Before I became a parent, other parents would talk about learning from their kids and I would nod like I understood, but I really had only the vaguest notion of what that actually meant. How could it be that your kids taught you things? I mean, sure, children deploy the occasional folksy wisdom, in that “kids say the dardnest things” kind of way, but I doubted that was what everyone was so moony-eyed over. 

Then Shiv Mehra came into my life and blew my world wide open. 

I wrote fairly extensively in Brown White Black about the learning curve that came when Jill, Shiv’s other mom, and I learned that we were becoming the (non-Black) parents of a Black child. If you’ve read the book, you may recall that a sonogram told us to expect a girl, only for Shiv to be assigned male at birth; more than one Black woman made it clear at that point that we had dodged a bullet because “at least y’all won’t have to deal with Black girl hair.”

Like I said last week, insert dramatic irony here!

There is no way for me to do justice to the intricate and complicated history of Black hair—first of all, I am far from an expert; second of all, even a dozen blog posts would barely scratch the surface. I am speaking only from my experience as an outsider with a deep, soul-level investment in understanding. It’s been about a five-year learning journey as a student-parent, profoundly humbling and beautiful in more ways that I can adequately capture, but I want to begin to try.