Hello beautiful!

Don’t be wavered by the title of this post if your hair isn’t natural… just keep reading.

I started my natural hair journey almost three years ago. It’s a very funny story. So December 2012, I was spending the holidays with my aunt in Lagos and I went to the salon for the routine hair relaxing before fixing Christmas hair (don’t judge me, I still make Christmas hair). I forgot that I had washed my hair a few days prior to coming to relax my hair so as the lady at the salon started applying the crème relaxer to my hair and scalp (I don’t know why they always relax the scalp as well, it’s only my HAIR that needs these chemicals ma’am!), back to the point, I felt the usual heat start to spread across my head and I knew that things will not end well. Needless to say, by the time she was done applying it to my entire head, I was almost crying. I believe I did shed a few tears. And Olamide and Phyno’s Ghost mode was playing during this ordeal so for that reason I always associate that song with the pain I felt that day.

She sha washed my hair ASAP since I was literally blubbering and she blow dried it with cool air because I would NOT sit under a hooded hair dryer blasting hot dry air on my tender and bruised scalp. I had been relaxing my hair for as long as I can remember because as a kid, I was everyone’s little bride or ring bearer at weddings and they always wanted a slicked back look on me. I think I have only one or two non-scalp burning memories from a relaxing experience. As I left the hair dresser’s place that day, I just knew that it will be forever before I punish myself like that again.

Afterwards, I got lazy and kept postponing relaxing my hair until it started to get harder and harder to comb. Patsy then suggested that I go natural. Before this, the only “naturalistas” I knew were both Deeper Lifers or Jehovah Witness people and it never looked nice (to me, no offence to any attendees of these churches) so I wasn’t down for that. So I started using texturizers which were just a milder form of relaxer. My hair was still puffy but tamed. I really enjoyed this phase because I got to experiment with my hair. This was up until December 2013 when I made the decision to go fully natural.

I started doing research, watching Youtube videos, checking out products, finding out what hair type I have, reading blogs, all the works. Sometime in November 2014, I went into Patsy’s room and started playing with her scissors. Before I knew what was happening, I was cutting off by my texlaxed ends. This is why I don’t own scissors; I spontaneously start cutting anything around me, including my clothes. My mum flogged me once because I cut the curtains in the living room when I was little. Patsy collected the scissors and helped me cut my ends off. It was really sad because I cut about 4/5 inches of hair that day. I leveled my hair again February 2015 and that was my last “chop”.

Water, coconut oil, olive oil and Jamaican Black Castor Oil have been my staples since I went natural. I have learnt that I have 4b hair type in the front center of my head and the back is a dense 4c hair type. I now know that moisture is my hair’s best friend. I have accepted my “untamed mane”. It’s big and stubborn like me, hehe. I love my natural hair. The growth in a year has been overwhelming and I honestly don’t see myself ever relaxing my hair again, not because I have anything against relaxed hair but because I love myself more like this.

So that’s it…my extremely long natural hair story. Stay glued to this site to follow me on this journey.

See you in my next post! Xoxo