My Natural Hair Journey

"Remove the kinks out of your mind, not your hair" - Marcus Garvey

Hey hey!

Yesterday, I started thinking... What would I say if someone asked me why I went natural? After thinking about the question for a while, I realized that I probably wouldn't answer the question concisely. I would probably go into a few anecdotes about past hair experiences. Here's what I would say...

Two years ago, I started noticing that a lot of women around me on campus began cutting their hair. Now, I'm not talking small trims, but full on buzz cuts and afros resulted from these cuts. I couldn't figure out why people where cutting off all of their hair. Part of me got mad because some of the girls had really long hair and I was struggling to keep my hair at shoulder length.

5-30-07

7-13-07

During the summer, I watched Madea's Family Reunion (movie) and saw an actress with really beautiful two-strand twists. Her name is Lia Arrindel Anderson. Her hair looked sooo beautiful and long and I wanted mine to look that way. A couple of weeks after I saw the movie, I went to get kinky twists at a local hair salon. They didn't come out anywhere like hers did:

The look I was going for...

The look I got :(

In about a month in a half (Oct 29, 2007), I took down the hairstyle only to find out that my hair had locked pretty badly... After crying for over 3 hours, I decided to go to a hair salon and have them fix my hair... That day I found out that they would have to cut out all of the locked hair. After crying a bit more, the stylist promised that she would make me look fly... Here's the haircut: This was also the very last time that I would get a relaxer, although I didn't know it yet...(Pics taken in Dec.)

I started wearing my hair in protective styles because I didn't feel like flat ironing it all the time. So I got a friend of my aunt to twist my hair for me (not sure what the style was called, lol!)

1/4/08

After a while, I started looking asking some of my friends why they cut their hair. I pretty much got the same answer from everyone... "Natural hair is beautiful and it's me!". That made me start looking about natural hair websites, and blogs to see what all the buzz was about... While looking at the pictures on the websites, all of the women looked like they were basking in confidence... They all looked gorgeous and their hairstyles were sooo cute! After some time, I realized that I was looking at natural hair photos everyday!

So...one day (July 8th, 2008) I washed my hair and allowed it to air dry...Later on when I went to the library, I checked out my hair in the ladies room... All of my new growth was nice and curly and looked beautiful while all of my relaxed ends were thin and stringy... It looked horrible to me (it's funny because I used to love wearing my hair like that!). It was then that I knew that I wanted to go natural and cut off all of my relaxed ends. That night, I went home and took some scissors and cut off all of the relaxed strands. Then my little brother helped me clip off the rest of the relaxed ends :) (Disregard the boobage in the first photo...hehe)

07/14/08 (Puff with braids in front)

11/2/08 (Wash 'N Go Pulled Up)

1-17-09 (Twist out w/braids)

4-26-09 (Blow Out)

7-14-09 (Ponytail!!!!)

9-7-09 (Wash 'N Go, Pulled Up)

9-26-09 (Wash 'N Go)

11-23-09 (Blow Out)

12-9-09 (Bantu Knot Out)

1-1-2010! (Wash 'N Go, Pulled Up)

Throughout my journey, I have had some rough patches with learning about my natural curls. I've learned what products work and don't work for me. I've learned to deal with people who may not like the path that I have chosen to take. Through this experience I have learned more about myself and have become wayyy more confident. Now, I look at my pictures and see that same level of confidence that I saw in the natural pictures I was looking about a little over a year ago... :)

So, that's pretty much what I would tell anyone who asks me about why I went natural (sans the pictures, lol!). I absolutely love my natural curls and I will NEVER relax my hair again! :)

Peace,

nNb Y