One Year Healthy Hair Journey con't

Read the first part of my story here!

OK, so I went from having hair this length,

 

 

To this

 

In less than a year! I was fed up and frustrated and decided that maybe going natural is something I needed to explore so I hopped online to do some research on going from relaxed to natural, I wanted to know what to expect, learn about products I could use, etc. Really not expecting to find much, I was literally blown away by how many women out there was blogging about healthy hair, both relaxed and natural! I was glued to my computer reading everything and anything about how to get healthy hair, I was hooked! Once I started following certain steps/rules, my breakage stopped dead in its tracks! After seeing all those ladies with long healthy hair I felt like there was hope for me again. I hated how short and thin my hair was I was not used to it; I was now hiding my hair with wigs because I had to not because I wanted to. I wanted my length back.

By March 2012 I had a lot of new growth (well, at least to me since it had been years since I went that long between relaxers); my last relaxer was in December 2011. My plan was to grow out my hair and keep cutting away at the remainder of relaxed ends little by little but my thick roots and thin ends got the better of me. I was going to just chop it all off, I felt like I was wasting my expensive products on ends that was going to be chopped off anyways. On the 20^th March 2012, I went to my old salon (the one where I dyed my hair black) to cut off all my relaxed ends. I didn’t want to go looking for a new salon plus I figured she couldn’t do any more harm so I took the chance with my old salon. Despite telling her that I wanted to get rid of all my relaxed ends she still left about two inches of relaxed hair. So I had about an inch of new growth and two inches of relaxed ends, about half inch to an inch of which was still black. I had some regrets but I loved how thick my hair was :D

March 2012

March 2012 Big Chop

As time went by I found myself reading more relaxed hair blogs than natural ones, I knew in my heart I was not ready to go natural so in April I decided to start my relaxed hair journey. I relaxed my hair on April 15^th 2012 and considered that day the beginning of my healthy hair journey, between then and now I have relaxed my hair three times. On August 13^th 2012 at 17 weeks post, no picture of this but I cut the remaining black ends. Then on November 30^th 2012 at 15 weeks 4 days post, I cut a little more than an inch because I did not like how the centre looked. Looking back on this and my last relaxer, I’m starting to think that the back centre area of my hair was more damaged than I thought; it’s hard to tell after my big chop because of the colour top that I had on. In all the years of going to my hairdresser that was the only area that I would get burn and was really thin.



November 2012 Before Trim

And finally, my most recent relaxer was March 27^th 2013 at 16 weeks 5 days post. After relaxing my hair I was not pleased with how uneven my ends were, a week later I trimmed about an inch and a half. I tried roller setting my hair to get it as straight as possible for my trim, it did not work out to well but I trimmed anyway.

March 2013 Before Trim

After Trim

I was a bit disappointed after my last relaxer because I had to trim again but looking back on this made me realise that I have trimmed over three and a half inches since starting my hair journey and since hair grows an average of six inches a year, I’m not doing as bad as I thought in terms of retaining length. When I started this journey my plan was to give it two years then decide my next step, one year down one to go! :)

Happy Hair Growing!