Couple's hair routine shows a powerful display of love
Jones Motivat has lovingly tended to his wife's afro for nearly all of their 26-year marriage.
When his daughter captured a tender moment of Jones and his wife Bea Motivat on camera, the video went viral on TikTok with over 2 million views overnight.
"My responsibility was to look after Flower here, make sure that she's blossoming," Jones told ABC News of the couple's ritual. "Which is a better way of pruning than starting with the crown on her head. Making sure that she looks like a queen and continues to look like a queen."
The couple affectionately call each other "flower" and "honey," respectively.
The video is one of the many from the U.K.-based Kenyan family which has resonated with people worldwide. The couple's children, Queen and Links, began documenting the family's experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and now they have over 1.7 million followers and over 100 million likes on TikTok.
"There's just small simple acts that we did as a family to kind of get us through the pandemic," Queen told ABC News. "We recorded and then we put it out there, and it kind of went viral and started the movement."
The family says they have continued posting content centered on love and positivity, creating the social media brand "Motivat," which promotes "a place where you can feel motivated" Queen said.
One of the best things to come from their viral fame is seeing viewers' reactions to what a beautiful and intimate relationship can look like, Queen said.
Bea and Jones, who both hold doctorate degrees in psychology, have also written books on love and give lessons on dating with their own dating skills program. They said they have tapped into their nearly three decades of experience as a blueprint to teach clients how to find and nurture their own love.
"Normally, we teach what we ourselves went through," Bea told ABC News. "One thing we did in the beginning of our relationship was to try and understand each other's love languages. So for me, it's the acts of service. When someone does something for me. When they help me brush my afro, make for me a cup of tea, I mean, it just means the whole wide world for me."
For the Motivat family, they say love is their message and driving force. It stems from the tenderness of the parents, Bea and Jones, who met as first-year students at Nairobi University in Kenya and fell in love while Bea took guitar lessons from her future husband.
From these lessons, the couple created an analogy they discuss heavily in their sessions, comparing a relationship to tuning a guitar.
"We have six strings that have to be tuned every day to survive," Bea said. "One of them is actually guiding and tending after one another and making sure that each string was finely tuned so that the music that comes out would be beautiful."
While Jones and Bea teach different couples worldwide, their first students are their children who hope their content will help inspire others, just as their parents' example has inspired them.
"I'm just so honored that I've had such amazing role models," Links told ABC News. "I just wish that everyone can experience what I've experienced. And I think the content has really helped to kind of reach that goal."
