To be honest...I'm no stranger to the natural hair movement and have gone through my fair share of BC's since HS (about 3 to be exact). However, it seems that every time I set out down this path...something seems to throw me off whether it be that awkward middle stage when my hair has grown out of it's TWA and I can't figure out what to do with it (which is when the texturizer or relaxer creeps back up) or this
time when I got severe heat damage from flat ironing my hair way too much over a period of 3 months, as you can see from the above picture :-( (and I was doing oh so well...*sigh*).
And although each attempt has been an epic fail, I can honestly say that I've learned a lot of different lessons from each experience and like the saying goes "When you know better, you do better". Now, I'm definitely not an expert on natural hair and don't know all of the terms, hair care methods, etc...but I'm doing my research this time around and already found some great blogs that have helped answer a lot of my questions and addressed some concerns. I find that my new nightly ritual is to dive into one of my natural hair care books like; Thank God I'm Natural by Chris-Tia E. Donaldson or the Curly Girl Handbook 2nd edition by Lorraine Massey. I discovered these books while watching a video by one of my favorite natural hair vloggers Elle (denimpixie) who also has a very informative blog called Quest for the Perfect Curl. I also like to visit Jess's vlog on youtube (mahoganycurls) and her blog MahoganyCurls. Another one of my favorite bloggers is Cassidy of Natural Selection, her and Lola (her hair) are so fun, it's kind of hard not to get hooked! :-)
It's funny that a few months ago, I never realized there was such a huge online community for natural hair, but thanks to my "heat damage"...I made this discovery and I'm SO glad (at least something good came from this unfortunate situation)! It's already changed my life in such a short time, I'm excited to see what the future holds for me, my natural hair and all that I will learn in the process! My hope is that I will continue to update this blog frequently so that it will be a help to me and to some of you as well...(this is the goal *fingers crossed*).
Oh, and just to give you a little background on my most recent natural hair relapse. I stopped relaxing my hair in the fall of '09 and transitioned until March of last year. At that point, my cousin told me about the Hair Rules salon in NYC (where I was living at the time) and since she was making an appointment, I decided to visit the salon, feel it out and inevitably made my own appointment to chop off what was left of my chemically treated strands. I was quite pleased with the outcome (although...I was still left with some heat damage in the front...since I had been flat ironing my hair throughout my transition period). This picture was taken when I got home from the salon that day;
I wish I had taken more pictures...but you get the idea. I remember really loving the cut...I couldn't stop looking at it...or touching it! It was a great feeling! And here are two more pictures of my natural hair from last August/September;
I wore my hair curly all the time last year...except for a few special occasions where I had it professionally blown out and flat ironed. Then life threw me a few curve balls which lead to my decision to move across country to San Diego at the beginning of this year, where I got a little "flat iron happy" and did some permanent damage to my curls :-( (it still pains me to think about it...almost 3 months later). I was pretty devastated when I washed my hair after my most recent straightening escapade in April and realized that my curls weren't coming back, as per usual...Ugh! I miss those curls...but I just have to keep reassuring myself that I will get back to that eventually.
Anyway...this has turned into a much longer post than anticipated...but I think it's been a good introduction nonetheless! So if you're reading this, THANK YOU and I look forward to sharing more of my story/journey with you soon! xo
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