🍲👑 The Soup Pot and the Crown

On leadership, mental health, and reclaiming authority when your body begins to speak

Leadership is not revealed when everything is working.

It is revealed when your body, your mind, and your confidence begin to erode — and you choose to stay present.

This is a story about my hair.

But it is also a story about authority.

About listening.

About returning to myself when everything felt as if it were slipping away.

When my locs began to itch uncontrollably, I assumed it was just another inconvenience. I couldn’t manage it anymore. The itching wasn’t dandruff. It wasn’t neglect. Something deeper was happening, but I didn’t yet know how to read it.

It had been almost eight years of my loc journey. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t cosmetic. It was personal.

When I finally took them down and wore my hair low, it felt like a quiet loss, not of beauty, but of familiarity.

Only then did I notice something else.

After every haircut, within two days, the front right side of my hair would thin. Then it began to recede. I cut it again. Same thing. Again. Same result.

After the fifth or sixth time, I had to wake up to it.

As I sat for a haircut, a hair aesthetician looked at my scalp and asked calmly,

“How long have you had alopecia?”

I didn’t even know how to answer.

I was already journeying with vitiligo.
I was living with arthritis.

I braced myself and told myself,
“I can journey with this, too.”

I recognized autoimmune patterns. I knew the language of the body, atleast mine.

But then another subtle fear crept in, quieter and more personal.

Having been running a vitiligo organization and living with different autoimmune disorders, I could feel the new visitor settling in.

What if I go bald?
Would I be okay with baldness?

“Yes, I will be okay,” I told myself.

Every day of the week?
Bald, with no makeup?

At that point, I wasn’t sure.

I don’t wear wigs. I don’t like wigs.

It felt like something was trying to erode my authenticity, to force me into a version of myself I had never chosen.

First, my joints.
Then my melanin.
Now my beautiful 4C hair.

And this was happening during my lowest mental period.

A breakdown I rarely speak about, not because it was dramatic, but because it was quiet. Heavy. Draining. I was scared. There were moments I wondered if things would ever turn around again.

The tools I once trusted sat unused, even confusing.

My DIYs.
My mixers.
My oils and butters.
My infusions.
My hair masks.
Hair teas.
Hair water.

I would bring them out with intention… and watch them spoil.

That was how I left my hair untouched for three years.

It didn’t grow.

The front right side kept receding. Other parts stayed stunted, thinning.

And I didn’t cut it again, not because I was healing, but because I was lost and low.

At some point, I stopped listening.

Instead, I started buying products.

Nothing I bought helped.

That was the confirmation I didn’t want but needed.

You cannot outsource listening.

One morning in May 2023, something shifted.

Not motivation.
Not discipline.
Just honesty.

I have to deal with whatever this is.

Not with panic.
Not with force.
But with presence.

Call me anything, but I will explore food and herbs. I always have.

“Ogo, wake up to it,” I said to myself. Our every-now-and-then mirror conversations were returning.

I returned to the soup pot. To my DIYs, not as a ritual, but as a language I already knew.

Herbs.
Infused water.
Oils.
Hair teas.
Simplicity.
Nourishment.
Patience.

And slowly, quietly, my crown responded.

Not overnight.
Not perfectly.
But faithfully.

My loc journey began again, not as a style choice, but as an authentic relationship restored.

What this taught me is something I now carry into every part of my life and work:

Mental well-being is not separate from healing.
Stability is not a luxury; it is a requirement.

The soup pot didn’t fix my hair.

It returned my authority.

And from that place, my crown began to listen back.

Not perfect.
It may never be.

But the progress is real.

And it is mine.

When we reclaim authority over our appearance, we interrupt every system that profits from our disconnection.