It’s Perfectly Fine To Fail Occasionally In Your Natural Hair Journey

A wise woman once said “Its my party and I can cry if I want to” and a famous black guy once said “It’s my prerogative” over and over again in one of his songs and a Rasta man once said “Baby don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright”.

While none of these songs can be considered highly intellectual they are very applicable to what I am about to say. Your natural hair journey is YOUR journey, not mine, not your best friend’s, yours!

It’s your party and you are free to do what it is that you want to do with your hair. There is a lot of ‘fear’ out there and quite frankly it’s understandable after all natural hair is very new to some of us and when we start a new journey we do not want to ‘mess things up’.

What I am telling you though is relax and live a little, if you really want to color your hair, then do it! If you really want to use your new flat iron* and wear your hair straight for a while then do it. Maybe you just want to relax your kinks a bit by trying the Brazilian Keratin Treatment, forget the naysayers, do THAT.

Before we get into the meat of the matter lets be clear; this post is meant to encourage freedom and healthy mistakes but not outright recklessness.

We can give advise until we are blue in the face but the fact remains that some people simply learn better by experience. So we are saying feel free to take care of your hair based on the knowledge you have acquired about how your hair works. The thing is, it’s kind of a catch 22 because you will never know how your hair works unless you fail on occasion.

For example, if you have never flat ironed your hair before and you want to try it, gain some knowledge beforehand by researching on best practices to pr0tect your hair. We would never recommend turning up the heat on your device to the highest level and letting it rest on your hair until it melts away, what sense would that make?

Rather with the knowledge you have gained and using a reasonable temperature setting, you should try using heat responsibly if you so desire and if you fail at it, examine the cause and effects, grow from it and move on knowing more about your hair than you did before.

What is a failed natural hair journey?

A completely failed no holds barred natural hair journey is one where you have for whatever reason, whether it is a setback or frustration decided to walk completely away from your journey and chemically relax your hair.

We do not consider your natural hair journey a fail if you have a setback, or if you experience breakage or shedding or even heat damage, these are just learning curves. We also do not consider your natural hair journey a failure if you cut all your hair off and decided to start over again.

Know that setbacks and frustration can be a natural part of any healthy hair journey, they are considered the tough love aspects of the journey because when you recover from them you come out feeling slightly brand new, with new knowledge about your hair and about yourself.

Mistakes that you make yourself are the best lessons and they give you the authority to speak on a subject especially if you find yourself in the position to give advice.

Have you ever met a new natural that ‘aint never been through nuthin”? Sometimes they get so excited about their journey that they start to tell you the do’s and don’ts about natural hair without having had some mud on their boots first.

Albert Einstein said “Any one who has never made a mistake, never tried anything new” and believe it or not poor judgment is often what leads to experience.

An experienced natural will have a few horror stories up her sleeve; she however will not consider her hair journey a failure. She might tell you that it’s just a journey of ups and downs with more ups the longer she sticks with it.

Perfect hair journey’s do not exist so don’t let the “I have perfect hair guru” advice fool you, prepare yourself for a few snags along the way that might require a pair of scissors or a long term protective style depending on how bad things get.

In addition to that, prepare yourself for boredom and the need to want to try new things. As women we should allow ourselves the opportunity to experiment switch our style up whenever we want even when it comes to our hair, after all that is what makes us unique right?

With that said stay away from the negativity as much as you can, you do not need permission from the natural hair gods on what you do in your own bathroom. I saw a comment on facebook recently that went something like this:

So if I flat iron*/color my hair am I not natural any more? I still want to be natural

It makes me sad to see comments like these because natural hair in some circles has become like an exclusive club where only the members to adhere to the strictest form of the club’s codes are allowed to remain members. Natural hair is what it means to YOU and you alone.

The most important thing is that you find reliable sources to educate yourself on anything that you might be confused about or anything that might be brand new to you. The second most important thing is that you make your mistakes if you have to but learn from them.

4 Ways to Fail In Your Natural Hair Journey And Still Be OK

1. Intermittent dryness and breakage – If you are experiencing relentless dryness and on top of that breakage, you can sometimes feel as if all your efforts are in vain. Don’t worry! Just figure out ‘the why’ and ‘the how’ to fix it and move on!

2. Color – Coloring your hair is probably one of the most creative things you can do on your natural hair journey. We all like to experiment with different looks, and who never wondered what they would look like as a blonde? If you try it and it affects your hair in a negative way, there are ways to recover. Educate yourself, start over, you now know that color doesn’t work for your hair but realize that it is not the end of the world, learn and move on.

3. Heat damage – If you use heat, even with heat protectant* you might still just experience some heat damage. Don’t get flustered, your hair is still growing, it will recover and you will learn something. Direct heat is probably not for you.

4. Psychological neglect – Sometimes we go through a phase of just not feeling like doing a daggone thing to our hair, we stop deep conditioning*, we stop wearing our bonnet, we don’t protect our ends it’s just a free for all. This is something we all experience and during our HHJ’s and there is usually a little voice nudging us to get back on our game. As long as you have your voice, this too shall pass, don’t sweat it.

And finally we want to emphasize that if you are experiencing physical hair issues, like breakage or shedding, realize that doing a relaxer or texlaxing your hair does not fix the issue it will likely make things worse.

Think of your hair strand like a piece of string, if it is so worn out or damaged that it cannot hold on to itself adding a chemical to further degrade the strand doesn’t help strengthen it, it weakens it.

What are some of the ways you have failed in your natural journey and what did you learn?