Chopped: The Journey To Natural Hair

Well, I've did it.  Fully Natural Now.  But here's a few pictures of me along the way.

Relaxed Days

I was in elementary school when I fist got a relaxer in my hair.  I'm not positive about my age but I'm thinking maybe 8.

Fall 2011   December 2011   Mother's Day 2012   Sometime last year 2012     Transitioning Days I was going to transition for a year and a half before chopping it all off.  My transitioning days were good at times and then there were times where I wanted to take a handful of something and smash it into the mirror. lol.  I ended up transitioning for about 10 months.  

I was in the thinking stage here.  Around 3-4 months post relaxer and about 90 percent sure I was going to go natural but still shaky.

Transitioning style:  Bantu Knot Out gone wrong.  My hair was still very wet but didn't have time to do anything else to it.  Stuck the pantyhose around my hair and went on.

   Curled hair with hair rollers and stuck the band around it and then here you can see the new growth coming in.

Attempted to do a "curl hawk" 

Not a great picture.  Hair half pulled back into a pony.  I was trying to convince the hubby to let me go ahead and cut it off.  I told him this is what I'd look like.

A Little Chop

Saturday night as I alternated between reading my Bible, watching a movie on lifetime, and researching this natural hair ( I know a whole lot of things going on at once-kind of like this blog), I just got the urge.  Every time I put my hands in my hair and felt those thick roots and straggly ends,  it seemed to just drive me crazy.  So at 1:00 in the morning, while Andre was asleep and I was still up, I took a pair of hair scissors and just started cutting.

After I cut a lot of my hair off.  I put twists in it and rolled the ends so I would look half decent for church.  I'm aware it looks like I'm doing the potty dance in this picture.  Not quite sure what's going on there.  lol  But check out the slack in those pants!  Size 14 falling down.  I had to keep pulling them up.

 

That night I cut a little more.  Andre was scared to help me.  He thought he would mess it up.  It was coming off anyway and he couldn't mess it up anymore than I was going Edward Scissorhands on it all day long.

 The Big Chop!!!

My hair is kind of wet in this picture.  I had just completed day 1 of the 30 day shred and showered.  

   

 The day after. I'm all the way natural and to be honest, not self conscious or anything at all.  I surprised myself!    The Inspiration       I would have NEVER decided to go natural if it wasn't for this little girl who first put the idea in my head.  I wanted her to feel comfortable with her hair and felt like I had to set the example.  It took a while to jump on board, but I finally did. Notice heavily spoiled baby in arms, just waking up after a ride back from the dentist.         A better view of the hair even though Miss Caitlyn was too busy scoping out ants.  She has a fear of any kind of bug...ants, butterflies, bees, spiders ...  Like mother, like daughter.    Note:  The hubs didn't really care if I cut the hair off but he was nervous too.    This journey wasn't always easy.  I was annoyed half of the time, frustrated, and thought about quitting. (like with working out)    The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.... Ecclesiastes 9:11   You can apply a scripture to anything.    Let me know what you think!