Shea Butter Era

I am declaring these the Lavender Years.

But before the Lavender Years got here the Shea Butter Era reigned supreme!

During college I discovered a different black girl existed. I’d shared a lot of the same growing pains and milestones with other black girls on my small PWI campus but I’d never known the “Afrocentric-natural-black soap-black girl magic” black girl. So when I discovered Shea Butter it changed my life. It was like Shea was made for us. Creamed honey made for brown skin. Shea just always called me home.

So… I used A LOT of it. All over my body.

Sometimes it was soft and warm but also messy. Other times it was tough. You worked it. Or it worked you. Often the ladder, when I felt - as black girls do - too tired from the weight of the day to lift my fists and fight with Shea. Sometimes there was compromise, sometimes the stubbornness prevailed. Sometimes we’ve both been left disappointed by the results, but we always tried again - trusting the magic of beginnings, our union and the subtle balance of life.

Shea taught me that the fight is often futile. I spent many nights warring with Shea (or my hair, hips, lips, mind, mouth) to become something it will never be. Trying to will it to an existence it was never meant for. I learned, during those years, that you have to let go. Simply. And it is usually then that things fall together.

Shea was so… unexpected, but always, in many ways, comforting. Shea is always a surprise and always takes some working through. Never not consistent. And when life let me down, there was Shea - ready to cloak me against the world. A shield we black girls always have available in some form or another.

Shea was thick and strong when she needed to be and knew how to bend and smooth and soften. Shea Butter was everything I didn’t know I needed and even now Shea sits in my closet waiting for me to need her again. To be that ever-reliable, impenetrable, golden guard.

I think black and brown women need a space to exist, unbothered. Times to abandon responsibility. When the world tries to swallow us whole where do you retreat, black girl?

-photogeNic