I thought I would share my hair story from the time I started my hair journey till now (June 2016).

I started my hair journey in October 2012 after I had come across a blog on healthy hair. Prior to that, I had absolutely no knowledge of how to take care of my hair, I was haphazardly going about the whole thing.

I had been natural for about 6 years and I decided to relax my hair in July 2009 – this decision was largely based on the fact that my natural hair seemed so hard to manage, and whenever I went to the salons, I would have the hairdressers not keen on doing my hair and always hinting (not so subtly) that I should relax it. So one day, I decided to stuff it and just relax because I thought it would be easier that way.

Fast forward to 2012 and my hair is at it’s absolute worst and I am not sure what to do next and somehow by some divine intervention I came across a healthy hair blog on the internet and I was immediately hooked. I love learning new things so I was so keen on reading up on how to grow healthy hair. It was so bad that I would spend hours reading instead of sleeping! I was so overwhelmed at the beginning because as you all know there is sooo much information, I really didn’t know where to start. There are so many products being recommended out there and I certainly didn’t have the money to buy them all. So the first 3 or so months of my hair journey were a confusing period.

It got better as time went on, I learnt how to choose products based on the ingredients, I learnt to streamline my routine and do only the practices that worked for me.

Like I said, my hair was so damaged when I started so basically all that hair had to go. I didn’t trim off the bad hair, I just let it break off like ai knew it would (looking back, I probably should have gradually trimmed it).

In July 2013, I started self relaxing and started my texlaxed hair journey. I enjoyed the thought of being able to handle my own relaxing process because I felt that it gave me more control and if anything went wrong, I would only have myself to blame :).

Currently (in Jan 2015) my hair is fully texlaxed although some bits are straighter than others (as a result of trying to get my texlaxing formula right). So all this hair (grazing apl) is hair I have grown from March 2013. Now that I have my hair health in order, I am now focusing on length – I plan on retaining length via protective styling mainly in 2015. I have a stretch target of BSL by year end *prays*.

So far what I have learnt is that consistency is the major key in any hair journey, especially with the basics of deep conditioning, low manipulation, moisturising and sealing. I have also learnt to take pictures regularly so I can document my progress and lastly to have fun with my hair!

This is what my hair looked like in March 2013, I was about 3 months post relaxer, but you can see how damaged my relaxed hair was at that time. That’s why I am so pleased about my progress so far!