Monday, January 26, 2009

Stepping Towards Freedom!!

Hi Everyone!! I wanted to create this blog to chronicle my journey as I step towards freedom - freedom from hair chemicals that is! Since I was 13 I have had chemically relaxed hair with a few breaks as I got older and chopped all my hair off. I've toyed with the idea of getting rid of the relaxer all together off and on for some time now - it's not as if I don't know what I look like without it - when I was 22 I chopped all the relaxer out of my hair and had a TWA of cute curls. But as it grew I didn't know what to do with it and got sick of wetting my hair and gucking it up with gel. So needless to say I went back to a relaxer.


Over the years I've grown and cut my hair, had braids, weaves - you name it I've done it. One day about 5 years ago, I saw an ad with a young woman with a great head of natural hair - it was gorgeous! I thought to myself, "I can do that," but back then I lacked the courage to go natural but wanted the look, so I found a product (Aveda's Be Curly) that worked really well on my hair - you see even though I relax my hair, I only do it 2 maybe 3 times a year so my hair still curls up when it is wet. Anyway I rocked the curly look off and on for a while. But never went completely natural.


So what brought about the change? Why do I now want to be free of chemicals? That's easy - I had a son. My son Jayden is the absolute light of my life. He's 1 years old and just developing his own little personality. One day while he and I were at home and were watching television a commerical came on with a young african american woman with long, silky, clearly chemically treated hair and Jayden pointed at the t.v. and said, "Mama." Now of course he doesn't know what he's doing, but it became routine that every time he'd see an african american woman on t.v. with long straight hair he'd point and say "Mama."


I don't want my little boy to grow-up with a misconceived notion of what beauty is. All women of color are beautiful and that is not determined by hair. I took a good, hard look at myself and my 'hairstory' and realized that my curls are beautiful and that I don't need straight hair. So I am embrassing the me that God created.


So here I am in transition - I haven't relaxed my hair since October 18, 2008 - right before my wedding. I currently have about 2 inches of new growth. I've decided to transition without the big chop, I enjoy my length and have no shame about that. My hair right now is about 3 inches past my shoulders and I am going for BSL.


I've decided that I will wear transitional hair styles - mostly just wearing my hair curly to blend the two textures.


So here I am making my first steps towards freedom....

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