Hallo Gahl readers,

I have finally made up my mind to go back to natural hair, the last time I was fully natural was back in 1999. You are probably wondering why I want to go natural now. Well to make things clear I love my relaxed and texlaxed hair, I think it is beautiful and I have absolutely nothing against relaxers.

 My main reason for going back to natural is because I don´t really know why I relax my hair any more. Before starting my hair journey I used to straighten my hair to make it manageable, now I have learnt how to manage it. I purposely started under processing my hair with the relaxer so that my texlaxed hair would have almost the same texture as my new growth and as a result, I can´t tell the difference between my new growth and the under processes hair. Now I am confident that I can handle my hair in it´s natural state just as well.

Another reason for me deciding to go natural is that I love the versatility of natural hair. It can be worn straight and curly. And I surely would love to rock a big fat twist out one day ;)

I am planning on doing a long term transition, my regimen will stay the same. The only difference will be that I will not be relaxing my hair any more. By the way the back of my head, edges and nape are currently 41 weeks post relaxer while my crown is 16 weeks post relaxer today. I am so in love with the curls and coils I am seeing grow out of my head. I keep wondering how come I never noticed them years back and the answer is simple, I used to relax my hair every 12 weeks, which is not enough time to be able to really see your curl pattern. Now I have seen it and I can´t wait to be fully natural :)

I am so excited about this new hair journey and as always you can join me in the long term transition if you want to go natural but do not want to cut off your relaxed ends immediately.

 It has been a little over three months since the Gahl length retention challenge started. According to the rules of the challenge, each participant is allowed only one heat pass every three months. This challenge has really helped me stick to my regimen and to stay away from heat, we still have three months to go before the challenge ends. Do feel free to join in :)

So on Sunday 5^th of May I applied a mixture of sunflower oil, olive oil and tea tree oil as a pre shampoo treatment onto my hair and left it on for about one hour. I went on to clarify my hair with the herbal essences clarifying shampoo since I wanted my hair completely build up free.

 After rinsing the shampoo off with warm water it was time for a protein treatment. At the moment I am using the nivea long hair repair 1 Min express treatment as a protein treatment and I am absolutely loving it. I followed with the Aussie moist conditioner which is my moisture conditioner for about 5 minutes and rinsed this off with cool water under the shower while detangling with my wide toothed comb. ( rinsing with cool to cold water leaves my hair soft and smooth). To dry my hair I simply used an old but clean cotton T-shirt.

To keep my hair from having to much build up I did not apply any moisturiser at all, I just applied the chi silk infusion serum which I use as a heat protectant and let my hair air dry. I then blow dried my hair on the cool setting and finished up by flat ironing. This was so much work! 

                                                         

You probably remember that I suffered a major setback back in April of 2012, if you are new to our blog you can read all about it here. It has been one year and a month since then and here is a comparison of what my hair looked like then and what it looks like now. 

I am quite happy with the results even though I did not retain any length in 2012. My hair is much healthier and thicker too.

 In April 2012 my hair was very damaged, but after a major trim and lots of time, it finaly looks healthy :) Thanks to all of you who encouraged and supported me to carry on when this setback occurred, I really appreciated your support.

Food for thought:

Don´t let a setback keep you from pursuing your hair goals, with the right care your hair will definitely grow back healthy again. To find out how I dealt with mine check out this post on my major setback. It will take a while but you will get there so please stay motivated and encouraged to carry on with your hair journey.

I've gone missing for such a long time, actually this was my last hair update, but to justify this, its been for a worthy and time demanding course because I went back to school last June. The biggest downside is that I got too busy that I neglected my hair journey. As a result, I ended up with very damaged hair. My hair was breaking  a lot due to split and my ends we so thin.
                                           Back in July 2012: The thinning had already began.

The length of my hair also became so uneven and for months I'd been too dissatisfied to continue keeping unhealthy hair.( especially being aware of how well Joanne's hair is doing)I resorted to a fresh and healthy start as at 28th April 2013. 

I texlaxed my hair just enough to retain the thickness that I desired. I cut my hair to a healthy neck length and that's my starting length. I have such a long way to go but I'm happy about a healthy head of hair and definitely about a whole healthy new journey.

Is there anyone out there who would like to take this new journey with me? we could keep track of each other share our challenges and just walk with each other. I envision a healthy arm pit length hair come December 2013.
 

I will try to do posts as often as I can to keep you posted on my new healthy hair journey.

Check out the pictures of my new hair!

                                                       This is what my hair looks like now.

Till next post, healthy hair journey and God bless.