When I was a little girl growing up in Singapore, Sunday mornings at my grandmother’s house smelled like coconut oil and camphor.

She would sit by the open window, hair unpinned and flowing down her back like a black silk river, her fingers working methodically through the strands. First, a careful massage with warm herbal oil—always homemade, a mix of amla, bhringraj, and neem she had simmered herself. Then, a rinse with rice water, which she caught after washing the grains for lunch. She claimed it made her hair strong enough to weather any storm.

At the time, I thought this was old-fashioned magic, the kind of wisdom that lived in kitchens and gardens, not in the world outside.

I never imagined that two decades later, I’d open TikTok and see millions of girls—some halfway across the world—chanting the benefits of rice water rinses, preaching about scalp oiling routines, and massaging their faces with jade rollers. The very rituals my grandmother practiced daily, now dressed up in pastel infographics and trending under #HairTok and #AncientBeauty.

At first, it made me laugh. Then, it made me ache a little.

There’s something surreal about seeing your personal history go viral. About watching strangers resurrect traditions you once quietly brushed aside in favor of bottled serums and salon blowouts. What was once my grandmother’s intimate act of self-care has become a global performance, wrapped in the language of “holistic wellness” and “natural beauty hacks.”

Scrolling through those videos, I think about the patience her rituals demanded—warming oils to just the right temperature, infusing water for days, storing secret blends in brown glass bottles to keep their potency. No quick fixes. No instant results. Just small, faithful acts done over and over, the way rain carves a riverbed.

In the pressure-cooker cities of Asia, where wellness is often sold in neon-lit spas and 10-step skincare routines, there’s a quiet rebellion in returning to these slower, simpler practices.

It feels like a remembering.

These days, I find myself warming coconut oil between my palms, combing it carefully through my own hair. I rinse my face with cooled rice water, patting my skin the way she once taught me—not harsh, but tender, like offering a blessing.

My grandmother passed away two years ago. She never had a TikTok account. She never called what she did “self-care.” She just knew, instinctively, that beauty wasn’t something you bought or chased—it was something you nurtured, patiently, quietly, from within.

And now, somehow, the world is catching up.