It’s been a year already
My relaxed hair journey
It’s been a year since I joined the relaxed hair community (9th April 2021 — 9th April 2022). Right after relaxing my hair, I wanted to get things right so I started consuming so much relaxed hair content. I was scared of my hair losing its thickness and colour because that’s what I mostly saw and heard from the relaxed hair chronicles.
With the content I fed on, I learnt about not relaxing your hair after seeing new growth every time. There were other things that run through most of the content but I’ll just focus on the new growth bit because that’s what I can speak about at this point.
I’ve come to realise that everyone’s hair is unique so someone’s hair routine isn’t going to work for you. Maybe some parts may, but you won’t get the results you want because you do not have the same hair growth rate, colour, strength, texture, etc., as anyone else.
With regards to not relaxing the hair after seeing new growth, I decided to do this because I was scared of losing the thickness, strength and original colour of my hair.
However, after a year, I can conclude that this may not work for me. My hair is unique and its growth differs from others. The kind of growth I get after a month differs from what someone else gets. I actually haven’t relaxed my hair just after a month because I’m mostly in braids so that’s like 2 months, and if it’s less, I wash and leave it on for a while before relaxing. The only thing is that I wasn’t tracking my relaxing periods so I can’t tell yet but I just know after removing braids that lasted like 2 months, I need to do something about it. I don’t have to force myself to braid and stretch my relaxing period. This is because it’s not really good for my hair. It causes so much pain and I come back to square one (back to the natural state). Here’s why:
When I relaxed my hair this Saturday (9th April), my hairstylist told me I needed to come back in a month’s time just to relax the roots again. Apparently, my hair had returned to its natural state because I didn’t relax it when I was supposed to. I went to braid. So she had to relax the whole hair just as she did when I first relaxed exactly a year ago. Anyways, the hair tips are okay now but the roots still have some natural elements so that’s why I need to go back in a month’s time.
I would have been able to avoid this if I had done that 6 weeks ago (when I forced myself to braid because it had been long since I braided and I couldn’t wait for another two weeks before braiding). If I had just relaxed when the time was due, I wouldn’t be found in this position. So yeah, that’s that.
Also, I find myself in this situation because I somehow turned a deaf ear to my hairstylist. She already told me how my hair was and what I needed to do. I did some of what she suggested but I ended up listening to what everyone else was saying so I put some of what she said aside. Anyways, the deed has already been done so I just need to learn and move.
I now know my hair is unique and so what someone does may not necessarily apply to me. I need to learn about my hair and look at what’ll work for me.
I wanted to share a one-year hair picture but that can’t be because I still have some unrelaxed parts so it won’t give the expected results.
PS: I’m not against learning from others. It’s just about knowing how to make it work for you.
