You've never heard one like this before. . .

So, as promised this post is about my hair story. As a child, my hair was relaxed and that is pretty much what was done with my hair most of my life (for a brief period I sported a jheri curl). I figured I would always have relaxed hair and didn’t give much thought to anything else. Now, I was never the type that liked hair maintenance! The ponytail was my best friend. I did get various braided extensions along the way but it wasn’t until 2006 when I decided that would be my staple style. For no particular reason, other than shear laziness, I got my hair in cornrow extensions FAITHFULLY every month. I might give my hair a week’s break but I was right back into the extensions at the blink of an eye. At the time, I didn’t understand that I still needed to care for what was under all that synthetic hair that I so loved to cover up. I would still retouch my hair in between when I felt like my hair was getting to nappy and unmanageable. I thought it all made such good sense at the time. . . little did I know! I went through a number of different stylist for various reasons. But the last stylist who braided my hair (from 2007 to 2008) asked me a very thought provoking question one day “Why do you still bother to perm your hair when it stays in braids all the time?” I took serious consideration of this since my husband had already been asking me to stop relaxing my hair. “Why do I still perm my hair?” I thought. So, I said “ok, I’ll stop” but not with the direct intention on going natural because as long as I could stay covered up in some braids, I was cool. Having said that, I remained braided and put the hair crack down for good. I don’t remember exactly when my last relaxer was. Then one day. . . a hair mishap. I was totally not thinking one day when I set out to take out my braids and wash my hair – I did JUST THAT – no detangling session beforehand!!! My hair was a hot, matted mess (I know you just got a good visual, lol)! I had no idea what to do so I did a complete hack job on my hair. I guess you can say that May 2008 was my unofficial “big chop”. It didn’t matter to me then because the very next day I was getting my hair braided again. Boy was my stylist shocked when she came over to do my hair :-). Nonetheless, it was covered up once more and I just kept moving on without a second thought – continuing to destroy what lay beneath. Well, I believe the constant stress on my hairline and the complete lack of nurturing my hair was taking its toll. Once day, I noticed thinning/breakage around the temple area and thought that sooner or later, I would have to stop getting my hair braided and start to take care of the hair God gave me. This was my true light bulb moment – yes, I know it took me a while to catch on. I knew I was not going to start relaxing again so I had to get educated on what to do with this “stuff’ on top of my head. Ok, at least by the time this revelation came about my hair was at length where I could get it into – you guessed it – a ponytail! I would strategize the whole thing: continue to get my hair braided up through December 2008 and then in January 2009 I was going to get a professional cut and start rocking my natural hair out for the world to see. That is how I ended up here but January 2009 was just the beginning.

I have so much more to tell and share so please subscribe for more about this journey that I am on. My next post will be on my visit to the salon this Thursday for a much needed trim (the last time it was cut was in January). By the way, do you notice that I leaving the scissor job to the PROS now. . .

Thanks for reading. Be blessed!

P.S. The pictures posted are from my flat twist French roll I did last weekend. Hope you enjoy!

CallaLily