Monday, December 12, 2011

I love my NATURAL hair!

As of September 5, 2011 my hair is 100% natural! Some of you may not know what exactly that means so let me break it down... Natural meaning my hair is no longer chemically treated and my hair grows the way it was given to me by nature (curly, kinky and full). At the beginning of 2011 my hair was left damaged due to my overprocessing during relaxers and I knew I needed to get it back to a healthy state. Before that time I contemplated going natural but feared the idea of learning how to take care of "nappy" hair. I think it's funny looking back now.. Women often say "Oh I can't do the natural thing my hair is TOO nappy" but that's only in comparison to your bone straight hair so the two seem like polar opposites. I found myself thinking "My hair is TOO nappy to deal with" so I went with what I knew and got a sew-in weave. I ended up having weaves for about 5 months and somewhere in that time span I declared that I was transitioning to natural hair(This is the period of time since one's last relaxer and both hair textures remain) By September I could no longer see myself spending 45 minutes trying to detangle two different hair textures SO I snapped and slowly but surely started chopping my hair off lol. Thinking of it now it seems like an out of body experiece.. like the load that's slowing you down.. I wouldn't stop cutting until I had every piece of relaxed hair OFF MY HEAD.

December 5th marked my 3rd month post big chop (the cutting of all relaxed hair) and I am extremely happy with my decision to embrace my natural curl pattern. Learning how to take care of my hair and keep it healthy has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. I would never discourage any from continuing to get relaxers BUT I will say that going natural is not as bad as you may think. It does take patience but with research and listening to your hair it makes the process a lot easier. With me being a visual learner Youtube has helped my journey tremendously. There are countless tutorials on things like shampooing your hair to styling your hair like your favorite celebrity.

I don't intend on making my blog all about natural hair BUT it is a part of my life so I will be talking about it here and there.

To everyone on their journey to healthy or natural hair.. stay encouraged! Surround yourself with great people and others who are working towards the same goal. I owe a lot of my strength to my friends Tot, Chantal (Nikki) and Michele. They have been the biggest help in my journey.. seeing their success let's me know it's possible to obtain my hair goals! Stay inspired and stay tuned!

A little of my journey:

 My hair in September 2010. It was so thin from being relaxed.. I was achieving length BUT my hair was never full and I couldn't stand that!
 This is me January 1, 2011. I had my last relaxer (at the time I didn't know it was) but I loved my short cut! Although I was soooo in love with the cut my hair grew extremely fast and I ended up relaxing it way too often.
 The sew-in that saved my life! My sister in the weave queen and hooks me up EVERYTIME she does my hair!
My first day wearing my twa to work. I was NERVOUS and feeling insecure. I wore it out for a few days and then the wigs returned.
Almost 3 months and I got my hair straightened. Loved it!!!!

2 comments:

  1. your hair looks beautiful girl, keep up the great work! :-)


    theMANEtopic.com

    ReplyDelete