On May 4th of 2022, my husband and I moved our family of five people and forty-five animals to our new farm an hour away from our place in the city.
We packed up necessities and the animals and drove on up immediately after signing the paperwork.
The “home” on the property, a double wide, wasn’t ready for us to occupy yet and by that I mean it was in need of a SERIOUSLY good cleaning, lots of paint, floor sanding and crawlspace water-proofing at a minimum, so we moved into an RV that day and started our new life on our new farm.
I remember the first shower I took after a LONG and SWEATY day of getting children and animals settled in our new space.
It was of the outdoor RV variety, so more of a spitting shower type experience, but at least it was hot.
The RV is parked at the end of a lovely field that was illuminated by moonlight only.
As I quickly showered (the hot water lasted three minutes, maximum) I thanked God for this new, uncomfortable, yet beautiful experience of showering by moonlight in the great outdoors on my new land.
What a gift.
I toweled off in the chill night air, threw on my pajamas and stumbled into the RV and into bed exhausted from all the work we had done moving and setting up our animals. I lay in bed nervously anticipating getting up in the morning to milk my new herd of goats I had purchased with the property (more on that later) and waited for sleep to come.
It came swiftly.
The next morning I woke up to a beautiful blue sky, green fields, birds singing AND hair that didn’t exactly feel clean, considering I had just washed it the night before.
The hair on my scalp had a heavy, filmy but not greasy feeling, and the texture of my hair was totally different.
With tons of work to do and little time for vanity, I simply put on a hat and went about my day.
But in the coming weeks I noticed that no matter what I did, my hair looked limp and heavy and felt unpleasant while my family’s hair looked full of body and clean.
A little about my hair care history:
For years now I have only washed my hair once per week and that has been sufficient.
I had started with co-washing and then moved on to no shampooing/dry shampoo dance for a bit when I had a pixie-like hairstyle and very small children and then eventually settled on a weekly washing commitment. I would have biannual haircuts and as I got older more and more highlights or toning, as needed. North Carolina water has lots of iron that tends to make blonde turn brassy so toning is a must.
I minimally blow dried or processed my hair unless I was going out or getting photos done, but if I wanted my hair to look “done” or intentional in any way I had to wash, blow dry and use the curling iron to make some beach waves.
I didn’t do much of the dry shampoo stuff and I was always trying to do the most healthy and nourishing things for my hair I could find.
I played with Prose and shampoo bars and was settled on using a few different “natural” shampoos of some variety in rotation around the time of my move.
But now on the farm you would never know that I was doing anything supposedly, “natural” or “healthy” for my hair, because it just did not look good.
I knew the water here was high in iron and very hard-loads of minerals and that that supposedly can wreak havoc on hair, but I was disturbed by the prospect of shopping around for some sort of haircare regimen that was going help me fight this battle against my water. The solutions appeared to mostly consist of using products that “strip” your scalp nightly to remove the oily residue and apply lots of moisturizing products to the ends to keep them from being dried by the shampoo that was removing all the build up.
Meanwhile, my children’s and husbands hair needed no such thing.
When we moved to the farm, I had had no delusions about what a difficult transition it would be to be living in a rural area, caring for new and more animals and to be adjusting to stripped down and far “cozier” living space.
But having to look in the mirror daily as I washed my face and see my hair look flat and oily and lifeless was quite frankly, bumming me out.
You think that living closer to nature you’re going to have a fresher, more natural look, meanwhile I looked like the characters from Seinfeld after using Kramer’s “powerful” code-defying shower head.
Please tell me you remember that.
I also couldn’t help thinking it’s strange that my husband and my kids who have only used any hair products maybe like 10 times over the past 14 years were having NO negative responses to the minerals in the water.
What was happening with my hair:
I did some more digging about what was going on with my hair and what I found was that minerals in hard water BIND to many of the chemicals that are in hair products designed to “soften”, “moisturize”, “tone” and “condition”, or at least give the appearance of doing so.
And because I had spent years using such products or getting them applied to my head at the hair dresser, my hair was coated in “moisturizing” products, lacking in self-resilience and completely inflexible to water changes.
No I’m not saying that having hard water is a good thing-although too few minerals is a problem too….
I knew I was going to have to do something about the iron, manganese and calcium levels in the water eventually, but I felt so annoyed that in the meantime every time I showered I was going to have this weird film-y like feeling on my hair, which by the way made it INCREDIBLY difficult to brush.
In my quest to understand what was taking place with my hair, I found a gal named Arielle deMartinez, a hair sovereignty advocate on Instagram that used to be a mainstream hairdresser.
In one of her videos she explained how shampoo is harmful to our hair and unnecessary, distorts the natural texture, growth and appearance.
She said we didn’t need it.
She said we didn’t need MOST of the hair beautifying products being sold to us.
We needed to embrace our own natural beauty, learn to stop trying to be something we’re not, let our hair detox and just be what it’s meant to be.
Gosh did her message resonate with me in that moment.
Using hair products had altered my hair to the point that a simple change in water COMPLETELY wrecked asinine and it was time to quit.
