Hello Friends!  I’m back after a longer than expected break.  Things have been pretty busy for me the last few months so I just haven’t had a chance to take the time to write anything for my blog.  I started a new job last month and meant to post something about the thought that I put into my hairstyle after accepting the new position but never got around to it.  Oddly enough, I didn’t put as much thought into how I would wear my hair on the first day as I thought that I would.  Since I’d been practicing flat-ironing my hair for several months, I wasn’t too concerned about how my natural hair would look on my first day of work.  I decided that I would use my tried and true method of flat-ironing the hair and wrapping it at night for the first day on the new job.  This method worked just fine for the first several days.  After that, I went back to being the queen of the up-do hairstyle.

Now that I’ve been natural for 18 months (I can’t believe it), I don’t put too much thought into how my hair looks to others.  I’ve become very comfortable in my type 4 hair and all that it can and cannot do.  Trying new styles doesn’t really excite me anymore either – I go more for what I know works for my hair.  For me, either two-strand twists using curl defining cream OR flat-ironed.  At this point, I have about 1 inch of perm remaining in the very front of my head.  I’ll give it a few more weeks before I snip that one inch of perm off.  Can’t believe that I haven’t been to the hair salon in 18 months either – that is unbelievable.  At this point, I am pretty much 100% natural.  Blow-drying, twisting and flat-ironing my hair are no longer the fun hobbies that they used to be when I first started on this natural hair journey.  Now it just a necessity that I sometimes dread – just being honest – LOL.

I do feel like all of my hard work over the last 18 months has paid off because my hair does look and most importantly feel healthy.  It has been very nice not having to experience all of the shedding that I used to deal with.  I plan to continue this natural hair journey since I do feel that I can alternate between straight and ‘curly’ hair whenever I choose to.  My next step will probably be to find a hair stylist that works with natural hair since doing my own hair can be time consuming and tiring.  My hair has pretty decent length now so I won’t have to worry about a stylist insisting that I do the ‘big chop’.  My aunt commented three times last weekend how much my hair has grown so I know that my efforts haven’t been in vein.