My hair journey.

Synopsis

I first relaxed my hair when I was around six. I really shouldn’t have then but I was caught up in everywhere person having straight hair and I felt a little left out. So without my mum’s consent and with help from my aunt I relaxed it and for years I felt cool.

Then…

The first thing I noticed was no matter how much I relaxed my hair was never flat, I naturally have full hair so it still shows even when I relax or straighten unlike other girls who had less full hair and it’ll just fall on their shoulders or below. The next thing was that my hair started changing colour from it’s original shade if black more to a browner shade. Then my hair started cutting and never seemed to get longer than that shoulder-chin length then I decided when I was 12 to stop relaxing.

The bad

I knew I wanted to stop relaxing but at that point natural hair wasn’t a thing like it is now so I didn’t get much support from anyone, my mum didn’t know much about it either and by the way my hair was still mostly relaxed at the ends but it was terribly dense at the roots which made it really hard to manage. I had two types of hair more or less and I had no idea how to take care of it.

The ugly

It was really crazy having two types of hair, it was incredible hard to comb and all the hair dressers were telling to to relax it (some still do) but I was in secondary school and it was constantly in plaits so lucky me I guess.

The good

Towards 2014 most of the relaxed hair had broken off and my hair was starting to look more like an afro, I never had a big chop but I was happy when my hair started taking shape, I still wore my hair in plaits most of the time so it was constantly protected. Below is my hair in early 2015, only the tips were still relaxed and it looked like an actual afro. I graduated secondary school then so I was faced with the challenge of taking care of my hair intentionally. I mostly used shea butter conditioners then but I still wasn’t taking good care of my hair. Oh well…

Lately

I have gotten better at taking care of my hair over the past two years and it’s getting healthier and longer. I spent the whole of this just ended summer getting hair inspirations and I decided to challenge myself to get to waist length, I know it will take years and loads of hard work but I’m willing to work at it.

My hair is currently 25cm, that will be my start length and around December I’ll check again so I can track growth.

Join me

If you are willing to challenge yourself or you want to transition or think it’ll be fun to see if I can achieve waist-length then join me in this journey! I would love to have your comments, current hair lengths and hair type too. Let’s have fun!
-Drop of Black.