Cutting it all off and starting over

Ever since I was a little girl, hair has always been an important part of my life. I remember my mum being very into hair and always doing my hair in different hairstyles and me always being complimented on it. In the black community, hair plays a major role in the way you present yourself, with natural hair considered scruffy looking and European influenced styles like straightened hair being the more professional and acceptable look. In the last few years the natural hair movement has become huge, with increasing numbers of women of colour giving up the chemicals to straighten their hair and embracing it in its natural state.

Over the years I have had many many different hair styles. From chemically straightening my hair, wearing braids, weaves, extentions, colouring my hair, having an undercut and side cut and cutting it into various styles. Anyone who knows me or has had a scroll through my Instagram will see that I change up my hair, sometimes as often as weekly.  It’s one of the ways I like to express myself, that as well as the clothes I wear and the makeup I choose on any particular day.

In August last year I decided that I wanted to stop damaging my hair with the chemicals that made it bone straight and I would “go natural” and embrace and leave about my hair in its natural state.

20180325_140008 My hair six months ago when I did the big chop.

I’ve been very lucky in that I have never experienced drastic hair loss from all the things I put my hair through, especially using hair relaxers to permanently straighten. I have seen so many horror stories about people who have used the at home system incorrectly or left the product on for too long and it had caused irreversible damage resulting in either their hair falling out or being forced to cut their hair off because there is just no saving it.

In August when I decided to go natural I did the big chop and cut off all of my straight hair, leaving just the curly roots that had been growing in since my last relaxer. In the months since then I have been taking good care of my hair, not putting any heat on it at all, keeping it moisturised and watching it flourish!

While my hair is at it’s short awkward length and I am struggling to find many cute styles, I have been turning to wigs to express myself and fulfills my need to change up my hair every so often, I’ve shown you one of my favourite wigs in a previous post but I have a nice handful of them now that I like to switch between when I’m not just wearing my real hair out.

IMG_20180325_134248The four wigs I currently have in rotation while I’m waiting for my hair to grow back.

Today is six months to the day since I cut all my hair off so it seemed fitting to post a hair post today. Cutting off all my hair and starting over is 100 percent the best thing I could have done for my hair and I plan to continue to keep it natural and let it be what it wants to be.