My story

Hello everyone,

The name “BeautifullyNappy” is a summary of my belief that natural hair is gorgeous and we don’t need to hide it! We should learn about it, love it and watch it grow (If that’s what you are aiming for)!

MY NATURAL STORY

My older sister is a doctor and she was always harping on about how nature is best and chemicals are the devil. I ignored her and called her a leaf-eating hippie (yes I was very proud of this nickname). However, when I turned 17 my face started sprouting pimples and I was desperate for a cure! Well I tried her natural remedies and voilà THEY WORKED!! Thus, I became a super hippie natural freak as well!! 🙂

Okay, so that’s the story of how I became a 100% organic baby as my friends would say, now this is my natural hair story.

I become natural in year 2009, because all of a sudden all the hair at the back of my head fell off. My dear friend cut my hair, and like all good Nigerian girls my plan was to wait for it to grow back and then relax it yet again!!!! There a few myths you learn as a Nigerian girl growing up, and the number one beauty secret you learn is that your natural hair should be “done” in some way.  That is, relaxed, braided or hidden in a weave!  Just to give you all a heads up, I would be making lots of references to the Nigerian view on natural hair and how it’s evolving throughout my blog. Mainly because I am Nigerian, and I have heard the funniest things since I started my hair journey, including comments like…..”But it can never be silky”, “relax it, it would be so long then”, “you think this is hair….abeg relax it!!” Anyway I digress, back to my story!

At the time, I had no idea that natural needed any special care, I would wash and condition it with my usual shampoo and conditioner (full of parabens and other chemicals harmful to your hair) and put it in a braid or weave.  It grew to about 6 inches at the longest point as at August 2012, I had long hair for a black girl, I still believed this myth that black hair couldn’t grow past a certain length except you were mixed!( I know! the horrible notions we grow up with). My hair was constantly breaking, because I had no idea how to care for it, but at the time I thought I was doing great!!!

Anyway, I was ready to relax my hair at this point, I was convinced it wasn’t going to grow. Another crazy myth I grew up with, “when your natural hair has stopped growing it is now time to relax it”!! At that time I wasn’t aware that  hair was always growing, and what made it stagnant was little to no length retention. However, the day before I decided to relax my hair, I went online oddly enough to find tips to care for natural hair ( I was still fantasizing about Rapunzel hair!!), I found so much information, but  two things I found  touched a nerve:

1. Clips from the movie  “Good Hair”

1. The Tyra Banks show on “What is Good Hair”

After watching these programmes, my hair became a statement and a crown! It wasn’t just something superficial anymore; I learnt suddenly how important it was that I accepted my hair just the way God made it! I decided I would never relax my hair and that I would learn to love it and rock it Beautiful and Nappy!

Since then, I have been taking care of my hair based on lots of things I have learnt from blogs and some of my own ideas; my hair has grown a lovely 5 inches since August 2012 and I am in love with it (no its crazy I really do love it!!). I am going to share all the things I have done to improve my hair and all the things I will be doing to improve my hair, so I hope you enjoy the ride!!!