Looking for something beautiful
/// multitudinous mothering entity /// A mother who moves through the world and navigates spaces while attached to or in close, physical proximity of her children. Italicized words expanded on in the Glossary.
Looking for something Beautiful
by Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
Mother Mother in the sun.
I have one mirror in my house—not by choice, rather by circumstance. Four circumstances actually, ages 9, 7, 5, and especially 3. While I know there are other mothers with young children who’ve managed to have mirrors safely in their home, I am not yet one of them. Sometimes I daydream about what it would be like to have a wall of mirrors when I’m dancing, or a massive, gorgeous, oval, wood-framed mirror that reached from the floor to the ceiling, so that I could study my whole form, as I am, and not the digitally-rendered, miniature version of myself that my phone faithfully reports backs to me.
Instead, I have a small mirror above the bathroom sink that is in an awkwardly placed corner opposite the toilet. To see myself, from the top of my head to about my collarbone, I have to squeeze myself around the wall bracing the shower. Most mornings I have not made the effort to discover what the lone mirror sees in me. I’ve lived the bulk of my mothering years without a mirror; I’m used to going without an actual assessment of what I look like before getting on with the day. (Yes, I brush my teeth—but not in the sink, because, did I mention, it’s cramped over there. And I’m usually assisting one or more munchkins with their toothbrushes, so it’s easier to do all of this with the bathtub faucet.) So it is a peculiar, fascinating thing that for the last 2 weeks I have been very conscious of taking a moment to twist myself around the tight corner to get a good look at myself. Why now? What changed?
This could be a hair story. And underneath the matter of hair is the deeper, wider, more complicated beauty story. Newly into my 40s, I’m arriving to the truth that seeing myself as beautiful has been a challenge most of my life. Dark skin. Short, nappy hair. Imperfect teeth. Awkward fitting clothes on a chubby, pre-pubescent body. A squished face, according to some girl from high school who’s name I can’t remember. I once tried to wash the darkness off in the tub when I was a little girl, but made my skin bleed instead. I prayed to God, something had to give I felt. God didn’t answer my many pleas because I kept waking up the same shade of brown every morning. I vividly recall being angry that Barbie had more hair than me, and my father, who did my hair in two plaits most days, offered to cut my hair off and replace it with the hair from the doll. I tearfully opted out, but still bemoaned that my hair did not cascade down my back like it did for the beautiful people—even if they were plastic.
I was 16 when Lauryn Hill’s sexy, sweat-dripping, chocolate-brown exquisiteness, complete with a glorious crown of locs, graced the cover of a popular magazine that I carried around in my bookbag for months. That was also when India.Arie debuted, another beautiful woman my complexion being celebrated in mainstream media (well, as mainstream as my mostly black-oriented media exposure was). Finally, I breathed, I could be beautiful too.
Once upon a Mother Mother in Trinidad, how I “wore” my hair for most of my 20s. Photo by Arnaldo James.
As I reflect on my journeys with feeling and being and living in beauty throughout my first 4 decades of this life, I notice a central theme: a need to experiment with the audacity of myself as I am. Is it possible that I too could just be beautiful, without adornments, without makeup, without hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on hair care, without the most fashionable, flattering clothes. Can I just be me, simple, raw, free?
Maybe I should frame this as a story of freedom. For years I’ve tried to figure out how to mother the way I do and grow my hair. For the better part of the last 20 turns around the sun I have shaved my head every few months, with some interludes of growth lasting nearly 2 years sometimes. But inevitably I would come back to this urgent need to live within the ease and freedom of my bald head.
Over time, this ritual of becoming Bald Binah was like a spiritual rebirth. And recovering the loveliness of my clear head, which I thought of as an antenna downloading messages from the invisible realms, and that could more easily soak up all the sun, was like a joyful homecoming to myself. Stepping out of the shower after a fresh cut—which I learned to do pretty well all by myself because I didn’t like going into barber shops, and I didn’t like men cutting my hair anymore, even the men in my family (another story for another time), and I couldn’t always get to a sister mama to do it for me—was when I would feel the most radiant, the most beautiful. And because shaving my head became a spiritual process, I would only do it if I had a clear signal from spirit to do it. Without that, I would let it grow.
Dancing into my morning majesties with the munchkins, a sacred time that is never devoted to doing hair.
Which brings me to now. I’m almost a year into this season of growth, and I can sense deeply that spirit is not bringing me back to the clippers. My spiritual directive to cut it all off usually coincides with a mounting anxiety around how to “do something” with my hair once it’s too long to just wake up and go. The pressure to make it “look done” starts interfering with my life labors of tending to many little people, managing our family enterprises, cooking, being present with the mamas in my village, writing, dancing, creating. On every given day there are always at least 20 things I’d rather be doing than my hair.
