How I Brought the Curls From My 20s Back to Life in My 40s
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I betrayed my curls for 15 years with intervals of chemical treason—a regularly scheduled hair felony that I committed with both premeditation and glee. Every three months, I would slip away to a salon where, thanks to a super-strong keratin treatment, several hours, and hundreds of dollars, I would transform my very curly hair into something sleek, straight, and swishy. No more tight ringlets—only soft, unfurled, velvety hair that moved with the artificial grace of a shampoo commercial actress who's probably wearing extensions anyway.
My first keratin treatment was just a few months after the birth of my first daughter. I was 34. Those early days of motherhood were a blur of sleepless nights, constant crying (both hers and mine), and a pervasive feeling that my life had spiraled completely out of control. My colicky infant dictated every moment of my existence. Then came that first keratin treatment. I emerged from the salon with the easiest, smoothest hair imaginable—exactly as advertised. Wash and go; air-dry; easy-breezy. My days and nights may have become chaotic and unpredictable, but my hair, at least, was suddenly manageable—a tiny island of control in the tsunami of new motherhood, like clutching a perfectly styled pool floatie while being swept out to sea. And so I kept it up. A few months of regrowth meant frizzy, curling roots, which I'd immediately squelch with a fresh coat of chemicals.
Over the years, the treatments weren't just a styling preference—they became part of my identity, my personality, and possibly my tax filing status. So much so that my own daughters, now 11 and 15, never knew about the natural texture of my hair. (When they were little I guess they didn't even clock how curly it was in old pictures?! Children: famously unobservant unless you're trying to sneak vegetables into their pasta sauce.) And when they'd innocently comment, from time to time, "Your hair is so straight, Mommy," I'd change the subject faster than a politician asked about their college drug use, uncomfortable with acknowledging the lengths I went to alter my appearance, and worried about the message I'd be sending. I felt a strange relief when they both ended up with naturally straight hair. At least they wouldn't inherit what I had spent years trying to erase or feel like I was condemning something they also had.
The summer of 2023 marked the end of that era. I tried a different brand of keratin treatment and afterwards something was catastrophically different. My hair resembled that of a cartoon witch: thin, brittle, overly straight, and falling out in alarming amounts. My ponytail was the size of a dime. I'm no scientist but it seemed obvious to me that the chemical bonds had broken beyond repair, despite the fact that to my knowledge, these treatments are not meant to break any bonds in the way relaxers or perms do. But clearly something had gone wrong, in the same way that the Titanic experienced a "minor navigational issue."
This wasn't a temporary setback that another treatment could fix in a few months. Standing in front of the mirror, I faced a stark reality: I needed to regrow my hair from scratch and gradually cut away the damaged ends, a process approximately as fun as filing your taxes. After 15 years of chemical straightening, I had to reacquaint myself with my natural texture—curls that I had long ago rejected. After two kids and the hormonal changes of perimenopause, I wasn't even sure that they'd grow back in the way I'd left them. What if the curls were totally different, and not in a good way?
As soon as I made the decision to grow out my curls, I started nosing the curly world, trying to figure out where to start. It was immediately clear to me that the curly hair world I'd left behind in the aughts was virtually unrecognizable now. What had once been a niche community with limited product options had exploded into a full-fledged movement with the organizational structure and devotion of a minor religion, pioneered in large part by Black women like Whitney White of Naptural85, Patrice Grell Yursik of Afrobella, and India Davis, Carmen Graham, and Toni Mitchell of My Natural Sistas.
The evolution was staggering. I felt like someone who had been in a coma, awakening to find that the world had moved on without me, like Brendan Fraser in Encino Man but with significantly better styling products available. Entire product collections dedicated solely to curly hair now lined store shelves. Social media platforms that didn't even exist 15 years ago now teemed with content creators who specialized in curl care including everything from basic tutorials to personalized consultations done with the solemnity of neurosurgeons. There were webinars, online courses, and virtual communities all centered around embracing natural texture. One click and you could have a "Curl Consultant" or "Curl Coach" talk you through wash day, styling tips, porosity, density, and more. There's @GenaMarie, who has over 100K followers and offers both one-on-one consults as well group curl coaching. CurlyJo is ready to step in for folks who are "on the brink of giving up on your curls or feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information." She also can tell you if you're actually scrunching ALL wrong—spoiler alert: you probably are, you absolute monster.
