Month: 7
Growth: 10 months’ worth
Length: 4.5″ – 5″
A good month. Just when I was stressing about my routine change because of starting to work full time, my fro got on board and was A-ok with the uproot. We came to some kind of understanding and I wasn’t as stressed about it as I had been before. I even wrote in my 7th monthly review that Fro can actually be pretty straight forward. If it’s dry, I give it water by either spritzing or washing it, not oil. If I want slick edges, I spritz the parts that I want, slap on some gel and flatten it with a scarf. I also got to the point of realising that flat twisting/braiding before bed wasn’t just for a more defined curl the next day. If I didn’t prep my hair the evening before, my hair would be knotted, matted and tangled which meant doing this multiple times in the week made wash day difficult and frustrating. So that kept me motivated to always (at least try) to prep before sleeping. My hair was too long to sleep with it unprepped. It was a necessary deed.
“I’m
feeling like I’m doing more to my hair on a regular basis than my
relaxed days. Yes when I was relaxed I had to also DC etc plus blow dry
my hair, spend about 20 mins flat ironing it but then for the rest of
the week, all I’d do is wrap it every night til wash day came round
again and I’d spend another 2 hours doing it. But that was it, 2 hours a
week that I had to worry about my hair. Am I only finding this whole
natural thing consuming cos it’s new to me? I’m loving my hair but I’m
worried about the time I’m spending on it, the number of things I have
to do to get it looking the way I’d like. And what will happen when I
start working? And when my hair grows out to a length that takes longer
than 20 mins to air dry?”
 |
| First puff EVER! |
The above is from a blog post I’d written a couple of months earlier I was ranting about how hard this whole natural hair thing was and when on Earth I’d get used to it. My main issue was that I was spending more time on my hair than I had in my relaxed hair days and I didn’t understand why that was since I kept hearing ‘being natural is so much easier, you just let your hair be’. That was before I went natural. Truth is, you don’t. Especially the first few months. It’s a different beast and I’m not going to fool you…being natural and having healthy, long hair is something that you work at. It will get ‘easier’ in the sense that you understand your hair, what it likes and doesn’t like just like. I ended up likening it to a baby. As a first time parent, you probably have no idea why your baby’s crying at 3 am in the morning. Is he hungry? Does she feel hot? Or just needs a cuddle? You don’t know that first night, or the second. So you try everything until it stops crying. But I bet you anything a few months down the line, you know exactly when he or she would cry and why. Yes, I know my fro isn’t a baby but that analogy helped me through some cringe worthy times that first year I was pregnant growing my fro. It was new to me. So I had to keep my sanity somehow, and that was one of the ways. I’ve shared this wisdom to a couple of my other newbie naturals at the time. I’m sure they thought I was mad, but hey whatever works for you and saving that fro.
Anywho, this month I continued my experimenting with different style variations and was super chuffed when I decided to just try a puff. I’d been reluctant to because I was sure my hair wasn’t anywhere near long enough. But ah the wonders of stretched hair! Don’t let that 75% hair shrinkage fool you! I did have a couple of hair fails, the worst of which I debuted at Christmas dinner (nice time to experiment).
 |
| What I wanted |
 |
| What I got |
 |
| FAIL! |
But my consolation was that once I was finally able to do a puff, I knew I was on my way to something awesome 😀
Next Timeline Post: Being Natural – 8 Months In
