My Loc Journey - Why I Had to Tell This Story
THIS IS MORE THAN A HAIR JOURNEY.
This is about identity, confidence, and learning to love myself in a way I never had before.
For a long time, I didn’t believe my natural hair was beautiful. And the truth is, I wasn’t alone. Many African women are taught—directly and indirectly—that our natural hair isn’t acceptable as it is. So we change it. We straighten it, relax it, cover it up.
Not because we want to… but because we’ve been conditioned to.
THIS IS THE STORY OF HOW I BROKE FREE FROM THAT.
Growing up in the United States, we were taught to do something to our hair—anything but leave it in its natural state.
Whether it was a straightening comb or a relaxer, the goal was always the same: make it look like something else.
For me, it was relaxers.
That became my routine. That became normal.
I was getting relaxers every 30 days, like clockwork for almost 30yrs.
I didn’t want to see any new growth. I didn’t even know what my natural hair looked like. That part of me was completely unfamiliar.
My husband at the time would say, “I can’t believe you still have hair on your head.” And honestly, I couldn’t believe it either.
My stylist would warn me. She showed me the damage. She told me what I was doing to my hair.
But none of that mattered.
Because in my mind, the question was—what else would I do?
I had experienced burns. Scabs in my scalp from chemicals.
But still I kept perming.
That’s how normalized it had become.
MY NATURAL HAIR JOURNEY DIDN’T START WITH MY HAIR. IT STARTED WITH MY DIVORCE.
That season of my life broke me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I had built my entire identity around being a wife and a mother. My children were grown, my marriage was over, and suddenly I was left asking myself:
Who am I now?
I didn’t have an answer. So I turned to God.
And when I surrendered my life to Him, everything began to shift.
BEFORE I COULD CHANGE MY HAIR, I HAD TO CHANGE MY MINDSET.
God showed me that I had been living a life shaped by expectations—by people, by society, by what I thought I was supposed to be.
I had to strip all of that away. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.
I had to let go of:
• The need for validation
• The fear of being judged
• The insecurity that had been planted in me
• The habit of comparing myself to others
I had to learn who I really was—without outside influence.
And in that process, I began to truly love myself.
Once my confidence started growing, the thought of going natural kept coming back.
I had already stopped dyeing my hair. I made the decision to embrace aging instead of hiding it.
But going fully natural still felt like a big step.
That question kept coming up:
What will people think?
Then one day, I came across a video from Dr. Umar Johnson.
He spoke about African women wearing their natural hair—about identity, pride, and confidence.
I had never heard that before. Not from a man.
That gave me something I didn’t realize I needed—confirmation.
I was waiting for my new growth to come in. Waiting for the “right time.” But it felt like it was taking forever, and then one day, it was like I heard, “Stop waiting. Do it now.”
So I did.
I shaved all my hair off, and when I looked at myself… I loved what I saw. I felt free in a way I had never experienced before.
For the first time in my life, I was seeing my natural hair, I had no idea what I was doing.
It was coarse. It tangled easily. I was tender-headed. Everything was new.
At the same time, I was transitioning into a more natural lifestyle overall. I wanted clean, organic products—but I couldn’t find anything I trusted. So I created my own. What started as necessity became something powerful. Eventually, I got tired of combing my hair and I made a decision:
I’M GETTING LOCS.
I started them myself. I had experience from doing my son’s and my ex-husband’s hair, so I trusted myself to figure it out.
They weren’t perfect. Some of them resisted the process but they were mine.
And they were growing.
THIS JOURNEY HAD REAL UPS AND DOWNS.
There were days I didn’t feel beautiful.
And there were days I felt like the most confident version of myself I had ever seen. On the days I struggled, I wore head wraps.
But one thing I never did was consider going back.
That wasn’t an option.
I STARTED SETTING LOC GOALS.
To be able to shake them.
For them to reach my eyebrows.
Then my eyes.
My ears.
And then my shoulders.
Now they’re past my shoulders.
My hair is stronger, healthier, and longer than it has ever been. But the biggest transformation wasn’t my hair.
IT WAS ME.
It burdens me to see how many African women are still damaging their hair just to feel accepted. Burns. Broken edges. Covering up who we are.
All for validation.
We were taught—subtly and directly—that our natural hair was inferior. And over time, we carried that belief ourselves to others.
BUT I WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
I want freedom.
To be who we are, as we are—with no apologies.
To walk in confidence, truth, and power.
IF YOU’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT GOING NATURAL BUT HAVEN’T DONE IT YET, I UNDERSTAND.
It’s not just about hair.
It’s about identity. Confidence. Letting go. And that’s not easy.
BUT YOU CAN DO IT!
You have everything in you to do it.
You just have to want it enough…
and love yourself enough…
to become exactly who you were created to be.
