Five Things I learned Throughout My Natural Hair Journey
By: Rose K. Charlotin
Tags: Natural Hair, Black Women, African American, Self Care, Self Love

Every moment of your journey is important. Some moments will boost your confidence, others will teach you lessons. All right reserved for the picture (made it myself).

A natural hair journey isn’t a linear path. There will be some days where you hair is flourishing, and there will be other days where it doesn’t want to cooperate. When your hair is flourishing, you feel confident, and you feel proud of yourself because your efforts have paid off. However, when your hair doesn’t want to cooperate, you can get very frustrated and be very emotional. That happens the most when you have an important event to go to, or you have to go school, work or meet with someone who is important to you. Going through these ups and downs with my own natural hair, here are five things that I have learned throughout my journey.

First, don’t try to detangle your hair when you are in a hurry or in a bad mood; otherwise, you will end up breaking your hair and get frustrated. People who don’t have this type of hair might think that our hair is very resistant and hard to break because of its volume and how the hair is “hard to comb through”. The truth is that our hair is more fragile than the Eurocentric hair aka straight or wavy hair due to its coils, kinks, and curls. When you are trying to comb through your coils, kinks, or curls, if you don’t take your time and use the right products, you will end up breaking a bunch of hair. When that happens, you can even ask yourself: “Why did I get to have this type of hair?” Add that to the fact that our hair type doesn’t fit the standard of the society, your self-esteem and confidence can take a hit.

Second, try to find the right products for your hair. I insist on the word “your” because sometimes you buy a product for your hair just because someone else bought it, and this person’s hair reacted very well to it. If you try it on your hair and it works, that’s great! But if it doesn’t, you will end up thinking that something is wrong with your hair. I wouldn’t recommend going out and buy a bunch of products at the same time to try on your hair because you won’t know what works or not. Keep it simple at the beginning. You need a product that has slip and a wide tooth comb to help you detangle your hair, a shampoo to clean your scalp, a conditioner to moisturize your hair, and an oil to seal in the moisture. You can try more fancy things as you work your way up.

Third, protect your hair at the pool, at the beach, and at night when you go to sleep. I know it doesn’t look fancy to go to the pool or the beach with a bonnet on your hair. If you don’t want to, you can protect your hair by making sure that you hair is moisturized and seal the moisture in with some natural oil such as castor oil and olive oil. For those who don’t mind, you can put on a plastic cap. It’s also important to protect your hair at night because the friction against the pillowcase can break your hair. You can use a satin or silk scarf or bonnet. If you don’t have one, use what you have. Just make sure that it isn’t made of cotton because it will soak up the moisture in your hair. If you don’t want to sleep with a bonnet or a scarf, try to find a soft pillowcase.

Fourth, stop thinking that your hair doesn’t grow. Unless you have a medical condition, your hair is always growing. As I mentioned earlier, our hair is not as strong as it might appear. Also, our hair grows about 0.5 to 1.5 cm on average per month. It depends on the person and his or her habits. Your hair grows from your scalp, but when you don’t detangle it properly, you break your ends. If for example you grow 1 cm per month and break 1 cm of hair, you will have the impression that your hair doesn’t grow. This is called stagnation. If you grow 1 cm per month and break 1.5 cm of hair, your hair will be shorter than it was before. It’s not that your hair didn’t grow; your hair grew, but you lost the growth. You will always lose some hair because the hair on your head are like the world population: people are born and die every single day. Be more careful when detangling your hair and don’t manipulate it too often, make sure it’s moisturized and protected, and let it grow!

Finally, don’t compare your natural hair journey to other people’s natural hair journey. There are multiple factors that determine the condition of someone’s hair. Your genetic code, your diet, physical exercises, hours of sleep you get per day, stress levels, amount of water you drink per day, health condition… are some of the factors that determine if your hair will thrive or be unhealthy. As I said earlier, someone might try a product, and it works well for him or her. And you try the same product, but it doesn’t do anything for you. It might be because your habits are different, or because your hair doesn’t like the product itself. Everyone’s hair is unique, and you have to find what works for your hair. You can always take a look at what other people are doing and get advice from them, but also learn what your own hair likes and change your habits to align them with your goals.

I have a little recipe for people who would like to give their hair a little boost to grow. It’s not a miracle recipe that will transform you into Rapunzel in one night, but if you stay consistent, you will eventually get results. You also have to make sure that you keep your hair moisturized and protected, and that you have some healthy habits such as drinking water or doing physical exercises. The recipe is actually simple. All you need is some water, some rice, and some orange peel. Don’t get too crazy about the measurements, just make sure that the water is more than the rice. Make sure you wash the rice first. You can either boil some water and put the rice and the orange peel in it, wait thirty minutes and use it on your hair. Or you can put the rice and the orange peel in the water and let the mixture ferment for 24 hours, and then use it on your hair. If you want to use it multiple times, keep it refrigerated. If you can’t keep it fresh, I wouldn’t recommend keeping it for more than three days because it can start smelling bad. You can choose to spray it on your scalp every other day, or you can use it on your scalp and the length of your hair on a washday. It’s a recipe that will make your hair very strong, so I wouldn’t recommend using it on all of your hair more than twice a month. But as I said, know what your hair likes. If you can do more than that, go for it! And do not hesitate to modify the recipe to fit the needs of your own hair.