Going From Heat Damaged Hair to Natural Hair: My Journey So Far

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Joy in Beauty. Today's post is about my hair. For the past few months I have been transitioning from heat damaged hair to 100% natural hair. Let me start off with it's been rough. I say that in the most light-hearted way I can. Going natural is not something easy. It takes a lot of patience and disciple to get nice, bouncy natural curls.

Personally, I decided to go natural because I want to learn to love all aspects of myself. Around the time that I made the decision I was going through a rough patch (you can read more about this here) and I realized that I needed to start a self-love journey. What better way to learn to love yourself than to accept the hair that comes out of your head unaltered?

My Straight Hair

When I was about 10 years-old my mom gave me my first relaxer. From that point on I got a relaxer every 4-6 months until junior year of high school. My last relaxer was around 2012-2013, which was a great thing, but that didn't stop me from straightening my hair almost everyday. By the time I decided to go natural I had a decent amount of heat damage. On one hand it could have been worse had I not gone through a phase where I did bantu knots on air dried hair (pictured below). I loved the results, but haaaated actually doing the bantu knots because it was so time consuming.

My Curly Hair

I decided to go natural at the end of May/ beginning of June. 

The very first picture is a picture of my first wash n' go. As you can see my hair is thin and my curls are very loose. The second picture was taken a couple of weeks later.

While I do diffuse my hair every once and a while I have not straightened my hair since July 3rd meaning I straightened my hair after I decided to go natural.

 I didn't think it would be a big deal, but I regretted it so much. I basically lost all my progress. Because of this I have not straightened my hair since.

The pictures above are all in chronological order.  

Here is the most recent picture of my curly hair:

 

 I'm not too sure if you all will be able to see because all of the pictures were taken on my phone, but there is a huge difference between my very first wash n' go and my wash n' go now. My hair has a lot more volume, my edges have flourished, and my hair is all around healthier.  

Want to see what products I use in my hair? Stay tuned next week!

P.S- did you all enjoy my pictures from snapchat? Follow me: staywithm3

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