Speaking of scrunching: I found myself learning an entirely new vocabulary of both acronyms and terms: "SOTC" (Scrunch Out the Crunch—what you do after your gel cast has formed), "seaweed hair" (hair that's scrunched and looks like wet seaweed before drying), "raking" (using fingers like a comb, not gardening your scalp), "plopping" (drying hair with a T-shirt by folding it onto your head), and the mysterious "pineapple" (a high, loose ponytail worn to preserve curls while sleeping). It was like learning a foreign language where every other term sounded like something your elderly aunt might misinterpret as obscene.
At this point, my reentry into the curly world felt like learning to walk again. Having discarded all my curly hair products and tools years ago, I was truly starting from square one. My bathroom soon became a laboratory of half-used products, like the storage room of a particularly indecisive cosmetic chemist. During a consultation with Sharley Viola, a CurlSmith educator based in the UK, I confessed that my bathroom counter was "groaning" under the weight of products. She laughed knowingly. "If you talk to anyone with curly hair, they've got so many things at home and you spend so much money," she said. "I have to have clear-outs so often. When friends with curly hair come over, I'm just like, 'Take it! It needs to go.' But you just want to always try things."
One of the experts I stumbled upon was Michigan-based Casey Voss, better known online as @VossTheCurlBoss, and who has built an impressive following with her no-nonsense approach to curly hair. She's developed an extensive eight module curly hair course and created the "Hair, Heart, and Happiness Journal", a daily tracker. These tools, she says, are designed to help people understand not just their curls, but the emotional connection they have with their hair.
Voss pointed out something profound about curly hair journeys: "I think a lot of it is self-acceptance, honestly. Sometimes when I have a new client, we spend the first hour just working through the lies that they've been telling themselves," she told me. "'My hair is just frizzy,' ‘It's just this,' 'I'm just that'... We can't even get to talking about your hair until we work through the fact that your hair hasn't done you dirty." This was apparently less of a styling consultation and more of a hair therapy session, minus the couch.
This resonated deeply with me. For years, I had been (consciously and subconsciously) telling myself stories about why my natural texture was problematic, unmanageable, unprofessional—and just not something I wanted to deal with, like learning how my car's windshield fluid works.
As the months crawled by and my curls started to overtake the straightened hair, the re-learning curve continued to be steep. I had to figure out how to wash my hair (less frequently), how to dry it (never with a regular towel, which is apparently the hair equivalent of using sandpaper as a face wipe), and how to sleep without destroying my curls (satin bonnet or bust!).
"It takes time and learning. It takes trial and error,” says Viola. “Sometimes people just get frustrated, especially if you're not into hair. They'll just be like, 'Do you know what? I'm just gonna blow dry it straight again.'" When I joked that managing curly hair felt like a part-time job, she laughed and agreed. "It definitely is!" But she also offered a perspective that shifted my thinking: "Your hair's getting used to being in this new state. If your hair's used to being blow dried and straightened, what you find is when you first start wearing your hair naturally, your curl patterns will be slightly looser. And the further along in your journey you go when you're not straightening and putting heat on it, it starts to get a little bit tighter. You're getting that elasticity back in your hair, which is allowing your curl to bounce back." My hair, apparently, was on its own wellness journey.
I confessed my frustration to Shundell Vance, a stylist at curl mecca Ouidad, in New York City. "I feel like it’s just a lot," I told her. "It is a lot of work. Why is it so much work?" Her answer was both candid and oddly comforting: "Think about a gardener and their flowers. To get the most beautiful flowers, you gotta put in the work. And to embrace the curls, you gotta put in the work. If it was easy, anybody would have them."
