Healing the Relationship Between Me and My Hair

How unmasking my neurodivergence led me on a journey of learning to love my hair again

Looking back, I can see that I disguised the conflicting feelings I had about my hair with creativity. I often chose synthetic hair extensions that were long and colorful. Wigs that were long with different cuts. At the root of my hair journey was a distinct dislike for my hair. For as long as I can remember, I have admired long, straight hair. Long and straight hair seemed less problematic and uncontroversial. My kinky and curly hair often got remarks like “Wow! I can’t believe your hair stays in place.” Or another common unsolicited request, “Can I touch it?” Straight, smooth, and long hair didn’t seem to be political or as difficult to manage. On the other hand, my hair is high-maintenance. I need to set aside half a day to just wash, dry, and style my hair. I want to be clear here and say that there is nothing wrong with wearing longer extensions in different textures. In fact, it fills me with joy when I observe women expressing their creativity through their hair. However, there is something wrong with choosing long and colorful extensions because you resent and loathe your hair.

As a woman of color, I know that my hair journey is not unique. The hair and beauty industry has made sure of that. Growing up, I remember walking down the hair care aisle and looking through hair magazines, and quickly came to the conclusion: my hair texture is not beautiful. I saw that a straightened texture was beautiful, and the longer I could grow my hair, the closer I could get to being a standard of beauty that was acceptable by our society. Of course, there are many versions of beautiful but the hair and beauty industry often highlights a select few, leaving the rest of us who do not match that version exactly wrong. Many brown-skinned girls grow up with this observation that, because they do not match the highlighted versions of beauty, what they see reflected in their mirror is wrong. The result is a generation of women who do not feel naturally beautiful and will feel inadequate in the endless pursuit of beauty that is accepted by our society. This is an impossible pursuit and one that leaves most of us feeling dissociated with our reflections.

In my mid-thirties, I received diagnoses for autism, ADHD, OCD, and CPTSD. I realized that there was a reason I felt different than my peers: God left his fingerprints on me in a different way than my peers. I spent the first few years of my neurodivergent journey filled with bitterness and resentment. After becoming sober from alcohol, I realized how exhausted I felt from years of letting shame rule my thoughts and choices. I wanted and needed better for myself. God led me on a journey of self-acceptance and unmasking my neurodivergence. Unbeknownst to me, this unmasking journey would include my hair. For years, I put up with sensory discomfort from hairstyles and products because I thought they made me beautiful. I put up with the itching, burning, scratchy synthetic fibers, and tugging sensations because I thought the discomfort was worth the sensory overwhelm.

I can’t tell you what changed, but in 2025, I realized that my unmasking neurodivergent journey needed to include the choices I made around my hair. Unmasking neurodivergence is a complex journey that will often include parts of yourself that you didn’t realize you were diminishing. I pondered getting human hair extensions and wigs instead of synthetic, but I realized that I needed to get to the root of feeling like I needed to prove my version of beauty was acceptable. The first few months of styling and wearing my natural hair out of our house were tough. I cried and second-guessed this part of my unmasking journey every chance I could get. Then, I started to notice the curl pattern and admire the unruliness of my hair. I started to feel protective of my hair, like it was my duty to nourish it and provide the environment it needed to be healthy, instead of taming it into submission to a standard of beauty that was never my responsibility to fulfill.

There is still work to do. I still am learning to love the complex attributes of my hair, but I am learning that my hair has been beautiful all along; I am just now noticing it. There will probably be a day when I wear extensions and wigs (human-hair this time) again; however, when that day comes, it will be because I know making that choice is one of the many ways I can express my creativity and not need to hide my kinky-curly hair to feel beautiful.