Growing up one of the things I struggled with was how to do my hair. If you know my story, then you know I’m adopted and I recently found out through DNA testing that I am 31% Native American, 24% England/Wales/Northern Europe, 12% Cameroon, Congo & Sothern Bantu Peoples, 9% Ireland/Scotland, 8% France, 6% Benin/Togo, 3% Spain and so on.

I tell you all this to help you understand why my hair was so hard to manage. When I went through puberty it was like my hair freaked out and didn’t know which ethnicity it should reflect. This, unfortunately, resulted in a SUPER thick, bushy, mostly curly with random straight places blob on top of my head – when before that point it had been fairly thin and straight. To make matters worse, I ended up getting a terrible haircut that the boys in 5^th and 6^th grade LOVED to make fun of. It was basically a big bushy triangle that I tried to poorly straighten. [The guys would tell the teacher they lost their pencil, then walk behind me and say, oh wait! I found it in Helen’s hair! – No lie, that happened.)