Bye Bye Straighteners: Time to confront a lifelong battle... with curly hair

As part of the decluttering frenzy we are on to prepare for our trip, I donated my once highly treasured GHD hair straighteners. This was hard for me as they represent a formidable weapon in what has been a life long battle for me: my curly hair.  This blog-post is less about travel but more about the virtual journey we are on to declutter our lives.  So let me tell you about this foe I have been fighting for forty something years.

People who don't have curly hair say things like "you are so lucky", "I'd love to have hair like that". Really, you want this uncontrollable monster living on your head! It's the same reaction that I have, as a short person, when tall people say they can't find clothes to fit. My inside voice thinks of all the stats that show what social and business advantages tall people have, and I fight the urge to punch them in the face (or belly if we are standing up). However I am mostly polite, so my outside voice feigns concern of how terrible it must be to be tall.

For my whole adolescent and adult life I have fought my curly hair.  In the most recent years I have paid to have expensive salon straightening treatments. I've invested in the best flat irons money could buy, I have slaved with a paddle brush and a dryer.

As part of my journey to a less stressful existence I decided to take the plunge of going back to my natural curly state.  Of course the Internet is a great thing, when you start to look for ideas about how to take his step, you find a whole community of curly haired people who have been on the same journey as you.  I found The Curly Girl method by Lorraine Massey on Amazon, $3 on kindle, and read away.  I threw away all the non "curly girl approved" products that contained sulfates or silicones, and I had my last wash with shampoo.  The method is so simple and low maintenance.  No more straightening or hair torture.

Several months in, my hair isn't fully rehabilitated yet. Sometimes it's still too dry or too messy for my liking, but I have probably saved 30 minutes a day, and hundreds of dollars in straightening treatments, and I value having one less item in my beauty maintenance regime. And while sometimes my hair looks crazy and wild I also think that sometimes it has a personality that my flat-ironed locks never possessed.

So do I still sometimes wish I had that beautiful straight, shiny hair.  Hell yeah! But, just like I've learned to accept I am never going to grow another three inches, I've learned to embrace my curls.