Being Natural

Many times I get questions about my natural hair such as:

• How long have you been natural?
• Why natural/ nappy?
• How long is your hair?
• What do you do to take care of your hair? 
• Is that your hair? Lol .... the list goes on...

How long have you been natural?

I've been natural for about 2 years and 4 months. I had my big chop Dec 2013, and before that, I attempted going natural twice and each time I  always went back to relaxing my hair.

Why go natural/nappy?

Sometimes Late 2010 I started doing my own hair, weaves, braids and even perms just because I was tired of the hassle of having someone else doing it. It wasn't till 2011 that I started really taking care of my hair, even though I relaxed my hair it still remained healthy and grew, and I was comfortable with the length. I've always felt that my hair will lose length at some point because it was relaxed with such hard chemicals, I started pondering on ways to prevent this and going natural, was it. Late 2012, I had my first attempt. I transitioned for 3 months and got tired of it, so I went back to relaxing it. The second time I transitioned, I also relaxed my hair because of the struggle of working with the two textures. Finally, I decided not to transition anymore, I took my hair out of its protective style washed it and just snipped the front, from there, there was no going back, this was December 1, 2013.
How long is your hair?
My hair is about 12 inches give or take.

What do you do to take care of your hair?

• I deep condition every other week when my hair is out and once a month when in a protective style (usually when taking out the protective style).
• I shampoo once a month
• protein treatment once a month
• oil treatment once a month ( usually right before protein treatment)
• I moisturize daily and add oil ( with or without protective style)
• I utilize protective styles often

I've found that no matter how many years, no matter how long the hair gets, there's always something new to learn about my hair. The one area I enjoy looking into its products, I find that some products work really well with my hair and some not so well. The products that my hair loves remain staples in my regimen but I'm always curious to see if something works better.
 The other area I look into extensively is length retention. The problem with some naturals at times is that we feel that our hair doesn't grow or that it stops increasing at a certain point but that's simply not true, it's all in length retention.

Four easy ways to retain length:

1. Avoid using brushes and combs ( try finger detangling)
2. Don't attempt detangling dry hair ( wet and conditioned hair makes easier detangling)
3. Sleep with a silk bonnet or use silk pillow case
4. Try stretching the hair before styling: this step makes it so much simpler to avoid breakage while styling or working with the hair.

Being natural takes time and patience. You have to learn what makes your hair happy.

Hopeful this is helpful.