For years I tried to practice more self-care discipline. I would see other women, many of them mothers too, devoting great amounts of time and resources to how they looked, their skin care, hair care, eyebrows, nails, clothes. Occasionally I would make half-hearted attempts to join the sisterhood of aesthetics, to put some effort into these hallowed labors of appearance, but it was generally short-lived. And even though I’d appear to be doing the right thing, I couldn’t shake the feeling like I missed out on something more essential to myself. I could have been dancing. I could have been creating.
So initially when I realized spirit wasn’t going to give me a way out my conundrum with a bald head this time, I resigned myself to doing some two-strand twists, again. Not my favorite process or style, but manageable and acceptable as “done” hair in my family of extremely hair conscious people. I would not get stares at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners. I could pass as a part of the appropriately beauty-mindful crew, if only tangentially.
But then I didn’t feel good about this solution of “doing something” with my hair either. I felt a surge of resistance rising up from years of feeling like I had to comply with the rules, systemically racist rules— from society, from my family, from other black peoples—demanding that I alter my hair to its most Eurocentric approximation. And then it would be appropriate. And then I would be beautiful, or rather presentable. But to who? And for what?
Many moons ago, dancing at the Kennedy Center Grand Foyer in my first set of freeform locs.
Why couldn’t my kinky glory be ok, AS IS? Why did so much time, life, money, and labor have to go into contorting my hair into something it wasn’t so that others thought it was beautiful? What did I think? What did I want? Was it okay to center myself in the choices around how I wore my own hair?
There was a gnawing static, a not-so-clearly defined tension building, and I wanted to listen to it. I wanted to honor it. Maybe it was sourced by the slippery, bubbling confidence emerging from somewhere deep inside my 40-year old black intuitive birthing body. Maybe it was the external determination of the bank account not prioritizing more hair products, promising to transform the reality of my dense coils into something more silky and smooth, over the necessity of food and shelter. Maybe it was the constant chaos of navigating 4 children’s personal hair-growing preferences—and trying my best to respect their liberties while buffering my children from the prickly interfaces with family and community. Maybe it was my deep yearning to create a new way for them with how they experience their own beauty (a much longer story on this another day)—and feeling even less of a desire to add my own hair needs to this extensive labor.
My last bald rebirth moment before beginning this new freeform loc journey.
It was a bit of all these things and more, but the truth I came to articulate, first to myself, and then to Sparkle, a dear sister friend, was this: I do have plenty of time to do my hair. I don’t want to give my precious time over to continuous and intricate hair labors. I feel there are so many other things I want to presence my life to: myself, my creations, my children, my family, my mama village. It’s not sustainable for my life rhythms to wear a hair style that requires much daily, or even weekly, time and attention. I’m not here for the maintenance. I’m here for the being, and the feeling, and the living.
With these words I felt free. For a moment, I was fully and finally relieved from the weight of having to figure out how to devote time to do my hair. And then I panicked. Now what? Just let my hair go? Allow the freeform locs I’ve been visioning in my heart for over a year now to actually take root and become real? On my head? In this life?
It seemed bold. It seemed courageous. It seemed crazy! The timing for this is extra interesting because I’m sitting with possibilities. And the way your body and face changes when you’re growing a new human is already A LOT to be with. Embarking on a liberating hair adventure in the midst of expanding into the unknowns. It felt dizzying. It felt full of uncertainty. It felt just right. I said yes.
The length my hair gets when I usually prepare to shave it all off again.
I had a little help. When I had confided my truth to Sparkle about what I really wanted for my life, also known as my time, she introduced me to this amazing force of love, clarity, and possibility, Mayowa’s World. I was instantly a fan and like, “how have I never heard of Mayowa! Every dark-skinned, nappy-haired woman (and actually anyone of any color, gender and hair texture!) who has ever questioned if they are beautiful enough should drop into Mayowa’s World and get into this word!”
I realized the last strangleholds of hesitation were coming from my girlhood insecurities of being some kind of ugly: because I am not light enough, not long-haired enough, not pretty enough to just go outside without doing all the things I was supposed to do to make myself more appealing. Tracing back to the earliest times in my consciousness of beauty and my relationship to it, I was fearful of embodying my natural state of being is in a world that still saw the way I looked as intrinsically inferior, problematic and undesirable. But what will I teach my children? It felt like a path had to be taken; either stay tucked away inside the unfair rules of others, or take up more space living and feeling into the fullness of my radiant, whole self.
