Nappily Ever After: What Happens When You're You | Author of My Faith: Encouragement for Today's Christian Woman

Nappily Ever After: What Happens When You’re You

Let's Talk, Lifestyle for Christian Women
October 1, 2018
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I just saw the movie Nappy Ever After. Man oh MAN…there were so many things in that movie that made it hit home. Although the running line was about Violet getting the man, this was a story about what happens when you’re you. It’s about what happens when you gain the courage to embrace who you are even when you’ve been conditioned to believe you had to change, modify or suppress it. We all want our happily ever after. But perhaps there’s a place we have to get to first. Like Nappy Ever After – which I really think is just a way of saying you accept yourself as is. In order to do that, I think there’s a few lessons we can learn from this story and apply to our own lives.

I had more to say than I orignally thought, so I decided to make this into a 3-part series. Here’s part 1:

Poor parenting affects children well into adulthood, but you can overcome it:

Although Violet is a very likeable person, what’s sad is that the things you love about her were never acknowledged, appreciated or nutured by her mother and seemingly her father. It seems like her mother especially was more interested in having a daughter who met the standards for a certain appearance. And as a result, there was a lot of emphasis put on her hair – most likely because her mother decided that it was something that met an acceptable physical beauty standard. To make matters worse, her mother made everything about herself. Violet had just shaved her head and she passes out instead of asking what’s wrong. She tries to shame Violet for wanting her father to be present at her birthday party. And of course her ex-husband’s (Violet’s father’s) ad in the newspaper as an underwear model was so shameful. What made me actually dislike her mother was how she responded when Violet said she’d burned her with the hotcomb. She completely dismissed her and basically told her that she needed to get over it because this is what it took to find a man.

The point is that parents who raise their children as an extension of themselves only fail their children. They also abandon them in a sense because they’re not really recognizing the child’s needs outside of the functional ones (food, shelter, clothes, and attending school). They’re teaching their children how to reject themselves at the core, because who they truly are isn’t good enough to receive love, acceptance or praise. That they can only accept those things if they maintain a standard that is the exact opposite of who they really are.

And while many of us probably sat through that movie judging Violet because she rejected herself to make a man happy, how many of us have done the same thing or something similar with a different person (say a boss, friend or parent) because we sense or believe that person won’t truly love us as we are?

The good news is that Violet found the courage to go her own way despite the evil stares and cutting remarks of her mother. So the question for you is what will it take for you to break free from a cyle of people pleasing to have a life where you’re accepted for who you really are?

Let’s Talk: How do you deal with someone who shames and criticizes you for being yourself?