When Nara Smith recently shared a vulnerable video revealing her return to her natural curls, it wasn’t just a hair transformation, it was a moment of healing, resilience, and love. Her video, filled with emotion and raw honesty, captured a pivotal chapter in her journey. Not just with her hair, but with her health.
“My husband’s been begging me to bring my curly hair back,” Smith shared.
She decided to surprise him with her natural look after two years of wearing her hair straight. But behind the sweet gesture was a deeply personal story shaped by illness, pain, and rediscovery.
“I haven’t worn my hair curly in about two years,” she confessed. “At one point, my scalp got so bad it started bleeding… I ended up losing so much hair and just didn’t feel confident anymore.”
The root cause? A complicated struggle with eczema, later revealed to be a symptom of something much deeper: lupus.
Nara Smith’s Hair and the Hidden Toll of Lupus
In an Instagram post, Smith peeled back the layers of her condition. Her symptoms began after giving birth to her second child. She first noticed a cracked patch of eczema, relentless fatigue, aching joints. She blamed postpartum changes, as so many women are conditioned to do. Her condition worsened, her hair began falling out in clumps, and her hands lost strength. She lived in fear of her own skin flaring up, with sleepless nights spent researching eczema remedies and eliminating entire food groups.
“I got sent home defeated, not listened to, and with a paper bag full of steroid creams,” Smith recalled.
After two agonizing years and a particularly brutal flare-up that left her body covered in inflamed, oozing skin, she flew to Germany for help. There, she finally received a diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
What Lupus Means for Black Women
Smith’s story is not unique. In fact, it’s part of a much larger, troubling pattern. According to research from the Black Women’s Experiences Living with Lupus study, Black women are not only three times more likely to develop SLE than white women, but they also experience earlier onset, faster progression, and more severe complications. Some including hair loss, fatigue, and organ damage.
In the study of 427 Black women with lupus in Atlanta, more than 80 percent reported experiencing racial discrimination in one or more areas of life. More than just emotional stress, these experiences were statistically linked to increased lupus activity and irreversible organ damage. The science is clear that racism isn’t just a social injustice, it’s a health crisis.
Stress, including that brought on by systemic racism, is known to elevate inflammatory markers in the body. For people living with SLE, this can fuel disease flares and accelerate progression. For Black women, who disproportionately face discrimination in workplaces, medical systems, and housing markets, the effects compound which creates a perfect storm of social and biological vulnerability.
Hair Loss, Identity, and Chronic Illness
Hair loss is more than cosmetic. It strikes at the core of identity, especially for Black women, for whom hair is deeply tied to self-expression and cultural pride. Smith’s decision to straighten her hair was not a rejection of her roots, but a survival mechanism in the face of debilitating scalp eczema.
“I made the decision to chop it off and straighten it to give my scalp a break,” she said in the video. “It was the best decision I could have made for myself, but seeing the curly hair today made me sob in the car.”
Her emotional return to curls was a homecoming. Not just to her natural hair, but to herself.
Smith’s openness offers a lifeline to other Black women navigating chronic illness in silence. Her story reminds us of the strength required to advocate for your body, even when the system won’t. It shows the toll that chronic illness can take on everything from physical health to emotional well-being, and the power of self-love in reclaiming control.