My Natural Hair Journey | Losing My Hair, Growing It Back, Hair Secrets I'Ve Learned [ With Pho

Straight hair has its magic, but i had never known the magic of my curly hair. So then, from that time i decided to embark on my natural hair journey, but then this happened hello. My people welcome back to my youtube channel and is this straight hair? Is it a silk press? Yes, it is, and am i loving it? Yes, i am but then have i come very far. I have the journey has been so long. I have looked like 14 different people. I feel like when your hair looks a certain way. It'S like you almost feel and become a certain way. So on that note, i have been very many people i have had to endure my hair falling off and i'll tell you more about that. So welcome to this video, where i tell you about my natural hair journey, this hair might look relaxed, but i swear it's natural. I have been natural for about i've been natural for 10 years. The length has varied quite a lot, and today i will tell you everything from the time i realized this needs to stop to now, where i'm actually kind of considering going back to relaxer, which will be i'll share. My journey with you as videos go on, but with all of this i'll also suggest to you some different tips and tricks. I use to learn how to take care of my natural hair and where i learned it from, i learnt it using a whole range of youtubers who taught me so much about my hair and actually created a playlist so that you can look through every single youtuber Or video that was probably very, very significant in my natural hair journey on there you learn everything and anything about taking care of hair, but also, i feel like these are og people. You know i'll tell you more about it, but for now let me tell you this. Let me tell you about this journey, how about that? How about we just talk about it. Otherwise i uh a bit of info about my hair. I have type 3b all the way to 4a hair, and i learned that you can actually have multiple textures on your hair, like at the back here i have. I have 3b it's more wavy on the back and then i have more curly hair here and then right at the top. Here i have 4a hair right off the bat. I want to say that this system of organizing here, according to 3, a all the way to 4c, doesn't really work for me. There'S so much nuance that comes to being 3c versus 4a and i feel like even people who have the same hair type. As me. Number one: we all don't have the same combination of textures on our head in the right order. That'S number one and number two. There are so many aspects of being 3c, such as the thickness of each hair strand the volume of the hair on your head and the porosity. The main question around porosity is: how does your hair absorb things? Does it absorb quickly and therefore lead to a lot of evaporation of like let's say water or does it take a while to absorb, and does it also end up retaining moisture for a bit longer? I have very high porosity hair, so you see how being 3c for a rather it doesn't because they can be a same 3c person who we are just rocking different volume. I have low volume, thin um, high, porosity hair, so things that work for me are very unique and i'll. Tell you more about how i ended up learning these things. We start with this growing up. I had always had relaxed hair and it was very, very long and at some points the length varied, but my mom legit told me the other day. The reason she did that is, it was because it was just easier to maintain, and so i grew up having very, very long, relaxed hair every two weeks or every month i used to go for treatment, which is like probably a protein treatment. It never used to be a moisture treatment and if you want to know the difference between different types of treatments, we start with the first youtuber, which is called green beauty. She does a lot of deep dives into the chemistry of hair, like everything, from the porosity of it, to the volume to the texture, to the thickness of it. And, of course, when you're looking at types of treatments, there's some that help build the protein in your hair and then there are some that help to add moisture to your hair and it's important to maintain the protein moisture balance. That'S the first time, you'll just find her in the playlist that i've linked. When i went to high school, i went to boarding school and there we were only allowed to do push back, which means you're, just you're only allowed to tie your hair back. By doing this, weirdly enough that really helped to grow my hair based on something else i'll tell you later on the video, but that really helped to grow my hair. So i had very, very long hair coming off of high school right before i went back to curly hair. What happened was i started coloring my hair, a lot and by coloring my hair. I didn't know that i had slowly started to create damage. There were times. I literally used to run my hair through a straightener and flat iron it and if it was not straight like this, there was nowhere. We were going. So i essentially fried my hair and then something told me you have died here, but you know what go take it to be chemicalized. Even more add some relaxer. When relaxing the hair see now it was time to wash what happened in the sink. Oh my god. Let me even make it worse. I didn't dye my hair using like normal color or anything. What i'm telling you is. I bleached my hair and i had bleached it with hydrogen peroxide, and this is because i went to a salon. The saloonis told me you're only looking to color your hair blonde. Why not just bleach it and then just leave it like that, and then you don't have to destroy your wallet. Just buy some quick hydrogen peroxide for 200 bulb if that's two dollars and then just authorize. My friend we authorized when it was time to wash this hair. When i tell you it fell off in the sink like this, and then she had enough to look at me and be like oh guy and now what's happening to your hair as if she was not the one causing the happenings. Surely, and so with that, you know what happened, i ended up doing a big job involuntary. I did not want to cut my hair, but i had to once i was done with high school. I took a copy and i had all natural hair natural hair black queen nubian, my friend when i was transitioning. We were not nubian queens. I actually never knew my hair texture, i'm not even joking, and so when i decided to transition and i started noticing how weak the hair strands were, the ones that were chemicalized was so weak and by cutting everything off. I remember just feeling so beautiful. I feel, like i tapped into my natural beauty, and once i had found how i look with curly hair, i felt more strong in my identity. I also felt like straight. Hair