So unless you live under a rock or just don’t have any black female friends, a lot of black women have been going natural lately. A lot. Some are calling it a trend or a fad. When someone called it that at first, I brushed it off, but now that I think about it, is it?
I’ve been on my healthy hair care journey for almost 4 years now and that means I took an “oath” to learn about my hair and to take the necessary steps to properly take care of it and to make it healthy. It took me a year to understand my hair and to find my staple products, but I did it. Some people might think “well don’t black women do all of this already.” Well, most of us don’t. Most just slap a perm on it every 6 weeks and straighten or curl it almost every week. We do things like wash it but most don’t take other steps to make it healthy because a lot of black women don’t necessarily want healthy hair. Ok, they do but that’s not their main priority. They just want to make sure it looks good.
Anyways, my hair is not natural, it’s texlaxed and I decided to do this the second year of my hair care journey. Texlaxed hair is hair that is permed, but not permed bone straight so it’s like you have texture and to me I have the best of both worlds because while it’s curly it’s not hard to manage or comb through. I’ve been texlaxed for maybe 2 years and most of my hair is that way except for the natural part. I use to perm it every six months. My hair was very long, very thick, and healthy. I took great care of it.
When I started doing that to my hair, the natural hair movement didn’t start yet so when I explained what I was doing to my hair to people, they didn’t understand it. Fast forward to about a year or two later, almost every black girl I know is either natural or going natural. I’m at this stage in my journey where I’m finally ready to go fully natural. It was something I decided on my own and something that took a while to decide on. I’ve always wanted to go natural, but by the 6th month of me growing my hair out (I’m too scared to cut it off), it got too coarse to grow it any longer so I would just perm it. A few months ago, I found this really cheap deep conditioner that makes my new growth really soft so I’m now able to manage my natural hair past six months. I now have about 7-8 months of natural hair.
But I get so many people telling me they want to go natural or they want to do what I did to my hair. And a lot of the reasons are so superficial: I want long hair; I want hair that looks like yours; I want hair that looks like [insert who’s ever hair that they admire]. Having a hair inspiration is great, but that shouldn’t be your reason for going natural.
I started my healthy hair care journey because my hair was literally falling out in clumps and I knew I needed to do something about it. I did and while my journey has led me on the natural hair path, it was organic, natural and felt like the best decision for me.
I feel like most black women aren’t going natural for the right reasons and don’t understand what they are getting themselves into. They are following the trend and are doing it because others are doing it and want hair like everyone else. I love seeing so many beautiful black women going back to their natural hair, and if this is a trend, it is one of the best trends ever. But as we all know, trends don’t last forever which is why I hope this isn’t a trend because I want this to be a permanent thing.
If anyone is thinking about going natural, don’t do it because you want hair like the next girl because let me tell you, you will NOT have hair like her. The beautiful thing about us black women is that we are so unique and every women’s hair is different. So I don’t want anyone cutting their hair off and being disappointed because they hate their texture. Being natural is about loving the hair that God gave you, not aspiring to be someone else. Also, don’t do it because you want long hair because hair doesn’t grow fast. You will be waiting and waiting and waiting. Long hair was a goal of mine so when I became obsessed with it, it seemed like when it grew, it was never long enough. When I let that goal go, it felt like time had flew so fast and my hair was down to my back before I knew it.
GO natural because you are tired of perms and want your natural hair. GO natural because you want to start embracing the things that make a black women, a black women. GO natural because you want healthy hair. Find a reason why you want to do it, and make sure it’s concrete so you know you’ll stick with it. Make sure that you are sure of your decision and know you won’t change your mind because once you cut it off, its done. (You don’t have to cut off all your hair to go natural, you can grow it out, but a lot of women rather cut it out).
I’m growing my hair out and I know I will love my natural hair and I can’t wait until all my hair is natural. If you want natural hair too, do your research, find a good enough reason, and join me on this long journey.
P.S. My avatar picture is a picture of my texlaxed hair straight just so you can get and idea of how my hair looks. It’s past my bra strap that’s in the middle of my back (idk what it’s called.)
crazybabyy 
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