My Hair Journey

 

I remember being young and having a full head of hair. When I was in my teens, people would always come up to me and say, "When you were a little girl, your hair was sooo long and thick, it would take two people to comb it." And for that reason, my mother decided to perm my hair when I was about 11 years old. It was too difficult for her to manage and figured perming it wouldn't be so bad. Boy was she wrong. Within the next couple of months my hair started to break off. I started getting my hair braided and then as I got older I discovered weaves. When I discovered it, it was like a whole new world to me. Straight or curly? 1b or 2? Bang or no bang? The options were endless. So, throughout high school, I experimented with that. Getting it done every 6 weeks and touching up my edges to make sure everything blended right. My hair stayed like this until my junior year in college. I can recall talking to my friend one day and she was going on and on about how she's natural. She kept saying that her hair is so much stronger without the perm. So I began to research natural hair to see what the hype was about. That's when I realized having hair free of chemicals is a beautiful thing. You don't have to worry about it breaking off when you perm it, putting a flat iron on it every day to make sure it blends with the weave or worry about getting out of the salon in at least eight hours. Setting a level of freedom that shows you are no longer bonded to what people "say" is good. After this realization, I began my journey to becoming natural in December 2008 and I haven't looked back since!