Boyzone. Backstreet Boys. B*Witched. Braids. This was the tail-end of the glorious Nineties and the last time I had braids. When my mum finally ended the weekly trauma of me sitting on a pillow between her legs while she attempted to pull a comb through my dishevelled hair.

The screeching and crying that proceeded was likened to hyenas. She would then have me keep these weird, slightly itchy, dangly things hanging from my head for weeks at a time.

In a small town in Northern Ireland, where I was the only black girl in a 50-mile radius, my peers just couldn’t fathom “what was wrong with my hair.” I would then spend subsequent lunch times enduring a game of “pull the braid and run” with the boys in my class. Since then, I professed “never again” and kissed goodbye to braids, a protective hairstyle set to save me hundreds of pounds.

My braid experience wasn’t only about the painful combing and the itchy scalp, it also stopped me from fitting in. All my Irish friends had long blonde silky hair and a tiny frame which all the boys seemed to like. And I longed to be anything but how I looked.

“How I learned to accept and love my braids”