As I sat with this, I traveled across scenes from girlhood, to teenage years, to early womanhood, to mothering today, moments when I acquiesced some part of my knowing to go along with doing what was right. The burns from the pressing comb on my ear every two weeks in Ms. Smith’s chair, the same chair my mother and aunts had sat in as little girls. The shame of having the nappy hair at the nape of my neck tugged on and ridiculed by classmates. Sleeping with my head propped on my chin because my new braids were too tight to lay on my pillow. The awkwardness my parents felt when I asked them to help me cut 4 years worth of hair off at the kitchen table after graduation, my first set of locs that represented all I wanted to leave behind in college. And then a few years later, the relief my family felt when I shaved my next set of locs off, a 7-month attempt at freeforming to mask another bout of trichotillomania, something that I dealt with off and on since high school and going well into my 30s. The sideways comments from a boyfriend who thought my haircut was too masculine. The 3+ days it took me to untwist, wash and retwist my hair with a newborn, the process growing longer and less frequent with each new baby. The critiques from family who disapproved of my inadequate (to their standards) care of my daughter’s hair. The increasing irritations my 5-year old expressed when I attempted to “do” her hair in twists like mine.
My big munchkins being silly while I try to capture my daily portrait, part of the experiment of documenting this freeform evolution.
But I think what brought me to the precipice of making a change for myself, and ultimately for my children too, was a long overdue conversation I had with my mother a few weeks ago when she told me, again, that family members were willing to pay for my daughter to go to a salon and get her hair done, properly. I had been dodging these gestures and invitations for years, because I didn’t want my daughter to experience the kaleidoscope of the hairdresser like I did for most of my childhood. But I hadn’t yet given a clear No to going to the salon when my daughter’s hair came up. Also, I was perplexed by the financial offer of support for my daughter’s hair when I could happily apply that gifted money to rent, groceries, supplies for our family learning lab, and the list goes on.
I finally found the words and explained to my mother that my daughter doesn’t like when I undo her twists and wash her hair, and then retwist. She squirms and complains and is OVER IT after the first two twists are in. It takes hours to twist her not-that-long hair because I’m being as gentle as I can, pausing for lots of breaks and snacks, and letting her bounce around (and a lot of times nurse too, even though she’s recently weaned now). “She’s not acclimated to just sitting through the frustrating ordeal of getting her hair done. I don’t want her to be in a public setting with a hairdresser who is expecting, at the very least, that she’s going to sit in the chair. I also am not going to wrangle her and force her to just deal with it—WHICH IS WHAT YOU WOULD EXPECT ME TO DO. To be an obedient black mother and get her child in line with the program. Because this is what you had me do as a little girl, tears in my eyes and all. Because little black girls learn early that pain is a part of being beautiful. Because I don’t believe it’s right to teach her that how she looks is more important than how she feels.”
Me at 12, I wore braids off and on from 7th to 11th grade, and then never again.
And when those words came out about how my little black girlchild feels being more important than how she looks, something popped. A decision was made: no more hair struggles! We would all be free, at last! This was the generational breaking point. This is where a new story would start.
I’m two weeks into this burgeoning wilderness of being. The day after the clarity talk with my mother is when Sparkle turned me on to Mayowa, and I’ve been taking baby steps ever since. I’m experimenting with oil-free hair, for the first time in my life. My scalp is happy and itch-free, and there’s no unnecessary buildup happening inside my coils because of excess oils. I have an undefined, uncombed, unadorned, ungreased, unordered short crop of kinks existing freely on my head. I’ve had one shampoo experiment with black soap which I really liked. I “wake” my sleep-smooshed hair up with a little spritz of diluted rose water. I bend around the corner to take a look in the mirror. I try and see if I find anything beautiful in myself as I am.
Some days I do, instantly, and I am still a bit surprised every time I see something I would genuinely call beauty. It feels almost like a dare inside, even though I’m not trying to challenge myself. This undoing of the conditioning that as I am is not enough—it’s a long labor.
Growing anew and being with the tender family newness of this beautiful miracle, my sweet starseed, D——-.
And then sometimes I don’t see anything beautiful, and I wonder how am I supposed to go on like this. What about when my hair grows bigger and it’s more obvious that I’m freeforming? Will there be stares, negative comments, inappropriate touching of my hair? What about when I’m nearing 10 moons with this new starseed and my face has swollen with the glow that birthing time brings? Will I be able to stand myself? Will I feel compelled to cover my hair with a head wrap? Will I defy the spirit guides and just shave my hair off again because I’m afraid of what will happen if I really embrace this freedom to do nothing?
One of the things Mayowa has helped me relax into is that this is all an experiment. And I get that. I love experiments, and that’s how I center my creative practices. So I’m choosing to live this freeforming discovery in that energy too. I will see how this hair, this me, grows. I will take pictures and experiment with herbal rinses, and other natural, homemade hair alternatives for shampoos and conditioners that were never ideal for my hair. I will be gentle with my journey. I will tell myself the truth. I will listen to my children and support them in wearing their hair they way they want to. I will look at myself in the mirror and see myself for who I am, as I am. I will learn what freedom looks like on me. I will know what being free feels like even more.
This is a beginning.
My first shampoo with black soap and nothing else. Liberating and exhilarating!