So there I was without a flat iron and wondering how on earth I was going to start growing my damaged hair longer. I was already certain that my hair was suffering because of the lighter hair color I decided to use for two years. What else was I doing wrong?
I jumped on Google and did a search on growing african american hair longer. I found a site called “growafrohairlong.com”. I read about how the site’s founder, Robin Woods, grew her hair to about waist length by using the “Crown & Glory” method. She talked about using braids as a protective style to help retain hair growth. She also gave suggestions on how to care for the hair like, how to comb it and deep conditioning. The thing I remember most was how she explained that she only did a relaxer 2 times per year. Say what! She would go 6 whole months without a relaxer! That seemed like an extremely long time to me considering the longest I went between relaxers was 8-10 weeks.
My hair after my 1st pregnancyI found out that this method was called “relaxer stretching”. Basically you use a relaxer less frequently to give you hair a chance to grow. To me that really made sense because I remembered how long my hair was after my first pregnancy. I stopped doing any haircolor or relaxers during that time because I didn’t want it to effect my baby and my hair flourished as a result.
While I researched it more I kept seeing all of this information about, “going natural”. I had no idea what that meant at the time so I was fascinated. It seemed like there were so many women out there who just decided to let go of the relaxer altogether. Then I started to see all of the cool hair styles that you could do if your hair was in its’ natural state. I really wanted to go natural and grow my hair long but I wasn’t sure how I would look. And then there was my hubby…what was he going to think. So, I was at a crossroads. Would I go natural or keep it straight?
Next time, “What finally made me decide to go Natural”