As someone who is a little over 2 years into her natural journey, I have noticed how much my curls have grown and flourished all while gaining a greater sense of self love and appreciation. But what many don’t know is that when I had my last relaxer in December of 2013 and made the ultimate decision to not get them any more in February of 2014, it was actually my second attempt. The first time was my junior year of college back in 2010.
I always took pride in switching up my hair whether it be a cut or a new bold color, and even went so far as to creating a hairstory photo compilation on my Facebook chronicling all of my many hair changes.
As someone with a short pixie whose hair grew fairly quickly, I had to keep up with the relaxers at least once every 4-6 weeks. If I went longer my hair would really start to curl up and the style wouldn’t maintain.
One wash day I saw these little curls in the back of my hair and thought hmm maybe I could try the whole natural thing.
So unknowledgeable, I went out and purchased some cheap curl activator, rubbed it on my hair and thought that was enough. I threw on a head band and that’s how I rocked my hair for a couple of weeks.
I’ve mentioned before that my mother wasn’t very supportive of my interest in a doing a journey to natural hair, and it mostly came from the fact that my hair just didn’t look good. She pressured me into getting a relaxer and chop, and back to the pixie I went.
I often say that she was the reason I gave up. Just because of the pressure and the negativity, but after looking at my journey now and how I was able to stick to it I realized it was mostly because I just didn’t know about the many resources out there.
YouTube, for example, is packed with tons of natural hair tips and tutorials that I just didn’t take advantage of.
So honestly, I failed at my first attempt to go natural because of the fact that I just didn’t know what to do with my hair, thus it looked a hot mess.
If this is you, and you want to go natural but just don’t know how to work with your hair, make sure you check out the tons of instructional videos on YouTube, take the time to read hair blogs like this one, and check out the forum as well. Often someone else had been through the same struggles and can help you will yours as well!
Brilliant! Do you think everybody learns to ride a bike, drive a car or pass exams on their first attempt? Everybody learns things in different ways and times. So what if you make a mistake or error? Think of this way.When you make a spelling or grammatical mistake, you don’t beat yourself for it, you just rectify it and move on. However when you made a so called few mistakes, hundreds learned. Silence. Think about it?