Growing What I Need to Nourish My Hair Inside and Out.

A plan for food security

I tried my hand at growing food this year and I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt empowered when we ate what we grew ourselves.

I have also started growing aloe, and other herbs that promote and enhance hair health and growth.

Supporting Black Women because the World still Overlooks Us Outside of Stereotypes

One of the things that really changed for me is how I viewed myself as a black woman when I decided to return to my natural texture. For most of my life, I had been thought not "black enough" because of my "light skin" "talking like I'm white" being "so articulate" etc.

Although my parent's provided inspiring information about our African history it wasn't shown in our day-to-day lives. The rest of that story deserves a blog of its own.

My natural hair doesn't look like, react like, or style anything like my relaxed hair. I had to step back and re-evaluate what being a black woman meant to me. I had to re-define what professional looked like for me. It was a real eye opener.

When people saw me in my business suits and TWA, their reactions were almost comical. In my preferred heel height, I'm 6'1 and I'm a woman of substance, so I tend to draw attention when I'm out and about. The first time I wore a head wrap in public, people seemed genuinely surprised that I spoke English "so well." It took a minute for me to realize that they thought I was an immigrant. Up until that moment I didn't realize that I'd added another layer of being a black woman in America to my experience.

Drawing on all of my own experiences gave me a greater appreciation and love for black people. It sparked an awakening of my consciousness that is continuing to evolve. I've become more active and vocal about our situation and also more active in community service and politics. I hope to express this more thoroughly in my vlogs because I feel that our hair is so much more than just keratin that has grown from our heads.

I came across this blog and it made me glad to see that someone outside of our community sees this truth and spoke up about it. I don't have to hate or denigrate other races in order to say with confidence that #BlackGirlsRock

Has returning to natural changed your views or your lifestyle in anyway? If so please share your story!

An Example of Nourishing My Body, Soul and Hair from the Inside

At the very beginning of my natural hair journey my health began to take a turn for the worse. While there was a plethora of symptoms it took time and testing to get to one of the major issues. This issue has led to other issues which include carb sensitivity. Because of this I've had to experiment to figure out how many carbs my body needs to reach my health goals which of course include my hair.

If you're interested in a more in-depth explanation of my issues and my plans to overcome them please feel free to follow my progress on my fitness blog Beautiful Sweat.

Tonight I'm sharing a fabulous soup that I found in my Cook'n Low Carb cook book by DVO. I can't praise this software enough nor the company that keeps evolving it's product to meet today's demands.

Although I don't normally follow recipe's exactly in this instance I tried to do so, although I did add an extra 1/2 cup of cheddar cheese because I was using regular cheddar instead of sharp. I used a pale ale as my "beer" and I must say this soup was yummy.

When I make this again I will double the recipe, add a bit more Worcestershire sauce (homemade) and top it with a crunchy cheese chip of some kind, probably something sharp. My husband has requested sourdough biscuits as well, which I'll try to avoid.

If you try this recipe, please post and let me know what you think.

Just Straight Enough is Good Enough for Me

I wore my hair out for a while after straightening it for trimming. When people see the length and thickness people often me why I don't wear it "down" or "out" more often.

I really don't have a quick and easy answer for them. I spent most of my life with my hair relaxed in a variety of styles and for me being natural has become about embracing my hair as it is and within the realities of my life style.
 
Here is a small portion of my condensed list of reasons I don't wear it straight which will probably expand to be individual blog posts at some point because like most things in life there are layers, levels and history behind each point:

1. I consider myself a "curly natural" which means that I don't wear my hair straight often.
2. I am on a fitness mission (you can follow my blog on that here) and I sweat A LOT.
3. I'm still learning to style my hair without it being chemically straightened.
4. I'm learning to love me from head to toe. 
5. Hair is much more than just something that grows from my head. It's a statement, an investment, an entrepreneurial avenue, a testimony, and so much more.

 
Here are pictures of my hair after it had been straightened and trimmed. By the time I had taken the pictures my hair had begun to shrink but things like thickness, health length are fairly recognizable.

 I'm sticking my tongue out at my daughter who is standing in front of me giving me a hard time.

I didn't put on a bra outside of my shirt to show my length but that is how long it is. I know the picture looks a bit awkward, but that has more to do with my large arms than it does hair length.

As a natural do you prefer to wear your hair in protective/low-manipulation styles or loose and free?

Participating in NaBloPoMo

I don't remember how I found the link about NaBloPoMo but once I read up on it I realized it was something that I wanted to be a part of. I enjoy writing and although I just started blogging about my natural hair experience I have a lot to say.

