Need toddler hair brushing tips!

How do you brush your toddler's hair without performing an exorcism?? 😱 I feel like I'm traumatizing her by how much she screams and runs away just looking at a hair brush. I've tried making it fun in a lot of creative ways, I've shown her videos of other kids getting their hair brushed, I've shown her how I brush my hair and let her play with the brush, but nothing's worked so far.

She has mixed curly hair. People make comments on how wild it is when it's not brushed, and I think that's fueling my insistence on trying to brush it. BUT at the end of the day, I'd rather avoid a traumatic experience for her and have her with unkempt hair then make this a daily battle. And then revisit this in a few months. But does that make me neglectful? Thoughts??

ETA: Thank you everyone for your responses!! I want to clarify that I do take the steps to make it as pain-free a process as possible for her (only when wet, with leave-in conditioner, and with a Wet brush or wide-toothed comb while holding it in bunches and brushing out the ends first and moving up to the roots). I'm more wondering about the psychology of it - if it truly is something that causes her fear/anxiety, is there any way to remedy that? Is this the kind of thing where I have to hold her body down and force her to let me brush her hair? That seems really counterintuitive and cruel to me. She's 2, and I want to respect her body autonomy, especially since it's not like a safety or hygiene issue, it's really just the difference between having tamed curls vs a wild head of hair. I probably am making a bigger deal out of it than I should, but I struggle to find the balance between the things that are "because I say so" and the things where I can allow her to say no and respect that. Where does hair care fall on that spectrum??