My braids and their jewels

You guys probably want to kill me. I sure hope not though. I know I promised about a week ago to let you see my braids and I intend to keep that promise..despite how late I may be on doing that. Here they are. I took these today.

Here is the back and top

These are some jewels I made for them

and here is the full back view

I really do like the braids and I have bonded with the jewels in the past week...as silly as that may sound. Even Though the braids have not even been in for a full half a month, they have been through a lot!! A whole day of pool water and about 4 washes. You might be able to tell I am enjoying them.

I treat them just as much as I torture them though. I spray them every night with a mister I made of left over taliah waajid, water and amla infused coconut oil. So they are needless to say, very forgiving towards me for my actions. I should be pulling them out by the first of September (I initially planned for the 5th) because I will be starting a new growth group on K.I.S.S that will require me to submit a current hair pic, without any additions.

I feel the hair love coming on

I am really starting to feel better about my hair. Every time I have a shampoo session, i feel the hair bond. Is their such a thing? Lol. Because that is the only way that I can think of to describe it. I have a little travel mirror that I put on the window, so that after I rinse out the shampoo, detangle with conditioner or rinse out the conditioner, I can look at my hair in it. It is a bit odd..but I can't help it. I have my hair goal of long natural hair running through my head all the time and everyday I smile at knowing that I am a day closer to my dream, though I may not be achieving it for another few years. I think about my big chop and how I had felt. I think of all the times I had looked at a beautiful relaxed head and asked myself if I made the wrong choice. All the frustrated hours spent in the mirror wondering what on earth to do with the intimidating shrinkage of a puff on my head and then I think of the mind set I have now, the admiration I feel come over me whenever I look at my hair in the mirror, the hurt I feel when I see my curls stretch too much when wet and know that I have come a long way. I have embraced me for who I am what I want to be. I feel the love each time I rub my fingers over the new growth coming in, thinking that I will protect them as well as I can. So that one day, all my texlaxed ends will be gone. I will be a fully tightly curly head and I will be natural and free.

My Hair History Continued

About a month after I had started watching YouTube videos and reading online, I had the second BC. It started off as a Mohawk, then i started trimming the middle bit by bit. Until I ended up with another boy cut. This time I accepted the look better and did not feel the need for a spruce up with color or anything else..except earrings, eyeshadow, and some lip gloss. These items paired with the cut are a perfect picture. This cut happened July of last year and i am now going on almost a year since then.

I made one last mistake last month and i have started this blog, to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again... I had another texturizer, or whatever you would like to call Dr. Miracle's regular relaxer with a good amount of coconut oil mixed in. It has relaxed my curls a bit. So, now i will have to consider my self a person in transition, as i have absolutely no intentions of chopping again. But all intent, to be a natural and one day have natural long hair.

I will be getting a camera soon, then i will be updating this blog with pictures along with posts very often. Because i want to share my journey. So that it will be known that no matter how your journey starts or how many hurdles had to be crossed...the hair of your dreams can be achieved. I intend to get mine.

My Hair History

The Young Days
As a child growing up, my mother never really had any time to comb my hair herself.  So the duty was handed over to my youngest aunt, who would comb my hair from root to ends. Which would have seemed like the right thing to do at the time (I know better now), but hurt my scalp oh so badly! This made me cry through almost all sessions and needless to say my aunt was not very pleased about that which made me feel even worst. Due to this I had the conclusion that my hair was not a good thing at all.

Anyway, due to this daily torture, I begged, as in literally begged my mother to let me get a relaxer at the age of 7. She debated a bit, but fell through and i got my way. I was sooo happy. My hair was now silky straight and a littlE below shoulder length.  Which to me at the time was reaching heaven(sigh). 


I was now quite pleased with my hair and got into the habit of combing my hair in the mirror and smiling to my self, pleased with what i was seeing. After the relaxer i started to comb my hair myself. My main style was letting out the lower half and ponying the top.I was elated to not have to have my aunt comb my natural hair anymore and she also seemed very relieved. 
This is when the clipping started. Each time i went for a relaxer, i noticed they always used a scissor on my ends. This made me very sad, for i had the impression that starting the process of relaxing my hair I was going to eventually have long hair down my back "LIKE THE WHITE PEOPLE". So to see my hair get shorter with each relaxer was very unnerving to my young mind. But at that age, i never thought of going back to natural, I thought it was impossible, as silly as that may sound and I did not want to go back to having hair that "COULD NOT GROW". 
This continued up until high school, where i became fascinated by locs. A fellow student in my dance group had the most beautiful locks i had ever seen and they made her look so stunning, that i could not help but want them too.  I was not willing to go through the transition to locs though, i just wanted them to miraculously appear with length on my head. lol. I was such a silly child. 
But, when i graduated high school, i had the loc extensions put in in order to get my locs....I didn't like them, after spending JA$18,000. They were the wrong color, stiff and looked obviously fake. I was looking for miracle extensions, so i was really not a happy camper. I was told to be patient and they wiould get softer and look more realistic. So, i waited and slowly they started to look more like messy extensions. A month after they were done, i chopped them off right at their starting point, and behold my first big chop was born. 
I cried my eyes out. My hair was short and i looked like a boy(or so I thought). I did not want to go out of the house for anyone to see me, and my relatives were laughing at me, calling me crazy. But, I eventually decided to embrace my new hair cut, and how i planned to do that was by going blonde. I was really not informed about hair at the time and just went out and bought a platinum blonde by Dark and Lovely. I went back home, put it in my hair and...wow...i was suddenly exotic looking, and i loved it!...until it started growing out. The sides were puffy and short, my head looked funny and i did not know what to do with it apart from washing it EVERYDAY and leaving it dry. This is when i got my first "texturizer" . I didn't want to go back to a relaxer and I was of the impression that a texturizer would just make my natural hair softer...Boy was i wrong. 
I got the soft and beautiful kid's relaxer and my hair felt awesome. It was sooo soft and curly. I loved it and figured it would all be easy from there. But the fact still remained that i was not very knowledgeable about caring for my hair. So I did all the wrong things. I almost never moisturized and was always oiling. Looking back, I really can't believe i did that. Needless to say, my hair eventually became very dry and brittle. This is when i went back to a relaxer. My hair was very short, to the point where i did not even have a bang. The longest hair  in the front of my head, would have been about 1/2 an inch, if that much. Once again, i hated my choice. I would glue extensions in the front to create bangs and this was a little cute, but the glue was ripping my hair despite me using oil to take it out. So I had to stop this. At this point, two more big chops were in my future. At this pint two more BCs were in my future. 
The first one happened when my relaxer got trashy and horrible looking. Of course, due to my lack of knowledge. The second one happened after i had started watching hair videos on YouTube and doing my Google research. I was amazed at the wealth of information about taking care of natural hair online and had started utilize the tips i had learnt. The first thing did was get a bottle of of Virgin Coconut oil. I started doing Bantu knots on my relaxed hair and my hair looked really shiny and healthy. At this point i was using water for moisture and sealing with the coconut oil. I had become fascinated again with natural hair and made a promise not to ever relax again...
look out for the rest of the story.