Making time to blog every day will help me re-focus on my writing, which has suffered greatly since my thyroidectomy in mid 2011. Between complications, new issues and medication changes I have been on a fairly stressful journey that is just now getting to a place where I have real hope that the worst is behind us.

I can't wait to read the blogs of other participants as well. As time passes I have come to appreciate the life journey's of other people even more. Tiny peeks into realities other than my own offer insight, wisdom, laughter, learning, pain and hope and makes me think of the world outside of my life.

I skimped on putting the banner in each of my posts and just placed it on the side although for aesthetics sake I should probably re-size things for a better fit. <--I'm probably just going to leave it.

I'm also participating in NanoWriMo I guess I'll wrap this post up since I've already given my reasons for participating and I need to hit my word count goal for the day.

If you're participating in either challenge, let me know so that I can cheer you on.

Back in Twists and Loving to Learn

I mentioned previously that I straighten my hair once a year in order to trim the ends so I thought I'd share a picture of my hair right after I finished. It's big and full and starting to curl and shrink at the roots because I only straightened it enough to get make sure the ends were taken care of.

As you can see my hair isn't super straight and is showing it's fluffy side. While the picture doesn't show it clearly the ends are even. I'll show more complete views in another post.

By the time I had lunch with my daughter and grandson and done a bit of shopping I had had enough of the heat from having my hair down (it was still in the low 80s where I live) I decided to stretch my hair and cool off with two pony tails that I pinned on top of my head as a style the next day.

When my hair was dry again I decided to try my hand at a french braid/twist style. I've been learning to french braid and twist my hair since going natural. I wore my hair permed for 30+ years so it's been a learning experience to be sure.

I really liked the final results.

The french braids are not at a professional level but I love knowing that I am learning to do them for myself. I pin curled the twists in groups of 3-4 for the fuller look. The bit hanging down made me feel sassy.

Let me know what you think. Also, I'd like to know what new hair care/styling techniques you may have learned as a natural.

Why a Wash-n-Go will always be a "That's a No" for me.

Once I got over the shock of my big chop one of the first things that I noticed about my hair was the amazing amount of shrinkage it had. Once it was shrunken, I could take what appeared to be very little hair and stretch it out for an inch or so.

It didn't take me long to realize that my hair loves to interlock on itself like a well-knit  cap. I could spend a lot of time and effort trying to enhance and coax the curls to come out and play, or I could learn to work with other styles to achieve my ultimate hair goal of hip-length  hair.

Fast forward two years and two months and you have what I like to call a lesson reinforcement moment when I needed to head out for a family outing, and my hair was not ready.

Once a year I straighten my hair to trim the ends. I tried trimming curly at one point and ended up needing to remove almost a 1/2 inch to correct my mistakes. For this trip I had planned to wear my hair straightened and I had already DC'd and done everything I needed to do for the straightening process when I found out that I didn't have a blow dryer (mine was on loan, and my daughters was a well.) We were leaving in a few hours, and I needed a style, so I decided to go with a wash-n-go. I didn't have any gel (thanks kids!) so I used water with aloe, Shea Butter and Coconut Oil.

Here I am almost ready to go. My hair is still fairly wet, but I wasn't going to let my hair situation keep me from enjoying my family and our time together.

Here is a side view, and you can see what I mean about shrinkage. My hair begins to shrink as soon as there is no pressure on it. The hair at my temples is not heat damaged I just have an entirely different curl pattern in those areas. My hair has 3 distinctive curl zones with two of them being closer in tightness and shrinkage than the other.

 

Looking at it from the back you can clearly see my neck even though when it's stretched/straightened it's BSL.

 Here I am getting ready for bed; I decided to go ahead and take this all the way through the Pineapple experience to show everyone what I'm talking about when I say my hair and I don't really get along with the wash-n-go process.

Here I am the next morning. As you can see everything above the scarf line has shrunk down considerably. Yes, my hair does curl at the ends but the roots have more of a z pattern.

I wanted to show that I used a head band to try to keep the curls elongated.If I had not lifted it out of my hair it would have been almost invisible because my hair will take on and keep gravity defying shapes. *Smile*

 Here is the final results of my wash-n-go and pineapple. The hair in the back shrank down to 2.25 inches, which is about 90% with most of the rest shrinking down 70% or so.

I tried pulling the hair down a bit after taking out the headband, but the results were less than ideal. I know that there are products and methods that might improve the results and enhance my curls, but I don't feel like that is the best use of my time and money.

I believe that my length retention is supported by me not manipulating my hair on a regular basis. When I create a twisted style, I plan for them to last at least one week with two to three being my preference. They need to last through work-outs, co-washes, be length retention friendly as well as non-time-consuming to maintain.

I'd like to know if any of you with similar curl patterns and/or lengths have found wash-n-go's to be successful.