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Justice's Journey to "Nappturality"
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Justice's Journey to "Nappturality"One Woman's Journey Back to Her Napptural Roots |
But here I am today in all of my natural/nappy/kinky/curly/coily glory! ... and LOVING it!
During these last three years I have loosed the shackles of harsh, potentially dangerous chemicals; cut the chains of unprofessional, money-grubbing, uncaring stylists; and broken the bonds of fake hair. The amount of money that I have saved just by embracing my God-given ability to do my own hair is unbelievable. It's astounding to think of the pain, hair loss, scalp irritation, and general skin eruptions that I have avoided by denouncing the perm. The increase in my self esteem that I have gained by refusing to remain dependent on wigs, hairpieces, extensions, and weaves is awesome.
I've come a long way, baby! ... 
I'm sincerely and extremely grateful to sites like the now defunct www.blackhaircare.com and www.yourhaircareplus.com for showing me the way to enlightenment and to www.nappturality.com for helping to keep me on the road. To all of my proud black sistah pioneers who paved the way by venturing forth wearing their natural crowns in all of their radiant glory without fear of criticism, ridicule, or fear ... I humbly salute you.
From TWAs to locs to coils to wash 'n go's to twists to knots ... whatever your imagination allows ... it's all good.
Unfortunately, I don't have many photos from my perm/wig/weave/extension/jheri curl days. Or maybe I should say
"fortunately"! ... 
Anywho, by some miracle I found this ONE photo from my pre-natural days. This was in year 2000. Here I'm permed to the gills. I had worn extension braids for about three months. Immediately after taking them out my stylist permed and colored my hair. You can't really tell here, but my hair is lifeless, thin, brittle, and dry. Over the course of the next couple of weeks almost all of it fell out and I had patches all over. It was a demoralizing and humiliating time. But it was the incident that created the impetus for me to consider going natural. The saying that "when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade" is really true.
Even though my mind lead me to just chop it all off and start over again, I was still a glutton for punishment. 
I really liked the new naturally curly look that was
becoming popular, so I naturally decided to ... you guessed it! ... TEXTURIZE!!!
In this photo, I'm about three to four months into the texturizer. If memory serves me correctly, this was 12/2001. I would wash, condition, apply Suave Humectant and Hawaiian Silky curl activator gel. You couldn't tell me that I wasn't looking good! Sometimes the stylist would just apply setting lotion and comb it back, and it would have a waved permed look.
Sorry about the dark background:
Even though I liked the curly look that the texturizer gave me, it brought its own set of problems. No matter how much I conditioned and moisturized, my hair was dry as a chip. I really wanted to achieve some length, but because it was so dry, the ends kept breaking off. It was definitely growing, but you couldn't tell it from the way that it looked.
I finally had had enough. One day as I was applying my products and my hand was coming away full of greasy activator and many, many strands of hair, I made up my mind that it was time to put a stop to the madness. I just showed up at an old beautician's and told her to cut it down to the new growth.
She cut it down to about an inch all around ... which wasn't attractive at all in light of the many patchy areas that the perms had created. She tried to wave it up with that yucky brown gel and tons of hair spray, but this just made my scalp more itchy and irritated. I made it for about a week or so this way but then couldn't take it any more. Thank God for wigs !!!
I want to make my position regarding wigs very clear. Now that I'm natural I really don't wear them very much. But being natural is about having choices. Sometimes I want a straight look without the commitment, so I just throw on a wig. There's nothing wrong with wearing wigs. I think that the problem comes in when you are totally dependent on them.
Anyway, I had boxes and bags full of wigs and I wore them to their best advantage. 
Here are just a few photos of my many wig looks:
In between wigs, I did curly weave looks. Expensive, time consuming, and unhealthy for both my hair and scalp. The weaves
really slowed me down in my pursuit of length ... but they looked good! ... 
In the next stage of my freedom journey, I began to tire of the wigs. Around that time my husband and I started to vacation more frequently. Our location of choice was the Caribbean. I decided to tentatively try twists and twistouts. This is the result of those experiments:
As I began to focus more on keeping my hair moisturized, minimizing manipulation, and keeping it conditioned, I finally began
to show some length. YAAAAAAY!!! ... 
Here is a
photo of the result of approximately one year of taking care with my natural hair. I went from approximately one inch of
weak, lifeless, dead, patchy hair to this (I think that this is at the end of 2002):
As my hair became healthier, stronger, and coilier, I began to venture out and experiment with scarves, headbands, and barrettes for style variety. I also found that my gray hairs were fighting a winning battle, so I decided to add a little color to the equation. I found a WONDERFUL hair stylist who is very experienced with natural hair to apply it. The first go round she applied a "Spiced Copper" by Wella.
This photo shows the new color styled in my very first flat-twistout! This was done this year. Even with the twistout I have a lot of shrinkage. Thanks for the instructions, Sugarnfeist!
Well, today I'm perfectly happy with my beautiful coily napptural hair. As a matter of fact, on my last salon visit for a color touchup, my stylist said that my hair was so healthy that the color was fading too fast!!! This time we upped it a notch and she colored it more of a spiced auburn. I just love, love, love it! Here are some of my present day looks.
I hope that the documentation of my journey will help someone else who is considering going natural and encourage those who may be natural but are thinking about going back to the perm.
Thanks for dropping by! Please come back often. I'll be updating the site on the last of every month with new styles, product information, and regimens.
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