WHEN NOTHING WAS WHAT I THOUGHT -
three-year-old Curly Girl's dive into the deep end
The spring sun warms my face as I sit outside to write. The birds have started chirping and the sound of the melting snow also reaches my ears from different parts of the yard. It feels good to straighten your limbs in the sunshine after a long winter.
Collecting the rays of the spring sun. The shade created with Cultivators vegetable dyes shines in the hair.
You know, I'm already a three-year-old Curly Girl! Last month was the third birthday of my curling journey 🎉🎉🎉 Yes, the years have flown by fast and yet those three years can fit a really huge amount of learning and insights, and let's say very deep ones!
I am a completely different person now than I was at the beginning of my journey. My relationship with my hair has changed many times along the way as I search for a balance to who I am regardless of my hair and yet so that my hair is also a part of me and it plays a part in me. Interesting insights into a topic that was seen in a completely different light just three years ago.
In this text, I share with you in this way, reflecting and opening up everything that has opened up in me during my curly journey. I believe that as you read, you will be reminded of many situations from your own journey where you may have sensed a change in yourself as well, even if you were not able to express it to yourself.
If you've been following my journey, you might know my starting point. I'll say it anyway: I was generally really frustrated with my hair before I found the CG method. The state of my hair affected me as a person, I let my hair define who I am. Many times I thought about taking scissors in my hand and cutting my hair off completely. I hated my hair and wondered why I had to be burdened with such a mess. So my relationship with myself was clearly distorted when I gave my hair such a big role in the whole.
The funny thing about all of this is that my hair was commented on even then and still in a very positive tone. Many times I would have wanted to scream that "you can get these right away. Can't you really see how terrible these are?!"
Well, once again something worth noting for myself: everything related to the topic has been inside my own head.
Well, using a brush for dry natural curls is usually not a particularly good choice 😀
The CG method appeared to me at first, and actually for quite a long time, as a kind of "Holy Grail", a provider and source of salvation, and I am of course very grateful for that. Everything that my extreme enthusiasm for the matter brought, after all, exceeded my own interest. By this I mean that I was able to help many others concretely use the method and thereby find the sources of their own hair, but also that I found people along the way in my life who are real pearls and nuggets of gold and for whom I am really happy. That's why I see the whole as much bigger than a change in the hair. And more was coming….
As my journey progressed, I began to see even deeper into myself and realized that it has never been about how my hair looks and feels, but how I feel when someone else looks at me with my own eyes. My own eyes were very harsh. They saw mistakes and shortcomings and also too big differences compared to some others.
Since I've been making a journey to myself in many other ways for years, years, this mirroring of my own thoughts through others started to feel violent and completely out of line with the line I already imagined I was with myself.. and actually with my hair as well.
Where before I stood in front of the mirror for a little longer, twisting and turning something to something where it didn't want to go, I started to see myself as a whole, where hair is just one part. In me that part is like this, in you it is different. I am me and you are you. I wouldn't be me if I had your hair, or even your nose, your thighs, whatever.
I am not a copy or an image of anyone, and if I see in myself as lacking what you have, but not in me, it means that I still strive to be an image or a copy of you.
It seemed funny for a long time to put a little color on the eyelids and even lip gloss. Variety is the spice!
Such things and realizing them in myself relaxed my attitude towards my hair. What I had started as a Curly Girl rising from the ashes in a really intense way didn't lead to what I thought it would lead to in the end. In other words, I didn't become a curling mentor traveling around Finland, rescuing lost sisters and brothers from the prison of their own hair! Well, of course I didn't think of it in those terms, but it was the related energy with which I would have set out to make it happen.
I strongly believe that I am always going in the direction I am meant to go, so no matter how I tried to turn the wheel towards that road, I was not allowed to go there.
Instead, my path brought me and my husband to the country. We've lived here for a little over a year now, and this year has been the strangest and most meaningful of my three-year curly journey so far.
My husband works at night, which means that he is away from home 3-5 nights and sleeps during the days after that. So I'm very much on my own. We are surrounded by forest, fields and one neighbor's house, which, however, is 500 m away from us, and we don't see each other except rarely when they drive past us. Exceptions and restrictions silenced my business activities. So hardly anyone is watching me.
