. No. They CAN'T. Fast forward 15 years of horrible to decent to occasionally good haircuts to the year 2007, when I was 31. A mother with gorgeous curly hair recommended I look for a Devachan-trained Curly Girl stylist. I ended up seeing Nicole Lueschow, who really has changed my life. She was the very first hairstylist to really make me appreciate having curly hair.

Thanks to her encouragement, I finally know what it takes for me to have fabulous curls. I don't always do it and end up sticking my hair in an Evita Peron-style bun, but I have the tools. I've followed Nicole to three different salons, and I would follow her anywhere (even beyond the Metro area) for helping me make peace with my curly hair. Every time she does my hair, I feel blessed, and not cursed, to be a Curly Girl.

An original DC Metro Moms post. Sandie occasionally blogs about motherhood, movies and being mother-less at Urban Mama, but she regularly blogs about entertainment for AOL's Inside Movies and Inside TV blogs. She also writes movie reviews for Common Sense Media.

Photo courtesy of Holly via a Creative Commons license (it's of her, not me!)