Actress Tanya Wright on Learning to Love Her Natural Hair: 'If I Could Control My Hair, I Could Control My Life'

Tanya Wright‘s hair has always consumed her.

The Orange Is the New Black actress admits to spending too much time and energy over the years trying to tame her natural locks – and ending up with more than her fair share of bad hair days in the process. “My hair has been the bane of my existence for most of my life,” she penned in an essay for the Huffington Post. “It is massive, curly and has a life all its own. I’ve had countless hair stories that could easily be horror stories!”

It took a family tragedy to change her perspective. After the death of her brother, Wright decided it was time for a new outlook on life – and her hair. “In 2010, I began to think about rebuilding my life,” she said. “The world seemed new, different. I wanted to start fresh. I was out walking my pooch, Macarena, whom I had gotten a year after my brother’s death and had the overwhelming feeling that if I could get control over my hair, I could get control over my life. The answer to it all was in my hair.”

“Mastering my hair was so important to me,” she added. “It was something that seemed to have a life all its own.” So Wright immersed herself in “the world of all things hair.” Turning to YouTube, the actress watched video after video of women with her same hair. She eventually learned which products, styles and tools worked best for her hair. Feeling inspired, Wright wanted to share her own story with others.

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“I felt I had a unique voice to add, one that hadn t been seen or heard online,” said Wright, who now has her own haircare line, HAIRiette, for women with naturally textured hair. “As I started to cultivate a more loving relationship with my hair, I realized those curly coils atop my head were teaching me a lot about patience. Elasticity. That shedding (which is natural, we shed skin and hair daily) is an integral part of the ‘letting go’ process to make a way for the new. Our hair is the only part we can cut off, grow back, tease, color, curl and straighten. The one thing we can manipulate at will to tell the world who we are.”

Embracing her natural locks also helped her cope with her busy career, including her role as the wife of transgender inmate Sophia Burset, played by Laverne Cox on Orange Is the New Black. “My life sometimes feels more out of control than ever,” Wright said. “At the same time, I know that the opposite is also true: That I am the captain of my ship; I am the master of my fate. Life is a healthy balance between these two ideas. And I would never have known that if it were not for my hair.”