I cut my long shoulder length hair this weekend. It was a tough decision to make and even harder to go through with it.. I mean this is hair that I have grown for over 10 years and was extremely attached.
I had been seeing many ladies with their natural hair especially in the recent years and even have few friends of mine who made the decision to go natural a while back. It never crossed my mind to go natural because 1. I love my hair 2. It just looked like such a hustle to maintain.
You see most of us growing up were made to believe that African hair is just unmanageable without straightening it. The methods used were blow dry, hot comb or relaxers. During my days, hot comb was most popular. I used to dread going to the salon to hot comb my hair. This was because I had really long hair (Longer that it was when I cut it), it was just torture; the pulling, the charred hair, the smoke that would fill in the small stuffy salon etc. As a result, I could not wait to finish my school at 18 to relax my hair.
Over the years, I have managed to maintain my relaxed hair by doing treatments and relaxing new growth after protective styling. The only issue was that I would grow long and then break. As a result, my hair was always the same height give or take. One time I decided to color it. Worst decision of my life. The breakage was so much I had to go and cut of the colored parts. Very painful for me.
The decision to cut my hair was inspired by I met a young lady I met while I was travelling out of the city for work. She had this very nice natural hair held in a bun and we got talking after I complimented her hair. She gave me a long talk on natural hair and even quoted a Bible verse about hair. She encouraged me to go natural and embrace my own African curly hair, as well as gave me simple routines I could use to maintain it and simple ingredients I could use in the house to wash and treat it.
I thought long and hard about it. I started watching you tube videos and following Facebook pages for natural African hair. I then started entertaining the idea of growing mine. For inspiration, I started experimenting with my daughters hair and the results were amazing. We then made the decision that she will not visit the salon unless its for protective styling, and even then no more heat. To straighten it for braiding or plaiting, we use a method called African threading ; whereby you section the hair and use thread to tie it till the tip. Wait overnight or a few days then unravel the thread and the hair is straightened. Heat weakens natural hair. The results have been amazing. Her hair is longer and healthier as a result of all the TLC.
I have been plaiting my hair for the last 5 months. The idea was to let the growth grow long the I can cut the relaxed hair because I will be uncomfortable with very short hair. I had originally planned to plait it through out for a whole year but i recently did very small braids which after removing really cut my hair. I then decided to go cut the relaxed bit of my hair but immediately braid the natural hair so it grows longer.
This weekend I went to town with the intention of buying a weave and installing it after doing the big chop as I had no intention of walking around with short hair.. zero confidence. On my way to buy the weave, I met an old colleague of mine by coincidence and she was also rocking her natural hair! I told her of my intention and she discouraged me from buying the weave. In fact, she dropped what she was doing and literally accompanied me to the salon to chop it.
It was very nerve wracking to have it cut and more so to try and get the courage to embrace the short hair.. something that i have never done. She held my hand all the way and encourage me by insisting that I look really good. Although I couldn't see it!
So here is the before and after photos.
As it turns out, I have very nice soft natural hair!. I had always thought it was hard maybe because as children we were taught hat our hair was hard.
Am still getting used to the new look. I find myself looking strange and also a lot like my mom..Haha. Another thing is the different reaction from people; some positive, some negative. But most is positive so I will choose to believe that and ignore the negative.
Ps: On a bad hair day i just tie a scarf!
The journey to growing long natural hair begins:-)
