My Natural Hair Journey

Hey Readers!

I hope that you learned something about natural hair or African American hair in general after reading my last post. I would imagine that you're probably wondering about my own hair in relation to the natural hair movement. Well here's a short anecdote about my own hair:


I have been natural for all of my life with the exception of two years (during which I had a failed attempt at a texturizer). When I was a child, my mom had a hard time doing my hair. My hair is thick & long which made it hard for my mother, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, to deal with. In addition, the fact that I'm tender headed wasn't much help either. As a child I never wanted a relaxer, because relaxing my hair meant that I couldn't swim as often as I'd liked to. We have a chlorinated neighborhood pool. When you have a relaxer in your hair, a chemical reaction between the lye from the relaxer and the chlorine from the pool can weaken your hair and cause it to fall out. And that's exactly what happened to me. In the third grade my mom put a texturizer (a weak version of a relaxer made for girls with a straighter texture of hair) into my hair out of desperation. I don't blame her. It was hurting her to do my hair!  She told me that I either couldn't swim or that I would have to wear a swim cap. I wasn't about to stop swimming & swim caps were ugly so I took the risk and swam anyway. After a year and a half, my hair went from being an inch above my rear end to an inch below my ear lobes. It was a tragedy!

This is how I normally wore my hair in high school. Long and straight.

As the years went on I nursed my hair back to health and stopped getting texturizers. Eventually my hair grew back just as strong and healthy (but not quite as long) as before. However, I always straightened my hair with either the flat iron or the blow dryer (The picture above is a picture taken after a band concert during my sophomore year of high school). I wasn't quite sure what to do with my hair in it's natural state.My natural hair was wild and unruly and I worried that I would damage it trying to wear it completely natural.  I think that I was kinda nervous about how my friends would accept my hair as well.

The first time I ever wore my hair natural!

My friend Asha and I wearing my hair in an experimental natural pony tail lol!

When I became a senior in high school I decided to not straighten my hair one day. I wore it in a curly ponytail & all of my friends loved it. I continued to wear it like that for a while. Although I really liked my hair like that, I still couldn't seem to figure out how to wear it completely natural in a curly fro. My hair would start out curly when it was wet, but when it completely dried, it would turn into a frizzy mess. Then one day my family was at the beach (picture above). I noticed that the humid weather kept my curls in tact at all times. I realized that what I needed was some kind of moisture in my hair at all times. I experimented and threw in some leave in conditioner & BAM! I had finally figured out the secret to my hair. 


By the time that I started my first day at UGA I had the confidence and the knowledge on how to wear my hair completely natural and care for it. Part of the college experience is experimenting with yourself and figuring out who you really are. I started watching LOTS of tutorials on youtube & I joined sites like CurlyNikki.com for support. Also the fact that there are tons of other natural girls on campus helps. At my high school, it was very homogeneous...all straight hair. It's hard to believe that I've only been wearing my hair completely natural for two years. Nowadays it's almost impossible to keep me from discussing natural hair. I'm always trying to convince my friends to wear their hair natural (and I've convinced a good bit of them too (: ). I even planned and participated as a panelist in a natural hair forum here at the University (pictured below). I'm still learning a lot about my hair everyday and it's often challenging to care for my hair in it's completely natural state.

I think natural hair is the thing to do, regardless of the fact that going natural has become a trend over the past year. It's important that we should embrace our natural-ness & be happy with the hair that God gave us. What I like most about being natural is that there is so much room for versatility in the natural hair styles which you can wear. There are lots of natural hair styles: twist outs, braid outs, faux fro-hawks, buns etc. Then I can still straighten my hair or wear it in heat pressed curls. I'm starting to wonder how I ever went being straight all the time. Now that I'm completely natural I have to change my hair style every couple of days!




Finally, I've been on a "natural hair journey." In my journey I go through periods of time when I go completely natural with no heat!  I'm still trying to figure out how to care for my natural hair so each journey has some sort of learning goal for natural hair.


 My first journey was over Christmas break. I wanted to learn about how to maintain my hair in the winter when it is dry and there is virtually no humidity. Let's just say that journey wasn't the best. I went about a week and a half with no heat. Next, I went for a month between the months of February and March with no heat. I wanted to learn how to properly detangle it. This time it went much more smoothly. My most recent natural hair journey began in April and has continued since. I've been without heat for the past six months! I've learned all new different styles, detangling methods etc. It's working out great! Originally I planned to only not use heat during the summer months when the high levels of humidity make it not worth it to try to straighten my hair (it'll just poof up anyway). But my plan lasted a little longer than expected (: I plan on straightening my hair sometime within the next week. It's getting cooler now and my straight hair will last longer. However I still plan to go on another journey, but one that is much smaller.


Well this is my natural hair journey! I will be providing tips on my hair maintenance soon!

Keep it natural,

Jackie