Just Not There Yet...

Today's post is a little different. Hair is still the topic, just not my hair. I am about to share with you my sister's recent hair story. And NO it's not one of those features where I ask her some cliché questions and listen to her typical answers. I'm about to give you the real, from my perspective.

 

mostly natural

Ok so the sister I'm talking about is the same one mentioned in this post. She had had relaxed hair ever since she was a preteen and loved relaxed hair very much. However, she had been 'stretching' (I use that term very loosely, as I don't think she even knows what that term means lol) for a few months when she discovered she was with child. She didn't relax during the entire pregnancy and wore braids for most of it.

braided up

Her fave - the pixie

 

She had always rocked (and loved) her pixie cut, so the year's worth of new growth brought her to fresh lengths (heyy Lesley lol).

 

I thought it fit to enlighten her on the benefits of rocking her natural hair since she had so much of it and only a few inches (maybe 2) of relaxed hair. I showed her some lovely videos courtesy of some youtube naturalistas. She was in! (and I was happy).

 

So we sat down to undoing her braids, washed, DCed...the whole shebang. And man! that hair was THICK!

 

close up of thickness and curl pattern

 

 

I was super surprised at just how thick that 'ish was. Anyway, we pressed on. We braided the hair into 5, so it would airdry overnight to be flat-ironed in the morn. The next morning the hair was wet as can be (womp :-() . We worked around it and flat-ironed anyway - took hours! And what's more is that the back is super kinky and reverted after a few hours (partly due to it not being bone dry).

 

silky straight

 

 

Needless to say, the next day she went out and bought herself a nice box of kit crème (which only did 1/2 her head due to the extent of her new growth and thickness (which I found a bit funny lol)) and was rocking permanently straight hair once again. Ahh, you win some, you lose some. I guess she just didn't have the time and patience to go natural right now.

 

The moral of the story is that you should only go natural when you are ready. No one can convince you to, it has to come from within. You have to be in a place where you are willing to spend the time and effort that natural hair requires. And last but not at all least, you have to really, deeply appreciate the beauty of natural hair. I guess some of us are just not there yet.

 

 

Ever been in a similar situation?