Every Natural Has A Story - My Journey To Natural Hair

For as long as I can remember I’ve always had long, thick, coarse hair. However, as a little girl I didn’t really like the thickness or the extra time and effort it took my mother to wash and style my hair every week.

So, after years of begging, and on or after my 13th birthday, my mother finally gave in and let me get a relaxer in my hair.

I was so excited! The results were amazing- or so I thought. My hair was silky smooth and ultra straight. I remember running my fingers through  my wet hair in the shampoo bowl, and being in awe of how good it felt to be able to run my hand all the way through my tresses without difficulty.

Fast forward to age 15. In a little less than two years post relaxer, my hair was thinner than it had ever been, and the shortest it had ever been.

I didn’t really notice it until my mother took me to the hair salon for maintenance and I was sitting in the chair on the brink of tears because the stylist was commenting on how damaged my tresses were, and that a hair cut- not just a trim- was what she was going to do to my hair.

I was crushed. I had never heard anything negative about my hair, from anyone, because I used to have healthy, thick hair.

I wish I could say that from that day forward I took the upmost care of my hair, and always got it treated, and trimmed on time, but I didn’t. It was a cycle. I would let my hair get healthy and then eventually I would let it get damaged again, and cut again.

Fast forward to college. This is where I started experimenting with sew ins. I was amazed at the fact that I could have straight long hair again, and didn’t have to take the time to wait and grow it myself!

I even tricked myself into believing that it was a “protective” style, because my hair underneath was braided up.

Although some of my hair underneath was braided, that style was by no means a protective style. I wasn’t fully taking care of my hair underneath, and was just putting in sew in after sew in to avoid the fact that I was simply just too lazy to take care of my hair!

In 2013, after I graduated from undergrad I decided to start transitioning to fully natural. I was simply tired of pretending that I was taking care of my hair, and honestly,  I missed the hair that I had as a little girl/preteen.

You know the old saying, “you never know what you have, until it’s gone.” I knew that my hair was capable of growing to the length I wanted it to be, I just had to start maintaining and taking care of it.

For me, the first step of that process was to stop getting relaxers in my hair. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you can’t have healthy hair with relaxers, you can, but I decided that I wanted my hair to be healthy without relaxers.

Not to mention, as a recent college graduate I was trying to save as much money as I could, and those treatments every 6 weeks weren’t cheap! Another reason for deciding to give up relaxers was because I wanted to see my natural curl pattern.

To this day I still can’t think of one valid reason, aside from being annoyed with how long it took to do my natural hair, why I didn’t want to embrace my coils.

So in 2013 I begin transitioning. Transitioning for me didn’t get real until I could unmistakenly see two different textures in my hair on wash day.

It was so amazing. I really begin to take pride in my hair health, which meant ditching old stylists who didn’t. I wanted to save money, so I youtube’d a lot, and only splurged on natural hair salon visits sparingly, but it was totally worth it.

It wasn’t until 2014 when I decided I was going to do the big chop, and truly start protective styling while my hair grew out.

Now, it’s 2015 and I recently celebrated my 1 year post big chop and I couldn’t be more proud of myself. It took me being sick and tired of damaged hair, and also tired of being in denial about the health of my hair to truly start taking care of it.

Whether you are natural or relaxed, the key take away I hope you get from this article is to not ignore healthy hair care regimens!

Take the extra time on wash day, and in-between to make sure you are giving your hair what it needs.

Oh, and also, do some research on what others are doing! There are so many tips and tricks out there, so have fun with it, and embrace your hair! Whether relaxed and silky, or natural and curly.