Twenty years ago, Patricia Gaines had a terrible hair experience with a chemical relaxer and was left with extremely short hair. For decades, shed used the creamy crack to straighten her tresses. But with the health of her hair at stake, she made the decision to cut it all off and go natural. But there was one big problem: As a Black woman living in Australia, there was nowhere to go for natural hair care help. Gaines went to the internet in search of a group of women in similar circumstances.

I went to a curly hair forum because that was the closest thing I could find. There were no Black hair sites other than relaxing hair websites, Gaines told HuffPost. There was probably a group of about 10 African-American women who were all in the same predicament I was. We didnt have a place to go, and we started to question why we were still relaxing our hair.

Their conversations about natural hair sparked larger discussions on race, stereotypes and self-identity. These women were no longer inherently equating their beauty or self-worth to long, straight hair. Instead, they were learning to accept the hair that grew naturally out of their heads, without chemicals. But Gaines and this small group of natural hair peers were the only ones talking about kinkier textures in the broader curly hair forum and they knew there were other Black women out there looking for guidance, too.