I LOVE my hair.

No, I don’t think you understand.

I LOVE MY HAIR!!! lol

Call it whatever you want - security blanket, vanity, treasure, crowning glory, whatever - I love it and can’t bear the thought of parting with it.

So, after relaxing my hair for about 15 years, I think I might be jumping on the “natural” bandwagon. But you have to understand my plight. Ok, here goes.

I’m from New Orleans, LA, a diverse city and state with a melting pot of cultures: Native American, African, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Caribbean, with a host of others. So it can sometimes be a guessing game what color skin, eyes, or texture hair your children will have. So within my family, like all multi-cultural families, there is a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a lot of in between.

With that being said, I got a helluva mixture of hair on top my head. As of now, my hair is down to the middle of my back. Usually I relax it about once every six months (and trim too, I know, I know). My hair is more wavy at the roots and more curly at the ends. I haven’t had a relaxer since March, but I’m kind of feenin’ for one now. I’m a straight wearing kinda girl even with all the humidity we have here in New Orleans. I usually wash and set my hair every week, flat iron the roots if necessary (which is definitely necessary nowadays) and wrap it every night.

So why did I decide to go natural? I’ve always loved the product of relaxers, but hated the process, but it never deterred me until now. I thought about going natural initially because there were so many other people on doing it. Then I saw people I KNOW doing it and decided to do a little research into it. The problem was that my initial knowledge about natural hair was the short, afro look, which I didn’t want. I wanted to keep my long hair and wear it curly when I wanted and straight when I wanted. So now I see that it’s possible to do both with natural hair. For now, cutting is not an option…I repeat, NOT an option. I like my long hair and don’t want to fathom a future without it. Obsessed you may say, but hey, what can you do?

So here begins the journey. Since I keep my hair straight most of the time, I’m especially interested in any advice/tips on going through the transitioning process without cutting all of the relaxed hair off at once. I’ve had people tell me that it’s an oxymoron of sorts - natural, straight hair - but as I’ve said like 15 times already, I’m not cutting. I’ll keep you updated on the progress. Laissez le bon temps rouler!