has its magic, but i had never known the magic of my curly hair. So then, from that time i decided to embark on my natural hair journey, so i really started like enjoying what it was doing and and eventually like i embraced it, and i liked it, but then now the trick was: how do i grow the hair long because After doing the big job i was just like, this is amazing, it's beautiful, but i just i just feel like it's short and then that time i had been used to long hair, my entire life, but i also knew that with curly hair, it's not going to Be the same, it's going to be different and me i'd envision, my hair to be, like you know those big bouncy, those women with the two big hairs and they're. Just my hair was not like that. My friend, we were not looking like that and that also launched my natural hair education, the first one, the og that i discovered was natural 85 and we have very different hair types but she's the one who essentially taught me about things like your hair porosity. How important it is to moisturize your hair. I remember at the beginning learning about the lco method versus the loc method and then slowly by learning through her and other different youtubers, who, of course, i'm gon na put the og videos inside the playlist through learning through her. I my hair eventually evolved into, like so sort of my self-care routine doing my hair was not now out of just styling it or i'm trying to make it longer. It was sort of a spiritual thing where i ended up taking care of myself after growing up and never even knowing my natural look, whether i even consider it natural beauty. Now that's a different. That'S like a bonus now see. I totally had colored my hair when it was straight um. So what did i do with the afro yeah? We colored it, and then i used to rock an afro non-stop. So my entire graph here before going to ala, i essentially had colored hair and i had an afro. This would be very important in the end, because you'll realize why this was a bad idea, not the colored hair but the afro. So i go to alien. I had colored hair. I had i used to rock a big afro once in a while. I would put it in like pushback styles and like laid back hairstyles, which now i learn are called low, manipulative hairstyles. I used to breed people for money and then i used to braid myself so that really helped me essentially put my hair in protective hair cells. But i learned not all hairstyles that are protective. Hairstyles are actually protective because your hair strands are still exposed once the hair ages by like a week because it starts to stick out on top of it being high manipulation based on the tension it puts on your scalp and how much you you know, manipulate it. It'S also very dangerous because it exposes your strands and when it exposes your strands, your hair starts to cut. It'S called breakage madames and my dudes yeah there's so many things i would do and i would take care of my hair. I would oil it. I would put leave in, i would put all the masks, but my hair was never growing and i didn't know why. So i decided okay, i really definitely need to start learning more about how to take care of it, but by the time i had reached, i had already graduated from ala and i had gone to the us going to the us. We encountered something called winter and also summer, which means the weather was very, very, very extreme. The only trick for me by the way to maintain it, was to either leave it alone by keeping it in an afro which are still colored or by braiding it, and i braided it a lot. However, i think that was the biggest mistake i did after that. I discovered a few people i discovered will on a whim. I discovered green beauty, the one i spoke about - and i also discovered amber answer now. Green beauty essentially talks about how it is very, very important to put your hair in low manipulation hairstyles to disguise your ends and to cover them up in a way that does not create tension. Some of the best ways to do this is to stretch your hair and to keep it in low manipulation. Hairstyles keeping my hair in an afro was number one as to why my hair was not growing, because what it does is that when your hair is essentially not stretched, the hair is very curly and it's prone to tangling a bit more because of the intertwining of Hair strands when it's intertwined, rather than being parallel to each other with straight hair, causes more breakage, and so, when you keep your hair in an afro for a long amount of time, especially like for me, it was more often because of the extreme temperatures. It was very dry, so my hair is brittle and it's tangled so anytime. I touch it any time. I try to comb through it anytime, it's time for me to tighten the hair band. What would happen it would break? The second thing is, i had to learn how to keep my hair in low manipulation. Hairstyles that take care of my ends. I used to think protective hairstyles is for hair. No, the real focus is here. How do you maintain this in a precious way? I learned about how important it is to trim my split ends, and i know we all know. Essentially, you should trim your split ends because they're like fake friends, you need to cut them off as bellona. Wim says. Green beauty also taught me about how important it is to be able to not only just trim your ends but to learn about something called single strand. Knots single strand knots exist in almost every person who has curly, hair and natural hair, and what happens is one strand forms a knot due to repeated movement or something like that? You need to trim your hair, but it doesn't always need to be that trimming where you cut off like more than an inch there's something called dusting, which is typically what i ended up starting to do. Where you look at each and every hairstyle, which takes a lot of time, though you look at every hair strand, and then you cut accordingly to where you end up seeing knots. So i started putting my hair a lot in very, very low manipulation, stretched hairstyles and then i also started to regularly trim my hair. On top of all this, i learned about something called the protein moisture balance, which is from will on a whim from amber answer. Who really put me on how important it is to do the hair mask. I think the one protein treatment. I know that really helps is what is it called the aphogee one or you could do the hair masks for um, sheer moisture, shea moisture, shea shea moisture, shear, moisture kenyans? We say she a moisture, please or you could also do a moisture treatment. So the one thing that really helps with the moisture side is deep conditioning your hair. So one thing i learned from these people is to do a protein treatment one weekend, then the next weekend is to do uh, deep