EP031 // Kids are like... My Hair? // It's Metaphor Time

My brain sees connections and metaphors all the time.  They smack my in the face and demand that I share them with the world. 

This one is pretty legit. 
Especially if you have a kid, or were a kid, or were raised by humans that were once kids.
Especially if you have hair that you coax & coerce into something acceptable with heat and chemicals.

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Transcript

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hello and welcome to this episode of piece by pieces unpacking the human experience season 2 i'm ashlee i'm your host and i'm so happy that you're here i love you let's go so today's episode was something that came to me while i was fixing my hair the other day you know how we often get those really good ideas in the shower or wherever like when we're in that it's like a mindful state is what it actually is you're in a fully present in whatever you're doing or you're not multitasking and you're not trying to do a million things at once although if you had a people into my bathroom you would me sometimes reading a book while blow drying my hair why do i do that that's because i have curly hair and in the past five or six years i've embraced my curly hair like really learned how to care for it and enhance it and the way that i do that is for it to be soaking wet when i put the product on and it was a process to find the right products as well but when it's soaking wet with the products on it it takes a while to dry obviously so often i'm with the blow dryer and the diffuser and i'm like hanging my head upside down and it just takes a while so i'm just standing there for like a really long time and i can't use high heat because it damages the curls damages your hair anyway this isn't a hair tutorial but i do that i read a book anyway sometimes while i'm blow drying but during that time the other day when i was blow drying my hair i realized that my hair has some has some direct parallels to children hear me out the way that i've treated my hair throughout my lifetime has direct parallels to how we treat children and how we raise children and how we cultivate and as some people would say train children some people would say it's how we domesticate children and let me this is another metaphor you know i love metaphors and i can't stop with them because they are always like flying at me through the air and smack me in the face and demand that i share them with the world so that's what i'm doing here so let me tell you a little bit more about my hair and how it has anything to do with children so i have curly hair and my mom did not have curly hair my mom had like super straight hair like straight as the straight hair so she didn't know what to do with my hair she didn't know how she treated it like she would treat her hair i had to brush it every day and wash it and not leave the house with it wet you know always have it pulled up and a ponytail or a braid or half up and you know i didn't know so you know obviously i didn't know how to take care of my hair so it was always like fluffy and frizzy as a kid which you know i didn't really care about when i was younger but i remember being in middle school and caring what my hair looked like you know and knowing that it didn't look like friends and it didn't you know it didn't look like the shiny pantene ads of this like thick like smooth shiny hair you know i wanted that and that's what some of my friends had and i was like why why can't my hair be like that right so you know being a you know a preteen in the 90s i thought the solution was buying the pantene shampoo and conditioner right like that's what the ads told me that i would have which back then was like five or six bottle five or six dollars a bottle i don't even know if it exists anymore does that does pantene still exist no but five or six dollars for some shampoo was a lot you know back in the 90s i mean it's a lot now but it's more normalized i guess but it was a lot for my family and my mom my mom was like no i'm not spending that much money on shampoo you killing me we're gonna use the the suave shampoo that's like you know dollar 77 or whatever and see no this was a battle it turned into a battle to like get my hair to be something that it wasn't right i wanted it to be different i wanted it to be what i thought it should be i wanted it to look like what i thought it should look like not what it could be and not what it was so then i found heat tools you know i got straightener and curling iron to like smooth it down and make it straight you know unless it rains right or unless it's humid because i grew up in indiana and it's humid so even if i spent like all that time coaxing my hair into what you know was acceptable what i found acceptable it would just poop up you know and and then you know as a preteen and a teenager it was something that i was self conscious about that i was insecure about because i i didn't know that my hair was curly i didn't know what to do with it i didn't know how to fix it and care for it and nurture it and bring out its natural beauty i didn't know so i would like you know i bought i bought spray gels and mousses and stuff like that but it never looked nice because i didn't know what i was doing and i didn't have anyone around me they knew what they were doing either to teach me and i knew that if you that your hair looking nice meant that it was straight and shiny and put together so that's what i did it was a constant fight and struggle in battle and like adding all these chemicals to my hair and i remember my sister found this product once it was called laminates it was by like a salon brand i can't remember i can visualize the package but i can't remember who made it but she would squirt a little bit of it into like a little container to give to me she's nine years older than me so she was like when i was a preteen she was in her 20s and because it was expensive she would give me a little bit and it smoothed my hair down but you know what that was that was like straight up silicone that's like coating my hair and heavy silicone to like literally weigh it down which i now know is like really bad really bad especially for curly hair but you know and then i added color on top of it because the color that it was wasn't satisfactory either right i wanted it to be blonder i wanted it to be lighter i wanted to have highlights i wanted all of these things right which i you know again parents wouldn't pay for me to go to a salon or anything so these were like things i bought at the grocery store and you know