I decided to create this blog to document the journey my daughter and I have started. Let me give you a little background. My daughter is 12 years old and I made the very foolish mistake of putting a relaxer in her hair when she was about 8 or 9 years old. She had a beautiful head full of hair down to her shoulders, but she complained all the time about her edges being "fuzzy" and not laying down.
I am 39 years old and have had relaxed hair since I was 15 years old, prior to that I rocked the Jeri Curl (never happy with my natural hair), prior to that, my mother would do the press and curl and I also had hair past my shoulders.
My experience with relaxed hair and my daughter's experience has been completely opposite. My hair continued to grow, while my daughter's hair continued to break off and not grow. She would get upset when it was time for her touch up and it always turned into this big production.
After much discussion and researching, I asked my daughter if she would like to go natural, which meant no more relaxers and she was esctatic. With her being a preteen, I decided the big chop would not be the way to go (did not want to damage her self esteem, since her overall goal is to get her hair back past shoulder length). So, we decided she would get braids for a while to allow some new growth to grow and trim a little of her relaxed hair off at a time. When it came time for the braids to come out, my daughter decided that she did not want braids anymore (she didn't enjoy sitting for 8 hours straight). I tried to talk her into getting the braids again, but she was adamant so I gave in. I washed her hair everyweek, deep conditioned, applied leave in condition and then would do cornrows, well my husband didn't like the sight of that and my daughter decided to get a relaxer again. By this time, I was so frustrated with the whole process, I was glad for the relaxer.
3 months later, we've decided that we should have been more patient and stayed with the transition process. But this time to help encourage and support my daughter, I have decided to transition from relaxed to natural with her. Another reason I've decided to join my daughter was to "show" her instead of "telling" her how beautiful natural black hair can be.
I am very excited about this new journey my daughter and I are about to embark on and can't wait for the moment we both no longer have any relaxed hair on our heads.