After the fall visit to the hairdresser, the curls got a nice hold for a moment.
I said the year of my weirdest curl journey because this is where I realized I was still doing things to my hair a lot because of that broken mirror. I washed, took care of, polished and ironed because the comments I get from the outside would confirm what I WANT to feel about myself, but I don't feel, so I need it from the outside.
Someone's comment: "Oh, what wonderful curls!" so it has always been about seeking confirmation for me, not something that I see in myself anyway. That's why, in fact, I didn't always even remotely believe the person giving the compliment. This all goes back to three years ago, when I didn't accept myself with the hair I was blessed with.
My hair experienced a change, but my inner Image dragged along.
Here in the country, I got rid of that distortion after realizing that I don't do much else to my hair here except wash and condition it. So if I only do that much because no one is watching, then for whom have I done things until then??? Happy!!!! Oh, how refreshing it is to notice such pain points in yourself and how liberating it is to admit them to yourself and find your true self through them ❤️💓❤️
Everyday me: hair brushed "straight" and put on a bun.
As a point of comparison: I usually put a little make-up on my face every morning. It didn't change at all after moving to the country. I do it for my own pleasure, highlighting some of my own features. It doesn't involve any wound, trauma, seeking approval or anything else and I know that, for example. that I can go out in front of people without makeup. This was a good reflection for myself in relation to hair, because that relationship was completely different and included anxiety and a little panic when I had to get my hair in such a way that I could mirror it as described above.
I don't need it anymore. I am completely perfect in my eyes and heart no matter what my curls look like. I am free!!
What I do with this freedom is another matter. So I can distort it into indifference, which in my opinion is not freedom but self-abandonment and more lack of love than self-love. Or I can see freedom as a real resource for myself, as a great expression of love and thus as any kind of choices at any time, such as "today I choose to wash and condition my hair with wonderful products suitable for my hair and press my head on my pillow covered with a satin pillowcase" OR "today I choose to do all possible tricks, so that in their wake my curls spring up like springs and shine competing with the sun!" Both are love for MYSELF, without trying to please, seek approval, be a certain way, fit a mold, etc.
I'm still a Curly Girl. Now I'm a complete Curly Girl and that's why CG is no longer the same for me as "I've invested so much and it must also be visible to others." I am also CG with my hair in a tight braid, I am also CG with my hair in a mess on Sunday morning, I am CG wearing a beanie, and I am CG after a friend's cabin sauna "of course-which-shampoo". I am a CG for myself.
Curls, waves, fluff, shine .. and all wonderfully part of my hair.
These three years have also helped me to understand that in order to be free at all (yes, I found myself around this issue too!), I must first be able to free myself from the prison of my mind, where I diminish, belittle, criticize and judge myself and myself. Having said that, I still emphasize that freedom is not something you have to run after. Freedom is found in acceptance of what is and it always comes from within.
" True freedom is found in what I AM,
not about what I HAVE."
-Guy Finley
On my initial journey, I partly talked about such deeper things. However, I was still blind to myself at the time and to the fact that I had just moved myself from one prison to another: from the place where I didn't accept my hair as it was to the place where I already accepted the curls, but compared mine to other people's curls..
If my love for myself is conditional, how could I ever love others unconditionally? That's a big question that I know the answer to. Now the only task is to make the answer come true.
It will be interesting to see, for example, in the next three years, what kind of things I will find myself at and with what thoughts I will look back to this moment. Life is exciting and wonderful!
Sumilayi has been a wonderful support for me concretely. The fact that I have a product line that I can rely on no matter the season or the weather has been a big help and I believe that it has also helped me to get to these deeper things in myself faster. If I had products that would do one thing one moment and another the next, that would be my focus. Deep gratitude for this amazing product family.
And even though the quote above says that freedom is in me, not in what I have, this side of the product still offers ease in concrete hair care and that's nice 😉🥰 Even though I'm such a self-liberated freak, I still take care of my hair all the time as with certain toothpaste and - by brushing my teeth.
Next time I will write about my experiences with a series of great oils, which are starting to be used for many purposes. I love the array of oil bottles in my dresser and use them every day. So stay tuned. I promise to make the next post significantly shorter than the one between this one and the previous one!
Braided Curly Girl
Joy and light to your days,
Maria ☀️