conditioning so that it can help to add moisture to my hair. So essentially i got like a routine where every single week i would focus on protein or the other. We could focus on moisture and in between. Sometimes i wouldn't even undo my protective hairstyles, because i don't want to manipulate my hair too much and then, when i would do my hairstyles, i would essentially tuck my ends and i would like keep them safe and bunched up. And then i swear to you. My hair started growing and growing and growing, which, as i am learning from all these people, who had been learning from apparently my hair, the problem was not growth. The problem was retaining the length so once i had learnt that the biggest thing now became. How do i look good while trying to do all these hairstyles? Because let me tell you me and gremlins: we were really looking alike because these hairstyles are just permanent, perpetual felicia looks i started like trying to brainstorm and that's when i discovered how important it is to accessorize and to do maybe makeup so that the hair is Just a backdrop i would do wash and grows by the way, but i also learned that the third or second day of wash and gos are actually the best that capacity you just end up. Looking like you put a small curly blanket on your hands, so it's so you know. Oh another thing that was important was head wraps. Why? Because sometimes with these protective hairstyles with the way we look underneath it just wrap it up, hide it whoa. So that was definitely something that helped me remember. I said i used to dust my hair a lot and i used to like do trims, where every single strand of my hair is essentially the same length now cuts to this here. My hair is extremely long. The volume is perfect. I realized that the lco method worked best for me, where there was l, i forgot or not, l stands for, but i used to do cream, then oil. I realized that because i had very thin hair very high porosity. What helped me was to wash my hair and then i put leave-in conditioner, the one from garnier or the one. That also helps is mixed cheeks for my hair type, and then i would seal the moisture with rosehip and jojoba or jojoba oil as a carrier. I don't say jojoba the kenyan in me, if you say jojoba power to you, man, as you say, jojoba my hair started growing and flourishing and it was getting long and beautiful. And then now i came to kenya. I realized two things number one. I realized that trying to grow my hair long and healthy, really prevented me from styling it in a way that made me feel like i was able to take advantage of every single look that i was going for and with that came a lot of formal and Then, at a point i started seeing tech talks of how why are we suffering because of our hair? Surely, like it's just hair, and so by saying that i started being like okay, i've low-key kept my hair in hibernation for almost two years. Let me take it out. The second thing which is based on that first thing is: i had started missing straight hair. I wanted to relax it, but some angel inside my brain told me. First, do a silk press see if it turns on behaving exactly like relaxed hair and if it works, then fine and then also i had to see how i feel with straight hair for a while, so that i see if i end up missing my curly hair Too soon so that i don't do relaxer and i'm not feeling really relaxed with all that i was like you know what? Okay, let me just go, do a silk press. When i did the silk press, they saw the length of the hair. One strand was like this: the other strand is like this. The other strand is like this and then the other one. You know why, because of dusting so dusting my hair made it that such that every single hair strand more often than not had such great variation in length. So my hair was very long like it was reaching up to here, but by dusting and everything. The more average short hair strands was this length, so i ended up cutting it to this length, even though my hair is pressed right now, it should be much longer, but do i feel the pain? No because, first of all again i'm starting to learn that it's just hair and i think hair for black women is such an important thing, because it has a lot to do with reclaiming the beauty that we were told. We do not have. But at the same time, i think there's a different place in reclaiming your beauty, where it does not define who you are anymore. There was a point where it defined, who i am from a place of internalized lack of self-love, then there's a place where i started understanding that it's beautiful but then now there's a place where i have the privilege to be indifferent about my hair. I think that's the place to be as a black woman, where you're becoming different about the things you're taught against about you know. So i don't know if that was english again. Good luck with that sentence right now where matt is like, you know what i'm gon na do, whatever i can so long as i have the education on how to take care of my hair, i'm just going to prioritize feeling good looking good and doing it within The confines of the health of my hair like, for example, this silk press. I did the olaplex entire treatment. I did it at fab here, kenya and they did like. I think there was five steps and they also put heat protectant before straightening it, and it was actually quite good right now, it's like day four, and there is just so much more lustrous, so much more strong and so much more shiny, so to prevent heat damage. I have to do intense protein treatments before doing a silk breast, a lot of, not necessarily in difference that i don't care how it looks, but in difference that i will not let it stop me from looking how i want to look because now i know how To get it there in a safe and protective way, i would highly suggest checking out the playlist that i made down below in the description box so that you can be able to follow every single person that i followed and learned from for my natural hair journey. Even if you're very well educated about your own hair, i think it can still be a huge benefit to see who i look up to. This is a compliment to your existing knowledge, and so thank you so much for sponsoring this video to be able to showcase just how important youtube playlists are, and for me in particular, this natural hair, ogees playlist is probably not even something that you'll be able to Use - it's probably something i will keep going back to. I hope that you can be able to tell me how your natural hair journey has been what you think of the playlists and, if you'd like, to connect more with me. Of course, please check out my instagram and tick tock at home, and so i will see you right here very soon again and until next time, bye,