About ten months ago I started a journey that many African American women take in their lives: I started going natural. From May of 2010, I decided that I no longer wanted to continue on with getting relaxers. It was a time in my life when I was transitioning from high school to college and I decided that I wanted a change in my hair as well. I had kind of been thinking of just letting it grow out for most of my senior year and despite what everyone said against it, I told myself that this was for me, it was something that I had to do.
So... Just so you all can get a little more background...here's my natural hair journey.
I had natural hair when I was a kid until 2nd grade when I had my first relaxer. My mom had been pressing my hair up until then. I kept getting my relaxers up until last year when I decided to go natural. During the ten years that I have been getting relaxers, I had A LOT of problems dealing with breakage and keeping my hair moisturized. I had a dependable hair dresser for the majority of that time until some of my hair would break off and she didn't know why. I later changed my hair dresser to someone who knew how to deal with it more professionally and my hair was able to get back to its original health. Although the health of my hair had gotten better, I still felt that my hair wasn't at its optimal health because my hair was still being chemically treated. This is when I decided that it was time for a change.
May 2010, I got my last relaxer and that was the beginning. It has now been 10 months of transitioning from relaxed to natural hair. I was too afraid to just completely chop off my hair and I feel like that would've been too drastic of a change for me at the time. Transitioning seemed like the easier option. It gives me a chance to do research on natural hair, figure out the best tips on natural hair care so that when I was ready to be fully natural I would have a pretty good feel for what I was doing. My transitioning has consisted of me wearing various types of braids every couple of months. I started off by wearing micro braids, then going to individual braids for a little while and right now I have tree braids. My plan was to go through this process and when May comes around this year I would finally cut off the relaxed ends of my hair.
It was just today when watching natural hair vlogs on YouTube that I chose to start making this natural hair blog. At this point I feel that I probably won't have that many followers, which is fine. My main goal was to log my natural hair growth journey so that I can see how much I progress throughout all of this. If I happen to pick up a person or two along the way who are interested in what I post on here, then that's perfectly fine. I would love to share my journey with as many as I can.
(My Tree Braids)
Until Next Time....
~JPB
