My Hair Story (The NEW Story) *Pic Heavy

To kick off the new year, I've decided to re-do my hair story, since there's been some MAJOR changes.

Currently, I am relaxed. As of right now, I'm not too sure I'll be that way forever (I'll get to that later).

Here’s the timeline:

May 2009 - Made Decision to Go Natural

May 2009 - April 2010 (11months) - Transitioned to Natural

April 10, 2010 - Did Big Chop and Became Officially Natural

October 2012 - Relaxed my natural hair/Started relaxed hair journey

I'll try to  make this as short as possible because I have the attention span of a gnat and I know plenty of others with the same problem. I'll make it into a Q&A sort of thing.

• Why natural?  I broke the golden rule of relaxed hair care, SCRATCHING right before the relaxer. I was using super strength ORS at the time and had THE worst burning of my existence. Literally right after I rinsed it out, I vowed that it would be my last time. My hair was severely damaged at the time because my mom would apply the SUPER strength relaxer to my ENTIRE head. I was tired of having short hair, so those factors came together and produced a new, natural me.

My Damaged Relaxed Hair

My TWA

• How'd you transition? : Sew-ins and the twist n' curl using perm rods

• How long were you natural? : 2.5 years

My Natural Texture

Mini Twist Out

•         Why did you relaxed your natural hair? : Sigh. This one's kind of tough. I've had a REALLY difficult time retaining length since…forever. My hair was in that awkward stage between TWA and full SL right when I went to college as a freshman. The workload + 4b/4c natural hair = a disaster. I resorted to wearing berets and scarves to get it to look semi- decent. As the months went by, I literally began to hate my hair. Wash n go's were a NO because my natural texture is pretty much like a cotton ball. No visible curl whatsoever. That meant that I would have to either twist or braid my hair to form the style that I preferred, which just wasn't going to happen If I wanted to dedicate my time towards my grades.

I officially began thinking about relaxing it around my 2 year anniversary (April 2012). So, this wasn't a brash, random decision. I began thinking about what I originally wanted the Dream Lexi's hair to be like. The dream me didn't have natural hair; She was relaxed.  At that point I wasn't being natural because I liked it, but because everyone else liked it. I had inspired my cousin, aunt, and mother to go natural and I felt like a traitor to  'the cause'. Around September 2012, I said eff it. This was the same problem I was dealing with when I was relaxed. Listening to what others wanted and not what I wanted. So during Fall Break, I went to a stylist and got a virgin relaxer. Couldn't be happier.

P.S. If there are anymore questions I'll be more that happy to answer!