This simple truth—that beautiful curls require dedication—was somehow liberating. I wasn't failing; I was gardening. My ability to keep houseplants alive is mediocre, though… so the metaphor was concerning.
Not gonna lie: that regrowth process was nothing short of horrendous and lengthy. For more than a year, I lived with split personality hair—frizzy and curly at the roots where new growth emerged, and poker-straight damaged, lifeless strands everywhere else. My hair truly looked bizarre most days, like I was wearing a botched wig…. that had been run over by a truck and then partially restored by someone whose only qualifications were watching three episodes of Project Runway and owning a hot glue gun. I felt a sense of shame that this was 100% my fault—that, had I not gone to such lengths to disguise my true hair, none of this would happen. I'd find myself staring at people on the subway or on the street who had curly hair, and wishing I could fast forward until my own were back, and promised myself that I'd appreciate them, at last…or at the very least, not mess with them, chemically.
When I described this frustrating limbo to Viola, she immediately understood the struggle. "When you are dealing with two textures, because you've got your natural hair growing through and then your keratin, it's very difficult to style," she explained. "It's hard to be happy with your style because you're going to get different results from different parts of your hair. It can be very frustrating."
She offered practical advice: "What I advise for people when they are growing out their keratin is that you might have to do a lot of half-up, half-down styles. Twisting and pinning the front, so you're not seeing that contrast as much. You're mostly just seeing that newer, curly hair underneath, and you clip the top layers half up." In other words, elaborate hair origami was now my only option.
Eventually, after enough regrowth had happened, I started getting periodic curly cuts to shape my hair. Two local curl experts helped along this journey: Susan Ayad at Curl Spectrum and Alexandra Lugo at Filament Salon who both dry-cut my hair, carefully trimming off the frayed ends and cultivating the curls coming in.
As my natural curls finally began to take over, I found myself reflecting on what straight hair had meant to me all those years. In my twenties, straight hair had represented professionalism, polish, and control. It was easier to manage, less affected by weather, and more aligned with conventional beauty standards. Straight hair was safe. It didn't make statements or take up so much space the way big, wild curls do. Voss had an insightful observation about the psychological aspect of curly hair: "Nine times out of ten, a straight-haired client is a million times easier to have a consultation with because they don't have hair traumas," she told me. Of course, as a white woman with Type 3 curly hair I have a vastly different experience than a Black or brown woman with Type 4 hair, who is far more likely to experience outward discrimination and societal judgements. But still, my preconceived notions about what curly hair signified were hard to shake.
For me, perhaps most tellingly, my straightening ritual had become a form of security. It was something I could control in a world where so much felt uncontrollable. There was comfort in the predictability: I knew exactly how my hair would look after a treatment, exactly how it would behave, unlike my children, career, or the stock market.
It's sort of no surprise that my hair rebellion (resurrection?) came at midlife, a time when many aspects of my identity are already in flux. My body has changed—and is changing, like it's being slowly replaced by a similar but slightly less cooperative version. My role as a mother is evolving as my children grow more and more independent, no longer requiring me to cut their food but instead requiring me to Venmo them money at random hours. Amid all this transition, reclaiming my natural hair texture feels like part of a larger reckoning.
Midlife is often when we begin to care less about others' opinions and more about authenticity, like finally admitting that we don't actually enjoy kale or understand cryptocurrency. For me, embracing my curls has become a physical manifestation of a broader internal shift—a move toward more self-acceptance in all aspects and of a new phase of life.
There was also something liberating about revealing my true texture to my children. When my younger daughter first saw my natural curls emerging, her eyes widened. "Your hair is curly?" she asked, genuinely surprised. I explained that yes, this was my real hair, the hair I was born with, the hair I had been chemically altering for most of her life.
