I love my new hair!!!!!
Well, let me go back and start from the beginning. Last July I decided that I wanted to color my hair a soft cinnamon like how Tyra Banks used to have her hair. My hair was just below the shoulders and relaxed. That weekend I went out to the local store and bought a home coloring kit (permanent dye). Which I applied incorrectly since I had never really colored my hair before and I applied it like you would a perm. I sectioned my hair into four sections and applied root to tip. Problem is that the four sections ended up being 4 different colors because of the application time. (My hair is super super thick) SO needless to say I didn't know what the hell I was doing and had no business coloring my own hair. But I was like "how hard can it be?" Well apparently it was really hard! SO I got the dumb butt award that day.
Well I can't go to work with parts of my hair blonde, orange, apple red, and brown. I looked a HOT MESS!!!!
SO I went to Sally's and asked the lady what to do. This genius said to put a toner and a darker red rinse on my hair to even out the color.
BIG MISTAKE.
Now all of my hair was orange and blonde (but not a good blonde a ghetto mess color blonde)
SO I went to my cousin who does hair on the side but never went to school for it and she told me to buy this Chinese black-brown natural hair rinse and just cover it all up and stop trying to fix the unfixable.
That was the next step...
Keep in mind this all happened over one weekend.
That was my next mistake!!! I should have just thrown a wig on it and called it a day and let my hair recondition before continuing to process it. (I must have been off my game that weekend because duh! I know that)
So the following week my hair was falling out in clumps... I wonder why???
I trimmed and trimmed and trimmed and trimmed but nothing worked.
My hair was dry, brittle and completely unmanageable. Needless to say when I did relax it again the relaxers didn't take. You can't relax damaged hair and expect good results.
So now almost a year later my hair has still not recovered. It won't take a relaxer My hair was literally in shock. My new growth was damaged because my hair was splitting up the shaft. I was having to flat iron and use a curling iron at the highest heat setting and it was just making matters worse. I started wearing weaves to let it just calm down and stop freaking out.
3 months ago I stopped relaxing it. And just wore weaves. (glued in)
Through the help of many YouTube friends I have decided to just go natural.
When i took my hair down and washed and conditioned it 2 weeks ago I noticed my new growth actually had shine and looked healthy. So I decided to cut off the relaxed part and just start over. I knew that there was no sense in trying to transition because my relaxed hair was really really damaged. My hair was only like 6 inches long on top anyway. So my big chop wasn't that tramatizing.
What I have found very strange is that my hair texture has become extremely curly.
I've been getting my hair relaxed since I was 4 so I've never seen my own hair texture. So now I have a TWA. And I'm so happy with how soft, and manageable my hair is. Many of the YouTube videos have shown me how to care for my hair and even though this is only my first week I think that I have the advantage of starting out on a good foot with a lot of great advice.
I haven't bought any natural products yet I'm still using the products I already had. I'm just using less of them. I've also been able to stop using grease in my hair. This is really strange to me because grease was my relaxed hair's best friend. But it just sits on top of my natural hair. I'm using the co-wash method because my hair loves water and it's not too happy with shampoo. My conditioner doesn't have any silicones in it or protein so it's just making my hair softer and softer. I'm co-washing my hair every other day. In between I'm just rewetting it and putting in a creamy leave-in lotion by organics that's meant for children's hair.
I also use a very very tiny bit of gel and my hair is soft and curly and not frizzy at all! My relaxed hair was always a ball of frizz with even the slightest bit of moisture.
This week I've had a few negative comments about me going natural and how natural hair isn't professional but I just shake that off. If a company fires me over my hair, I'll be living in a mansion by the end of the year so it's a win win. ha ha.
I don't think my boss gives two craps about my hair as long as my work is done. That's the beauty of a man boss. He probably hasn't even noticed that I cut it.
So that's my story of why I'm going natural. Contrary to popular belief I'm not a political activist, I'm not a vegatarian tree hugger, I'm not Jamaican (someone asked me that today, idiot!) I just want healthy hair. I'm sick of waking up and having hair all over my pillow.
Originally I was just going to let it stay natural to let it rest and then go back to relaxing it after I got a little bit of length. But after seeing the other women on youtube I don't think I'm going to go back to relaxed hair. All of my person misconceptions about what natural hair looks like has been changed. I didn't even know that my hair was curly!!! I was always told that I had unruly, unmanageable, dry, thick hair and the only way to tame it was to chemically process it to death.
Shame on my grandma for relaxing my hair in the first place!!!
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