La Trenza del Barrio

You know, sometimes I think my hair has a life and mind of its own. It decides what it wants to look like each day. It disregards the way I want it to look. It challenges the way I style it. It just does what it wants to do. It always has the last say in everything I do to it. ¡Cabrona!

When I was a little girl, my mother would braid my hair all the time. She was always so creative with my long beautiful locks. She would create regular braids, pigtail braids, french braids, braids with fluorescent shoelaces in them, with beautiful ribbons, and pretty bows. And then I remember those painful plastic ball hair ties, where if you tied it too tight, the ball would snap on your hand if you didn't fasten it fast enough and it would hurt so bad. Good times, good times. BUT! I was so cute and stylish as a kid. 

As I look back, I think about all of the ways my hair has been such a huge influence in my life. My hair has some pretty deep secrets. It's been almost every color. And with every color, a different phase of the seasons that took hold of me to teach me some things along the way. I went back to my natural dark brown after all of the phases. To see myself in my authenticity after searching for something that I didn't know wanted to be seen: me. 

My blog is something that, after years of searching for my voice, I have finally decided it was time to talk about certain things that are just taboo. They say you go through madness to find yourself. I did just that. And through every shade that my hair was dressed in, it finally found its way back to begin day one again. 

This is La Trenza del Barrio. 

Yo soy la trenza del barrio.