That conversation opened up deeper discussions about beauty standards, authenticity, and the pressure women face to conform. I realized that in trying to shield my children from potential hair insecurities, I had inadvertently reinforced the very message I was hoping to avoid: that curly hair needed to be "fixed," like a broken appliance, rather than a natural variation.
I'm now a year and a half into my curl renaissance and my hair is 90% regrown—the damaged ends are still being gradually trimmed away—but the new growth is healthy, vibrant, and curly in a way I had almost forgotten was possible. The curls are very curly—more so than I’d even remembered. Lots of them are like curly fries; you can almost put your finger through each spiral like a finger trap.
The journey has been both more challenging and more rewarding than I anticipated. There have been moments of frustration, especially on humid days when my curls seem to have a rebellious mind of their own, expanding outward like they're trying to make contact with distant planets. There have been expensive product mistakes and lots of trial and error with brushes, clips, hair dryers…. "Curly hair is highly technique-dependent," Gena reminded me. "Even with the best products, if the application method isn't right, the results won't last. Many people struggle with applying the right amount of product, distributing it evenly, or using the right techniques to enhance definition and hold." (In her group coaching, she does live, interactive styling sessions where she demonstrates step-by-step while watching members style their own hair on camera, a process that sounds only slightly less intense than training for the Olympics.)
But there have also been moments of satisfaction—like the first time a stranger complimented my voluminous curls, or when I caught my reflection and felt a surge of recognition: "That’s the real me." I've come to see my curly hair as not just a texture but as a temperament—unique, expressive, and resistant to control, for better or for worse. In embracing it, I'm embracing those qualities in myself as well. I need to bite the bullet and get new headshots taken—with my big new head of curly hair.
Vance from Ouidad offered me a reassuring perspective when I asked if the learning process would always be this overwhelming: "Once you learn it and you find the products that work for you, it's like riding a bike." My new “ride” happens to be a monster truck of products recommended by experts and curl content creators alike: a curl cream (I like the Not Your Mother's Defining Cream), a strong hold gel (Ouidad Climate Control Gel) and a mousse (DevaCurl Super Mousse), plus diffusing with the Curlsmith Defrizzion Dryer. I've also found that adding in the DevaCurl CurlBond mask periodically really does make a difference. I now have a more elaborate hair routine than most runway models, and I need a larger suitcase when traveling.
Curl Talk Defining Cream
$11.00, Ulta Beauty
Advanced Climate Control Heat & Humidity Gel
$26.00, Amazon
Supermousse Coconut Oil Infused Volumizer
$34.00, Nordstrom
De-Frizzion Dryer
$189.00, Ulta Beauty
Curlbond Re-Coiling Treatment Mask
$44.00, Amazon
The keratin treatments that once felt essential now seem like a relic from another lifetime. In some ways, I can't imagine going back to that quarterly ritual, to that cycle of dependency on chemicals and heat to feel presentable.
But I'll be totally honest. In spite of it all—now that my hair is entirely curly again and the memory of two-textured, horror-show hair is fading fast—there are moments (bad hair days; pictures I don't like) when I feel weak and wish I could just have smooth, swishy hair again. I find myself tempted to go back “on the sauce.”
Part of writing this piece for the world to see, I think, is to try to work through my conflicted feelings about it all, and perhaps give me some accountability for being curly again, especially during those weak get-me-a-keratin! moments—for better or for worse, through frizz and fuzz, in humidity and in drought. I'm learning to work with what nature gave me, to enhance rather than erase. I'm discovering that there's a profound difference between styling your hair and fundamentally altering it—both practically and psychologically.
Finally, I'm wearing my hair the way it was meant to be worn. It took a village of experts—online and IRL—to get me here, but the curls are back in action. It's not always perfect, not always cooperative, and definitely not always predictable. It's still far too short for my liking and it will probably take a long time to grow it to the collarbone-grazing length I'd prefer. (The tighter the curl, the longer it takes! It's like growing your hair in dog years rather than human ones.) But it's real, it's mine, and after 15 years of faking it to make it, that feels like the greatest luxury of all.
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