just experimenting with all these kinds of things and attempts to achieve you know hair that grows naturally out of my head right to coax it and coerce it and force it into what i felt was acceptable and good and pretty and worthy right so this continued through my 20 straightening my hair when i'm 30 years old and i'm straightening my hair and then i started seeing these i got turned on to these it's called the curly girl method and i dug into this concept because i was it was like i was seeing these before and after pictures that were just amazing you know but before pictures looking many of them just like the hair that i had you know that was like frizzy and stringy and kind of wavy but like not and like crunchy you know if i ever tried to wear it curly so i read up on it and i learned like what chemicals to avoid and i learned to start the process of basically detoxifying my hair and healing it right retraining it in a whole new way returning to its natural beautiful state and it was a process let me tell you like a while like a year and a half or two years maybe even before i consistently got like the natural beauty back out of my hair in the process of returning it to this natural state and finding tools and products that enhance my natural texture and my natural form of hair caring for it in its natural state the way that it just is instead of trying to force it into something that it's not and also shifting my ideas and my beliefs around what is acceptable and what is worthy and what is pretty and what is enough for my hair to look like are you seeing any parallels yet between my hair and how we raise children so there was years recently that i didn't even own a blow dryer i didn't own a flat iron i didn't own a curling iron i got rid of it all because i knew that it was damaging my hair i haven't colored my hair in years at this point because i know that it also damages all those chemicals damage my natural curls i haven't straightened it since then maybe like once or twice like and seriously in the past like six years maybe not even that i can't actually recall that happening but you know it was a commitment it was a big shift it was a changing of tracks it was you know like i've been on this this train track on this road on this trail of not accepting my hair like forcing it to be different than it is and you know what i'm going to change i'm gonna make a choice and i'm gonna look to embrace my hair and it was not easy because there were days that it looked awful there were days that they looked horrible there were days that i would try certain products or certain methods and it would just look like poop or like super sticky or heavy there was a lot of days where i just pulled it up into a messy bun but i kept going i didn't go back i didn't go back to the straight iron i didn't go back to the curling iron i didn't go back to the silicones it was a commitment and now i have the benefit of having really healthy hair really healthy completely natural hair my natural color my natural texture i now know how to take care of it i now know how to nurture it i now know how to nourish it and love it and give it the things that it needs to shine and to really embrace what it is and allow it to be right it was a process of letting go letting go of what it needed to be let it going letting go of what i wanted it to be so then the other day when i was fixing my hair because i figured it out right i figured it out and now and it's beautiful and i love it in realizing that my hair has returned not only has my hair returned to its natural healthy beautiful state the way my hair was created to be but i also now have the tools and i know the process and the products to enhance it even further and really nourish it and pull out the curls that i have in a way that i'm honestly still surprised that my hair can look like this and i was sitting there and i was like oh my gosh we do this to kids it was done to us when we were kids it was done to our parents when they were kids it was done to their parents when they were kids that we whoever we is that's raising them that's teaching them that's guiding them that the adults we want them whether we're aware of it or not we want them to be something other than they are we want them to be quieter or if they're shy we want them to be louder and use their voice and if they're really active and always haven't a lot of energy we're like oh my gosh can't you just calm down down sit still can't you just sit still my gosh you're making me crazy but if they're no if they're if they're you know like not then we're like you can't just sit on the couch all day why are you so lazy get up go outside run around and if they're smart then we're like oh you think you're smarter than me but if they're not smart then it's like my gosh they're so stupid right like we do this to kids we have these expectations about them why aren't you sleeping through the night why are you still getting in bed with me at nighttime why can't you brush your own teeth why can't you tie your own shoes why can't you put on your own clothes i know you can go to it it's like i bought you this toy so that you would play with it by yourself instead of wanting me to play with you because i got laundry and dishes to do like we have all these things you know i paid for a full season of soccer and now you don't want to play anymore but i spent all this money i already bought you the cleats i've already paid for the next three months of piano lessons but now you don't feel like doing it anymore come on just push through this you're a big girl but your big girl painting's on keep going we do this we try to take the beautiful curly hair and modify it and coerce it and add chemicals to it and heat and stress to get it to look like something that we think it should look like and when it rains it all goes to hell and it's poofy and when the stress hits the fan and you know we do it or it's been done anyway but i got a different choice i got the opportunity to make a different choice you have the opportunity to make a different choice you're in the middle of it already and you know it you know you're in the middle of making these different choices and if you're on the other side of this or if your kids are a little older they can go through that detox process too and it's not a detox process but that's just another metaphor retraining they'll figure their stuff out they'll figure it out like we've figured it out we are figuring it out you know the culture that we grew up in a lot of us are still figuring out the stuff and unpacking it and reorganizing it and deconstructing some