Embracing the Natural Me

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August 19, 2013 by CJ

I’ve been threatening to blog about this for a while, so why not know.

For as far back as I can remember I straightened my hair. I did so because that was what I was taught. My mother straightened her hair, her mother straightened her’s and so on. It was just what one did. The decision to go natural wasn’t one that happened overnight. It was a process.

When I decided to train for my first race, I realized I needed to change my hair routine. Getting my hair done was a time-consuming thing. Not only would it require a few hours in the salon (depending on how overbooked my stylist was), it was expensive. And after taking that time and spending that money, I wasn’t about to sweat it up, so I had to plan my runs around my hair. That just got annoying. At first I thought I’d stop getting my hair straightened while I was training, and once the race was over I’d go back to my normal routine. But as anyone who has caught the running bug knows, one race was all I needed to get hooked. Before I knew it, I had signed up for multiple races throughout the year that would require regular training. I started pulling my hair back into a bun. That was good, until I took the bun out and tons of hair was coming out along with it. My hair was breaking off like crazy! I knew I had to do something. It was then I decided to go natural.

While some people decide to do the big chop (cut it all off), I didn’t. Instead I opted to transition. What does that mean? I decided I’d let my hair grow out and slowly cut of the relaxed or straightened ends. I made some decisions. First, I decided to stop combing my hair unless it was wet. Second, I got rid of all my hair products that contained sulfates and parabens  and all kinds of junk my hair didn’t need. Third, I decided I was going to cut about 1/4″ off every 8 weeks. I followed these steps until I couldn’t take it anymore. One day, a few weeks back (June 23rd to be exact) I cut all the remaining chemically processed hair off.

I admit, some days it’s not easy. Going curly from a lifetime of straight has it’s learning curve. But overall, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

Yeah, I wear my Color Run headband when I work out.

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