Making My Crown

Crack is wack!

I’m talking about the creamy crack. The hair crack. The stuff black girls get hooked on the moment their scalps can handle it

For those of you who don’t know, I’m talking about perms (aka hair relaxers or chemical straighteners). I don’t remember when I got my first perm but I know I was younger than 5. I have kinda-fond memories of sitting in my mom’s room while she opened that box of white cream, mixed in the activator, stirred it up real nice with a tongue depressor and then greased my scalp before slathering on the hair crack relaxer. I remember tearing up barely 10 minutes later because my whole head was burning (even with no-lye formulas!).

But dammit! If it didn’t make my hair combable, manageable, blowing in the breeze (when done by the pros). Back then, I thought long, flowy hair that a comb (small tooth) and fingers could run through easily was the way to go. I hated my short, nappy, always kinky, hair. I thought it was ugly. The world said so. To make matters worse, even when it was relaxed it would break and snap and just fall out. I hated my hair. I wanted good hair.

But then I realized something: My hair is my crown. If I hated my hair, then I wasn’t really that happy with me and what it represented - my roots. I didn’t have bad hair. I had GOOD hair. So in 2011 I made a decision - I was going natural ya’ll! I stopped using the cream and just did blow-outs and hot combs. But it kept falling out. Little by little I cut my hair off until one day in May 2012 I chopped it all off. I wasn’t just a little chop. I cut it ALL off.

I went from this:

To this:

Here’s the thing: It hasn’t changed from that since. And I miss my crown. So, I’ve been experimenting with different products, reading online blogs and now I’m just ready to try out my own thing. I’m going to take you along with me on yet another journey. This time it’s all about the hair (and school and health).