Let's see...It all began when I was just a twinkle in my parents' eyes...just kidding. I had "regular" hair all my life and of course my Granny (mom's mom) pressed my hair for Easter and other special occasions. When I was seven, during a visit, my Grandma Dot (dad's mom) decided to give me a Jheri curl on a whim (I think she had been waiting for an opportunity) so I spent the next two years letting my soul glow and not feeling silky or smooth. I got a lot of colds because I was already a little sickly and now my head was wet ALL the time because Grandma felt it necessary to activate me every 5 minutes when we were together (God forbid I have a dry curl!). After an intervention from my mother, I grew out the curl so that I could get a perm (as we called it in 1989). I had a relaxer for the next 20 years. During that time I had healthy permed hair about 95% of the time (well, as healthy as it could be). My hair grew to my shoulder blades over the course of my life and I was always the girl with the pretty, thick, long hair. My hair survived a scissor-happy stylist in my teens, college freshman bonding sponsored by Clairol, a bad meaning "bad" weave my junior year and a bad meaning "FABULOUS" weave that summer, and a self-inflicted hair lightening catastrophe right before a college friend's wedding where I was to be a beautiful bridesmaid, but looked like a brown skunk (thank goodness Sally's was having a human hair sale and I can make a great bun). Throughout all this, I would say to myself "I'll go natural when I start having kids because relaxers are bad for babies". At 28 and some change, I was low on funds and decided to stretch my relaxers. After going without a relaxer for 2 months, I decided to go natural. I was a horrible transitioner-I treated my hair like it was relaxed when I should have been using products for natural hair.
Well, here I am at thirty with no children (yet) and a beautiful, lush head of NATURAL hair.