What Our Hair Remembers: A Mother's Day Reflection.
Curated for Soft Rows By Moraya Seeger DeGeare, MA, LMFT and Chief Clinical Strategist, Personawealth & BFF Therapy
Moraya with her two children.
This year, in the days leading up to my daughter’s preschool Mother’s Day tea, I witnessed a transformation. Not just in her, but in all of us.
Millie Rose, my four-and-a-half-year-old, has been refusing to go to school. She did not make it a single day last week. Resisting baths unless it has all the toys and popsicles. And doing her hair has been this power of wills. Resisting having her hair done feels like an understatement. I have to plead with her, and every now and again we catch it on the right day and the right treat and we get it done. She had her hair in two braids for two weeks and she loved it in the end, mostly because no one bothered her about her hair.
So on picture day, I didn’t even realize it was picture day. But somehow, I managed to get her hair up in the sweetest little bun, and she actually went to school. Later, when the pictures came back, her hair looked wild and free. The teachers had put caps on their heads, taken the buns down, and didn’t quite know how to put things back together.
At first I laughed. Then I felt a quiet kind of awe. There was something wonderful about that wildness. Uncontained. Alive. It reminded me of my childhood. I also felt embarrassed, like I was failing her as a mom that her hair looked unloved. But she is so deeply loved. Will people see her hair and think I don’t care? When really, I don’t care to fight with her. To exercise some idea of what she must look like to be in the world.
I also don’t want to do her a disservice by not helping her understand that being put together, in whatever style she chooses, is also an important skill as we move in the world around people. Especially understanding that as Black children, although with lots of light skin privilege, the way you move in the room does impact how you are listened to. In many ways, in 2025 more than even years past, Black hair is such a conversation.
Moraya with her maternal Grandfather Pete Seeger
We lived in a multigenerational, multicultural artistic household. My maternal grandparents, Japanese and white (Dutch, Scottish, German, Mayflower lineage, with all the legacy that implies) shared the home. My paternal Black family lived just a mile away. Everything about our lives was diverse: rituals, traditions, meals, hairstyles, everything except politics.
But it was my Japanese grandmother, Toshi, who gave me my first rituals of softness. She’d warm olive oil on the stove, brush through my curls, wrap my hair in saran wrap and a shower cap, then draw a warm bath and talk to me while I soaked with my wooden toys. That was love. That was care. And she gave it freely.
Now, I mother two children who are discovering their own relationships with their hair.
Raiden, my nine-year-old, has the loosest curls in our family. Gentle, soft, easy to grow out or cut depending on his mood. And then there’s Millie, with the tightest, most magical curls that hold braids, twists, and coils with pride. Her hair is versatile, expressive, a canvas of beauty that her older brother admittedly envies.
But at four and a half, Millie wants control. Over everything. And every bath, every hairbrush, every spray of water can turn into a battle. Until one night, something changed.
Raiden was in the bath and asked me to wash his hair, even though he normally showers now. Before I could answer, Millie jumped in. Can we play salon?
Suddenly she was the stylist. She asked if he had an appointment. He said no. Well, I accept walk-ins, she replied. I became her assistant. She shampooed his hair, told him off gently for wiggling too much, and brought the bath to life. Raiden lit up with the attention. She beamed from the power of care. In that moment, they weren’t siblings. They were co-creators of ritual, wrapped in love and laughter.
From then on, Raiden kept asking, can we do the salon again? And something in Millie shifted. Doing hair wasn’t about being forced. It was about connection. Play. Story. Culture. Identity.
So for her preschool Mother’s Day tea, two days in advance, she planned our outfits. She chose our hairstyles. She woke up with excitement. She walked proudly into school, waved at me from across the lot with a heart-shaped hand gesture, and carried her handmade gifts for her teachers like a queen.
No meltdowns. No fighting. Just presence. Because she had ownership.
And for me? All I wanted was for her to brush her hair, get dressed, and go to school. That’s it. But what I got was so much more. A child who felt connected. Who designed her experience. Who saw herself as beautiful, powerful, and in charge of her own expression.
This is what healing looks like. This is what it means to mother. To co-create culture inside our homes. To make room for softness, for ritual, for joy.
Millie’s bow came from a friend’s trip to South Africa. Her dress was passed down by a cousin who knew she’d love it. Her hair holds the stories of generations who learned to care, together.
Shabazz, Tinya, Kitama, Pete, Toshi, Moraya (me), Rose
Design doesn’t just live in what we wear. It lives in how we love. In the way we pass down tenderness, confidence, and curiosity through braids, parts, and coils. Hair, for us, is a language. A legacy. A lineage.
This Mother’s Day, I’m holding close the gift of being present. Of bearing witness. Of letting the outcome go, and embracing the joy of watching something bloom.
To all the mothers and caregivers out there: your presence is a form of design. A form of storytelling. A quiet revolution in the roots.
With messy transparent love,
Moraya
What Is Pre-Parenting?
In therapy and healing work, pre-parenting is the inner tending we do before or alongside raising our children. It’s when we pause and ask, what am I carrying that doesn’t belong in their story?
It is different from re-parenting, which is about giving ourselves what we didn’t get as kids. Pre-parenting is about preparing the soil. It is examining what we’ve inherited so we don’t pass down weeds.
My pre-parenting of self includes re-parenting my relationship to hair. As I softly get curious with my children, we are bringing soft joy back to these vital relationships.
From My Therapy Room
I often say to clients in healing work, it seems like someone gave you a misinterpretation of the data.
Part of healing is separating someone else’s interpretation that is not ours from our own. In that, we create gaps of data that we sometimes have to find, grieve, or honor. Other times, we have to yell that something was just bullshit.
When it comes to hair, the messages we’ve been given from family, friends, society, beauty standards, they hold a lot of bad interpretations of data. Bad opinions about good hair.
And now, gently, we rewrite.
Curated for Soft Rows By Moraya Seeger DeGeare, MA, LMFT
Chief Clinical Strategist, Personawealth & BFF Therapy