I’m what you’d call a “reluctant natural.” After years of relaxers, something just changed and my hair started to behave differently. It was dry, breaking off, and it just wasn’t the hair I was used to. In honor of my 1 year Natural-iversary, here’s a timeline of my journey and a Big Chop video. If you’re just starting out, here are the great and not so great moments you can look forward to. (A lot of these pics aren’t so great, sorry they’re old and some of them were never meant to leave the sanctity of my Camera Roll. Oh well. We’re all friends here.)

Read On!>>>


Phase One: “A full on Monet” Around this time my hair still looked aiight. From far away it was fine but up close it was a big ol’ mess. It was breaking off and over time started to look thin. (Check out that sheer situation at Disneyland. Not cool.) I tried to save it by getting regular trims, using heat protectors, wrapping it, babying it, but I knew it needed to be cut at some point.


Phase 2: Bantu knots In an effort to give my hair a heat break, I started doing about four or five Bantu knots on semi dry hair. I was already getting very gentle relaxers (basically a texlax) but decided to chill on that, too. I was technically transitioning albeit unofficially. In my mind I was just taking a “break.”


 Phase 3: Oh hell no. On this particular night I had just washed my hair and was taking pics to track my acne scars. I caught a glimpse of my wet hair and freaked OUT.  I had no idea the breakage was this severe and decided to cut off my damaged ends. I mean, it had to be done!

 Phase 4: THE (sorta) BIG CHOP
After Angelica cut off the damaged ends the rest of my hair was in okay shape. Even though it was presentable, I had this fear that it would grow out and break all over again. I couldn’t take that risk. “Maybe relaxers aren’t for me anymore,” I thought. I did a lot of research and decided to go natural. My last relaxer was around November and we did the first chop in January. The end result was pretty hilarious, I looked like I had gotten electrocuted! No big deal, I made an appointment to get my hair braided in advance so I was covered.

Phase 5: Roller Sets I had no curl pattern going on at this time and really didn’t know what to do with my hair. This was the shortest it had ever been and without a go-to ponytail I was lost. During this phase I experimented with every kind of roller and every kind of styling foam. It was a struggle. I just couldn’t get a full week out of rod sets, blending the two textures was problematic, and the foams were really drying. I hadn’t learned the importance of pairing a foam with a deep conditioner so yeah, I was messing up big time.

Phase 6: BIG CHOP #2 So let’s review: my last relaxer was somewhere around November 2014, I did the first chop in January 2015, and cut the rest off in September 2015. It’s November so that makes a full year of this entire process! The second big chop was really hard, to be honest. I had finally got my hair to a good place and I really didn’t want to lose it. On the flip side, I was limited when it came to styling. I pretty much had to do roller set after roller set and curl-enhancing products only worked on my new growth. It was a nightmare. After Big Chop #2 my hair was happy, healthy, and growing a lot faster. It’s been hard learning how to deal with my texture but I’m getting the hang of it. It turns out my hair is super thick and doesn’t like to be told what to do. (Much like me!)

It took a LOT of trial and error, YouTube fails, and epic bouts of frustration, but I’ve finally found products and techniques that work for me. If you want some laughs, here’s my Snapchat story from my second chop. I’ve listed all my regimens beneath the video. If anything is unclear, leave a comment or shoot me an email. I warn you, my regimens sound super OCD, but trust me they’re not.