Transitioning to natural hair

Hi beautiful people 
I know a lot of people are transitioning from relaxed to natural hair so I decided to ask my friend Sikha to share her story and hair journey so far.

This was my second attempt at transitioning I failed the first time and gave in to relaxing because I still wanted straight hair.

OK so my decision to transition to natural happened when I started to understand that my particular hair texture was not conducive to relaxers/ relaxing and it would not be fully healthy in that state. I have very curly and yet very soft and fine textured hair, when I relaxed it became thin and looked sparse at times. My ends were brittle and thinned out maybe also due to a lack of proper haircare.

I was really excited about going back to natural, but I was waaay too scared to try a big chop immediately so I opted to gradually transition. What I did first was cut all the very visible damage in January 2015 and started with neck length hair.

Transitioning is essentially ‘growing out’ the natural hair while trimming or cutting the relaxed hair as you go along, when you get to the length of natural hair you are comfortable with then you can finally big chop all the relaxed ends and remain natural. Some people like myself never had a big chop I just kept trimming the ends until I ended up here.

There are a lot of awkward hair stages if you are going to commit to transitioning, you will be trying to style hair that has two sharply contrasting textures. I struggled a little in the beginning and flat ironed a lot but I realised I was damaging my hair and I committed to buying hair products that would promote the growth of my hair as well as its health. Natural hair or curly textured hair loves moisture, so it can get very dry. Shampoos/ conditioners with sulphate in them strip the hair. I invested in some sulphate free options, these two are my favourite shampoo and conditioner.

My hair is very fine as I mentioned which also translated into fine edges that were not very strong. I didn’t have a hairline problem but I thought hey prevention is better than cure so I researched products that give hair a fuller look while making the edges stronger and fuller too, and I discovered these gems. Caivil fusion hair grow essence oil which has every single healthy hair oil you can imagine as well as Jamaican black castor oil with coconut which actually smells pleasant. I’ve never turned back.

                        

In the wake of taking care of my hair I discovered what natural my curl pattern actually looked like. I had serious damage in the front so I cut there the most which turned out to be the most prominent place to see the pattern. I unfortunately don’t know in which category this texture is!

The only way to keep natural hair moisturised is to lock the moisture in with oil. That is when I discovered two things I now cannot live without that is coconut oil and hot oil treatments. In my opinion for transitioning and natural hair these two are a must. For hot oil treatments you can use a whole range of oils; olive, jojoba ,argan ,castor, coconut (there are so many) as well as a plethora of essential oils. I mainly use the Caivil oil (because it contains so many good oils already), coconut oil and black castor oil and peppermint for the essential oil.

To moisturize daily or as a leave in conditioner I use shea butter (which I don’t have a pic of right now) If I need to oil my hair daily I either use the coconut oil or ORS hair spray

                                                                    

As I said before styling can be a mess so I honestly stuck to protective styling 75% of the time, braids and weaves mostly. I also learnt how to do bantu knots which is a healthier way to deal with double textured hair.

                             

I hardly actually took notice of progress but I did a few length checks later on In 2015 since starting January of that year, then a one year length and health check in Jan 2016.

October 2015:

December 2015:

                                   

Last check was January 2016:

              

I am still on my journey and I can’t wait to see where it goes!
Disclaimer: I am not a hair expert this is just what worked for me and i hope it helps those of you transitioning or planing to. Feel free to ask any questions in the comment section. 

XOX & Take good care of that hair.