Being a psychologist I will look at this whole process from a psychological perspective. I was thinking about how relaxing your hair is a lot like being addicted to a drug. Its something that once started is extremely hard to stop. You even have to go through the The Stages of Change that all addicts go through when deciding to kick the “creamy crack habit”. I’ll tell you a little more about that. For most people, sobriety happens gradually, moving from being uninterested, unaware or unwilling to make a change (precontemplation phase), to considering a change (contemplation phase), to deciding and preparing to make a change. Genuine, determined action is then taken and the person attempts to maintain the new behavior (action phase). And finally, relapses are almost inevitable and become part of the process. This is exactly how my decision came to be. I went through the precontemplation phase for many years not even considering another option besides relaxing my hair. The next phase involved me not feeling good about how my hair looked since before I became pregnant in 2009. I had my hair cut early on in my pregnancy into a style that was very cute, but impossible to recreate at home. Of course during my pregnancy, my hair grew thick and beautiful and I started liking it again. About three months after I had my son, my hair started coming out. This is pretty common, since your hair doesn’t shed at all during pregnancy (but unnerving none the less). So I was back dealing with hair that I was not at all happy with. My hair began growing back pretty quickly as “can’t kill hair” tends to do. Then on April 21st 2011 I tried a new Roots of Nature relaxer. The relaxer didn’t take very well at all and that had never happened before. Also about one week later I started noticing my hair was shedding quite a bit. I thought nothing of it and figured it was just my routine shedding cycle, but a few weeks later when it didn’t stop and my ponytail was getting very thin I started to check my hair. There were huge chunks that were very short and broken off all over my head. This is when I moved to the contemplation phase. I thought “Well I have wanted to go natural for a while now and haven’t been happy with my hair in a long time, and with my hair in the shape it is in now no better time than the present”. It took me a whole week of thinking, talking with friends, and a lot of obsessive research about transitioning, to finally commit to the action phase of the process. And as I discussed in My Mane Memoirs, I have already even experienced relapse during the first time that I attempted to go natural. So now I am dedicated to following through. Hopefully through reading as much as I can about transitioning and getting more involved in the transitioning and natural hair community (like going to AA. “Hi my name is Kim and I’m a relaxaholic”), and writing this blog, I will be able to staying on track and stay away from relapsing on the creamy crack. And not to sound to cliché but we’ll see how this thing goes just one day at a time. Here we go…
What you'll need Afro Pick Steps 1 Start on an old wash and go, twist out or braid out. 2 Part hair into sections for maximum fluffing. 3 Insert Afro pick at the roots of your hair and move in an outward motion. 4 Move to next section and repeat inserting pick at roots and pulling outward. 5 Do not take pick all the way to the end of your curls. You want the ends to remain curly 6 Once you have picked out all sections, separate curl strands for even more volume. 7 Finish by shaping your humongous fro and admire your work!!😁 Check out my other content @ naturallyhooked on Jumprope.
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