Thinking out loud: Common Natural Hair Myths

I personally decided to cut my relaxed hair and transition to natural hair. I was never lucky with relaxers, there was always a new brand in the market that a hair stylist would recommend to me but my hair always got burnt and still looked due for a retouch. I have full short hair and this is a miracle for someone who was called ''GORIMAKPA" by my aunties, I think it means ''someone with a hairless scalp''.

Transitioning was stressful at first because I did not have any knowledge on how to manage my new growth. With time, I did my research and discovered It was an easy task. After transitioning for 3 months, I did my big chop.

6 months after the big chop. Length check. You can see me sweating, all thanks to detangling after loosing a protective hair style.

I was in a fast food restaurant the other day, relaxing, chewing my meat pie as I was writing a new entry into my personal journal, I noticed a group of young folks starring at me, the stare was so obvious and rude, then I heard one of the girls say "they only wash their hair once in a year", it dawned on me that they were talking about my hair, the others laughed and someone said "that's impossible" but she continued saying ''people with natural hair washed their hair once in a year''. I had to correct them. When I am not rocking a protective hair style, I wash my hair every two weeks. 

I have a lot of people ask me questions about my natural hair and noticed there are plenty myths about our black natural hair, which are just false or exaggerated. I want to share some and debunk them.

1. “Natural Hair is Very Strong”

This is a misconception. It may look or even feel rough and tough, but it isn’t. Natural hair is actually fragile and has to be handled with much care. Why? Because the strands curl and bend so much that each curl is a possible breaking point because the bend in the strand weakens the shaft. In fact, many people assume people with natural hair have thick and strong hair strands when in fact they can have fine and wiry strands which can break easily.

2. “Natural Hair Can’t Be Combed.”

Naturally curly/kinky hair is not meant to be combed and styled like straight hair. Curly/kinky hair requires a whole new mind set in styling and you can’t work with kinky hair the way you do with relaxed hair. I can not and will not attempt to get a comb through my hair dry — only while it’s soaking wet with conditioner.

4. Natural hair products are expensive

There are low, mid and high priced natural hair brands in the markets. They all do the same job, It all depends on your hair type and how regular you take care of your hair. Just like relaxed hair, natural hair also has certain needs that certain brands cater to. Don't look down on the pocket friendly products because you can also get perfect results with them.

3. “Trimming Makes Natural Hair Grow.”

Even though trimming will improve the overall health of your hair by getting rid of split ends, it has nothing to do with the hair that grows out of your scalp. By trimming your hair, you are able to hold on to strands that don’t split, so you are able to see length because it’s not breaking and splitting. I had a friend who would hold on to her split, see-through ends in an attempt to grow her hair long. But she had to get a major haircut once a year to get rid of the splits, so each year she had to cut her hair shorter and shorter to make it healthy again. It was a never ending cycle that could have been prevented.

4. “You Shouldn’t Wash Natural Hair Too Often”

I grew up hearing that you can’t wash too often because our hair is very fragile. Maybe with relaxed hair, but washing is wonderful for natural hair. However, strong shampoos can be drying. If you do use shampoo be sparing with cleaners that contain sodium laurel sulphate. If SLS is too harsh for your strands, try a “conditioner wash”, using conditioner to cleanse your hair instead of shampoo.

5. “Water Will Dry Out Natural Hair”

Water is the best moisturizer for natural hair, so don’t be afraid to apply it! The key to maintaining a moisture balance is RETAINING the water that you do apply to your hair via sealing. Here is an article listing the two steps to effective moisturization.

Our hair is beautiful, whether relaxed or natural, the key to having healthy relaxed or natural hair is taking care of it, just the way we pay attention to our skin and body in general, our hair also needs that tender love and care. 

XOXO

THINKING OUT LOUD: Let's talk about training up a child.

I owe my dad a basket full of gratitude, my father was always there to let you know the difference between right and wrong or good and bad. There was no avenue for spoiling us, he wasn't the type of parent to spare the rod if you did something wrong as a child. There were days where he would correct with his mouth and there were days where he would correct with punishment. His favourite was one he called "stool down", some of you know it as "pick pin".

I remember how my sister and I used to tear out pages from our notebooks to create funny crafts. Our exercise books never lasted, my dad explained to us why it was wrong to play with our exercise books and to stop that silly behaviour, he numbered all the pages. So if page 15 was missing, you would have to give a very good explanation. He had a full time job as an Engineer and a full time job as a father. He never took anything for granted.

This affected the way we behaved outside the house, it made us respect his presence and absence. Our training was both formal and informal. This is why I was never the type of girl to fall for peer pressure, if I want something, I work for it, if I cannot get it at the time,  I remain contented till I can buy it for myself. I can say 80% of the kind of woman I turned out to be can be blamed on my father's ability to understand the importance of training his children. I have so many stories of my dad but I will leave that gist for another day. 

My BabaTee (That's his nickname, lol! a short form for Babatunde) and yours truly.

 These days, most young parents leave the duty of training their children to anyone. Charity begins at home, when you decide to let your children behave in a wrong way without any correction, you are leaving that child's future to chance or luck. I hear people make comments like this when their children misbehaves "he's just a child or she's just a child" and I don't understand them. Should the training of a child begin when he or she is a teenager or an adolescent?

I was in the hospital last week, while waiting to see the doctor, a little boy kept jumping all over the place, at first it seemed adorable because he was really cute but after a while, it became too much as he was disturbing a lot of adults. His mother kept shouting and chasing him. You could see that she was tired. A man seated close to me caught the toddler and held him down. He cried for a while, then became calm. The man looked at the mother and said "stop acting like he is bigger than you", she laughed and said "aah!!! he is bigger than me o!". I have seen people let their children stay up late on school days, they let them watch anything on tv till when they are ready to sleep. As a child, if the movie wasn't PG rated or strictly for children, there was no way my dad would let you see the movie. Children should have a time when they go to bed especially when they have to go to school. Just like some adults who have schedules, I believe children should have schedules too.

There should be a time for everything in their young lives. A time to play, a time to read, a time for siesta, a time for fun. Guide your children, don't let them do the guidance for you, it's your responsibility as a parent and remember this "If you don't give your children the proper training they need, society would assist you and in many cases, it won't be the kind of help you would like.   

Let's talk about the movie "HIDDEN FIGURES"

This past Friday was date night for me and bestie, the good Lord knows how much we needed one. The past few months has been all about "work and no play", that is what setting up a new business does to a couple who are partners in the same business. We decided to see the movie "Hiddden Figures", I didn't know what the movie was about and film house had run out of movie catalogues, just seeing Taraji  Henson and a little girl scribbling some maths on a chalk board caught my attention. It had to be an inspirational movie and so that's what we saw.

As a fashion enthusiast and a lover of all things vintage, I was immediately hooked, I wanted everything they wore in my wardrobe, vintage fashion is so classy, stylish and modest. Asides the fashion, I loved the story and related well with it because it was based on true events. Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson were female computers and pioneers who did their jobs during a time of racial and gender discrimination while acting with dignity and humanity. Lessons learned from the movie are patience in adversity, fortitude, integrity and perseverance in the face of discrimination and condescension.

They pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be a mathematician, a scientist or an engineer. This can be applied in every field of life we find ourselves, we should always thrive to do to the best of our ability.


xoxo...
Chioma Mide