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Disclaimer

The hair tips, advice and recommendations given on this blog are given based on the experiences of the authors. These tips may not work for everyone and every hair type and it is important to acknowledge this since we are neither hair specialists nor trichologists.


Also many pictures on this blog belong to the authors but there are others that we do not have ownership for and thus we do not claim ownership of the ones that do not belong to us.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The Joys and Pains of transitioning

I have been natural for 2 yrs now or is it 3? My mind goes back to September 2007. I was super stressed from school; was in an abusive relationship (emotional) and I was just fed up. I remember clearly, I was watching TV with little sis then I got up, went into the bathroom, scissors in hand and chopped off a big patch of hair. I waited a few seconds for the tears to flow but nothing so I went on and cut my hair really close to my scalp. I stepped into the shower and for the first time in a long time, felt free, totally free and light and I could feel the pores of my hair open and soak up water (ok maybe I have a vivid imagination :)




Today, I have fulllllll, healthy, JET-black hair and I love every part of its kinkiness. Woohooo! Prior to my drastic cut, I had contemplated going natural, my number 1 reason was because I was in Halifax, NS Canada, which at the time was not as diverse as Toronto, so I couldn’t get my hair braided or professionally retouched. I had done a lot of research, joined a few natural blogs, toyed around with home made products for my hair type and asked the people around me who were natural a lot of questions. So September 2007 did not come as a shock to me, I felt it was coming.

Now transitioning was hard, as I struggled to accept the “new” me while trying to grow out healthy hair and just get used to the criticisms and the questions (trust me I got loads of them). I had long relaxed hair before “ruining” my crown of glory as my mum says.

While transitioning, I felt like retouching my hair. But going on the blogs of some “die-hard” naturals and seeking advice helped a lot. One advice I swear and live by is covering your hair by doing braids, plaits, or weaves (yes I did and still do weaves) . It helps a whole lot because, you don’t see your own hair and the urge to retouch it isn’t there or at least minimized.

I wear braids for 6- 8 weeks at a time with 2 or 3 weeks interval in between. So I kept telling my self, 8 weeks of braids and it will be almost a yr J plus seeing that extra length when I took the braids out sure motivated me. In between my braids and weaves, during my 2-week rest, I moisturize like crazy, coconut oil, Dudu Osun, Shea butter, almond oils, grape seed oil, castor oil, became close friends of my hair. I started adding proteins to my hair- eggs or egg whites. I took loads of vitamins and I swear by Biotin. For me that is, because not everything I use will work for you and vice versa for me.

This is getting long so I will continue it in my next post.




Omozee

1 comment:

Aina D. Hassan said...

AM glad things are better....hon be strong :)