Substitute Teacher Wednesday

10 Things I’ve Learned (Since Becoming Natural)….

By Wes of Honey Brown Sugar

1. Everything isn’t for everybody. No one head of hair is identical and we all have our own special needs. For instance, the LustraSilk cholesterol conditioner did not work well for me but that’s not to say it won’t work well for someone else.

2. Hair should ALWAYS be detangled in the shower with conditioner! I remember when I first started wearing my hair in its natural state- I would never untangle it. Ever. I would simply wash and style. Not once taking the time to detangle!

3. Denman has become my best friend. Although some days I do finger comb, most days I rely on my trusty Denman D4 brush. It is my curls’ best friend. Prior to discovering the Denman brush, I would use a wide tooth comb- which wreaked havoc on my strands.

4. Trims aren’t needed as often. Though some curlies do prefer to clip every 6 to 8 weeks (or when they feel necessary), it isn’t “mandatory” that a curly girl trim her ends so often. My stylist from Devachan recommends once or twice a year as sufficient*.

*Being that you don’t do excessive heat styling and/or don’t deep condition on a steady basis.

5. I don’t like “colored” hair. During my relaxed years, I also experimented with color. I’ve had burgundy hair, brown hair, blonde highlights, red highlights and jet-black hair. It wasn’t until I stopped relaxing AND coloring that I realized how much I love my naturally dark hair.

6. My natural hair has various textures. The front-left differs from the front-right; one side is more tightly curled than the other. The back/bottom is also very tightly curled while the crown literally has its own thing going on (I’m still trying to figure that section out).

7. It’s okay to use conditioner as a leave-in. I would have never thought to do this until one year I was on vacation and didn’t have any hair products outside of some shampoo and conditioner. I decided to use the conditioner as a styling cream and a whole new world opened up to me. Now (for the most part), I only use conditioner to style my hair.

8. It isn’t necessary to wash (shampoo) your hair every other day. In the beginning, I think I would wash (yes: with shampoo!) my hair every two days. During this time, I didn’t deep condition and I used styling products made for NON-people of color. Most of these products contained drying agents.

9. Silicones aren’t really as bad as we make them out to be.

10. Natural hair is a learning process! If you’ve relaxed your hair most of your life, you WILL definitely need to “re-learn” your hair. If you think you knew your strands when you were relaxed, you’ll find out that you didn’t really know much.