I remember when I was little, I hated having natural hair, my mum always said, “relaxers will only damage your hair because it is full of chemicals!!”. I always thought “woman you lie!, please anything to relieve me from this headache and pain I feel anytime I comb my hair”. I remember always begging the hairdresser to please relax my hair or add some texturizer into my hair, just to make the pain go away, but in my head, I was thinking “that should make it soft forever!!!”😈. You see yeah, the rule in my house back then was my sister and I should not relax our hair until we were both done with secondary (high) school. It was like doing hard time, just thinking about it.
Most people around me in school had long relaxed hair, I used to be so jealous not knowing that what I was looking at was more of split ends than long hair. Let’s fast forward a wee bit, to the day I added texturizer into my hair… Man my mother flipped!, never did she know that I snuck around texturizing my hair in secret to help numb the pain (addict). At some point, I remember that I got tired of sneaking around and just gave up. I thought having natural hair was some sort of prison time as I was tortured.
I was super happy when secondary (high) school was over, I could finally relax my hair which I did, but the fear of having my hair chemically damaged was always on my mind. I decided that I would only relax my hair once or twice a year and trim the ends whenever I have my hair washed at the saloon to make sure I had “healthy hair”. I loved having long hair!
Guess what? My sister decided to remain natural, because relaxers did nothing to her hair, whenever she relaxed it, it did not last a week or two and then back to being NATURAL. She decided not to bother relaxing her hair and took a U-turn to be part of the natural hair gang. Every time I saw her hair, I got jealous, still jealous by the way. Her hair is full, soft, curly oh let’s not talk about the curls! Sometime early 2020, it was like I had an epiphany, stood right in front of a mirror, and chopped away, my sister says I get scissors crazy and she is right sigh…… guys for the first few hours I thought I looked like a guy after chopping my hair hahaha… I found myself looking at my hair over and over and over again, "Asking, oh Jo! What have you done?"
The good part of the Big Chop Journey is I have grown to love my hair, especially when I have them in twists, the curls I have are just beautiful and my hair has never been so full, don’t get me wrong my hair was still full when it was relaxed but I wanted to be adventurous and try something new. Now, I am not going to lie, patience is very key when you have natural hair because the SECTIONING, SHAMPOOING, and CONDITIONING your hair section by section is just insane and is no joke for me. I just tell myself “abegi! look at how full your hair is… let's talk about that first…ok!”, then I move forward with life. It is high maintenance but healthy.
Let’s talk, which are you? The scissors crazy type or let it grow out and it will fall off type or cut everything it off kinda gal?
Share your tips on taking care of your natural hair or relaxed her.
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