High Self Esteem through Creative Writing

I believe creativity is intimately tied up with higher self esteem and emotional healing – at least for some of us. When I started to feel good about me and trust myself and didn’t carry so much old baggage, I began to be willing to write and take myself seriously enough to write a book. Funny thing is when I was in school I loved my English classes but was always critiqued by teachers for my ability to speak well about what we read but my very limited writing ability. I write poems, little essays and comments on life. Now I love all of my writing. I see creative writing as another self empowerment. Hair Stories Honey I was 2 or 3. I lived in an apartment in E. Orange, NJ over a store – a drug store that my mother worked in while my father was away in the Army. My father was in Europe in the Army in WWII. I lived with my very nervous, unsure mother and her roommate, Joan. I remember walking between our neighbor’s apartment, an old lady named Blanche, and my apartment. Blanche sometimes combed my hair into special hairstyles. I remember two braids pinned up on my head. The hairstyle came with her honeyed love – honey because it was sweet and it clung to me when I went home where a more nervous, matter-of-fact kind of love lived. Dad’s Shoulders One of my favorite things to do was to sit on my dad’s shoulders as he sat on the couch and fix his hair. I used barrettes and bobby pins, (remember those?) – maybe even bows. He’d let me comb it and play with it as long as I wanted to. My mother was impatient and I would never have even asked her. She felt too uninviting. I felt like I was floating in a safe cocoon-like bubble – just me and him. It was a little girl version of a hot tub with your closest friend. Bobby Pin It’s a bit of a stretch to call this one a hair story. It’s actually about a bobby pin and my brilliant 4-year-old experiment with electricity. (Ah! My mother was fixing her hair, so it actually qualifies.) My mother was sitting at her dressing table combing her hair. (Does anyone have a dressing table any more? They seem to signify a slower time when women weren’t in a rush to look beautiful and be out the door. They took their time to sit down and make themselves beautiful. And they even took the time to put “skirts” on the dressing table.) I was hanging out on the floor watching when I saw a bobby pin. I thought, “I wonder if this would light up if I put it in the plug?” So I tried it. Wow! Ouch! Fire came out and burned my hand. I spent the whole day lying on the bed with my mother helping me put my hand in ice water so it wouldn’t hurt and blister. It was too cold. She did it with me to make me want to do it more. It blistered anyway and I never forgot what’s in the plug. The Permanent I had very straight hair when I was a child and, being female, I wanted curls. Sometimes I’d bug my mother enough so that she would set it in rags but those curls came out right away. A couple of times my mother let me get a permanent in a beauty parlor because the Toni’s she gave me, always came out in a few days and they were very smelly, too. Not only that but my mother was all thumbs so it wasn’t very like the picture showed it to be. The curlers were crooked and falling out. I believe it was 2nd grade and we were going to have our pictures taken and my mother agreed to let me go to the Pleasantdale Beauty Salon to get a permanent. I was very in love with my 2nd grade teacher, Miss Sokely, and wanted to look especially wonderful for picture day. I have that picture some place in my pile of pictures. My bangs (cut by my father with a dish towel across my forehead) were straight and the rest of my hair was straight right down to my ears where it stuck out in bushy permanent curls. To top this picture of feminine pulchritude off, I was missing some of my front teeth. Did I think I looked beautiful enough for Miss Sokely? Although this seemed like a major event at the time, I don’t remember. There’s something for me to learn here. Whatever is happening today, in 50 years I won’t remember. The Wig Oh, my poor overly self-conscious 21-year-old self! In the early sixties wigs were “in” – particularly for Black women. My father sold clothes and wigs almost exclusively to Black women door-to-door. And he sold wigs. Lots of wigs. Sometimes I was coerced into working with him and he made me wear a blonde wig! Can you imagine me in a blonde wig? I couldn’t either. But this was my very own dark hair, almost black hair, wig. My boyfriend and later first husband got it in his head that I should have one and he bought it for me from my father and gave it to me as a gift. Of course, I felt I had to love it. But wearing it was a whole other story! I hated it! I knew everyone was looking at me and thinking how weird I looked. But did I tell my boyfriend? Of course not. I managed to convince him that it was appropriate only for very dressy situations. And then I was asked to be a bridesmaid for my friend. And my boyfriend expected me to wear the wig. I did. I had the worst time I ever had in my life. I was in 100% stress throughout the wedding. I even brought another dress to change into after the ceremony trying to convince myself that it was the dress that stressed me out. But it was the wig. I shlepped that wig along on my honeymoon to Europe. I never wore it; I just shlepped it. I don’t recall what finally happened to it – how I got over having to please him and force myself into wearing it. I know it wore it very few times. I know it was long gone when I finally left him in 1980. He probably just got tired of caring about the wig. And the funny thing is I had long, beautiful, almost black real hair. The Braid I was what I like to call a “middle-class hippy.” I wore long dresses exclusively for 3 years while my husband went off to work as a programmer in a suit everyday. I had the requisite long hair and we belonged to a somewhat exotic spiritual organization which completely freaked my parents out. I loved wearing my hair in two long ponytails or one long braid. I looked so “in” and exotic. It took 3 years to grow my hair long enough to have a braid that touched my waist. It took a full day for my hair to dry when I washed it in N.J. humidity. It was a real challenge to have hair like that. I had two little kids – one a baby who’s little chubby hands loved to grab my long hair. One day when I was driving around doing the mom-like errands of a mother of two and a wife, I had it! That damn braid kept feeling like a lump of coal stuck in the middle of my back while I rushed around and tried to keep a 2 year old and a 6 year old from killing me from the back seat. I came home that Friday and told my husband I had to cut it off. I called around to local beauty shops but the women were booked for appointments with full force that Saturday. So we left the kids with my parents and went into Greenwich Village that very night and I found a somewhat famous beauty salon open until midnight that would do my hair. All the operators stood around while the man who cut my hair cut it to a pixie! And here I am at 66 thinking of growing a braid again! Hair Dye And then there’s the story of my dying my hair. When I was around 30ish, I started to get a bit of a gray streak in the front of my hair. I kind of liked it. Never thought about dying it – being the mother earth type and all that. Until I met Barbara D. I gave her lots of power and she thought I should cover the gray and try a reddish look. Why did I listen to her? I did it because I thought she knew. Dying my hair is a big pain in the neck. My dark hair is very dark. Roots weren’t in like they seem to be in today. But I think it’s dark roots with light hair and mine was the other way around anyway. I dyed my hair for about 12 years until one day I dyed it and I had a really bad allergic reaction. The light came on! I am the “natural girl”. Dying my hair doesn’t go with me. Thanks for the message, God. I’ll let it grow out. But how ugly. First thing I did was cut it and use a hair pencil to cover the roots. And it looked worse. So I went to a beauty salon and asked the owner who had very long striking natural gray and dark hair herself if she could do something to temporarily cover it while it grew in. She said she could. And my hair turned pink and green! I had it cut very, very short and survived until it all the dye grew out. Do you notice any an underlying theme throughout these little stories? Do you notice the self-esteem journey written within?

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