When How You Feel About Your Hair Starts Messing With Your Recovery
What we see in the mirror is more than “just hair.” For many women, it quietly shapes our mood, our worth, and our courage to show up—especially in sobriety.
Can we talk about something that doesn’t usually show up in recovery books… but absolutely shows up in daily life?
Hair.
I recently read a piece on “hair-esteem”—how we feel about our hair and how others treat us because of it. The research backs up what many women already know in our bones:
- Comments about our hair can stick for years.
- Hair-based bias hits women and girls of color especially hard.
- Feeling “wrong” or “not good enough” on the outside can slowly chip away at our worth on the inside.
In recovery, that matters. A lot. Sobriety isn’t just about not drinking or using. It’s about rebuilding how we see ourselves—body, mind, and spirit.
If you’ve ever avoided a gathering because you “didn’t look right,” felt like your curls, coils, gray, or thinning hair didn’t fit in, or caught yourself thinking, “If I looked better, I’d feel better,” please know: you’re not shallow or vain. You’re human, and you’ve been swimming in a culture that ties our value to how we look.
Your recovery isn’t less valid on messy-bun days. Your worth does not rise and fall with your hair.
You’re allowed to care about your appearance and still know that your deepest beauty sits in your courage, honesty, and willingness to start again—sometimes from zero.
A few gentle check-ins you can try:
- Notice the voice. When you look in the mirror, what’s the first sentence that pops up in your mind? Would you say that to a friend?
- Name the pressure. Is this coming from your own preference, or from a message or beauty standard that never really fit you?
- Choose one kind thing. Maybe it’s a protective style, a deep-condition night, a cute scarf or beanie, or simply deciding, “I’m not talking to myself like that today.”
Small shifts in how we talk to ourselves can be powerful support for sobriety. When we feel safer in our own skin, cravings and urges have less room to run the show.
A little support for “bad hair” days 🧶
Because I know how big this can feel, we created something simple and cozy that many women in our community are loving on those “I can’t with my hair today” mornings:
The “Be Grateful” Cuffed Beanie
It’s a soft, easy throw‑on beanie you can grab on the way out the door—school drop‑off, a meeting, a coffee run, or your next recovery group. On the front it says “Be Grateful,” not as pressure, but as a gentle nudge:
“I don’t have to be perfect today. I can just be grateful to be sober and here.”
When you buy a Be Grateful cuffed beanie, you’re not just covering a bad hair day—you’re helping cover the cost of therapist‑created Recovery Support Texts that go out to women who need hope in the middle of their day.
I’m proud of you for all the invisible work you’re doing—yes, even on the days when your hair, your mood, or your life feel out of place.