of it in the past several years and we're still in the process of figuring it out but with our kids we can look at them now and make different choices so that maybe we minimize the amount of chemicals and straws and straightening irons that they apply to their natural curls it's total metaphor but by the way my daughter does have actually curly hair but yours may not i don't know but instead and choose to embrace the beautiful curly things about them supporting them and giving them the tools and products and opportunities to enhance their natural abilities and their natural skills and the things that are innately unique and natural to them and in them instead of trying to get them to be something that they're not or going against you know there's a meme out there that like if your kid's bad at math but they can build a house like don't get them a math tutor get them a print a ship with a contractor and i totally made up that situation but there is a meme out there i just don't remember what the exact things were but it's like enhance the things that they naturally are their natural strengths instead of focusing on what their weaknesses are we all have strengths and weaknesses and it's part of our purpose and path in this lifetime instead of turning them in trying to coercing them pushing them pushing them coercing them controlling them into something that they're not and this goes for you too mama like i said i know that you've already been on this journey of unlearning and deprogramming and deconstructing and choosing and healing and retraining your mind and all of these things and it's exactly that you may have already started this awkward period in here where you know your head and your hair just looks bad all the time cause you're in this transition period and you haven't figured it all out yet and you don't know what you're doing you're still detoxing from all the damage that was done to you and through you over the years and years and years i did that to my hair for like 35 years probably more but no matter the years of damage that are there it can be undone perhaps not reversed but growth is always happening and new growth is always happening things can be unlearned habits can be unlearned flipped reframed you get to make choices you get to bring in new defaults you can set your kids up not only to have all of this or to minimize the damage at least because there's gonna be stuff there's no graduating from childhood a hundred percent perfect foundation underneath the view i don't believe it actually exists i believe that there's always something that we're gonna have to overcome as humans though we can minimize the stuff that they'll deal with because there's stuff that we know that we've dealt with and are dealing with that we get to choose to not repeat in them the stuff that they'll heal from the stuff that they'll get to overcome and you can do it yourself too for the journey for you for you for them and for future generations and the beauty of it is that with the right tools the right products and the right instructions the right guidelines the right stuff you can thrive in this just like my curls thrive now just like my curls thrive now you can thrive in this transition when you've got the right stuff to make it easier and it brings more ease into your life that is a new default a new habit a new behavior a new way of being to where your default is now i don't even own a flat iron because i know i don't need it anymore i don't use it anymore i don't want it anymore what are the things in your parenting mind that you have learned imprinted of what it means to be a mom what it means to be a good mom to have good kids to be a good kid with flat irons are in there that you just don't need anymore there's gonna be this period where you're fearful of not having it like what if one day my hair just looks awful and i've got a big meeting or i'm going on a date or there's or whatever and you're like what if i need the flat iron what if i need it and i don't have it what if my hair never looks great and then i'll just have to go buy another flat iron but what if i just keep it in the back of my closet it's still there it's still there for me to grab when i need it maybe let it go i'll let it go let it go let it go let it go let it go it wouldn't be a podcast if i didn't reference at least one disney movie right oh my gosh mama i'm so happy that you're here i'm so happy that you're here i'm so happy that we can do this you don't have to do this alone and you don't have to do this without the tools it doesn't have to be hard actually it gets to be easy this transition gets to be easy and it gets to be fast and i know how that can sound like too good to be true or like i'm selling snake oil or a magic pill you know we all want magic pills until we're offered to like a legit magic pill and then we're like i don't know seems too good to be true i think i'm gonna pass thanks oh and if it were true what if it were true what if it is true you get to decide you get to decide because you make the best decisions for you but if you're interested in knowing more please take the next step be curious about what if what if what if and you know you're not gonna get any pressure for me because i am all about your personal power and your free will and you making the best decisions for you i am anti coercion anti manipulation anti pressure so below in the show notes you'll find a link to an application for a free dm conversation with me and it's just some questions to reflect on where you are right now in your motherhood journey and where you want to be and then we'll just have a little chat i also have a new free mini course coming up that is all about how you can give your kids the childhood that they deserve and are worthy of while also allowing yourself the motherhood experience that you are worthy of without needing to be fully healed and without decades of therapy and without effing it all up and it gets to be easy and it gets to be fast so keep an eye out for that new mini course coming in that will have so much more information as well but if you want to go ahead and get chatting with me fill out the application via the link below and if we're a good match there's lots of options because i've designed it this way there's minimal time and money investment and then it grows from there so it depends on what works for you and i love you and i love your kids and i love any future generations that come from you and i can't wait to walk along this journey thank you for listening clink the link below for your free application and i love you awesome we'll see you next time