My 2013 Natural Hair Journey

Another year is coming to a close. For me this means in two days I will be officially 3 years natural. Things changed up a bit for me halfway into the year.  I found myself frustrated with hair that would not curl right due to some damage from my relaxed days.  Trying to mask it with different styles just wasn’t cutting it for me.  I ended up doing a BC (it got shaved off) on the sides and the nape of my hair.  I did this in hopes of my new hair growing back better and healthy looking state.  So far I’m liking what I see.  At the time of this post my hair on the sides have grown and are down to my cheek bones. The nape part now stretches down my neck.  It will all be caught up enough with the rest of my hair in 6 months to blend in well with styling. Yay!!! I can’t wait because I miss my curly afro puff.

This year the things I did different was trying out Bentonite Clay, making my own leave-in conditioner, flaxseed gel, and curly pudding. I also learned that my hair needs protein treatments from time to time to keep from getting weak. Lots of people don't do protein treatments because they say their hair doesn't like protein.  I did some researching and found out the best way to utilize it is by first clarifying your hair (shampoo) then do the protein treatment and follow that with a deep conditioning to restore the moisture that was stripped of your hair from the protein.  This gives your hair a healthy balance of protein plus moisture.  When I started the treatments I did this weekly for a month.  The next month I did it twice (every other week).  Now I'm down to once a month.  I had to do so many in the beginning because my hair was losing it's elasticity and becoming weak at the ends. I still do my weekly deep conditioning regardless. I may not have mentioned this before but I do hot oil treatments once a month during hot weather and twice a month in the winter.  If you happened to have missed what I posted in year 1 and year 2, be sure to read those so you can see where it all began. In these pictures below you will see what has been going on with my hair from Jan. to Dec. of this year. (Click on the picture to see the rest) With my hair being oddly cut I had to get creative with styling. Some days were hit and miss but I got it to work.

Click on me

Although my hair has grown to 14” I will have to cut an inch off so that my ends will be healthy. I didn't do my usual trims every 3 months.  I only clipped my ends once this whole year. They are looking stringy and I don’t want a big problem with split ends. This is the 3rd documentation of my progress in my 5 year natural hair journey. I’m not sure what I’ll do different this next year. My only hair goal is to keep it healthy but then again I hope to reach waist length or 24” of hair by the 5 year mark.  At this time I'm still compiling a list of things I need to buy for my yearly big purchase of hair products. Thank you for taking time to stop by and read my hair journey update.


*Note: This is a repost from my old blog "Think 0utside the Box".