I had spent the first half of 2022 delving deeper into what it means to embrace my female-designed body-a topic I plan on going deeper with here, and to stop trying to change or hide naturally occurring features like a round or squishy midsection, hair that grows in my arm pits, a bigger booty.
There’s so much pressure to do unnatural things to our bodies everyday with very little conversation about what these alterations do longterm.
Deodorizing feminine products, obsession with hairless bodies, perfectly shaped eyebrows and flawlessly made up faces.
All these beautiful standards require sooo much upkeep.
It’s work that creates more work both for us AND our bodies.
How I had approached hair care for more of my life, shampooing, conditioning, getting highlights from time to time, having to tone said highlights and then having to moisturize the hair that would dry out from the highlights and toners, that was simply convention and I had mindlessly followed it with no regard for the consequences or extra work / lack of resilience it was creating for and in me.
And then what would happen when I can’t get to the hairdressers in time?
What happened when I was traveling or ran out of products?
My hair was unpredictable and not pretty.
I would have to tie it up to hide its weird behavior when what I really wanted was to be able to just let it be the crowning glory I knew it could be.
It was all starting to seem like an unnecessary ritual that causes more headaches in the long run.
It reminded me of high school when I had terrible acne.
I experimented with concealers and foundations to cover my skin and sometimes I had success, but I always struggled with the question of, “What happens when my makeup comes off and people are shocked to see the real me?
Do I wear makeup to my track meets? What happens when my sweat causes it to run down my face?
What about sleepovers? Sweaty dancing at proms? The beach?”
Hiding my skin was all well and good, but what happened when I couldn’t hide it?
And weren’t the chemicals I was using to hide my “flaws” creating more flaws?
I never washed my boys’ hair with shampoo and they had AMAZING texture and style to their hair no matter the water. At the beach, in the mountains, at that airbnb in Florida…
Is it possible that all these things I had been doing to my hair, occasional highlights and toners, blow-dries followed by beach wave curling iron sessions, weekly shampoos and leave-in conditioners were robbing my hair of it’s natural beauty, resilience and flexibility?
My entire life I have been using conventional shampoos and conditioners, I wonder what my hair would be like without it all?
What if I just let it be?
And so I did.
That was the end of May and here I am January 2023 and my hair has never been so predictable, soft, and free of an oily or occasionally itchy scalp in my life!
Back when I washed and styled my hair, I NEVER knew what to expect from day to day and the question was always “Am I just tying it up in a bun, or going to try to style it today?”
Now, it’s just the same every day, no matter what.
A soft wave (curlier in the rain or increased humidity).
It’s brown (sun-lightened at the bottom) with silvers sprinkled throughout, in fact I have LESS gray now than I did a year ago.
Go figure.
So what’s the message or point?
It’s certainly NOT that washing your hair is bad or wrong or that you should stop.
You do what works best for you and your head.
For me this was this awakening to all the lies we women have been sold about the things we “need”, things that actually made MORE work and decreased resilience.
The lies are so embedded in our culture, handed down to us by our mothers and television advertisements, that we don’t even think to question them.
”Why do we have to cover up smells?”
”Why do we have to cover up our faces?”
”Why do we have to shave this or prune that?”
”Why is THAT beautiful and THIS is not?”
”Who says breasts need to be strapped down? OR that bellies should be flat?”
”Why is that hairstyle or hair color beautiful and this one not?”
”Who makes these rules and are they even serving us, making us feel better inside or more attractive and is that even the goal?”
”Are the things I am putting on my body even SAFE?”
How many of your beauty rituals are hiding your womanhood?
How many are rooted in altering your appearance to mimic aesthetics that just don’t exist in nature?
How many of the things we collectively do to our hair, skin and bodies necessitates that we do MORE to our hair, skin and bodies?
Have you ever considered that manufactured beauty regimens designed to make your hair look fuller and less gray, your skin wrinkle-free and bright, your lips plump and your face dewy are all trying to create the ILLUSION of health while ROBBING you of your actual physical and emotional health?
I’m warning you, if you haven’t already begun doing so, once you started asking “Why?” about every convention and social norm you follow or habit you have, you’re going to feel a little disturbed and potentially have your mind blown.
Even if you just start with beauty.
My hair was a pretty innocuous experience in realizing that the more we do to our appearance, the more we HAVE to do to our appearance, but I appreciated it because now I know to think very critically before I take on any more expectations for my appearance and or beauty regimens.
I’ve been asking “why?” for over a decade now and I look like a very different person with a completely different life than the person I was when I started, one with my better, natural hair that is very little work, HA!
So the next time you reach for that makeup, wax or micro needle, ask yourself, “Why?”
Ok but sometimes hair needs some refreshing.
Sometimes it needs to be cleaned of animal smells, dirt or whatever else gets in it on the farm.
We all get knots and dreads so what do I do to care for my hair now to keep it fresh and happy without altering it’s natural state and capability to clean and detox itself?
I’m sharing my hair care protocol below with my paid subscribers.
Click the blue box to subscribe if you want to learn more.