So today ladies and gentleman, I’m starting anew.

For those who know me, I have had a relaxer (a relaxer is the chemical process of loosening the curls and kinks to straighten hair. For black women, it can be our saving grace as well as hair demise) on my hair for now four years. Before that, my hair was natural. I loved being natural but my hair didn’t love me being natural. I didn’t do what was needed to maintain healthy looking and feeling natural hair.

For those who are looking at your screen like what the hell she talkin bout, being natural is at least the way I understand it is no longer putting chemicals (relaxers, sulfates, etc) on a woman’s hair. It just isn’t healthy for one and two it’s damn expensive. For me, it isn’t that expensive because I don’t live in the salon. I maybe see my hairstylist six times a year. So that amounts to about $480/year. That’s cheap compared to some women who go every month. First of all, I’m not trying to be in the salon for five hours every two weeks to a month. Secondly, I don’t have that kind of money to be spending on my hair especially since my paycheck seems to be dwindling to nothing.

Yes I understand the many challenges I’m about to go through with my hair. And I understand that I must remain disciplined with my weekly to biweekly rituals. However, there are some really fantastic natural hair blogs out there that have given me lots of insight.

One such blog I have been reading is Black Girl with Long Hair. I have been reading this blog for some years now. Even after I “went back to the dark side” in 2009, the fabulous writers of the blog still gave me helpful tips and guidance to keeping my hair healthy. There are tutorials, style profiles, product reviews, etc. What’s great about this blog is that the writers also often do interviews with real natural haired ladies. They talk about why they went natural in the first, their journeys with their hair as well as give advice from their perspective about going natural.

Another blog I love reading is Afrobella. I really like reading her blog. She too blogs about natural hair but she blogs about so many other things as well. From fashion to health/beauty to celebrity profiles to culture, she pretty much covers a wide spectrum of topics. Again like Black Girl with Long Hair, I have been reading her blog for years.

While I love the above blogs, it was this post on NapturallyCurly.com that led me to the decision to go natural again. I knew I didn’t want to “big chop” all my hair again. I also knew that my thirty plus years in the business hairstylist would help me transition the right way. And she’d get after me if I wasn’t doing something right with my hair. Plus she’d give me tips on what to do for MY hair. This woman does things for my hair that no one has done since I was going to the JcPenny hair salon in Waco, TX when I was a student at Baylor.

So with all of that said, along with my regular postings, I’m going to start blogging about my journey with my hair. I’m old enough now to realize the importance of maintaining my hair. I think the biggest problem I had in 2006 was that I was just being lazy and didn’t really understand the journey of going natural. I wasn’t getting the same results that other ladies were getting. I understand more now than I did that not everyone will have the same experiences with their hair. I have also realized that with anything especially with this blogit takes a lot of discipline on my part to get the results I want.

Here is the beginning of my transition from relaxed hair to natural hair.

Before @ 11:30
I was looking crazy. Like C-R-A-Z-Y! Roots were all kinds of fugly and had new growth fo days. Jesus my hair was atrocious.

Midway point (@ 13:30) of my hair appointment.
Miss May has shampooed and conditioned my hair. Then she put a deep conditioner on my hair and put me under the dryer for fifteen minutes. Then she combed my hair out which hurt like hell. I still don’t like that part of the process and blow-dried my hair out.

After @ 16:00